Walking, Shopping, Looking, Reading, Reflecting, and, of course, Eating

If you don't want to read the rest of the post, the title sums up the last few days Erin and I have had, wandering about Berlin.

If you do want to continue, here are a few visual aids to help:

We started off by winding our way through various parts of Barbara's neighborhood and the neighborhood next to it, headed to a farmer's market and breakfast. There were several interesting shops along the way:



But one in particular you'll hear more about a bit later. It involves a matching unplanned purchase for both Erins. It also involves cutting edge design, iconic Berlin landmarks, and paralyzing indecision. "It" shall be revealed in the next post.

We (finally, at 12 noon) arrived at the market, and immediately sat down for "breakfast" at an Alsatian restaurant, a favorite of Barbara's, and now one of our favorites too.

chocolate banana crepe, various fruits, french sweet cheese, latte, homemade bread

Erin and I took off after breakfast, leaving Barbara to secure dinner items at the market. We headed back to the bookshop that had closed so I could rectify my sad lack of postcards. I did so. Then, in the same building was an entire exhibit of 60's fashion drawings. I really liked them. Erin really liked the shopping mention on the wall.

Then, it was time to get serious. We had a museum pass and we intended to use it. We wound our way to what we thought was the entrance to the musical instrument museum. (Guess who chose that one?) We found a set of doors, with hours printed on the glass, and a uniformed gentleman standing outside. But he was smoking, and non-communicative, and when we waved our passes vaguely in his direction he shook his head firmly. Weird - the hours were right, it was the right place...but Erin thought we should maybe try going to the other side of the building, which in fact was indeed the proper entrance. Once inside, we found ourselves in a rather intense, completely silent room full of old and beautiful instruments. The guard to visitor ratio was approximately 1 to 2, including the guy who had waved us away from the back door, who might or might not have been pretending not to recognize us.

Erin, remembering her glory days

I plan to learn how to play the orthotonophonium when I get home

From the Musical Instrument Museum, things got even more serious, matching the cloudiness of the sky. We walked a few minutes to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which is very difficult to describe. It consists of more than 2000 cement block-shapes, arrayed in a grid, with shorter ones on the edges and much taller ones in the center. The ground itself is not flat, so you walk in and soon find yourself going up and down the small valleys amongst the cement blocks. The designers purposefully offer no interpretation, instead inviting visitors to reflect and come up with their own. Erin and I talked about what we thought as we walked quietly around amongst the stones, so I think in that sense the Memorial is a "success"; it really made me search for a meaning that made sense to me rather than just reading an informational plaque, taking photos, and moving on.

View from the center of the memorial towards the American embassy

After an even more sobering visit to the small museum/information center below the memorial, we were ready to head home. We caught a bus, because our hurting feet made our faces look like this:


We did see these guys on the way home...the translation is something like "Thank you for football from another galaxy. In 4 years, you will get a 4th star (World Cup win) for Germany".

Back at home, Barbara had our dinner fixings ready to go, and Erin mixed our beer/lemonade drinks, and we ate well.

There was even a surprise dessert!