Berlin and Prague Part 1!

When we last left you, we were in Berlin. We had a few more days there which were filled with all sorts of awesome.

The first day after the last post, we decided to do a few museums. We started with the Pergamon Museum, an absolutely amazing museum containing all sorts of classic archaeological finds. There was not only the usual glut of Greek and Roman things, but there was also lots of history there from farther east, from the times of the Persians and the Ottoman Empire, among more. The Greek stuff was still amazing though; the namesake of the museum is the city of Pergamon, from which the museum had a huge frieze, of more than 80 metres. In case you didn't know, a frieze is like a relief sculpture that usually extends around a temple. This one depicted a myriad of gods and goddesses locked in a struggle with snake-limbed titans. Other highlights included a huge gate that served a market town connecting the east and west of its day, and a set of huge Babylonian gates. Really, I could go on and on about the things in that museum. It's amazing. If you are ever in Berlin you must go. We also went to the Bode Museum, a museum focusing on more 18 and 19th century artifacts. The museum may have been interesting, but the huge amounts of religious art depicting Mary and Jesus all starts to look the same after a while. It did contain a fascinating collection of coins from all eras of history and all manner of nations, but there were so many that even those became hard to focus on.

The day after that, after not doing anything overly interesting that evening (museums are TIRING), we hit up the National Gallery, with paintings by many artists, including Manet, Monet, and Beckmann. It was pretty ho-hum for me until I got to the top floor where most of the names I just mentioned were, along with some others. In fact, I am hoping Mandy keeps the post card I sent her, because I purposefully went and found my favourite painting in postcard form, and promptly forgot the name of the artist.

True to the 2-museum groove we had been cultivating lately, we spent that afternoon at the German History Museum. Since my WW2 and communist history is not fantastic, I started out at about 1919 and made my way up to about 1994 (which is about as late as the museum goes). Wow, you really take for granted how complicated everything involved actually was. I was very impressed with how unabashed the Germans presented their checkered past under the Third Reich. The facts are all there, not matter how horrifying they sometimes are, as if Germany has gotten them out into the open so that they could move on.

That night we went to go see Scraps of Tape, the Question and Division of Laura Lee, three Swedish bands doing a show together at a small club in a neighbourhood nearby our hostel. Liam wanted to see Scraps of Tape, and actually managed to get not only a street poster, but also all 5 of the bandmates signatures, a short conversation with each, and their complete discography (of the course the last came at a price). Their latest came in the form of a record, which was so much fun to mail... but more on that as we go on!

The next day, we went on our merry way to get our butts to Prague, only to run into a few snags. First of all, it was a holiday in Germany! Unfortunately, that meant Liam could not mail his record and had to carry it with us to Prague. Then! We went to go catch our train only to realize that the station closest to our hostel was out of operation for the day. In a panic, we took a "train bus," which basically took us to the next train stop, where the trains were running relatively normally. When we got to the main train station we had to perform a mad dash to our train headed to Prague.

Upon arrival to Prague we had a little bit of fun finding our hostel. The instructions on the website of the hostel gave only a metro station name, which I took to mean that the hostel was right outside that metro station. No such luck! After wandering aimlessly for a little while (but not too long because by now we have realized that it never seems to work) we dropped into a net cafe to grab the address of the place. After dealing with some mildly confusing signage, we did find the right street and address of our hostel, having walked by it a few times because it looked like an apartment building... which is basically what it was. We buzzed the hostel, got no answer, then I remembered... "Oh! There's something weird about this hostel." Wait for it... "Oh yeah, there's no actual reception. We have to get the key at the bar." So, going to a few nearby bars, we found the one who was holding our key, found out we were entitled to a free bar, then went back to the hostel and let ourselves in. It was literally an apartment building, and after climbing the whole building searching for it, we realized the 'hostel' was on the second floor, and was just basically a converted apartment. The nice part about this was that our room was huge; it had 3 beds, 2 couches, and 2 coffee tables, and there was room for plenty more. They also had free internets. Bonus! I spent the rest of the evening trying to get a hold of my mom, whom we were meeting in Prague, and had apparently planted at a cocktail bar nearby to her hotel.

We didn't get a hold of her until the next day, in the midst of our wandering around trying to mail Liam's record. We went to 3 post offices, who each told us to go to a bigger post office, but none of them had a record sized envelope or box. We eventually met up with my Mom, who is named Mary Ann, and with her assistance tried to track down a place where Liam could ship his record. Having no luck, we eventually all got stranded by some rain and hail, and my mom decided to treat us to a taxi ride to the Communist Museum. The Communist Museum is, if I remember correctly, the first of its kind to open after the Iron Curtain dissolved. The museum was not so remarkable for its artifacts so much as its clear, sober representation of the Communist Era, and the way in which it affected the Czech Republic. All of the writeups were extremely well done and paired with good visual aids, and a video broke up the exhibition quite nicely, depicting some of the police brutality that Czechs had to endure to have their demands heard. One particularly moving moment of Czech history happened when Jan Palach, a Czech youth, lit himself on fire in protest of the Soviet invasion intent on reversing some recent liberalising reforms to communism that the government made. The full story can be found at the link, of course.

That night, Liam and I decided to try and get a taste of Czech nightlife and wandered around the streets looking for a suitable haunt. After walking around fruitlessly for a good long while, we ended up at a somewhat unassuming pub that seemed busy enough that it might be decent. After wandering around the small upstairs for a little while, we noticed people were going downstairs and decided to check it out. Imagine our surprise when we found out that the downstairs was a dance club that was about twice as large as the upstairs! Having had a satisfying taste of what nightlife might be like in Prague, but feeling rather tired, we had a few drinks and soaked in the atmosphere (including the ubiquitous tobacco smoke) but then headed on back to our hostel to rest for the next day's adventure, which will be on the next post!