Day 239, 28 February 2013. Berlin, Germany. Or should we say MUSEUM DAY!!! To have so many world class collections at our fingertips was a treat. And we would have felt guilty if we'd not had a jolly good crack at them whilst still free with our Museum Pass. So off we went. We really got involved in the public transport today - S-Bahn (State/City trains or "Up" trains), U-Bahn (Underground or Metro trains. That sometimes are above ground.) and of course, Shanks's Pony. The first stop at Zoologischer Garden (Berlin Zoo) was the Museum for Photography. Their main exhibit was focussed on Helmut Newton - the man who turned high fashion photography into an art form. It is lucky we are well-travelled and reasonably broadminded because there were many, many nudes in his photographs and our eyeballs were hanging out at the end of the visit. The clothes by Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel and Quant were also stunning - the fashions hilarious at times. Really a mind-blowing display. Even the posters displaying his photographs and used as exhibition advertisements from Tokyo to London were uber-cool. Next stop, modern Art (with a capital "A") at the Neue Nationalgalerie - Picasso, Andy Warhol and a plethora of German artists from both sides of the Wall. James and I have concluded we've not quite evolved far enough to understand some modern art. But it was mind-opening, that's for sure. One of the unusual exhibits was the film clip in technicolour of animated Beatles, singing "All you Need is Love". Having opened our minds as much as possible without resorting to a tin opener we walked next door (seriously, so many museums and galleries in this town). Our next stop was the sublime to the Neue Nationalgalerie's ridiculous - the Gemalde Galerie. I don't think anything less than 500 years old is allowed over the threshold. A great many Dutch painters are represented here and we saw Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Necklace. I did eventually at least. I'd been off looking through all 41 rooms for the Girl with a Pearl Earring and of course hadn't found it - it being in The Hague and all. Honestly, just a little mix up with the Girls and the Pearls.
We were of course utterly exhausted by then (4 pm ish). So the only answer was to keep going! And so it was back onto the metro and off to the Natural History Museum. Originally for no other reason than to see the largest mounted Dinosaur skeleton in the world (as certified by the Guinness Book of Records). It was uber-uber-cool! There were even gizmos to see it in the flesh and running in the grasslands. No big kids here, no sirree. Having viewed the massive dinosaur and with 40 minutes till closing time we ventured into the rest of the museum. Wow - neither of us have seen anything like it. We were also lucky enough to see our second Tasmanian Tiger (aka Tasmanian Wolf). They became extinct in Australia in around 1910 and the reason is becoming exceedingly clear. It's because they were all shot and stuffed and put in museums! Honestly. Could have forgiven the Irish one but to find one here as well. I don't think Australia has a stuffed one, yet the rest of the world is swamped. A couple of things occurred to us as we wandered the exhibits in the quiet prior to closing. Firstly - felt a bit like the movie "A Night in the Museum" - definitely didn't want to get locked in. Secondly, if you want to get creeped out and back again, head to "The Wet Room" - thousands upon thousands of specimens. Preserved. Wet, Rack upon Rack of Life displayed in Death. Thank goodness Berlin is geologically/seismically stable. That is one mess you'd pay not to have to clean up. OK. So that's four down since 11 am and it was then 6 pm. Thursday, happily, is Berlin's "late night" closing for museums. So we hauled ourselves along to the Neues Museum on Museum Island (on our way home). Despite the absolute wealth of Egyptian history we saw - in Egypt, in the Louvre and in the British Museum, we had not really seen much from Tel-a-Marna (where Amenhotep IV/Akenaton and his gorgeous wife Nefertiti lived). And incidentally raised Tutankhamun. We saw the famous bust of Nefertiti, the highlight of the exhibition. We had a laugh over this as we sent someone a postcard from Egypt displaying this stunning item. We just didn't know at the time that it hadn't been in Egypt for over 100 years. We were tuckered out by the time we made it back to the hotel. Incredibly glad we invested a little more in our Berlin lodgings - fabulous to be in the centre of (East) Berlin, right in Alexanderplatz - can't recommend the Park Inn highly enough. Tomorrow we're planning a visit to Bernauer Strasse to see the remaining stretch of the Berlin wall. Our knowledge is expanding by the minute, but all it confirms is how much we didn't know and how much there is still to discover.