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I went to Germany. The trains weren’t running on time and the drains were up, which completely confounded all my prejudices.
Back when I was at school, I spent five years in a vain attempt to learn German. As exercises go this was a complete waste of everyone’s time and I knew it – I remember once putting my hand up in assembly and asking if I could stop doing German classes as it really wasn’t going in but to no avail.
For my teacher it was a waste of his valuable teaching time trying to hammer cases and declensions into my resistant neurons; for the taxpayer it was a waste of their money paying someone to try, and for me it was a waste of time as I simply sat there year after year with a bovine expression of incomprehension on my face. As I sat a long stream of drool poured out of the corner of my mouth and collected in a pool at my feet. By the time I took my GCSE I was knee-deep in slobber and pretty much the only German I knew was the translation of “How do you say that in German?”, as that phrase was the only thing which was going to get me through the oral exam. As a result German GCSE became one of only two exams I’ve ever failed.*
The last reason it was a complete waste of everyone’s time became clear as I spent a few days in Berlin the other week. I’d carefully prepare what I was going to say and practise my little script before I walked into a shop or restaurant. Then I’d walk in and carefully recite what I wanted to say, and there’d be a short pause before the German person answered me in nigh-perfect English and carried on the conversation that way. This happened every single time.**
I’ve only been to Germany once, for a stopover on my flight back from Mexico about fifteen years ago when I had my wallet nicked, so the country didn’t leave a great first impression. However, the she-David was determined that I should go and that I’d like it and I know what’s good for me, so I acquired some of the local currency by buying a Monopoly set before jetting off for a long weekend of fun*** and frolics.****
Berlin Airport is surprisingly small for a major world city, and the light rail runs from it through what was the old communist East Berlin to the city centre. I’d booked us into a hotel pretty much bang in the middle of the city – called Mitte for the hard of thinking like me - for convenience sake, and as we sat on the train I tried to think of what the outskirts of the old east reminded me of. Eventually I decided it was reminiscent of the outskirts of old British northern industrial cities like Leeds or Sheffield; that same collection of dilapidated red-brick industrial buildings and a heck of a lot of post-war flats put up fast to give people somewhere to live without worrying too much about aesthetics, and as we approached our destination it all got newer, sprucer, cleaner. It’s sobering to realise that seventy years after the end of the war some bits of the city are still being rebuilt; the destruction of the battle of Berlin was catastrophic, and you can tell if a building is genuinely old or new-built-to-look-old as the real old stuff is still pockmarked with bulletholes and shrapnel marks. If you ever think London had it bad during the Blitz, go to Berlin. It’s something else.
Back when Berlin was first settled by the Hohenzollerns literally dozens of years ago they took up residence on an easily-defended island in the middle of the river Spree and the city grew up around it, and has long-since overwhelmed the original settlement to the point it’s difficult to tell there is even an island any more. However, the old island is still very much the centre of the city. At one end there’s a huge building site which is where the German government is demonstrating their ongoing commitment to rebuilding all the more historic parts of the city by reconstructing the old Imperial Palace which the communists levelled back in the 1950s*****, whilst at the other end of the island is what is the cultural heart of the city; here you’ll find the Berliner Dom – their equivalent of St Pauls – and five museums. One is the Alte Nationalgalerie, which is pretty much what it says, whilst the remaining four, the Alte Museum, the Neue Museum, the Bode Museum and the Pergamon museum, are the German equivalent of the British Museum spread over four buildings rather than crammed into one. It was here I headed first.
Unlike the British Museum, you have to pay to get in to the German equivalents which is on the one hand quite annoying as it’s about a tenner a go, but on the other hand it’s quite nice as this means the museums are pretty empty. It’s almost unimaginable to find yourself alone in a room with a wonder of antiquity or two in London, but in Berlin it’s like that in every second room. I liked that immensely, although I couldn’t help but think the British Museum probably makes more money by letting people in free and then selling them tat at every opportunity.
The Altes Museum is, as the name suggests, the oldest of the group; here they’ve stuck a selection of Greek and Etruscan statuary, jugs, lumps of architecture and assorted nicknacks. It’s mostly the same unremarkable stuff you find in any museum of Greeko-Roman statuary except for a fab head of Athena and the central area which is a dome based on the Pantheon lined with tremendously well-preserved colossi of the Greek gods. However the café does a spiffing chocolate cheesecake as well, if you’re after recommendations.
From there it’s on to the Neues Museum, which was, I admit, the one I’d really come to see as it’s in here they’ve got the collection of Egyptian antiquities, which I’m always a fan of, and the exhibition of Schliemanns excavation of Troy, which I was keen to see as I liked the film and the novelisation. The renovation of the Neues Museum from war damage was only completed a few years ago and it’s been done really well – clearly the museum was once decorated with frescoes and wall paintings to mimic the civilisations it displays, and the renovation has left a lot of the war damage intact: rather than a full refurbishment the walls have shattered plasterwork and blackened remnants of décor. As you wander the place you occasionally come across an exhibition case with a small, sad note explaining that there should be an exhibit here but it was carted off by the Soviets after the war and is still in the Kremlin being used as a footstool by Vladimir Putin, or whatever. The juxtaposition of the antiquities and the way the war and its consequences is recognised in the design and display of the building makes the whole thing that much more affecting and thought-provoking. Indeed, that recognition of the war in design decisions is something that occurs again and again throughout Berlin, and it’s something I’ll return to later.
Of course, the most famous thing in the Neues Museum is the bust of Nefertiti. You know it, even if you don’t realise it. It’s this:
It’s one of those things that a photograph simply can’t do justice to, and thanks to the ‘charging through the nose to get in’ museum policy I had the room containing her to myself several times (as I kept going back for another look). Beautiful and remarkable, queen of the Nile and wife (and possibly, unusually, equal) of the Pharaoh, she stares at you across three and a half thousand years; fine-featured, high-boned, and with that faint, knowing, tolerant smile that anyone who has ever done something stupid to impress a girl will recognise instantly. Apparently the archaeologist who found her covered her in dirt and grime to make her look worthless in order to snuggle the bust past Egyptian border guards, which is something the Egyptians still are quite cross about. You can see why. It’s an absolute treasure and you’re not allowed to take photos, presumably half because camera flash might damage the ancient pigments and half because it’s immensely famous and controlling the image rights is probably a good source of revenue. Eventually – eventually – I dragged myself away. I had a fair amount of museum to do and not a huge amount of time to do it in.
If I have one complaint about the Neues Museum it’s that unlike many museums the exit is not the same as the entrance and isn’t very clearly signposted for anyone who doesn’t speak the lingo. This results in the guard getting quite cross and finger-jabby with you as, idly musing on ways you might show Nefertiti a good time, your reverie gets broken by an angry little fellow with an angry-man mustache when you make the understandable error and try to leave by the way you came in.
Still, I mused to myself as I let myself out the back door and wandered off to my next stop. Berlin might have Nefertiti, but frankly the rest of the collection just isn’t up to the British Museum. I comforted myself with the thought that London has loads more way better stuff as I trotted up the steps and through the door of the Pergamon Museum - whereupon my jaw fell open and didn’t shut properly again for quite some time.
Coming as I do from a country with a rich and honourable history of appropriating artifacts which weren’t nailed down I have to respect clear evidence of someone just completely outclassing us in one of our core competences, as the contents of the Pergamon Museum knock the Elgin Marbles into a cocked hat. Let me tell you; if Lord Elgin had been German he wouldn’t have just had the marbles. The Parthenon would have been gracing the London skyline for the last couple of centuries and the Greeks could whistle for it. This was cultural appropriation on a scale of which I had not previously dreamed.
One of my favourite things in the British Museum are the wall panels from the palace of Ashurbanipal - their antiquity is impressive, but the thing I like best is that there are fragments of the original paint still adhering which give a hint as to the original bright colours. In contrast to this, slap in the entry hall to the Pergamon museum is the Ishtar Gate; the walls and gate of the city of Babylon still as brightly coloured with original glazed azure and gold brick as they were when Belshazzar was wandering through them for a bit of the old Tekel Upharsin millennia ago. They're breathtaking. I stared at them for a good while, occasionally muttering "By crikey!", or words to that effect.
And it's not just the Ishtar Gate they've got in there; there's the gate of Miletus, a Roman-era city gate, and the Pergamon altar, which sounds less impressive but is right up there with the Elgin marbles when it comes to dead fancy Ancient Greek architecture, and more. Quite seriously, after the mild disappointment and sense of British superiority on the archaeology front engendered by the first two museums the Pergamon Museum is in a league of it's own - all I can compare it to is the room in the V&A containing life-sized replicas of things like Trajan's column, but as if the things in that room were real instead of reproductions. It's genuinely wonderful.
But anyway. It was getting late in the day and I had to be getting on. I'd tried to get into the Berliner Dom earlier in the day for a nosey about but, once again, it was the fat end of a tenner to get in and so as evening rolled around I put on an air of Teutonic piety and joined the gathered congregation for evensong, which was free.
The Cathedral, like much of the city, was completely gutted and reduced to a rubble-strewn shell during the Battle of Berlin, but you cannot tell now. It's been rebuilt as it was pre-war and it's impossible to see the joins (except they've put underfloor heating in, which is nice). For all you know you're in the original 19th century building; it is, for want of a better word, perfect. Even more gratifyingly it turned out that as well as evensong it was CPE Bach's birthday and so we got an unexpected but delightful rendition of some of his greatest hits at the end of the service.
Eventually we wandered out of the nice, cosy cathedral into the chilly North German night and headed off back for dinner, the hotel, and an early night. The museums had been nice, but there was a great deal more I wanted to see yet. There's a lot of history of Berlin, and all that Hitler/Stalin/East Berlin stuff. I had places to go, and things to see.
End of Part 1.
*The other being my first driving test, which means that according to qualifications I’m roughly as good at driving as I am at speaking German – something you should bear in mind should you ever ask me for a lift somewhere.
**Except once, when a heavily-tattooed East German Rock chick decided I would benefit from being shouted at in German and then, when I carefully explained my German wasn’t up to much, decided that this meant I needed shouting at some more. Lord knows what she was saying, but she seemed jolly keen about it.
***German fun
*****German frolics.
*****You can tell this is a government project as it’s immensely expensive and nobody seems to have a clue what they’ll do with it once it’s finished.
Back when I was at school, I spent five years in a vain attempt to learn German. As exercises go this was a complete waste of everyone’s time and I knew it – I remember once putting my hand up in assembly and asking if I could stop doing German classes as it really wasn’t going in but to no avail.
For my teacher it was a waste of his valuable teaching time trying to hammer cases and declensions into my resistant neurons; for the taxpayer it was a waste of their money paying someone to try, and for me it was a waste of time as I simply sat there year after year with a bovine expression of incomprehension on my face. As I sat a long stream of drool poured out of the corner of my mouth and collected in a pool at my feet. By the time I took my GCSE I was knee-deep in slobber and pretty much the only German I knew was the translation of “How do you say that in German?”, as that phrase was the only thing which was going to get me through the oral exam. As a result German GCSE became one of only two exams I’ve ever failed.*
The last reason it was a complete waste of everyone’s time became clear as I spent a few days in Berlin the other week. I’d carefully prepare what I was going to say and practise my little script before I walked into a shop or restaurant. Then I’d walk in and carefully recite what I wanted to say, and there’d be a short pause before the German person answered me in nigh-perfect English and carried on the conversation that way. This happened every single time.**
I’ve only been to Germany once, for a stopover on my flight back from Mexico about fifteen years ago when I had my wallet nicked, so the country didn’t leave a great first impression. However, the she-David was determined that I should go and that I’d like it and I know what’s good for me, so I acquired some of the local currency by buying a Monopoly set before jetting off for a long weekend of fun*** and frolics.****
Berlin Airport is surprisingly small for a major world city, and the light rail runs from it through what was the old communist East Berlin to the city centre. I’d booked us into a hotel pretty much bang in the middle of the city – called Mitte for the hard of thinking like me - for convenience sake, and as we sat on the train I tried to think of what the outskirts of the old east reminded me of. Eventually I decided it was reminiscent of the outskirts of old British northern industrial cities like Leeds or Sheffield; that same collection of dilapidated red-brick industrial buildings and a heck of a lot of post-war flats put up fast to give people somewhere to live without worrying too much about aesthetics, and as we approached our destination it all got newer, sprucer, cleaner. It’s sobering to realise that seventy years after the end of the war some bits of the city are still being rebuilt; the destruction of the battle of Berlin was catastrophic, and you can tell if a building is genuinely old or new-built-to-look-old as the real old stuff is still pockmarked with bulletholes and shrapnel marks. If you ever think London had it bad during the Blitz, go to Berlin. It’s something else.
Back when Berlin was first settled by the Hohenzollerns literally dozens of years ago they took up residence on an easily-defended island in the middle of the river Spree and the city grew up around it, and has long-since overwhelmed the original settlement to the point it’s difficult to tell there is even an island any more. However, the old island is still very much the centre of the city. At one end there’s a huge building site which is where the German government is demonstrating their ongoing commitment to rebuilding all the more historic parts of the city by reconstructing the old Imperial Palace which the communists levelled back in the 1950s*****, whilst at the other end of the island is what is the cultural heart of the city; here you’ll find the Berliner Dom – their equivalent of St Pauls – and five museums. One is the Alte Nationalgalerie, which is pretty much what it says, whilst the remaining four, the Alte Museum, the Neue Museum, the Bode Museum and the Pergamon museum, are the German equivalent of the British Museum spread over four buildings rather than crammed into one. It was here I headed first.
Unlike the British Museum, you have to pay to get in to the German equivalents which is on the one hand quite annoying as it’s about a tenner a go, but on the other hand it’s quite nice as this means the museums are pretty empty. It’s almost unimaginable to find yourself alone in a room with a wonder of antiquity or two in London, but in Berlin it’s like that in every second room. I liked that immensely, although I couldn’t help but think the British Museum probably makes more money by letting people in free and then selling them tat at every opportunity.
The Altes Museum is, as the name suggests, the oldest of the group; here they’ve stuck a selection of Greek and Etruscan statuary, jugs, lumps of architecture and assorted nicknacks. It’s mostly the same unremarkable stuff you find in any museum of Greeko-Roman statuary except for a fab head of Athena and the central area which is a dome based on the Pantheon lined with tremendously well-preserved colossi of the Greek gods. However the café does a spiffing chocolate cheesecake as well, if you’re after recommendations.
From there it’s on to the Neues Museum, which was, I admit, the one I’d really come to see as it’s in here they’ve got the collection of Egyptian antiquities, which I’m always a fan of, and the exhibition of Schliemanns excavation of Troy, which I was keen to see as I liked the film and the novelisation. The renovation of the Neues Museum from war damage was only completed a few years ago and it’s been done really well – clearly the museum was once decorated with frescoes and wall paintings to mimic the civilisations it displays, and the renovation has left a lot of the war damage intact: rather than a full refurbishment the walls have shattered plasterwork and blackened remnants of décor. As you wander the place you occasionally come across an exhibition case with a small, sad note explaining that there should be an exhibit here but it was carted off by the Soviets after the war and is still in the Kremlin being used as a footstool by Vladimir Putin, or whatever. The juxtaposition of the antiquities and the way the war and its consequences is recognised in the design and display of the building makes the whole thing that much more affecting and thought-provoking. Indeed, that recognition of the war in design decisions is something that occurs again and again throughout Berlin, and it’s something I’ll return to later.
Of course, the most famous thing in the Neues Museum is the bust of Nefertiti. You know it, even if you don’t realise it. It’s this:
It’s one of those things that a photograph simply can’t do justice to, and thanks to the ‘charging through the nose to get in’ museum policy I had the room containing her to myself several times (as I kept going back for another look). Beautiful and remarkable, queen of the Nile and wife (and possibly, unusually, equal) of the Pharaoh, she stares at you across three and a half thousand years; fine-featured, high-boned, and with that faint, knowing, tolerant smile that anyone who has ever done something stupid to impress a girl will recognise instantly. Apparently the archaeologist who found her covered her in dirt and grime to make her look worthless in order to snuggle the bust past Egyptian border guards, which is something the Egyptians still are quite cross about. You can see why. It’s an absolute treasure and you’re not allowed to take photos, presumably half because camera flash might damage the ancient pigments and half because it’s immensely famous and controlling the image rights is probably a good source of revenue. Eventually – eventually – I dragged myself away. I had a fair amount of museum to do and not a huge amount of time to do it in.
If I have one complaint about the Neues Museum it’s that unlike many museums the exit is not the same as the entrance and isn’t very clearly signposted for anyone who doesn’t speak the lingo. This results in the guard getting quite cross and finger-jabby with you as, idly musing on ways you might show Nefertiti a good time, your reverie gets broken by an angry little fellow with an angry-man mustache when you make the understandable error and try to leave by the way you came in.
Still, I mused to myself as I let myself out the back door and wandered off to my next stop. Berlin might have Nefertiti, but frankly the rest of the collection just isn’t up to the British Museum. I comforted myself with the thought that London has loads more way better stuff as I trotted up the steps and through the door of the Pergamon Museum - whereupon my jaw fell open and didn’t shut properly again for quite some time.
Coming as I do from a country with a rich and honourable history of appropriating artifacts which weren’t nailed down I have to respect clear evidence of someone just completely outclassing us in one of our core competences, as the contents of the Pergamon Museum knock the Elgin Marbles into a cocked hat. Let me tell you; if Lord Elgin had been German he wouldn’t have just had the marbles. The Parthenon would have been gracing the London skyline for the last couple of centuries and the Greeks could whistle for it. This was cultural appropriation on a scale of which I had not previously dreamed.
One of my favourite things in the British Museum are the wall panels from the palace of Ashurbanipal - their antiquity is impressive, but the thing I like best is that there are fragments of the original paint still adhering which give a hint as to the original bright colours. In contrast to this, slap in the entry hall to the Pergamon museum is the Ishtar Gate; the walls and gate of the city of Babylon still as brightly coloured with original glazed azure and gold brick as they were when Belshazzar was wandering through them for a bit of the old Tekel Upharsin millennia ago. They're breathtaking. I stared at them for a good while, occasionally muttering "By crikey!", or words to that effect.
And it's not just the Ishtar Gate they've got in there; there's the gate of Miletus, a Roman-era city gate, and the Pergamon altar, which sounds less impressive but is right up there with the Elgin marbles when it comes to dead fancy Ancient Greek architecture, and more. Quite seriously, after the mild disappointment and sense of British superiority on the archaeology front engendered by the first two museums the Pergamon Museum is in a league of it's own - all I can compare it to is the room in the V&A containing life-sized replicas of things like Trajan's column, but as if the things in that room were real instead of reproductions. It's genuinely wonderful.
But anyway. It was getting late in the day and I had to be getting on. I'd tried to get into the Berliner Dom earlier in the day for a nosey about but, once again, it was the fat end of a tenner to get in and so as evening rolled around I put on an air of Teutonic piety and joined the gathered congregation for evensong, which was free.
The Cathedral, like much of the city, was completely gutted and reduced to a rubble-strewn shell during the Battle of Berlin, but you cannot tell now. It's been rebuilt as it was pre-war and it's impossible to see the joins (except they've put underfloor heating in, which is nice). For all you know you're in the original 19th century building; it is, for want of a better word, perfect. Even more gratifyingly it turned out that as well as evensong it was CPE Bach's birthday and so we got an unexpected but delightful rendition of some of his greatest hits at the end of the service.
Eventually we wandered out of the nice, cosy cathedral into the chilly North German night and headed off back for dinner, the hotel, and an early night. The museums had been nice, but there was a great deal more I wanted to see yet. There's a lot of history of Berlin, and all that Hitler/Stalin/East Berlin stuff. I had places to go, and things to see.
End of Part 1.
*The other being my first driving test, which means that according to qualifications I’m roughly as good at driving as I am at speaking German – something you should bear in mind should you ever ask me for a lift somewhere.
**Except once, when a heavily-tattooed East German Rock chick decided I would benefit from being shouted at in German and then, when I carefully explained my German wasn’t up to much, decided that this meant I needed shouting at some more. Lord knows what she was saying, but she seemed jolly keen about it.
***German fun
*****German frolics.
*****You can tell this is a government project as it’s immensely expensive and nobody seems to have a clue what they’ll do with it once it’s finished.
