MUSEUMSINSEL BERLIN

Dear Caroline,

After a hectic week of firsts, my friend and I decided we’d go to Museum Island. Berlin has so many museums and galleries, there’s something for everyone. The island is comprised of 5 museums and an installation called the Panorama. There’s the Altes Museum (the old museum), The Neues Museum (the new museum), the Pergommond, The Alte Nationalgalerie and the Bode museum. It’s a lot for one day, we managed to see the Altes, Neues and the panorama.

You can always tell how important museums are to city from what the subway station looks like. In Toronto, Museum Station got a whole renovation some years back and it’s now this super cool Egyptian theme. In Berlin, the ceiling looks like a night sky and everything is super sleek.

The Altes museum was all about the ancients. The Greeks, the Romans, some early Egyptians. It’s so cool to see how they lived thousands of years ago, to see what’s changed and what hasn’t. For example the games they played back then were similar to the games we play now. There was a case with old dice that they found and they could have been bought today. Not only were they still the same design as they are today but the dots on the faces for the numbers are identical too. In the farming exhibit they had a display with all the parts of the horse’s halter and those to are exactly the same today.  Interesting how a civilisation can fail and disappear but we keep coming up with the same tech.

It was a great day! After the museums we walked to Alexanderplatz and went on a hunt for some special chocolate my friend had found here last time she visited. It was quite the trek but we found some and it was worth it. I’ll try and save you a bar.

So far things are nice here in Berlin. Talk soon