Impressions of Berlin

I liked Berlin far more than Budapest.

It was rainy when I arrived but I was still excited to be here - somehow even without map I found my way to Museum Island (the main reason why I came) and checked out magnificent Pergamon Museum with re-constructed greek temple, doors of ancient Roman city market and (the best of all) Ishtar Gate of Babylon - that was truly spectacular.

 Since weather was rainy, I made up my mind to visit a museum per day - it worked quite nice, I got myself a 3-days ticket for Museum Island and saw a lot of beautiful art - Nefertiti, ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman sculptures, lots of beautiful paintings and later I have visited Berlin's Film Museum where they have lovely exhibition about 1920s and 1930s german movies (that I always loved) + Marlene Dietrich collection from her private archives - her costumes, clothes, make up box, letters, telegrams... fascinating. I was very happy to be there.

 Jewish Museum was in my neighborhood so I checked it out yesterday - it was a very strange experience. Besides being very depressing and emotional story (basically there is almost nothing happy or uplifting here, its a long saga of prosecution, humiliation and survival trough centuries) and I cried quite often while walking trough - but I was prepared for this - the surprise was in architectural design of the building's basement, where architects purposely wanted visitors to feel strange, off-balance and displaced - they accomplished this by building walls and floor just a little leaning in wrong direction (in a very clever, discreet way) so as visitors walks in (unprepared) he start to lose the ballance very soon and feels sick, scared and threatened - which is how most of the jews felt. There are also doors leading to "Holocaust tower" and inside are just empty, gloomy walls, the whole space is one huge feeling of fear and death, strange how they managed to do this.

 Berlin is mostly completely rebuilt after WW2 and I actually like it because of that - you still sense this is old town with tradition, history and story behind it, but streets are built nicely, buildings are impressive and even huge amount of tourists can't camouflage the fact that locals are basically nice people. They wait politely on the street lights, greet warmly on the stairs and I have impression they are polite. The weather has been mostly always cloudy and rainy so I didn't look out for night life or anything else besides my cultural interests - I usually walked 7-8 hours daily and was tired in the evenings, when I would simply relax with my music, computer and museum book guides. Can't believe that I travelled trough Budapest and Berlin without actually experiencing night life, but it simply didn't interest me. I am officially getting old.