Berlin: Day 2 (Pt II)

As promised, I'll write a bit about the museums I visited today.

First stop, the Jewish Museum. In one word: amazing. I walked out 3 hours later with a new level of knowledge of Judaism. I guess that should be expected after visiting a Jewish Museum, but I learned far more than I expected. What I also appreciated was that it wasn't all about the Shoah (Holocaust) or persecution, rather it was a celebration of the Jewish faith. Yes, they discussed the Holocaust and other forms of persecution, but with a focus on the future, not the past.

The museum itself is architecturally stunning, which seems to be a trend throughout Europe. The Jewish Museum only has one square feature in the entire building, and that is the memorial garden, which itself contains non-square colums. The Axes in the basement are moving, and really well-presented, covering both the positive and negative repecussions from the Shoah - i.e. migration and death.

There was also a Freud exhibition on at the time (Mum you would've loved it) which attempted to shed some light on his life, his theories and why people attend therapy in the first place. Essentially they couldn't explain it, so they just showed it from his perspective, which was just as effective. The room with all the couches, where you can sit and listen to psychology depicted through film was great - you'd be surprised how often 'the couch' is used in films!

Next stop, after a massive downpout and lunch of currywurst, was Checkpoint Charlie. CC served as one of the checkpoints between East and West Berlin, and became the most infamous one because it was the location of the tank stand-off during the Cold War. The checkpoint itself has been moved to a traffic island in the middle of the road, but the whole area is dedicated to the Wall and the people who lost their lives trying to cross. It's another example of the ever-changing Berlin, as the district is entirely new (since 1991). They are also attempting to create continuous and coherent relics and monuments to the Wall, and there is now an exhibition at CC showing how this will be done. Interesting that they've waited this long to do that, but when a city is completely broke, it's not totally surprising.

From there, I checked out the Topography of Terror exhibition, which covers the SS & Gestapo, their prisons, and the Nurnburg Trial that followed the end of WW2. Fascinating stuff, and not covered in any of the other museums I've been to so far. Free too!

Finally I visited the Jewish Memorial - the one you may have seen with all the uneven stones. As opposed to the Jewish Museum, this memorial is entirely dedicated to remembering those lives murdered in the Shoah. It doesn't mince its words, and it definitely sets out to emphasise the enormity of it all. Definitely confronting, particularly the use of the word 'murdered' not 'died' as in many other places.

After that I felt a bit numb so I went on the internet and booked all the boring necessities for the rest of my Europe trip - train tickets and Edinburgh Tattoo tickets.