Day 7 – It’s all Egyptian

  

This morning after a very Australian breakfast in one of the local cafes, eggs, sausages and beans, we decided to all split up and do our own thing for the morning after a brief stop to drop the bikes off. Having seen a big sports store close to the drop off point and having wanted to look for a few days I took this as my opportunity to finally go in. I can’t decide whether I was disappointed or not. I came out with three items so irregardless it did serve a purpose. All very humdrum and not really worth mentioning what.

Afterwards I decided to do a bit of tourist shopping and a bit of research around where to put our bags tomorrow. It turned into a four hour walk. But it was fun, searching for a magnet of the victory tower for a mate, buying a present for Claire and generally trying to capture a few good shots of the city.

I stopped for a beer in one of the bars on the river. Asking for a radler because that was the only beer they had that I hadn’t had. Amazing eh? I’m starting to find German bars that I’ve now drunk all the beer at. The beer I ordered was a Radler, so whilst sitting there I did a bit of research and learnt that a Radler means cyclist in Germany, is a mix of lemonade and beer and was considered a refreshment for cyclists. I didn’t cycle but I thought I deserved one anyway.

After a short pop back to our apartment, we then left for the Pergamon museum. Unfortunately the queue was two hours long. However it’s on Museum Island with a range of other museums so we went to the Neues Museum instead. This museum holds a large amount of Egyptian Art, which took up over half of the museum. It was very eye opening but after a while it all seemed to fade into one. Claire and I had split up early on in the musuem like we do usually but I got to the point where I just wanted to find her. Her enthusiasm is a real pleasure to be around when looking round galleries and museums and she soon energised me to keep looking. It’s very much something we’ve done to feed off each other’s passions. Of particular note was Nefertiti’s bust and the Golden Hat which recorded the lunar eclipses.

One thing I did enjoy was the two courtyards they had there representing an Egyptian and Greek courtyard. It was nice to feel almost like stepping back in time and was the first museum I’ve ever been to that has done anything like this.

Afterwards we drifted out for dinner at Atame Tapas (another recommendation) and enjoyed a delightful meal for the three of us. A brief stop on the way back for another drink and that was our final night in Berlin.

IJS