After a day in which I spent part of my day visiting the Old National Gallery with Olivia, we spent our evening at home, cooking fried rice with leftovers and watching the Bourne Ultimatum with my roommate, Ronny. The Old National Gallery had some fantastic paintings from the 19th century and featured one of my favorites, Caspar David Friedrich.
There were also other great pieces of art that I really enjoyed such as Karl Friedrich Schinkel's art pieces. These Romantic paintings are really quite impressive.
One of the ones I did not know about before was this one painting that reminded me of Harry Potter for some reason. It's called The Island of the Dead (or in German, Die Toteninsel) by Arnold Böcklin in 1883. Pretty neat, no?
I also forgot to mention that we spent yesterday at the Altes Museum and Neues Museum in Berlin. I had only been to the former before but never the latter as it wasn't opened until October 2009—after being closed for 70 years following heavy destruction during WWII. The bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti used to be in the Altes Museum, so I thought it would be good to go there. Turns it out it was no longer there, so it was more or less rather boring.
The Neues Museum, on the other hand, was extraordinary. In fact, the New York Times had a feature on it last year when it opened. The architectural blend of old and new is fantastically done, and the exhibits themselves are extraordinarily impressive, both in terms of the collection and the presentation.
Sadly, the bust of Nefertit is no longer allowed to be photographed (which I was able to do in 2007 and 2008 when I had visited it previously in the Altes Museum). So instead, I took pictures of another great piece—a relief from the Amarna period of Egyptian art featuring Nefertiti and her husband, the pharoah Akhenaten. I had always thought it was a huge piece of work covering an entire wall, but it turns out it's about the size of my computer screen!
We spent a good two to three hours in the museum and then went home to eat leftovers and watch the Bourne Supremacy. That is the film in which Matt Damon—as Jason Bourne—runs through Berlin. Pretty neat to recognize the city sites and also notice inconsistencies in his location from scene to scene (i.e. you can't run from one spot in the eastern part of Berlin to a spot in the western part in 10 seconds during a police chase).
So anyway, back to New Year's Eve. My roommates both went out to a party, and since my friend, Michelle, is stranded back in New York, we didn't end up going to the Brandenburg Gate as previously planned. The more I had heard about it over the past few weeks though, the less excited I was about going. The thought of more than a million (tipsy or drunk) people setting off fireworks in close proximity didn't seem like the wisest idea. Plus I just don't like crowds.
Instead, Olivia and I watched the entire show online. There were some weird music combinations that cracked us up, but otherwise, I enjoyed my New Year's Eve with a Bavarian beer, a Berliner beer, and then a Turkish beer—all very common parts of Berlin/German culture.
After the clock struck midnight, fireworks went off like crazy at the Gate. Looked nice, but it also sounded like an air attack on Berlin outside.
For the past 24 hours, you could hear giant explosions outside. As my friend, Brandon, said, Berlin sounded like a war zone with huge booms and explosions that sound like machine guns. I took plenty of pictures of the people lighting off fireworks directly below.
At least a good handful landed on our balcony or hit the walls next to us. It's now after 2 AM, and there are still firework explosions sounding through the night. In fact, one of the larger explosions of the night just went off outside. Also just heard the first fire truck sirens down the street.
Tomorrow, Olivia is checking out some museums on her own, and then I will join her to see the rest of the Old National Gallery. They closed at 2 PM today, so we only got through half the museum. I have an annual pass now though, and she has a 3-day pass, so we'll be fine getting in without paying again.
Then on Sunday, we fly out way early in the morning to Ireland for a week. Looking forward to checking out Dublin and Galway!
Until then, Happy New Year!
Sam
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