Museum Island, 博物馆岛

July 5, 2022

When we were in a new place, we always looked for a breakfast/coffee store to experience. We found one this morning to have a brick of roasted pork bacon, and it tasted good.

We bought the two-day Museum passes and started our museum tour today. One island and five museums, a unique collection of buildings in the center of Berlin, make museum hopping much easy. For crowd control, we also needed to get the time entry tickets. We went to the Neue Museum Berlin in the morning, had lunch at the museum café, and then visited the Pergamon Museum in the afternoon. There was so much to see between the two museums. The highlights were the statue of the Egyptian heroine, the golden hat, and the replica of the Iraqi Ishtar Gate. The museum and many of its collections were destroyed during World War II and have been under renovation since the reunification of East and West Germany. In Pergamon Museum, through the protection glass, we observed the staff restoring the collections with cotton swabs.

We were pretty exhausted after visiting two museums in a row. Enough museums for the day, we left the museum island and went to the Turkish market in the late afternoon. The market was huge, selling all kinds of things. We were there a little late, and some stalls had already begun to close. We bought fresh cherries, had the lamb stews and falafel balls from the street food stands. The food tasted delicious, although it took us a while to find one small table with a bench to sit down and eat our food.

Dinner was Vietnamese food. We had a communication issue when we tried to order the food. Since our son was allergic to nuts, we had to ensure that none of the dishes we ordered had any nuts. On top of that, our daughter is vegan, and we would like to have at least one vegan dish for her. It turned out to be a challenge. The waitress did not understand English, and not a single staff did in the restaurant. We had to use the translator on our phone to communicate with her. During the entire meal time, we were worried about the nut allergy.

Berlin was a big city; we had done a lot in just two days and were exhausted. Back to the hotel, we were told that the AC should be back working the next day, another day.

欧洲游第四十六天：今天去了柏林博物馆岛上的柏林新博物馆和帕加馬博物館, 精点展品是埃及女主的塑像，金帽子和复制的伊拉克伊什塔尔城门。博物馆及许多收藏品在二战期间被毁，东西德合并之后一直在整修。P5中隔着玻璃看到工作人员在用棉花棒小心翼翼地修复藏品。柏林的几个好的博物馆光有票还不够，还要专门订进场的时间。连着二个博物馆看下来觉得蛮累的，下午就去了土尔其露天市场，我们去得有点晚，有些摊位已开始收工了。在那里买了点樱桃，顺便尝试些他们的街头小吃。晚饭是越南菜，语言交流有点问题，服务员一点英语都不懂，来欧洲四十几天了还是第一次。为了菜里有没有花生这事搞了半天。柏林有点大，玩得挺累的。