Speed Culture Begins

Monday, May 4, 2009
Last day of language course

Today is my last day of class at the language school. On balance the course was a positive experience. It would have been better as a course designed to be one week long, rather than to drop me into the middle of an on-going class. But there wasn't much choice.

After the class, I started to use the Berlin Welcome Card. I had scheduled two places that are very close to each other. Furthermore, on the map, I saw a Flower Market; maybe I'd walk through it on my way. When I got to the location of the flower market, there was nothing there but a closed up building; maybe it's open only on certain days; maybe it's an old map.

My first cultural stop was the Berlinerishe Gallerie. This museum features modern artists and architects that are or were active in Berlin. The permanent exhibit was not impressive to me, but I'm still trying to appreciate modern art. The special exhibit showed work by the artist and author named Erwin Blumenfeld. He worked in 20s through the 50s, having left Germany for the States during the early Hitler years. His artistic series “Hitlerfresse” was, according to the exhibit, dropped by the millions by US airplanes over Germany.

Then I walked around the corner to the Jewish Museum. I arrived at 6:00, planning to stay until it closed at 10:00. I couldn't see even half before I was chased out after 4 hours. This would have been the archtypical museum nightmare for my kids when they were younger (or even now?)

The museum is dedicated to Jewish life in the Germanic world. It covers the high points and the low points. For those who recall this personality: In the section on the Crusades, it mentions Geoffrey of Bouillon. I learned that on some occasions the Jews fought off the crusaders, sometimes successfully. There was also a temporary exhibit, “Deadly Medicine,” jointly developed by this museum and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

The museum's permanent exhibit starts at the top of a huge staircase, three floors high (or you could take the elevator). As you move through the display, I noted only as I exited, you have been descending imperceptibly so that you exit at a lower level.

As we were being urged out of the museum at 10:00, I overheard a museum person offer a visitor free admission tomorrow since he couldn't finish today. I asked if I could also take advantage of the offer, but for Thursday (since I will be busy with my Welcome Card schedule through Wednesday). She extended my admission to an extra day on Thursday. “We are always happy when our visitors take such an interest,” she said.

Leaving the museum I came upon three Spanish tourists taking a picture in front of the museum. I decided to ask them in Spanish if they would like me to take a picture of all of them. It took me a long moment to shift gears into Spanish to be able to ask them.

By this time I was beat. I practically fell asleep on the U-bahn trip back to the hotel.