Free museum Thursdays: Old places

Despite generous subsidies by the university for cultural events, free is still better than paying half. Therefore, I have made it a goal to hit up a new museum every Thursday. These past two Thursdays, I have gone to the Museum Island, which is the Prussian empire’s vision of culture. In true romantic and idealistic fashion, it literally is a whole island of museums in the middle of Berlin.

The two that I have visited so far are the Altes Museum and the Altes Nationalgalerie.


The Altes Museum—“Old Museum”—was designed by the multi-talented, vastly influential Karl Friedrich Schinkel. It was built across from Federick the Great’s palace, which must have been a pretty tough assignment considering that’s what the King sees when he looks out his window. It can’t overpower the palace, but it has to live up to its prominent location. The big panels of glass didn’t used to be there. That’s right, it was just an open space, bridging a direct connection to the surrounding buildings and environment. Here's a view from the side:


In terms of the collection, the most notable piece is the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti. After looking at all the other excavated artifacts, the Nefertiti bust really stands out. It is incredibly well preserved, with most of its colors still in fact. Her features are also more elegant—by my Western standards—than the other ones. All in all, I thought the building itself was much more interesting than its contents. The inside is pretty neat as well:


On the other hand, I really liked the pieces I saw at the Altes Nationalgalerie, also on Museum Island. When you first walk in, you see a number of beautiful sculptures by Schadow and Rauch, two great 19th century German sculptors, including the marble version of his famous piece of princesses Friederike and Louise.


I like museums that logically guide you through its rooms much more than ones that have interconnected rooms that weave into each other and ask you to explore on your own. I’m not saying I like having my hand held, but I’m just acknowledging that whoever is setting up the exhibit probably knows more about the pieces than I do. Therefore, she has the unique opportunity to tell a story, draw some connections, or create a pleasant walk for the lesser informed.

The Altes Nationalgalerie is such a museum. In this "Old National Gallery," the first three rooms of paintings were especially thoughtfully put together. As we walked into each new room, we would be greeted with a piece that is more refined than the works in the previous room. However, after setting up our expectation of the more defined styles, the rest of the pieces in that room would feature stylistically or substantially related but much more “wild” works. In these rooms, we saw works of Monet, Manet, Cézanne, and Renoir. They weren’t masterpieces from these giants, but you can’t really complain about seeing a superstar cast of artists all in one place.

Another notable part of the museum is its large collection of Adolph Menzel paintings. We got to walk through a few decades of work that he produced, which included everything from commissioned paintings of high society to nature to his feet. It was clear that his technical ability was beyond question, but it was the lightheartedness in his paintings that he maintained until his death that struck me. Probably can’t say the same thing about the a lot of other painters. I suspect that the success he saw during his lifetime, obvious from the numerous royal paintings he produced, had a role in that quality of his work.

Bike Tour of Potsdam

This past Saturday, I went to Potsdam with our field trip course, "Berlin vor Ort." Potsdam a city to the southwest of Berlin, a few stops on the S-Bahn outside of the city. It was the residence of former Prussian kings and the location of the Potsdam Conference, which I will talk about further down. We rented bikes next to the station, and 30 Stanford students proceeded to ride all over the city, dominating the streets and annoying locals. Here is a 6 minute photo walk through or our 6 hour bike tour. One observation: taking good pictures is pretty hard when you are in a pack of 30 bikes.

The city has a series of interconnecting lakes, and we saw our first one not long after we started riding. The city is really scenic, has a lot of green, and was basically just really beautiful. The professor led the way, and the rest of us followed. He said we should be okay, but some people got lost last year--which he said was mind-boggling.

We saw a lot of really nice houses, but I could not hear our professor as he was too far away. Maybe this house had some significance, maybe it was just cool. Either way, I appreciate it.

This next picture gives you a glimpse of what the cars had to go through to navigate around us. I thought the old school Chevy was a particularly interesting sight. Also, most of the streets were covered in cobblestone, which was quite painful in combination with shockless bikes.

I don't quite remember what this was and will ask my professor.

Schloss Cecilienhof is the English tudor style summer residence of the Hohenzollern family. More importantly, this is where the 1945 Potsdam Conference took place, where Churchill, Truman, and Stalin met to deal with the problems at the end of WWII.

I remember this by Spy Bridge, but it's actually called the Glienicke Bridge. The United States and Soviet Union exchanged captured spies on this bridge during WWII.

We stopped at a Biergarten for a late lunch. The professor was slightly baffled by the fact that no one ordered beer, which he says is the best part of the place. I personally think it's a good idea to bike sober.

As we were eating, a shark boat passed the Biergarten. Before this, my friend Kristine pointed out that there were many interesting looking boats on the lake. This one takes the cake though.

After the break at the Biergarten, we biked over to Park Sanssouci, the summer palace of Frederick the Great. My guidebook claims that it is "among the most beautiful palace complexes in Europe," and I don't doubt it. The name "Sansscouci" means "without cares," and one of the interesting interpretations of this name comes from the fact that Frederick the Great was buried here--we are without cares in death. Morbid.

The park had many beautiful sculptures of Greek mythological gods. Here's Artemis.

The Neues Palais in the background can be seen from the main avenue in the park.

After our brief visit at Park Sanssouci, we walked over to Friedenskirche, the Church of Peace. We were in the right place at the right time, so the professor decided that Stanford should pay for tickets to the Peace on Earth choir concert. The music was good, but it was slow and we were tired. I'm pretty sure each of us fell asleep at one point or another, which was especially bad because we were something like a third of the whole audience.

I took this next picture while riding over a bridge on the way home. Its serene calmness is actually pretty deceptive of the actual circumstances. An hour and 15 minutes into the concert, our professor rushed to get us out of the church. Some of us thought he was angry that we fell asleep, but it turned out that we needed to return the bikes by 7pm. It was 6:35 when we left the church. What ensued was pure hilarity as a long parade of Stanford students mad-rushed down the streets of Potsdam, dodging cars and riding down the wrong side of street at times. Because some people were trailing pretty far behind, our professor stayed behind and let the students find their way. At one point, we were off road and in the midst of a forest. I think we fully understood how some people could have gotten lost last year. I am honestly surprised that no one was lost or hurt. Ultimately, everything turned out fine, and we found our way back 20 minutes past 7.

Vegetarier in Berlin: Massai

Lychener Str. 12, 10437 Berlin
www.massai-berlin.edu


Yesterday, after several cancellations spread out over the last six months, I had dinner with my friend Chris. We chose Massai, a self-described "African" restaurant she found in her guidebook, because the guidebook said it was an vegetarian friendly but will also satisfy the adventurous omnivores. Yes, it serves zebra, antelope, and crocodile, but I won't be able to tell you about these fine delicacies because we're both vegetarian.

The guide was right--two pages of the menu were dedicated to vegetarian dishes. We ordered the Maadee combo under Vegetarische, along with Dju Dju banana beer and Dju Dju palms beer.


The place is really nicely decorated and looks touristy. It was dimly lit, with bold colors and animal wood carvings as decorations. They even had giraffe utensil holders which would probably make good presents for someone back home. But I'm in Germany, so I will try to purchase "German" things.

The beers came first. The banana beer was light and sweet, and you can smell the banana when the bottle is open. I would definitely go for some in the future if I come across it again. The palms beer was dark and almost red, but other than that it just tasted like a strong beer (its alcohol content is more than 8%).


Our first course was a soup that tasted saltier than it looks. It was a little like porridge and very tasty. I think there was some type of dried fruit in there (raisins?). Then came the "salad," which consisted of thickly julienned cucumber, carrots, and some other vegetables. It was drizzled in these yellow and brown sauces that added just a tiny bit of flavor that was barely salty with a hint of sweetness. Overall, it was refreshing and light.


Finally, the main course arrived. It was a big plate that spanned the length of our two-person table. The two main dishes were Foolfeta and Agbisa with rice and couscous, but the meal also featured small spinach, cabbage, and another dish--all sitting on two generous pieces of Injera bread. To tell the truth, I wasn't sure what I was eating most of the time, but as a vegetarian it was comforting to know that we weren't eating any exotic animals.

The Foolfeta, covered in shredded cheese, is African beans, tomatoes, and paprika. The African beans are humongous, so big that we didn't realize they were beans. They were like obese kidney beans and something like three-quarters of an inch long, but they definitely had the characteristic bean texture.

The menu described the Agbisa as a dish with sauce, onion, and tofu. However, instead of tofu, we had eggplant, which I am slightly allergic to. It's okay though, because I still enjoyed the small vegetable dishes, especially the spinach one. The spinach dish, next to the Agbisa, reminded me a lot of the Palak Paneer that I've had at various Indian restaurants (without the tofu-like cheese though). The couscous, under one of the dark fruit shells, was excellent as well.

The meal with the two beers came out to be around 30€ after tax and tip for two, which seemed very reasonable given fancy decorations, interesting beers, and three delicious courses. It's one of those meals that fill you up slowly, leaving you satisfied but not stuffed. Overall, I had a wonderful meal and would definitely recommend it to vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike!