This morning, the forecast was a bit better (yesterday, it had been overcast and rather cool—the first time we really needed jackets), so we got ready for a day with indoor stuff early in the day (when it was still in the lower 60s) and outdoor things in the afternoon (74 and sunny—about perfect). We had breakfast at the hotel around 8 and then took the S-Bahn to the Technische Museum, to get rid of our tech exhibit deficit that we’ve had since the visit to the paper museum that we had to cut short. It was really a lot of fun. We skipped airplanes and boats, but we went to pretty much every other part of the museum, which included:
1. a couple of separate exhibits on computers and on the development of various communication “nets” from telegrams to today’s internet, with many things we had seen before, but also a Cray 2.
2. many, many trains (part of the area is a former train station, Anhalter Bahnhof, with a restored turntable and storage area for locomotives that now holds classic examples of old trains and wagons and whatnot.
3. There were also exhibits on many industries and processes: photography, paper making, suitcase making, jewelry making, etc etc. Nothing was completely new, but there were some interesting moments—especially when we raptly watched a video on how metal pot scrubbers used to be made with a kind of knitting machine.
4. We did look at a lot of classic and unique cars and a few motorcycles, although my favorite in that exhibit was a small oval 1950s camper, lovingly called the “Wanderniere” (wandering kidney) and a very very pristine Karmann Ghia, one of my favorite 60s cars because they were actually made in the city where my mom lives.
5. Because the museum also integrates a former cold storage building from the 1910s, it features a really unexpected horse staircase
We spent a total of almost 4 hours at the museum, and then headed back to Charlottenburg to have our Indian leftovers for lunch with Laurie and a rather grumpy Kai, who decided to stay behind when we ventured back out at about 2 pm. It was beautiful as predicted and we walked the 2 kilometers to nearby Schloss Charlottenburg, another Berlin palace. We had walked there two years ago, but now the renovations are complete and it looks pristine from the outside—but we still didn’t want to tour yet another glittery building, so we just walked around in the really beautiful gardens, along the Spree river and along shady avenues. Then we visited one more museum, the Broehan Museum, which exhibits beautiful art nouveau and Art Deco pieces (some a bit over the top, but others just gorgeous in design and concept—there was a “lady’s secretary” that was just perfectly designed), but currently also has an exhibit on the very opposite of Art Deco—the 1910s and 1920s Berlin realists and their attempt to raise awareness about the misery and hunger that run rampant in the Berlin of those years. They featured sketches, paintings, photographs, and prints by Kaethe Kollwitz, George Grosz, Otto Dix, and Heinrich Zille that were really impressive (and depressing), although I still have a really distinct preference for Kollwitz, whose human touch sets her apart from what I think as really cold and hostile about Dix and Grosz in particularly. That said, I came for the Art Deco, but ended up liking the realism better—especially Kollwitz and some of the posters and direct appeals that these artists designed and that I wasn’t aware of.
We stayed until about 4:30, then walked down the Schlossstrasse and eventually took the subway back to the hotel to get Mark’s computer and my iPad before returning to Laurie’s. We worked on our blogs and photos and helped a little with dinner preparations until Laurie and Stella came back from Stella’s theater class. Then we had a lovely pesto dinner with arugula, tomatoes, and mozzarella, and some cake we’d brought home for dessert. We watched a few bits and pieces of Kai‘s performance in Big Fish, and then Mark and I took off at about 10 pm to catch the subway back home. It‘s nearing midsummer, so it was still light outside and we thoroughly enjoyed the nice cool air and the last bit of daylight outside. Fun days in Berlin—tomorrow, we‘ll go back to my mom‘s.