Many museums

We have evolved a pattern. It takes John until about 10:30 am to be ready to head out, so I go to the supermarket or my daughter and I go to the coffee shop in the next block to check our email. It is somewhere between 11:30 and noon before we get out of the subway at our destination, and then we stop for a light lunch before going into the museum.

Today we went to Schloss Charlottenburg . My particular interest was section of the palace that is a museum of prehistory and early history, including what remains in Germany of artifacts from Troy (many were taken by the Soviets and have not been returned). Our daughter was interested in the Palace as an example of reconstructing historical sites and so she and John toured the palace. I am less interested in palaces and our son and I went to a museum across the street called Sammlung Berggruen showing mostly Picasso and Klee. There were some Klees that made me gasp.

We met up again at an icecream shop that was advertising milkshakes. The kids just wanted to come back to the apartment so they got off the subway at our stop and John and I went a little further to see Nicholaikirche, the oldest church in Berlin. It turned out to be closed for construction, as a number of important sites still are in what was the eastern half of the city. We did stop into another church which was a museum for the architect Schinkel. I saw something that said Berlin and Pottsdam between them have over 300 museums, and I believe it.

Our son isn’t as interested in museums as the rest of us, but if we respect his wishes some he is willing to go along. He wants to see the Natural History Museum so we will make that our first priority Tuesday. He wanted more time there than a quick trip this afternoon.

Our apartment is half a block from Berlin’s Konzerthaus, so this evening we went to a symphony concert of Beethoven and Bruckner by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester. The student rush tickets for the kids were 10 euros but it cost considerably more for John and me. Our seats were in the front row of the first balcony behind the orchestra, which is a fun place to sit because you can see all the conductor’s gestures. We had quite a close view of the musicians as well, which John particularly enjoyed. I told the kids this was a life experience but they could leave at intermission if they wanted to and they did, but they seemed very focused on what was going on while they were there.