Wow it was a busy day and my feet are sooorrrree! It started with an S-Bahn ride to near the Reichstag to go to the dome on top. (You have to go to an office across the street ahead of time and choose when you want to go.) It was really neat since I had scheduled a time to go last time, but I ran out of time and couldn’t go on top. Anyways the dome was designed by a British architect. It’s a big glass dome meant to symbolize transparency within the government/Bundestag (similar to Congress) of Germany (that only meet and works for about 20-22 weeks out of the year.) You can view down (not really because of glare and darkness) into the main hall. It was metaphorically designed so the German people could look down and watch their leaders to make sure they don’t start getting rowdy again. Or by law, people (maybe Germans only, or anyone I’m not sure) can schedule an appointment to go and sit in and watch a session of congress. The dome gives a great view of the city especially with the great audiguide you get, all free of charge. Around the middle at the base of the dome is a big timeline of events regarding the Reichstag from it’s construction in the1880’s to the 1990’s.

Next I headed to the German History Museum. Another big museum full of Germany history of the last 600 or so years. It had tons and tons and tons of really neat artifacts, much to my surprise, the actual hat worn by Napoleon at the famous battle of Waterloo, which he left behind along with his sword as he fled. It covered Germany’s history from its days as the Holy Roman Empire, then to Prussia, then to the German Empire, then to the Weimar Republic, then to the Third Reich, then to East and West Germany and then to the modern day country of the Federal Republic of Germany. Napoleon invaded and occupied Northern Germany for a time.

Next I went to the Pergamon Museum to try again, and it still had an approximately 2 hour wait line to get in. No thanks. So that was off my plans for the day so I headed up to the Medical History Museum… now this was almost a mistake. For starters it was really expensive, even more than the incredible German History museum, and much, much, much smaller. The museum is on the edge of a huge medical complex with all kinds of different medical offices, and studies and lectures. Part of this museum is in a room where famous German medical professor Rudolf Virchow taught in the 1800’s. The inside was neat, but it was mostly a museum about death and the studies and sciences along with it, and old healthcare practices. It had so many gnarly and horrible and gruesome displays of so many… bodies and body parts with medical abnormalities and whole parts I won’t go into any more detail. I almost felt sick at parts of it. The only time I’ll ever say this, is thank God they don’t allow photography inside this museum. After that I took the S-Bahn over to the massive tower, the Fernsehturm, but that had a very long wait as well. (Who’d have thought major attractions in a capitol city on a Saturday could be so busy…?)

So with another change of plans, I went to another museum. A museum that has no other one like it in the world. The: Computer Spiele Museum. The Video Games Museum! It was really cool. The images and ads around it made it look kinda lame and unimpressive, but it was actually very well done, and highly interactive. There was tons of displays of all kinds of old gaming machines, from the 70’s and beyond, mainly focusing on games from the 70’s and 80’s. But all around the museum was lots of old games you could play, most of which I had never heard of. There was old consoles, new consoles, it had an 80’s themed and decorated arcade room, with lots of games from the 80’s. There was virtual reality demonstrations, 3d racing games, and everything. They even made hilarious themed bedrooms decorated from different time periods, and a game console inside you could play from the time period. Like the 80’s room had old Star Wars posters on the wall, the carpet and wallpaper looked like it was from the 80’s, and there were Mad magazines on the vintage style desk. (I’ll of course put pictures.) It even had a hilarious machine called The Painstation. I’ll let the photos do the talking. And to top it all off, I happened to be wearing my video game shirt today, which is a coincidence, since I wasn’t planning on coming here today.

Then after that I made a trip to nearby Friedrichshain (Fredericks Meadow) to see another large anti-aircraft Flak Tower that’s been covered up in dirt, with very little of it exposed to see. I also heard music from a nearby concert, so I went to go investigate and there was tons of people coming and going to it, and the band was pretty good. When I got there I saw a big banner over the entrance: “LesBiSchwules Parkfest” Or Lesbian-Bi-Gay Park Festival… so there’s that.

So then I headed north towards the Prenzlauer District where there is a neat, and Berlin’s oldest old water tower from 1877. It was shutdown in 1952. In 1993 a temporary concentration camp was set up for the ‘undesirables’ and it was one of the first built. It was demolished later that year. The tower though was pretty cool. “Below the storage tank were the homes of the machinery operators who worked in the tower; these apartments – a landmark of Prenzlauer Berg – are still inhabited and in much demand.” Then I headed home as it was getting late, and my feet hated me.