Temporary Nomad

Finally we’ve played the tourist. Berlin is our first stop where we don’t know anyone, and don’t know the language. Staying in a backpackers, wandering the streets map in hand, navigating the public transport system, it’s all been quite like old times.

We managed to see quite a bit of central Berlin, based as we were in a rather funky part of town just north of Alexanderplatz.

But as usual, we got caught up in museum fever and managed to tour through some of the great museums of the city with a tolerant Freya in tow. Well, actually, we managed to time it so that Freya was so exhasted by the time we got to the museum entrance that she fell asleep for an hour or so almost every time, so we got to see a fair bit without her even knowing.

Poor thing: slept through the Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon Museum,

Freya falling asleep in front of Babylon’s Processional Way.

dozed off in front of Nefertiti,

Freya falling asleep in front of a Kouros, just opposite Nefertiti in the Altes Museum.

failed to appreciate Daniel Liebeskind’s Jewish Museum (though she enjoyed the garden) and was oblivious to the wonders of the European masters of the 13th-17th centuries in the Gemäldegalerie.

She did wake up just in time to play hide and seek through the Holocaust Memorial, which I think probably wasn’t the idea, but didn’t have much patience for the accompanying information centre. I’m very sorry to all the people disturbed by her hysterical cries there.

Freya fast asleep in the Holocaust Memorial.