Museums of Berlin- Pergamon

I do believe I am a little museum junkie. To me, museums are a visual and reflective experience, with every artifact transporting me across time and space. Words cannot explain the connection I feel with the millennia of humankind that I feel through one tiny fragment, almost as though I were a time traveler.

I try and visit one in every new place I go to, including one at Andaman and Nicobar. That one was a bit sad though… we have no sense of managing museums in India. Everything becomes a room full of stuffed dusty animals, wax replicas of humans, unloved displays and no sense of the immense potential of museums. To think of it, even the towns where I live in currently have no museums. We do have a museum of the Black Cat Commandoes though…ahem.

Anyway, when I was in Germany, I made sure I bought a Museum Pass. Suffice it to say- the more museums you can visit with this multi-day pass, the more paisa-vasool it can be. However, here’s what you could end up with…very sore feet. Also, I think I could have spiced up the nights with a bit of partying…which I am sorry to say I did not do much of. {How sad is that! Now look at us..41 years old this July, locked up in a post-pandemic world, creaky bones.. life should be full of museums, adventures, parties, trysts 🙂 }

Berlin has five interesting museums in what they call the Museuminsel (Museum Island)- the Pergamon Museum, the Neues Museum and the Bode/ Altis Museum. There’s also the Deutsche Historical Museum but I think this was across the river.

Here I bring you just a small sample of the wonders at the Pergamon, a name that by itself conjures up early twentieth century images of excavations (yes, yes, exactly what you can imagine- colonial white sahibs and us natives that fill the background with our little hammers going plink-plink-plink in the dusty sun. Reminds me of Agatha Christie too hmmm. Then afterwards, just before the sun sets, a little “cobalt-blue” shrapnel emerges from the dust, and it is the just the beginning of the walled city of Nebuchednezzar…).