The last part of this itinerary, from the second Munich visit onwards, was unplanned, but due to certain giant volcanic ash clouds, we had to take the long way home, travelling by train, bus and boat for around 30 hours straight to get back and relieve Matthew of the responsibilities of Jam. As well as this, we had work to get back to, and I have a poisonous toe, which required medical attention, plus we couldn't afford to sit around in Augsburg (as lovely as it was) waiting for Ryanair to put our flight back on.
Anyway, I will attempt to tackle each of these cities and towns in an individual blog post, in a very dull, holiday slide show sort of fashion, in order to document our trip to the annals of history as being the greatest holiday that ever was.
So, in the spirit of getting on with pointless and lengthy tasks:
Edinburgh.
We went to Edinburgh on the afternoon of the tenth of April, later than we should of, being forced to buy new tickets because we had to find a post office that would sell us Euros before leaving. The beginning of a trend of having to spend more money than necessary while in Britain, compared to relatively low costs in Europe.
I know Edinburgh isn't particularly interesting, but it's worth a mention because we had a lovely afternoon in the sun outside our friend Ed's flat, followed by a tasty Korma cooked by the aforementioned Ed, with an early night in preparation for an early light the next day.
This flight had a disturbing contrast between chirpy, cheerful announcements and grumpy twat staff, who repeatedly shouted at one passenger for sitting in a seat that was inexplicably off limits, rushed through the emergency procedure with complete apathy and boredom, and badgered us to hurry up and sit down so that we could get flying on time.
Berlin.
I was most excited about Berlin out of all of our destinations, and it didn't disappoint, although it was definitely different to what I expected. We wandered around lost for a while, trying to find a market that sold old Soviet memorabilia to buy a present for our cat-sitter and accidentally walked straight up to the Reichstag, without even realising where we were. The spaces in Berlin seem incredibly open, and while there was a huge line outside the Reichstag building, it was pretty much deserted otherwise; whether this was because it was a Sunday, I'm not sure. Often we'd walk down a perfectly normal street, turn the corner, and find a massively impressive building, or several all in one place, as with the museum district. I guess no one walks around anyway, they cycle or take the awesome U-Bahn, so maybe that's why there wasn't many pedestrians.
We eventually gave up on trying to find the market and went to the Hamburger Bahnhof gallery, which was the first in a day of really incredible art spaces. This place was flippin' massive, and had a lot of modern artworks by artists who, admittedly, I hadn't really heard of, but which were extremely impressive nonetheless. They did have several Warhol's, which were interesting; I never really get overally excited by Warhol, but I always find myself intrigued and/or amazed by him when I actually see his work. Included was a huge Mao print, the scale of which can only really be exemplified by showing it in situ:
There was also a couple of his Elvis prints, a James Cagney one and a large Flowers one.
Next we jaunted over to the Neue Nationalgalerie, which was, for me, probably the most impressive place we visited on the whole trip. It was full of the works of some of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, including Pablo Picasso, Rene Magritte, Otto Dix, Paul Klee, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Edvard Munch, Piet Mondrian and many others. Here's a few of my favourite paintings from the collection; it's hard to remember them all, because I was very tired from the flight etc., so I hope to go back some time and take a lot longer to browse through:
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Potsdamer Platz (1914):
Otto Dix - Card Playing War Cripples (1920):
Barnett Newman - Broken Obelisk (1963):
Paul Klee - The Goldfish (1925):
George Grosz - The Pillars of Society (1926):
A lot of the work in the Neue Nationalgalerie focused, understandably, on the First and Second World Wars, and it was extremely interesting to see artworks from German and other European artists in person; they were certainly as full of horror and disgust at these wars as the works of ally artists like Paul Nash. Many of the works were also featured in the infamous "Degenerate Art" exhibition, held by the Nazis in Munich in 1937. It's amazing to think that the Nazis would even attempt such a thing; one would think that anyone exposed to these works would see their worth, and yet the Nazis were able to turn people against modernism and what they deemed "Jewish-Communist" artworks such as these.
The last place we visited that day was the somewhat underwhelming Kunst Bibliothek (art library), which had an exhibition on 60s fashion photography, and one featuring works by Botticelli, which we couldn't seem to find. By this point we were tired, and overwhelmed by the Neue Nationalgalerie, so perhaps it's no surprise that weren't hugely impressed.
We went and checked in to our hostel, the East Seven, which seemed comfortable and friendly. However, on the first night, we pretty much just got Chinese food and a coupla beers and went to sleep, we were so tired.
Day two of Berlin tomorrow (or later today, if I can be bothered)!
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