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More stuff from the computer & game museum, including an old Macintosh signed by Jerry Manock, the designer. There was SO much cool stuff in here, like a playable setup of the original DDR, a gigantic Atari joystick that you had to use your whole body to move (if you thought Ms. Pacman was impossible before...), a whole bunch of old German programming books and modules, Zork, a tiny arcade with NBA Jam (!!), original Dungeons & Dragons manuals, and the aptly-named PainStation, which is essentially torture Pong. If you’re looking at that last picture like “wtf who would ever play this,” uh... I didn’t personally try it, but I can say it definitely lives up to its name, haha. You would probably have to play it non-stop for hours for any of those things to actually happen, though.

So much of the museum was interactive and hard to photograph outside of that context which is why I’m not posting those pictures (I’ll post dumb pictures of myself online all day long, but I won’t post other people unless I know for sure they’re cool with it), but I did have to get a photo of the Atari 2600 since that thing was my BFF before I got a Sega. Same with AlphaWorld/ActiveWorlds. I lost my shit when I saw that on there since I was obsessed with that game for so long, yet I find Second Life so boring.

They also had a bunch of video game character statues from Zelda, Tekken, Street Fighter, Metal Gear, and Tomb Raider (both versions of Lara Croft!), but I guess I somehow forgot to take a good picture of all of that since I have none :(

Did you know Berlin has a computer and video game museum? Now you do! Berlin has a museum for everything, though. The best part was these tiny spaces set up like time capsules of different eras of computer/game technology. There was another room for the 90s with Super Mario and one for the early 2000s featuring a Playstation with Crash Bandicoot (which I’m only not posting because my friends are visibly in the pictures, but you still need to know they exist, haha). The stuff in the first and second photos is exactly like what was all over my family’s basement until maybe the mid 90s, so seeing that was a trip. Most of it still exists in storage, so theoretically I could make my own version of one of those rooms.

A few more Bronze Age things and then some Egyptian art! The little pair of hands is so adorable <3 And who wouldn’t love the little Bastets?

That blue glass jar is cool, but the real reason I took a photo of it is because those are ashes and bits of burnt bones in there. Probably the most badass thing I saw that day.

...I also took a picture of one of the famous Nefertiti busts and got yelled at because the only “no photography” sign was all the way across the room and facing the opposite direction. Womp womp.

These are from two different museums which explains the shift in subject matter, haha. I didn’t know how best to put these together, though. I love those rugs SO MUCH y’all don’t even know. The Golden Hat was listed as a thing we really needed to see, and yeah, that sure is a thing made by a sun-worshiping Bronze Age cult:

“The hat is covered in celestial symbols. The star at the top stands for the Sun; the sickle and eye patterns symbolize the Moon and Venus. The circular ornaments can be interpreted as both depictions of the Moon or the Sun. The cycle of the Sun determines the times of night and day, as well as the seasons and the Moon governs the division of the year into months and days. However, the year of the Moon is eleven days shorter than the Sun year. Already in the 2nd millennium BC, leap days were added in order to synchronise the cycles of the Moon and Sun. The ornaments on the hat reflect this knowledge. The embossed patterns can be read like a calendar. The number of circles in particular areas corresponds to the 12 lunar cycles of 354 days. Adding the number of patterns in other decorative bands, one obtains the 365 days of the Sun year. It takes 19 years until the Sun and Moon years correspond again. Encrypted within the ornamentation of the hat is the understanding that seven lunar months have to be added every 19 years.”

More stuff from the Pergamon Museum! Meant to post this earlier but forgot, so here it is now. Love that lion statue.

More random Berlin photos, including a few things from the Pergamon Museum. I was marveling at the weird centaur fish dudes when I saw them on the bridge but forgot all about them until yesterday, when something I randomly looked up on Wikipedia led me to a page about the ichthyocentaurs, Bythos and Aphros. Mystery solved, I guess!

Last one for today. The first two pictures are the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Berlin is full of memorials, if you haven’t noticed by now) which pictures couldn’t do justice since walking around in it is the only way to really see it, the next couple are from some kind of design exhibition in the Kulturforum (it was free and we didn’t have time to see anything else, haha. Not that it wasn’t still cool), and the last ones are from the Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz. Wanna see dat IMAX WITH LASER.

More buildings and stuff in and around the Tiergarten. Did I mention this place was huge yet? I really did love the architecture here.

Some more photos of stuff in and around the Tiergarten.

Meant to kept posting these earlier, but my sleep schedule is balls right now, SO. Here are some photos from stuff in the Tiergarten, one of the biggest parks in Germany (it’s HUGE). The first couple photos are from the Victory Column in the middle of the park, and then the next couple are from the Bismarck Memorial. I don’t know if the thing in the last photo has a name, but it’s pretty!

As it turns out, Aquarium Berlin isn’t just an aquarium. On the second and third floors they have reptiles, amphibians, and bugs. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to see the bugs, but here are photos of some of the other guys! The setups for the frogs and toads were all absolutely gorgeous but also impossible to photograph due to glare :( There were also stained glass windows and decorations like that throughout the aquarium, but again, they were too difficult to photograph, so I just have one picture.

Jellyfish! My other favorite aquarium thing. I love moon jellies, but the little tiny mushroom guys were my favorite this time. Too tired to Photoshop out that glare on the glass, but maybe I’ll come back to it if I ever want to use these pictures for anything.

More aquarium photos. Puffers are so cute, you guys. I know hugging them would be The Worst Idea, but it’s what I want to do every time I see one. Every time I see a redtail catfish, though, I just think of the fish store near me that had one sitting in a huge tank that was still too small for it. Someone got one and then dumped it off there once it kept outgrowing the space they had for it. The fish store didn’t know what to do with it, either, but they figured trying to give it a home would be better than whatever the original owner would have done. Of course there was an arowana in there, too. Please don’t ever buy an animal unless you’re able to properly care for it for its entire life. I seriously have no idea why fish like this are still commonly sold as pets.

There was also a koi pond out by the entrance with some fish who had very thoroughly made the humans = food connection. They started swarming as soon as they saw us and had no problem coming up to our hands. It was adorable. 

Some photos from Aquarium Berlin. Y’all know I love fish, so of course I had to go here! It’s probably one of the nicest aquariums I’ve ever been to as far as the diversity of setups and health of the fish (though Aquarium Kaiyukan in Osaka was also really good). I always get excited about seeing common pet store fish in proper setups like these, too, just because it’s cool to be able to see them in a somewhat more natural state, haha.

Last post for today! Here’s a bunch of art from the East Side Gallery, a portion of the Berlin Wall that was painted in the 90s by different artists from around the world. Most of these have been touched up or had to be repainted completely due to the amount of vandalism, though, and the fight between vandalism and restoration is still continuing which is why there are fences up. Seems like there’s a huge problem with this all over Berlin (and if anyone can shed some light on that, feel free! I’d like to know the reason for it).

The last three pictures are public art from the subway station near our hostel.

Street art and other signs around Berlin, part 1! Maybe I’ll have to come back for Rick Astley’s comeback, haha.

Graffiti even extends to things like the Berlin Wall Memorial. You can see where there have been attempts to take it off, but people just keep adding more.

Many of the people who died trying to cross the wall (or who were killed near the wall because it was assumed they were trying to cross when they weren’t) have their pictures, names, and birth and death dates listed at the memorial, and most of the children were actually that young when they died. People still come here to remember them.

The crosses are grave markers - the graveyard that used to be there was moved during the construction of the wall (and is now right next to the memorial site), but many of the graves of soldiers from WWII didn’t make it over and so the crosses were placed to remember them, as well. The last photo has a picture on the side of a building showing what that street looked like when the wall was torn down.