Berlin

We only had one full day in Berlin.  It wasn't enough.  We were smart enough this time to buy a ticket to one of those hop-on hop-off buses because we knew we didn't have the getting lost time that we usually factor into our trips.

Digression: One of the best and worst things about being married to a soldier is their excellent map reading skills and ability to "land nav" as they call it.  My husband can glance at the ricketiest looking map, look up at the sun then say, "If we just keep heading northeast on this street we should get there in 5 to 7 minutes." So while I'm following him eating [insert delicious native sweet here] and saying, "But I'm pretty sure the street down there looks familiar," we appear at our desired destination.  As if by magic army witchcraftery.

It's excellent when we are together and I can just dote along behind my super husband, but when one starts traveling with one's friends who also are married to a super husband it makes for some lost ladies most of the time.  End digression.

We went to the recently opened Jewish Museum in Berlin.



The Garden of Exile stood out to me the most.  The description on this sign is accurate.  The garden is on a tilt.  Making the garden dweller very uneasy in the stomach region.



The columns in the garden are straight up and down, but they feel tilted since the ground is tilted.



Beautiful, but unsettling.  This garden did an excellent job of getting its point across.

Inside the museum there's a tree full of paper pomegranates with wishes written on them.



I wished that I will be able to live the rest of my life as happy as I am now.  Cecilia wished that she would never have to go through an experience like the holocaust.

The museum focused on Jewish culture through time.  With the help of donations from community members, individual stories were told from as far back as the 1500's written in Yiddish.  The personalization of the religion made it much more interesting.  Hearing about how a Jewish merchant had to carry enough food for a business trip that could take months due to their kosher laws made the Jewish lives that were lived much more real than simply showing me a old kosher pot they took with them.  It was the combination of the pot and the story and the audio that made it amazing.  The museum had a ton of interactive parts to it.



Including this mustache mirror and the German girls behind me who wouldn't get out of the picture even though I kept throwing them the dagger eyes.