A festival and two protests.

Today was another fun day in Berlin. I got up and headed over to Alexanderplatz in the east side of the city. The first thing I did was tour a church called Marienkirche. It was another really old church and was pretty cool inside.

After that I checked out a statue of Neptune (the Greek god, not the planet) as well as a statue of Marx and Engels, the founders of communism. When that was done, I headed over to Museum Island to see the Pergamon, which is filled with Greek, Roman and Babylonian art and architecture.

Before I could get there though, I ran into some sort of festival. I'm not sure what it was, but they had music blasting out of speakers and concession stands set up. Based on the excitement level of the crowd, I'm assuming it was the "Hey, let's give communism another shot," festival. I could be wrong though.

In any event, the Pergamon was awesome. I spent a good bit of time checking things out there. They had all kinds of statues, plus pieces of ruins that were thousands of years old. It was pretty cool. If you ever come to Berlin, be sure to check it out.

After that I took a walk through the Tiergarten, which is basically Berlin's version of Central Park. The big difference is, it's more of a forest than a park. It's really neat.

From there, I figured I'd head back towards the west side to find something to eat. I was following my map back to a street called the Kurferstendamm when I realized something wasn't right. I basically walked straight into one of those Muslim protests about the whole cartoon thing. Fortunately the police stopped me before I could get there. Apparently these protests are Muslims only, which is probably a good thing as I'm sure they would have loved to have gotten their hands on an American.

It wasn't exactly what I expected though. I've heard a few people claim that they're just doing this for show and not because they're angry and after being around it, I'd tend to agree. People were more excited about this than the festival I'd seen earlier. Don't get me wrong, there was some yelling and chanting, but there were also couples walking hand-in-hand and even a lot of mothers pushing strollers. Not what I would picture in a protest.

So, being that I couldn't get through, I headed out in another direction, got completely turned around and almost walked into the protest a second time. Not good. After another bit of searching I finally figured out where I was, when I ran into another protest. I have no idea what this one was about, but like the other one, there was a ton of police around. I guess this is one mad city.

After lunch I took the subway to Charlottenberg Palace, which is in the picture. I didn't go in because it was already 5:00 and I wanted to head to the Agyptischen Museum which houses Egyptian art. They have a bust of queen Nerfertiti which is supposed to be pretty cool. When I got there they had a sign up saying the museum was closed and had been moved to Museum Island, where I started the day.

So, since I couldn't go there, I went to an art museum across the street that mainly featured works by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. It was all right, but nothing too exciting.

All in all though, another fun day. Tomorrow it's off to Poland, but for now, I could use a beer.