Hamburg

Did I tell you I went to Hamburg?

I guess I got busy with school and approaching deadlines (ack!) and neglected to blog about it. Well, I braved the really crappy weather (post-hurricane) to spend two cold, windy and wet days in Germany's beautiful Hanseatic city-by-the-bay. (Photos here.)

Because of the inclement weather, I saw most of the city through the windows of one of those hop-on, hop-off tour buses: the diplomatic quarter (only New York has more consulates than Hamburg), the fish market, and the mind-boggling HafenCity.

I also went to a service at the St. Michaelis church

Yes, you read that correctly. I wanted to see its beautiful interiors


and since I arrived right before the start of the noon service, I decided to stay. It actually wasn't much so much a religious observation as a chance to show off the church's three organs. The service's format: greeting, song from organ #1, scripture reading, song from organ #2, prayer, song from organ #3; it only lasted fifteen minutes. Still, it's the first time I've been to a church service in almost five years.

Some pictures from my trip:

The Rathaus

Speicherstadt warehouses

The harbor (The sun shone for the first and only time as I was on my way to the train station to head home; go figure.)

St. Petri

Germany's oldest stock exchange

The Elbe Tunnel

Old Jewish Cemetery

Safari outfitters

Umbrella detritus

I took advantage of a break in the weather to visit the Nikolai Kirche.

You should take with a grain of salt your guide book's claim that this church was destroyed by the allies. Yes, it was damaged during the massive civilian bombings carried out by British and American forces during WWII, but it was not destroyed. It could have been restored after the war, but instead the nave was demolished and the spire left standing as a war memorial. Now, it's an observation deck. It offers beautiful views of the city from 75 meters up:


As wonderful as the view is, getting there is really frickin' scary. You travel the 75 meters in a glass elevator that goes really fast, but that's not the scariest part. What's really frightening is that you travel through nothing to get there: the church is gone and the spire is a ruin, so there aren't any real walls, ceilings or floors in sight. It also boasted what must be the world's scariest emergency exit:


I'm not sure if the photo does it justice (the wind was blowing so hard I couldn't hold the camera steady; seriously), but it's terrifying: a rickety staircase that just plunges straight down into the abyss.

But I didn't go to Hamburg to ride around in a bus, look at buildings, and scare my mother by climbing unsafe structures.

This was the main event, and it was amazing. I won't even try to describe it, I'll let the images speak for themselves:











I couldn't resist bringing the paintings home with me, in the form of a bag,


a photo line (called, of all things the Steely Dan),


and some postcards.


Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go stare longingly into the distance for a while.

Dresden

Dresden is about a two hours’ journey away by train, so on the way I had a chance to relax, do some knitting, and watch the countryside fly by. It’s a very picturesque city, but also rather depressing. It was all but flattened by the Allies (bombed mostly by British planes and not American planes, or so I’m told), and the Germans are still rather bitter about it. You hear all sorts of ridiculous stories about planes shooting at civilians and the river boiling, as well as grossly inflated death tolls. (I wrote about all that in a paper once; I guess it’s the result of some kind of post-war guilt-driven psychosis—the need to be the victims, etc.)

Anyway, the city hasn’t really recovered from the war. Bit by bit it’s being rebuilt (sadly, though, some of the Soviet architecture is there to stay), but it still has a long way to go. Many of the remaining buildings still have this rather macabre charred look to them. I walked from the train station to the Kreuzkirche, the town hall, and the famous Frauenkirche, freshly rebuilt. Where possible they rebuilt it using original stones. While this is nice in theory, the result is the rather odd speckled look you see here:


I was very disappointed when I reached the Albertinum and realized it was closed. The sculpture collection had been relocated to the Zwinger, but the collection of “New Masters” (a.k.a. 19th and 20th century art) was just gone . A temporary exhibit will eventually be opened elsewhere in town, but for the past several months (and for several weeks to come) the art has been sitting in storage. I just can’t believe that they would put the Monets, the van Goghs, the Paul Klees, the Gustav Klimts. and the Caspar David Friedrichs in storage, as if no one would miss them. Romanticism, Impressionism, Expressionism, all gone.

This is a sampling of some of the fabulous art I didn’t get to see:

Degas

Otto Dix

Caspar David Friedrich

Van Gogh

Gustav Klimt

Monet

Carl Gustav Carus

Well, I think that’s enough bitterness, for now. I was then off to the Zwinger and an afternoon going to every museum that was open.

My first stop was the Old Masters Gallery. The masterpiece is the Sistine Madonna by Raphael:


Quite frankly, I was disappointed. It was beautiful, yes, and perfectly balanced and composed, but it looked like it needed a good cleaning. There was an emphasis on Italian painters, and there were many pieces by Guido Reni, Titian, and Rubens. There was one measly room with a Dürer and some other recognizable northern Renaissance painters, a rather lovely room with two Vermeers, and then many, many poorly-lit galleries filled with paintings that all looked alike by artists you (and I) have never heard of. I feel I should explain, though, that by poorly-lit, I mean lit with incredibly bright, diffused, natural light from the enormous twelve-foot windows lining the galleries. Of course, the brightness caused massive glares, but who comes to a gallery to see the art, right?

There was, however, a fabulous exhibit of paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder and Lucas Cranach the Younger. Apparently they were both court painters (although I can’t remember the court and am too lazy to google it). Given that one room of the exhibit contained paintings portraying Salome with the head of St. John the Baptist, David and Bathsheba, and Samson and Delilah, as well as a knife sheath featuring the myth of Phyllis and Aristotle, I assume it was a rather misogynistic court.

I should also warn anyone planning a trip to Dresden in the near future that it was filled with white-haired British tourists. They shuffled through the galleries, reading only the tags and then making inane comments like “Oh, look, here’s another Titian.” They would stare at it for a while, and then shuffle on, looking at the tags instead of the art and only stopping when they got to another name they recognized. I realize this might make me sound like a snob, but why do people go to museums who clearly have no understanding of or appreciation for art?

There was also a museum employee giving a tour to some—and by “some” I mean “two”—VIPs and frowning at anyone else who tried to listen in.

However, the day did get better from there.

My next stop was the armory. I know I may not seem like the armory type, but it was really very interesting. There was lots of silver and gold “gently used” armor, some fake horses wearing horse armor, two fake horses and two fake knights wearing real armor demonstrating jousting, plenty of swords, sabers, rapiers, and guns, but not as many cod pieces as I expected. When it all started to look the same, I left. There was also a display case comparing armor to football pads.

Then it was on to the display of scientific instruments at the Mathematics and Physics Salon. That was also rather fun—gilded and elaborately engraved scales, beautiful globes, some portraying earth and others the constellations, thermometers, microscopes, and giant lenses used to focus light and melt things such as tin, copper, and lead. I’m not sure they had a practical purpose, but I bet they were fun toys. There was also an early adding machine from Blaise Pascal; it was the first (1650) to count to 10,000,000.

After having seen the 18th century speculum at the Mathematics and Physics Salon (bonus points to anyone who can figure out what gynecology has to do with either math or physics), I thought my life was complete, but then I moved on to the main event: The Green Vault. Wow. Wow. Wow! Not very eloquent, I know, but you’d understand if you’d been there. The place was filled with the most amazing array of treasures I’ve ever seen. Things like this:


and this:


and this:



and this:

I spent almost two hours there gawking and writing effusive notes in my journal. There was at least one piece made from every imaginable material: mother of pearl, diamonds, precious stones, minerals, clay, wood, leather, gold, silver, crystal, cherry stones, nautilus shells, ivory, enamel, coral, ebony, porcelain…

The early pieces focused more on craftsmanship than on precious metals and gems (although there were plenty of those, too). There were also distinctive orientalist tendencies to the collection, with scenes and people from India, Egypt, China and the Middle East. Some of my favorite pieces were Daphne turning into a tree (see above), a set of decorative and elaborate mining equipment (see above), pieces made with nautilus shells and ostrich eggs, a carved cherry pit portraying 185 faces, a leather trout containing a set of knives, and figures made from oversized pearls:


The collection belonged to the Electors of Saxony, and it was August der Starke who collected most of the pieces in the 18th century. He’s also the monarch who developed Dresden’s porcelain collections and founded the porcelain manufacturer at Meissen. Unfortunately, only half of the museum was open. On the ground floor of the castle they have restored a Baroque vault and will display 3,000 pieces, as well as a collection of delicate Medieval and early Renaissance pieces. That part of the vault opens in mid-September and will only allow a limited number of visitors per day. I think it probably warrants a trip back to Dresden.

After viewing August der Starke’s treasures I moved on to his porcelain. Now, I should say to my skeptical readers that a collection of porcelain is much more interesting than it sounds. There was a long gallery containing Chinese and Japanese porcelain from the 17th and 18th centuries. At one point the collection contained 22,000 pieces, but only about 12,000 pieces still exist today. Thankfully, not all of them were on display. Most of it was blue-and-white, and it was very pretty, even if it did have a tendency to all look the same.

Other parts of the museum contained porcelain made in Meissen. Strangely enough, most of the early pieces looked like Chinese and Japanese porcelain; even the people they portrayed looked Asian. There were also some pieces in the ornate, Baroque “German” style. My favorite pieces were serving dishes with decorative handles in the shape of lemons, artichokes and stuffed boars’ heads.

There was also a gallery of large porcelain animal sculptures from the Meissen factories. At the time, these were the largest pieces ever made of porcelain. There were porcelain buffalo, peacocks, owls, turkeys, goats, monkeys, lions, tigers, and bears. Oh my.

My last stop was a brief visit to the sculpture collection. It was a rather odd mish-mash of pieces, with 1st-3rd century Roman sculpture standing next to 20th century pieces. I did see my second representation of Daphne of the day, as well as this sculpture:


I then walked around the roof terrace and took some photos and sat in the courtyard of the Zwinger and listened to the Glockenspiel. After that I walked back to the train station and bought a pair of shoes along the way. After that I was homeward bound.

Here are some additional pictures of how Dresdon's museums coped with the catastrophic flooding in 2002:

Lange Nacht der Museen, part two

If you'll recall, in the last post I detailed my exploits during the first 2.5 hours of the Long Night of the Museums. I thought I would use this post to catch you all up on the last 3+ hours, but I promise to not go into as much detail as the last post. I realize it was a bit long. After leaving the Rembrandt exhibit I headed for the New National Galery next door. I walked in and was slightly disconcerted; it's a difficult transition to go from Rembrandt to contemporary art. I walked around and let the art soak in. In the end, I liked the exhibit, but it kept suffering in the comparison to Rembrandt (or Dürer, Brueghel, van der Weyden, etc.). I snapped this photo from outside the gallery:


As you can see, it was like a circus. There was art hanging from the ceiling, an uneven floor, a giant bee, and that's just what you can see in the photo. There was lots of art that you can interact with, like a series of photos and texts printed on cheesecloth and hung together so that you have to walk through them to read them. I didn't stay long, but I'm glad I went.

After that it was off to the Martin Gropius Bau and Egypt's Sunken Treasures. Once there, I was greeted by a long line, but I was prepared for this: all the good museums have lines. Several people just behind me left, saying it wasn't worth waiting "hours" to see. I disagreed and stayed (and only waited thirty-five minutes). It was a once in a lifetime experience. The artifacts in the exhibit were excavated from the Bays of Alexandria and Aboukir in Egypt over the course of ten years. The exhibit in Berlin was the world premiere, and almost all of the 500 artefacts on display have never been seen before. The exhibit ends on September 4 (They've had to extend the museum's hours to midnight during the week, just to accommodate all the visitors). Plus, the exhibit will only travel for two years before returning to Egypt permanently (The next stop is in France, and the exhibit will travel to two more as yet undecided European countries). I simply wouldn't have the chance to see this ever again, so I waited.

Wow! I'm sorry that most of you reading this won't have the chance to see the exhibit; it was amazing. The archealogical team found artifacts spanning sixteen centuries from the cities of Canopus, Thonis-Herakleion (It was a result of this excavation that they were able to determine that the two cities were in fact the same), and the Bay of Alexandria, which all sunk into the sea as the result of earthquakes and other natural disasters/climate changes in the 8th century CE. I'll spare you the details and only hit the highlights, but if you have an interest in Egypt and antiquities, I recommend planning a trip to France (I'm guessing it will move on to England after that, and then maybe to Russia or the Czech Republic) to see it or buying the catalogue.

The exhibition contains some remarkable things: private devotional objects from Herakleion, early Christian jewelry from Canopus, the "largest free-standing statue of an Egyptian divinity every found":


There's also the largest stone tablet containing both Greek and Egyptian texts (It's like the Rosetta Stone on steroids):


Many of the artifacts date from the Ptolemaic dynasty (305 BCE to 30 BCE), which was an exceptionally interesting period in Egyptian history. Since the great Pharoahs were gone, there was a bit of a power vacuum, and the art of the time reflects the influences of Mesopotamian, Greek and Roman cultures. This statue has the traditional posture of a pharoah, but the body and the drapery are distinctly Greek:


Pretty cool, eh? It makes me want to travel to Egypt. I will, however, wait about ten years for that until (a) I have a real income and (b) they build the underwater museum at Alexandria .

I left the exhibit and followed the line of the Berlin Wall (In case any of you are following this on a map.) and walked through the Topography of Terror exhibit, a museum of sorts built into the excavated remains of a Nazi/SS prison (The Prinz Albrecht Gelände, I believe the area is called). There's also part of the Berlin Wall there that's been picked clean in some places. Even though the area has such a dark, horrific history, the area looked really pretty lit up and full of visitors. I followed the wall to Checkpoint Charlie and then walked up Friedrichstrasse, past all the glamorous stores (Gucci, Escada, etc.) wth wonderful window displays. After a quick stop at the train station for some much-needed sustenance (not to mention caffeine), I went to the German Historical Museum where there was, miraculously, no line. At 11:15 I sat down in the inner coutryard of the museum (which has been covered by a glass roof) and caught up in my journal. I started in the special exhibit about refugees, displacement and immigration, situated in the museums I.M. Pei designed addition:


It was very interesting, with lots of authentic documents and artifacts, but I didn't really have the energy for it. I walked to the permanent exhibit, but knew I was in trouble as soon as I walked up the stairs and saw the sign reading "500-100 BCE" I knew I was in trouble. I didn't have the energy for 2500 years of German history, so I very quickly made the decision to come back another time (tomorrow, I think). I walked through the exhibit at warp speed and made a stop at the museum shop before I left. I'd been avoiding museum shops because I didn't want to (a) spend money and (b) have to lug around heavy bags all night, but this was the last stop so I figured, "What the hell?" I bought some really fun stuff, including this book:


After that I was homeward-bound. I had, of course, missed the last bus, so I had to walk for 20 minutes. I got home just after 1.00, exhausted and with aching feet, but it was well worth it.