Museum Day

     Today was filled with raspberry jello sponge cake, cannons, a Babylonian gate, and men in tights. And women in tights, but, I mean, that's to be expected. Anyways, the bakery some of us wandered upon accidentally was a tiny hole-in-the-wall with a line out the door for a reason. One local waiting in line was very friendly and talked to us for quite a while but the baker was clearly having a bad day because she was majorly grumpy. Perhaps she was just disgruntled by our American-groomed ability of smiling and pointing helplessly. I've gotten pretty good at that. Struggles aside, I has a truly amazing gooey raspberry custardy cakey thing and I have every intention of getting one again tomorrow because it was heaven.
     We spent the majority of the day on Museum Island being awe-inspired and overwhelmed by thousands of years of German, Middle Eastern, and Greek history. We first visited the Pergamon Museum, which houses the reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate of Babylon along with portions of the processional path and the interior of the throne room. THAT was impressive. I've been in some big museums, including the Louvre, but I have never been in a museum that features historical/art pieces that are so large in themselves. The museum's namesake, the Pergamon Alter, was even larger, and the collection of Islamic art was some of the most gorgeous I'd ever seen. It was like a giant historian's playground and I kind of wanted to live there.
     The second museum a group of us went to was the German History Museum. That's right, it covered ALL of German history. From the Romans to the 1990s. Let's just say that after an hour and a half of going through a very expansive collection of art and artifacts with our feet begging for mercy, we walked out into the lobby to realize there was a whole other half left. So we ran through that. But despite it's intimidatingly large collection, it was fascinating and definitely worth it; we saw everything from Napoleon's hat he wore at the Battle of Waterloo to Hitler's desk, and witnesses original Martin Luther texts alongside Medieval political cartoons featuring timeless potty humor. All in all, a very good choice.
     Lastly, we saw the ballet Onegin, tonight, which I'm sure everyone else will be writing extensively about, so let me just say that those ballerinas are ripped. They did not skip leg day. Or arm day, for that matter. They were all ridiculously talented and OH MY GOD THAT ORCHESTRA. Last night, the Magic Flute pit was good. Onegin pit = 6 out of 5 stars, which makes me ridiculously excited to see the Berlin Phil tomorrow night!!!
     Well, I'm going to go back to eating the best chocolate muffin in the world. I hope you all enjoy your miserable existence while I live the dream.