The Pergamon Museum

One of the places I always wanted to visit while in Berlin, but was never able to convince a companion to spend a preparation day on, was the Pergamon museum. You all remember on Raiders of the Lost Ark how the nazis are searching for the ark of the covenant? Well, in a lot of ways the Germans are that crazy about historical artifacts. Before the World Wars, in the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, German excavators unearthed some awesome pieces of history, which they then cataloged and shipped back to Germany where they were painstakingly put back together piece by piece.

The first room is the altar of Pergamon, after which the museum is named. As an interesting sidenote, in Revelations 2:12 John the Beloved mentioned Pergamon, and most biblical scholars believe that the "throne of Satan" mentioned in the verse is actually the altar of Pergamon. So without further ado, Michi on the steps of the throne of Satan...

Ok, so technically the altar was up in the edifice and was destroyed to the point that it couldn't be reclaimed. The frieze depicts a battle between the Giants and the Roman Gods. For more information on all this stuff, just visit Pergamon Museum's Wiki Page. Here are more pictures.

 Wide view

The city of Pergamon, you can see where the temple was in the city

Some of the frieze

This is what they believed the full thing looked like, the altar is in the center square

Steps looking down

At the top

The next room contains the Market gate of Miletus. A large gate that led the way to the city of Miletus in ancient Greece that was carved entirely from marble.

16 meters high

The next room was actually my favorite of all. They unearthed the legendary city of Babylon and brought the Ishtar Gate and processional way and reassembled it again piece by piece. It is a very surreal feeling to walk under the same arches that King Nebuchadnezzar ruled.

These lions lined the processional way into Babylon

The images were of gods, the Ishtar Gate was also an instrumental part of their religious activities

A model of the processional way and Ishtar gate. The gate at the Pergamon is actually the smaller front gate

These walls, which matched the Ishtar gate and processional way, were taken from King Nebuchadnezzar's throne room

Just some of the detail. The bricks were painted with glaze to give them their color

The processional way, it would have been about 3 times wider in the original city

She doesn't know there is a scary lion behind her.

There were lots of other ancient excavation runes, that we saw, as well as some ancient and modern Muslim art.

Visiting with friends in Berlin

In addition to seeing lots of sights in Berlin, we also got to see some special people from my time there. We went to go see Anne Mueller, an investigator that I got to know very well during my time there. Adrielle and her granddaughter, Aliyah, got to be fast friends. We spent an entire morning having a wonderful breakfast and catching up on old times.

We also spent most of the day with Oliver and Irene Luedtke and their son Frederick, who is a couple weeks younger than Adrielle. We went to Potsdamer Platz, one of the newer areas of Berlin. It is built in what used to be no man's land, the area between West Berlin and East Berlin that was always guarded by military turrets. Since the wall fell, they've put up a lot of new commercial buildings, a Ritz-Carlton, a high-end movie theatre with restaurants, a shopping mall...and a Legoland :)

Inside Potsdamer Platz with everyone

The last couple parts of the wall at Potsdamer Platz that are still standing

Aerial view of Potsdamer Platz and into Tiergarten. We went up to one of the tops of the larger buildings that gave a great panorama of the city.

Adrielle playing with Frederick

She likes to try to taste the wind

Two beautiful girls

Downtown Berlin

After getting in late, we planned a full day of sight-seeing in the downtown Berlin area. We started things off with a lunch in Alexanderplatz with Susanne Tammert, who was baptized in the Marzahn ward during the time that I was serving there. Alexanderplatz was one of the main pedestrian hubs of former East Berlin, and it is famous for the large TV tower that can be seen throughout all of Berlin.

Just one train station east of Alexanderplatz is the famous East side gallery. It is one of the very few remaining areas where the Berlin Wall is still standing. Just 3 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in February 1990, they sectioned off this ~1 mile stretch of the wall to be painted with murals. The paintings were finished by September of 1990 and it has been a memorial site ever since. When I was serving there was no access to the backside of the gallery, but since they have opened it up. There is a lot of graffiti in some sections of the backside, but they've reclaimed the land and made it a nice greenbelt next to the river. There are also sections that have hi-res photos printed onto the wall that represent "walls" that still exist in the world today.

I have a picture as a missionary in front of this same mural

The gallery with Warschauer Strasse towers in the backgroud

This is the greenbelt area

We continued our tour of downtown Berlin by going to see the Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral). We had a nice time there just enjoying the view and trying to put Adrielle to sleep. We also saw the Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate), the Reichstag (Parliament), and the Siegesaeule (translates to victory pillar). The Siegesaeule is in the heart of Tiergarten, which is like Berlin's equivalent of New York's central park. It is also only a couple hundred meters away from the stake center, which is where we ended our evening and put Adrielle to bed before taking the buses and subways home.

Berliner Dom with Alexanderplatz in the background

the Brandenburger Tor

The Reichstag

The Siegesaeule

Copenhagen Airport

I'll try to make the posts a little bit shorter so I can get them up a little quicker. On our way from Stavanger to Berlin, we had a layover at the Copenhagen airport. It was one of the coolest airports I'd ever been in. Most of it looks more like a shopping mall than an airport, and they had a really large family area full of toys for kids to play with, it made the time there much more enjoyable.

These beach chairs were at our gate

Norway with Chris and Chelsea

First stop on our European trip was Norway to visit our good friends Chris and Chelsea. Adrielle made good friends with them pretty quickly...

Chris kinda scared her a little bit sometimes with his booming voice, but her and Chelsea were best friends by the end of the trip. They live in Stavanger, which is in western Norway in the area known as the fjordlands. The entire area has tons of fjords, which are geological features that were created when giant glaciers carved out valleys as they slowly moved downhill. Our first day there we hiked to månafossen falls with their ward, then further up the hill to a house that was next to the river. Adrielle did awesome in her baby björn carrier, and had some fun with the local wild animals...

the falls

Grass roof house

fjorldland landscape

"I'm on a sheep"

She fell asleep on the way back down

We stopped at a dairy farm on the way back and had some fantastic fresh ice cream.

The next day I had a work meeting but Michelle saw Stavanger with Chelsea, including her cake shop.

Our last day we went on a beautiful drive, then took a ferry ride back close to Stavanger, and a last Norwegian hike that overlooked the city.

The fjordlands

Apparently the trolls build these...

...and these

View from on top of the fjord

Having lunch and waiting for the ferry

Looking down the fjord

on the ferry

Preikestolen

Preikestolen is a famous landmark and one of the more famous of hikes in Norway leads up there. If you look carefully you can see some people up on the ledge. The hike just leads to the edge of the cliff, which has no railings or anything, so you can just dangle your feet off the edge. Here is a picture from the top (not taken by us)

and our ferry ride continues...

On the last hike

Stavanger is in the background

Norway was something very new for us and we really enjoyed our time there, especially thanks to Chris and Chelsea, who were amazing hosts.