Walking in the rain

Bode Museum, with collections of Byzantine art.
It turns out that fall in Berlin can be rainy, rainier so far than Ithaca.  A 2:00 p.m. flight from Syracuse to Detroit (like Columbus we needed to go west to find the east) got us first to Amsterdam and then Berlin at 8:00 a.m.  Twelve hours of travel takes a toll, especially since the early arrival left us without access to our room.  We stored our luggage and went out to do about all we could manage, wander the streets, shuffling a bit like extra’s from the walking dead.  

We chose a hotel on Oranienvburger Strasse since it was close to Museum Island and headed there to get bearings. Water, of course, attracts all wanderers and we quickly came to a bridge across the Spee on which the many tour boats kept sailing in spite of the weather.  There we also encountered the first museum, the Bode but decided that our fatigue made any museum tour impossible. 

What we managed was a stroll along Unter den Linden.  With no churches or castles on offer, I thought a university edifice might serve as an imposing introduction to imperial architecture. The walking mall down the center of the boulevard begins with the statue of Frederick the Great and ends at Brandenburg Gate.  Like much of east Berlin, this area is under heavy construction and the mall was completely overwhelmed with a construction project.  

The next few days promise more clouds and rain, but rains in foreign climes seem, somehow, more attractive.