10-30 # Museums, and Zoos, and Aquariums! Oh, my!

Today was my history and wildlife day.
As the free tour had covered most of the sites in Berlin, I had to decide what to do with my entire extra day. Museum Island was an obvious choice, but after 2 or 3 Museums I knew I'd lose interest. I had heard that Berlin had a pretty nice zoo, so I decided to visit that too. I do love animals, after all. And, just my luck, the zoo is connected to an aquarium!

To start off, I went to the Pergamonmuseum, which houses ancient Pergamene, Islamic, and Egyptian works. The biggest of these is Pergamon Altar (below), which was brought to Berlin from the city of Pergamon in Asia Minor.

Pergamon Altar

I then also explored the Neuesmuseum «New Museum» which houses the bust of Nefertiti, though we were not allowed to take pictures of it. It held some other ancient Egyptian works as well, and a variety of other things. It was quite an interesting place, but I didn't take many good pictures there.

I then went to the zoo. There was a bit of confusion with the ticket lady, because I totally asked for an even pointed to the Aquarium ticket, but she gave me a zoo ticket (the zoo was closing in 10 minutes, why would I want that ticket?). Anyway, the Aquarium lady was nice and let me in even though I didn't have the combined ticket (I think that the fact that I explained the situation to her in German probably helped a bit, thanks Frau Martin!). But on my way to the Aquarium in the 10 minutes the zoo was still open, I got these pictures:

The little guy in the back is licking the wall. ¡¿?!

Nice to know what direction home is in!

So finally I made it to the Aquarium and spent about an hour there looking at some Bugs, Fish, and Amphibians (it was a very complete aquarium). Watching the ants do their labor in the bug section was quite entertaining.

I liked this "little" guy