Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog
It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.
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Reading progress update: I've read 130 out of 192 pages.
So, Sunday I went for a walk to the Kulturforum via the banks of the Spree river and what might be termed Embassy Row, in order to visit the Gemaldegalerie. Saudi Arabia, Italy and Egypt stand out as having impressive embassy buildings. Apparently the Nordic countries share a building that the public can visit and they put on art exhibitions - but I didn't know that, then.
Anyway, the Gemaldegalerie is pretty big, with ~60 rooms displaying paintings. If you want an over-view of mainland European fine art painting circa 1200 - 1800, this is the place to go. (There's some British work - only one relatively small room but it's got some top-notch Gainsborough in it - hard to find outside Britain itself.) The layout is very clever: it's split between countries North and countries South of the alps and they progress forward in time in parallel, enabling easy comparison and showing the development over time. I managed to see a targeted ~40% of the museum before my brain completely fried. There were a lot of Big Name artists I didn't see. I left the place with a frickin' mini-art-library; there were surprisingly plenty of books in English as well as heaps in German and one of the gallery highlights books was also available in Spanish and French...
Mid-afternoon and I wandered over to Potsdamer Platz and the amazing Sony Centre with its fabulous supended glass roof over the central plaza; saw The Predator. Yep - in Germany watching a silly American sci-fi action/horror movie...in IMAX on Berlin's biggest screen, however. Also saw the approx. life-size LEGO giraffe outside LEGO Land Discovery Centre. Adults must be accompanied by a child in order to be admitted, in a reversal of the usual restriction...waaaaahhh!
After that, pizza and back to the hotel. This book and map served me very well, indeed.
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