Friday morning we ate breakfast at a little café near our apartment and then walked over to Alexanderplatz and then headed over to city hall- the Rotes Rathaus. Next we walked over to the Berliner Dom – which is a bit of a misleading name since it isn’t a Dom (Cathedral) since it has never been the seat of a bishop and it isn’t Catholic- it is associated with the Evangelische Kirche Berlin. The floor plan of the church was quite different from others we’ve visited and I couldn’t get over the Dom height. The mosaics and stained glass at the top of the Dom were really beautiful as was Sauer’s Organ. The crypt was also really interesting – it includes the sarcophagi of over 80 Prussian royals. We also climbed up to the dome gallery (great view of the inside of the church) and then up to the walkway that is on the outside of the dome. When we left the church we walked up and down Unter den Linden a bit, thought the road wasn’t nearly as pretty as usual (from what we’ve heard) because there is a ton of construction going on for a new UBahn line that runs under the road. We stopped at St. Hedwigs Kathedral, Humboldt University, and the Mercedes museum/showroom. From here we visited the East Side Gallery which is a 1.3 km long section of the Berlin Wall covered with paintings.
After walking along the wall and the river Spree which is behind it, we took the train back to our apartment so we could get ready to go to the Philharmonic. We got all dressed up (I wore high heel pumps for the first time since moving over here which turned out to be a terrible idea) and ate dinner at Lutter & Wegner (a really nice, popular German restaurant). After dinner we took the UBahn to Potsdamerplatz and walked the few blocks to the Philharmonic (right about now my feet really started to hurt). The show featured “music from the time of Mozart” – so Jean-Fery Rebel, Mozart himself, Christian Cannabich, and Johann Christian Bach and was conducted by Reinhard Goebel, who is the founder and head of the ensemble Musica Antiqua Köln. It was fun to do something a little different and overall the night was a success (despite the super painful trip home.. at several points I was tempted to take my shoes off and walk back barefoot…).
