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When the_webmeister suggested going to the Bauhaus Archiv museum, I was fine with the idea but not as eager to go as I was to, say, the the Jewish Museum, with its controversial new addition by Daniel Libeskind . More fool me.

I came out of that museum so inspired I felt like I was fizzing. I literally skipped down the street, much to the bemusement of the_webmeister.

You weren’t allowed to take photos in the museum, but here’s one of the outside, designed by Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus School:



Here’s a few of my notes:

Johannes Itten: “a work of art must be sensed”. Plunged his students into chaos – free play in order to develop their artistic personality and artistic freedom.

Wassily Kandinsky: Believed in “free art for the free spirit.” Associated yellow with triangles, red with squares and blue with circles. Didn’t like green – color of “self-satisfied composure”.

Hmmmm. I just painted my bedroom “Peaceful Jade”. What does this say about me?

There was so much more. I bought myself two postcards to pin above my desk, so I can look up at them and remind myself of how inspired I felt when I was there.

After that we headed over to the Technology Museum , which is truly amazing place. Continuing on our Shoah theme, we went inside a cattle car that had been used to transport Jews to concentration camps:



Just being in there with three other people gave me the heebie jeebies. I couldn’t even imagine what it must have been like to be packed in like sardines with no food or water for days.

That’s just one of the exhibits in the two huge rail sheds. I was very excited to see a real Enigma machine:



(If you’ve seen “Breaking the Code”, about the code breaking efforts of Alan Turing and the team at Bletchley Park during WWII you’ll know why I was so excited by this).

We also got to make linotype:



Then it was over to the hands-on Spectrum part of the museum, where there were some seemingly great exhibits that would have been completely lost on me if not for the physics-literate Webmeister, because all the explanations were in German.

Here’s a pic of my physics hero, who clearly is still in touch with his inner kid:


and here’s me getting in touch with my inner Hermoine, trying to divine what’s going to happen in the last Harry Potter book:



Despite the fact that by this point my feet were ready to drop off, the Drill Sargeant – I mean, the Webmeister – was not going to cut me any slack, because we still had another museum to cover, namely the Jewish Museum. There was a very moving installation called “Shalechet”, or “Fallen Leaves” by the Menashe Kadishman:




Finally, it was back to the hotel, where I got a hug from one of Berlin’s many bear sculptures (who, while cute, is not nearly as cute as Knut):


Even better, I managed to beg a cup of ice from the bartender to ice my poor weary tootsies!