Three museums in one day, and we didn't even get to town until 4pm!

Time for stop three of three on the Trio Tour. Time for Berlin again! Very excited, as my brief taste two weeks prior was excellent.

We arrived on the train from Prague at about 4pm. Immediately, with our bags still in tow, we went for a dose of culture. We headed for the Hamburger Bahnhof, a former train station now converted into a modern art museum.

It was perhaps the coolest gallery space I've seen, with high, arching ceilings and a minimalist refurbishment that lent the appropriate grandeur and space to the large pieces of art contained within.

First area was the "model experiments" exhibit, which toyed with the concept of reality, of size, and of models representing real life.

One of the neatest in this exhibit was a full room shadow puppet display called "Schattenspiel" (Shadow Play). The artist had attached a large number of children's toys to spinning disks. Light projected on those spinning disks then created a fantastical set of moving images on one of the walls. It was mesmerizing to watch.

Another contrasting pair of pieces investigated what is actually art. One was a set of large, intricately detailed models of insects, done by a curator of the natural history museum in Berlin. The other was old plastic bottles, cut and colored to look like beautiful vases when viewed from afar. Weird and neat.

The other exhibits showed pieces from artists such as Andy Warhol, Cy Twombley, and Joseph Beuys. Some hits and some misses there. The Warhol pieces were fantastic, oh-so-large, and with a big dose of irony.

After a quick pit stop at our hotel, we headed to Museumsinsel, or Museum Island. There, an incredible collection of five museums beckoned. Better still, it being Thursday evening, all were open late and open for free.

We went first to the Alte Nationalgalerie, where the majestic old building was stuffed with old German art.

We specifically investigated the work of Caspar David Friedrich, a potential favorite of Kevika's. His was the best of the bunch, landscapes that had a spooky eeriness. Some, especially one of a lonely monk by the sea, just held my attention.

Then, to the third and final museum of the day, the Pergamonmuseum.

This museum made my jaw drop. We walked into the first room and there was the entire Pergamon Altar from Turkey.

A huge stone gate, reconstructed inside the hall of this museum! It was surrounded by fantastic friezes of gods in pitched battle against other gods and wild demons. Apparently, as part of the contract to excavate it form Turkey in the late 1800s, the Berlin Museum got the rights to ship it all there. Fascinating.

But the monumentality didn't stop there. In the next room was the famed Ishtar Gate of Babylon. A gorgeous blue color with 3D representations of animals, including a made up creature that has the head and body of a serpent, the front legs of a lion, the back legs of a hawk, and the tail of a scorpion. I would not want to run into one of those in a dark corner.

And so it was that we found ourselves heavily cultured, immediately upon arrival in Berlin.