Berlin Fiasco and Beautiful Bremen

[elusivek]

Some observations on Germany (so far):

Most [young] people speak English, but everyday things like the menus and stuff are not bilingual.

Museums feel a bit substandard to me. In my experience at other museums, things are properly labelled, audio guides are very well made. So far at the museums and the palaces in Berlin we've been to? Audio guides with mis-read sentences that get ignored, and the reading person just starts again from the sentence. Exhibits are not labelled, exhibits are missing, etc. The "tour routes" are not properly thought out, and at the Charlottenburg, they ran out of things to say and just said "here, hear some music while you tour on your own", and then even the music did not loop so I was left with no music for the last 15minutes of the visit. Information booklets meant to be left in place "for everyone" are falling in pieces and just held together with scotch tape. But the booklet itself is just a stack of A4 printed paper pinned together with a stapler - how hard is it to unstaple it, replace the one rotting piece of paper, then stapling it back together? Scotch tape. *facepalms*

Then at the Bahnhof some weirdo gypsy whatever grabbed my ticket and took my bag despite my vehemently saying no, then I got a call from work, and that's when my fuse short circuited and yelled at him no thanks, and later we found out the guy got angry at my not giving him money after him "helping" me and stole a bag somewhere. Jerk.

Bremen though, is beautiful! Just a pity we came at a time when they are preparing for Christmas, so there were lots of trucks and moving vehicles and construction going on at the front yards and boulevards of whatever (churches, Rathaus, etc...)

And of course there's the Bremen musicians!Now we are on the way to Rothenburg ob Der Tauber, but the train is full so we don't have a seat and it is slightly tiring standing for so long.

Comments

[found-world.livejournal.com]

How neat to see a reference to the Bremen musicians.

[magic-treehouse.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I think it very much depends on which museum you go to. The DDR Museum is excellent and bilingual.

The two things that really surprised me about Berlin were how cheap it was and how card machines are quite rare. It's a great city.

[arrowwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Ugh screw people grabbing your stuff! That's also a shame about the museums, how strange. It seems like a nice city overall though :)