Day 54 - Richard Wagner Platz

I'm having a little difficulty remembering what I did yesterday, so I named the entry after the street where I had a noontime snack. Heh. I think I remember my food from the day better than the day itself. For breakfast, still sick of müsli, I headed out and got some eggs. I scrambled them well and had them with grapefruit juice. I got burned out on grapefruit juice a while back, but if I have a glass of water before and after the juice, it's nice. Still on a bit of a protein kick, lunch was bread and an apple with a big bag of peanuts eaten a block east of Richard Wagner Platz because I wanted to find a bench in front of the church I wanted to stare at. Peanuts are hard to find here sometimes, which feels odd because they're hard to avoid in the states. For dinner I had two falafels and baklava. Quite possibly the greatest desert I ever had was baklava eaten in Rio. This was not nearly as good, but I should have enough time in Hungary and Greece to find its equal. So much for the food update. Let's catch up with the activities.

• Nightlife Tour. The time on the web site is wrong, so I missed the tour by a half hour. It was the perfect end to a cranky day. I was already feeling better at that point, so I didn't really mind.
• Busy Work. I booked reservations for Mama's Hostel in Krakow and A Plus Hostel in Prague. I still need to book the trains.
• Bröhan. The Bröhan was supposed to have art deco and art nouveau. It did, but you can't take any pictures because they want to sell you forty euro books. I liked the stuff, but not that much. I should mention that out of all the porcelain sculpture I've seen, I think the Bröhan had my favorite stuff. It had character, and personality, and used the characteristics of the medium to its advantage. So much porcelain statuary seems like it's trying to be marble, plastic, or something other than what it is.
• Old Museum. I took the metro across town and wandered my way to the antiquities museum. As an aside, the metro here is fabulous. It runs ever five minutes and it moves. The antiquities museum had some cool jewelry from a nomadic culture that was contemporary with the greeks. They were nomads and some of their artifacts were found as far north as Brandenberg. Then someone chased them off and they were never heard from again.
• Wondering. I'm still wondering what my interest is in these objects. The art deco glass looks fabulous, but even if it wouldn't poison you, would you dare drink from it? The same can easily be said of jewelry. I'm impressed by how detailed some of it is. I find the interplay of colors and shapes interesting. But I have no use for it in real life, do I? If nothing else, it enriches the textures I dream in, hardly justification, but an interesting side effect, nonetheless.
• Scrabble. A couple of hosteler's were playing scrabble. It was very fun to watch and be silly with them. They are both physics students (going for a masters and a PhD), so it was good nerdy fun. Geeking out is definitely one of my favorite activities. The highest scoring word of the evening was quark, at fifty six points.

That pretty much catches you up with the highlights. Today the plan is to visit some museums out near the botanical gardens. Lots of ancient art that is not Greek awaits. :O

Germans are so efficient. They can make that open mouth symbol with one letter. Ö They can do a smiley in one letter, too. Ü Now that's a big smile.