Travelling Hopefully

You know the old saying, "One mans trash is another's museum exhibit".  The Museum of Things on Oranienstrasse takes that to its logical conclusion.  Since it was only fifteen minutes walk from where I was staying I trotted along to take a look at Kei's suggestion.  The museum exhibits standard household objects from the late 19th century until yesterday.  Genuine is contrasted with fake, tasteful with kitsch and functional with overblown.  The walls are lined with cabinets containing homely domestic objects from the last hundred 
years or so. I'm pretty sure I recognised a pair of shears that were still doing sterling service in my parents house up until recently. Think of the place as a midden heap in the making. Future archaeologists are going to have a field day with this place when they dig it up.

In the centre is the core of the exhibition which was sourced from the Deutsche Werkbund an unholy alliance of artists, designers and industrialists who "endeavored to forge a new understanding between product designers, manufacturers, suppliers, and consumers by establishing “ethically pure” design principles such as quality, material honesty, functionality and sustainability." They were, according to the museum "pushing for a cultural utopia achieved through design and way of life reforms at the beginning of the twentieth century". All of which I must confess I find rather disturbing.  

The Werkbund fought a relentless war against kitsch as an example of form over substance (and a pretty hideous form at that), that they were completely opposed to. Personally I think they're wrong, when some illiterate slob nails some plaster ducks to his wall he is plugging into the same motivation that inspires someone else to spends thousands on tasteful interior design. Function by itself isn't enough, we need embellishment as well.

But that's enough of Berlin for the moment.  I took a train out to Hamburg to meet Thomas and Prue for lunch.  After various petty difficulties relating to missing trains by a minute at every single opportunity I slid out of Berlin and hurtled towards Hamburg.  On the way I thought I saw deer in a field.  They looked like deer or at least they looked like what I imagine deer to look like.  It's possible they were miniature, emaciated cows.

Hamburg presents a distinct difference to Berlin.  In Berlin I worried if I was about to get mugged. In Hamburg I was afraid I'd be refused entry to the city for failing to meet the dress code.  Prue and Thomas met me and we went to lunch.  I bought socks (not for lunch) and we took a tour of the town hall which is huge and manages to make Sydney's look small and quietly understated.  During the second world war when the allies literally bombed Hamburg flat and killed some forty thousand of the inhabitants the town hall escaped unscathed with only one bomb dropping nearby which didn't explode.  They have the detonator on display.  I find it slightly embarrassing that we trashed the entire of Hamburg and still didn't take out the politicians.

After the town hall we went to the planetarium where we saw a documentary on stars narrated by somebody who Germans think is Whoopi Goldberg.  It was  very interesting if slightly interrupted by the man behind me snoring.  In his defence it was dark and the seats reclined.

That was pretty much the end of my stay in Berlin.  Next day I headed to Prague.  So it only remains to thank my beautiful and talented host Jah and her delightful sister Yip who made my stay so enjoyable, showed me things and translated for me in shops when it became obvious that my German wasn't even up to the task of ordering donuts.  When the time came to leave I didn't want to.