Day 11

Today, we had a fairly early morning start to go on our walkabouts.  Our first stop was the Christian Democratic Union.  While we were there we were offered a quick impromptu tour of the building.  I really like their design for their office, with having their building inside of a building design.

We then headed over the Bauhaus Archives and Museum.  I did not know anything about this museum at the beginning of the day; however, all the architecture students were so excited to be spending a few hours there.  I learned a lot there and was very pleased with the amount of exhibits this museum had for architects that were Bauhaus student's work inside of which.  Afterwards, we made our way down to the Nordic Embassies.  We had a tour of this complex containing five embassies: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland.  Within our tour we were only allowed to go inside of the Norway and Finland Embassies.  I thought the design for the entire complex was very remarkable and simply modern.  However, I found the tour of the C.D.U. Building nicer than of this complex.

After our guided tour we waited to have lunch at their embassy café, which was in fact pretty good.  Then the group proceeded to head towards more memorials and museums and along the way we stopped to view several Embassy’s architecture.  We stopped briefly inside at the NRW's Office. I thought this building was done very similarly to the C.D.U. with the building inside of a building technique.  

When we arrived at the Bundeswehr Memorial we were disappointed to discover that it had been closed for the day without any type of notice.  But, we quickly made our way to the Memorial to the German Resistance and Museum.  I found this outdoor Memorial extremely eerie.  (The movie Valkyrie was actually filmed on location- where the resistance leaders were killed after their unsuccessful coup.)

This museum and memorial I found to be well done, but like all things of this nature very sad and making one leave feeling a deep sense of gloom.  Subsequently, class ended for the day and everyone went on their own way.  I along with Aaliyah and Sarah headed back to the apartments to do laundry and plan more for our upcoming trips to Amsterdam and Salzburg.  After spending a good while doing this we made dinner and called it a night.  I am looking forward to our uneventful free day tomorrow, where I hope to accomplish a good deal of little things on my list and to pack for upcoming excursion around Germany.