Neues Museum in Berlin

OK, I decided not to blog about the appalling production of Lucia di Lammermoor at Deutsche Oper last Saturday which went down the drain in spite of Eglise Gutierrez [a petite girl with too small a voice] and Roberto Alagna [who looked like a pedophile next to Eglise]. Plus, on the same night at Komische there was that new production of Don Pasquale that I so wanted to see, but since I had a ticket for Lucia, what could I do?! I guess I would've been be less pi*ed if Diana Damrau was singing.
All, all, but you should see those sets... Dear God!!!

Nor I'd talk about Peter Seiffert who screwed up my Tristan und Isolde on Sunday [Why, oh why does he keep singing something he cannot?] He already ruined the whole series of Tristan in Liceu last January, and now the series continues  in Berlin. René and Waltraud clearly saved the best for the Festtage, and just wanted to get it over with... Only Ekaterina Gubanova and Saint Barenboim made me not regret to have spent the operatic weekend in Berlin.  It happens...

Homo neanderthalensis, 45,000 BC [sic!], 
found in Le Moustier (Dordogne, France)

Berlin is Berlin so you can always get to see something good... A good gallery, a good play...  When in Berlin you should go and see the Galleries of contemporary art. There are many of them, and since Berlin is the center of the World for everything that comes under the name creative art today...

For Paris standards, Berlin's museums instead are not really great, EXCEPT-EXCEPT for the newly reopened Neues Museum. You simply MUST visit the Egyptian section, but everything else is extraordinary too. That alone is definitely worth a weekend.
It is strictly forbidden to take pictures of Nefertiti, which is not the case with other smaller statues. Here is one

Standing-striding figure of Nefertiti, 1345 BC

Pair of hands from a group-statue of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, 1350 BC

Standing-striding figure of Akhenaton or Tutankhamen, from between 1340-1330 BC

Fragment of a pillar: king Seti in front of the god Osiris

Head of a statue of a princess

A tiny chunk of the Schliemann's Trojan treasure

Extremely rare coin bearing a portrait of Charlemagne (here not only with the Frankish royal titles, but the Lombard royal title as well)