Ok. I admit that I can be a bit of a cultural heathen when it comes to visiting the museums of the world…mostly because it means spending the day inside when I want to be out exploring. I traveled to Berlin with my friend Julie Bartolotto, the executive director of the Historical Society of Long Beach, who is in the process of planning a permanent home for the Society’s historical collection…a museum. Of course she wants to look at museums, so what can I do? Pray for rain so I won’t feel bad about being inside!
The universe obligingly provides the precipitation, so the next hard decision is which museums to visit. There are 
multiple history museums to choose from in Berlin, as well as a panoply of art and culture museums. My interest is sparked by the Story of Berlin museum, which will take us from the city’s inception through it’s times of prosperity, turmoil, division, and reunification up to the present day. If we only get one rainy day, then at least we’ll have an overview of the city’s history.
We follow our young guide out of the shopping center and into the parking structure, then down several flights of stairs. We crowd into an antechamber in front of a heavy metal door with the other English-speaking visitors from Georgia, Australia, Denmark and Argentina. We’re 
in the decontamination chamber. In a brief orientation the guide explains that the bunker was built to house 3592 people. She is refreshingly candid about her opinions of the usefulness of the bunker in a real nuclear crisis, given that it was only stocked with enough supplies to last 14 days. However, the first 3592 people still have someplace to duck for cover in case of current biological or chemical threats which might clear more quickly than nuclear fallout.
When we pass through the metal 
door, eerie colored lights hint at the vast expanse of cots hung four deep, floor to ceiling, extending in tight rows into the darkness. Our guide shows us around the perimeter of the room, where glassed-off doors allow a glimpse into men’s and women’s sanitation areas, the 47-bed infirmary, the generator room, the air filtration system and the kitchen full of unlabeled gold cans with a notice on the window stating “no provisions are stored here.”
The idea of sharing this un-air-conditioned bunker with 3491 other sweaty cranky souls for 14 days only to emerge to…. what? Maybe world leaders should have their summits here. Gloomy thoughts for a rainy day. We head back upstairs, through the mall to the main exhibition. We opt not to get the headsets with the narrated tour, but rather to read our way through since everything is in German and English.
We enter the exhibition through a courtyard, representative of the German 
and Turkish people and neighborhoods of the city. A friendly staff person takes our tickets. The inner doors open. We step through into the Time Tunnel stretching ahead of us. To the left, a jagged bull’s-eye of green light on the floor outlines the borders of Berlin at it’s founding in 1237 as a village on the banks of the Spree, and its expanded borders in 1648, 1919 and 1920. That original village is now Berlin’s Museum Island. A video on the wall flashes images and dates of Berlin’s history as a center of trade and commerce accompanied by German narration.
We step across the Time Tunnel hallway into a glowing holographic tube 
where the entire circular outer wall of backlit text and illustrations tells the story of how Christianity, Judaism and Islam have influenced the history of the city. In the center of the room, large photographs depicting religious rites surround a tall chest of drawers in three columns topped respectively by a Cross, a Star of David and a Crescent. Each glass-covered drawer contains artifacts used for religious ceremony. In one drawer a Christian baptismal gown, in another a Jewish wedding veil, in a third ritual silver dishes from Ramadan.
Back in the Time Tunnel I am a bit overwhelmed by the lists of dates and 
significant events in history and all the interactive panels with video clips. I move on to admire the series of Prussian military uniforms while Julie diligently reads all the important happenings of the 18 th century under four rulers named Frederick. Next door, I join life-size figures of the intellectual elite lounging in a Biedermeier room juxtaposed against a wooden barricade with a burning red background. Symbolic of the cultural advances in Berlin before, and the decline after the unsuccessful 1848 revolution.