Day 67 28 May 2015 Berlin

Off to Potsdam today which is located 20 minutes by subway from south-west of Berlin.  Full of green spaces and parks, palaces and lakes.  Popular with the rich and famous it is regarded as German Hollywood as most German films are made here, from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to Tom Cruise’s Valkyrie. A nice lakeside residence would cost about $12 million.  Claudia Schiffer is one of the residents and our tour guide today, Johannes, told us that she had lots of assets here and we (at least I was) keen to see these assets.  

One of the highlights was Frederick the Great’s Palace and gardens.  (Fig 1 and 2) We didn’t go into his palace and the gardens were nice, not as ornate as others in some ways were much nicer. Potsdam itself is really quite attractive.  Of all the places we had seen I had thought Versailles would have been my pick but I think Potsdam outshines it.  It is a charming place.

Schloss Cecilienhof is where the Potsdam conference was held. Our the museum tour guide mentioned that Tom Hanks producing a suspense film in Potsdam about the exchange of Gary Powers, the U2 spy plane pilot who was shot down over the Soviet Union.  At first we thought Tom must have been following us seeing that we were in Florence three weeks ago when he was filming in Florence but it did emerge that it was last year.  It was interesting to see where the decisions of the Potsdam Conference took place and how they influenced the world. (Fig 3 and 4 photos from their info board as we weren't allowed to take photos.)

Returning to Berlin, during lunch we visited the Memorial Church of William II that was almost totally destroyed in World War 2 in 1943.  The remaining mosaic was as beautiful as anything we have seen.  I suspect one reason why we thought it was so beautiful is that we were so close to it.

Checkpoint Charlie, a bit cheesy but what else can they do with it…you have to see it.  For 2 Euro you can have your photo taken with a Soviet or a US serviceman.  The tour guide made them sound like Chippendales but they were far from it.

There is a cardboard East German car on display.  Apparently they had like a two stroke motor and made of a plastic cardboard amalgam. You can hire them and you can push them from one Berlin attraction to the next.

Currywurst sausage is some sort of national dish which we have both successfully avoided. There is a Lego museum which is essentially a platform for selling Lego but I did stand next to a life-size Starship Trooper made of Lego.

We took some photos of the Brandenburg Gate had extra bits on the side which I didn’t realise and was designed as a tax point.

A visit and afternoon tea at the Reichstag this afternoon was a highlight.  Lovely views over Berlin and interesting construction that you can walk up the dome. It provides interesting internal reflections.  (Fig 4-7) It really was a highlight and we would have never considered visiting it if we were travelling by ourselves.