Day Eight - Final Day - Potsdam and Berlin...and then home sweet home!

Friends & Family:

     Day eight is our last day in Germany and there is still so much to see and do!

     We decided to take an excursion outside Berlin and visit the neighboring town of Potsdam. Our guide told us many wealthy people who choose to live outside the hustle and bustle of Berlin choose to live here and raise their families - I imagine it is what Greenwich CT is to NYC.

     Entering Potsdam you first have to cross the Glienicke Bridge, better known as The Bridge of Spies. During the Cold War, this bridge was used four (4) times by the United States and Soviet Union as the location to exchange captured spies. The bridge lies at an isolated point where the United States occupied West Berlin meets the Soviet occupied Potsdam, which was in East Germany. The 4th and final spy exchange was the most attention-getting as it stemmed from an agreement President Reagan made with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 when the Soviet Jewish activist Antoly Shcharansky, who Moscow had convicted 13 years earlier as an American spy living in Moscow (a charge he and President Carter denied) was exchanged for 2 Russian spies who worked within our CIA. At the exchange, Shcharansky was driven in a Mercedes over the snow covered bridge, and whisked away in a waiting Israeli jet.

     We ran into this strange-acting man below...could he be a spy?

     Next stop was Schloss (Castle) Cecilienhof, which is a rambling Tudor manor house built in 1913 for Crown Prince Wilhelm.  This 176 room castle is noteworthy as it was the location where Stalin, Truman, and Churchhill “hammered out the fate of postwar Germany” at the 1945 Potsdam Conference.

     Not far from here is a charming small enclosed area of wooden buildings called The Alexandrowka Russian Colony.  Built in 1826 under the direction of Russian Czar Alexander, their purpose was to house singers in the Russian choir.  It is now a residential neighborhood and a UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Site. 

     Next stop is Schloss (Castle) Sanssouci, the summer residence of Prussia’s most famous king, Friedrich II or, Frederick the Great.  The king was said to have spent more time here than in Berlin.  Located within Park Sanssouci (which translated means “without a care”) it is surely one of those places that in the spring or summer would be magnificent to visit, but in January, misses the mark.  Maybe I’m getting “castle-weary”?

What it looks like in the summer..

What we saw…

     But just when I thought I’d seen as many castles as I needed to see for a lifetime, we turn into the gigantic courtyard of Neues Palais (New Palace) which was a FOR SURE WOW!! moment.  It is considered to be the last great Prussian baroque palace.  Built after the Seven Year’s War (1756-63), Frederick the Great loosened his purse strings, and built this palace to show “the state coffers had not been depleted too severely by the long conflict”. There are actually three (3) buildings – one the residential quarters, another a theatre, and the third the kitchen and servants quarters – and all three (3) are connected through a series of underground tunnels.  As we strolled the grounds, it was one of the few times in Berlin that the sun broke through!

     













We decided we were long overdue for a hot chocolate, and so we drove over to Keithstrasse, a cobblestone street full of antiques and gift shops.  Why had we not made this our FIRST stop??

     We returned back to Berlin around 3pm, and starving, went to a brick oven pizza place right across from Museum Island.  One of Berlin’s two (2) original settlements this unique complex of four (4) museums surrounded by water, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Nalini told us we MUST go to at least the Peramonmuseum, and so we took her advice, and were glad of it!  Inside this museum (which took 20 years to build from 1910 – 1930) are reconstructed monumental buildings such as the Pergamon Altar and the Market Gate of Miletus, all originally from what is now known as Turkey.

     You can see some persons from our party were getting a tad punchy…

     Our day ended with a (way too) quick visit to KaDeWe, the largest department store on the European continent (and second only to Harrods in all of Europe).  The 6^th and 7^th floors (each the size of a football field) are devoted to foods where Bill was to be found… Lulu and I were on the 3^rd floor perusing Germay’s largest luxury shoe department.  For those visiting Berlin – do not let your visit to KaDeWe be the last stop on your itinerary as we had!!!  It was an amazing store, and fun for Lulu as she discovered some fashion lines she was not familiar with here in the USA. 

     And at 8pm when KaDeWe closed (we thought closing time was 9pm, but it was Saturday so it closes an hour earlier) we headed back to our hotel as we needed to be up and out by 4am (yes 4am!) for our early morning flight home to LAX… land of sunshine!

     We had a great journey through Germany – I hope you enjoyed the “virtual” trip!!!

xoxo  

Cindy 1/20/2013