After breakfast we headed to the theatre where 500 of us were organised into bus groups for our tours to Berlin. We're in bus 16 of 17. Talk about an exercise and a half and as you can imagine took some time. Next it was a short walk to the train where all 500 of us have a 3½ trip to Berlin. The trip is mostly through countryside. Lots of farming of crops and sheep with some cattle. At one spot there were lots of little towers every so often. Erik, our tour guide for bus 16 told us they were hunting towers. Apparently, hunters sit in the towers and hope game will come walking by. This created quite a discussion about hunting among the 6 of us in our part of the carriage. 4 Americans, with the two males both hunters (one big game the other only pheasants). At least everyone agreed that the hunting of 'captured' animals was abhorrent.
On arriving in Berlin we met our guide Tatiana and off we went to Potsdam. She's an excellent guide and very informative on the history of the areas we are travelling through - from the royal history of King Fredericks and Frederick Williams to the cold war years where Berlin was divided into East and West. First stop is the Cecilienhof Palace, constructed from 1914 to 1917 in the layout of an English Tudor manor house. Cecilienhof was the last palace built by the House of Hohenzollern that ruled the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Empire until the end of World War I. It is famous for having been the location of the Potsdam Conference in 1945, in which the leaders of the Soviet Union (Stalin), the United Kingdom (Churchill) and the United States (Truman) made important decisions affecting the shape of post World War II Europe and Asia. Quite an unassuming building with a most interesting history.
Lunch was a little down the road where we were treated to a “typical” German “peasant” lunch of sausage, potato and cabbage – and a beer of course.
After lunch we visited the Palace of Sanssouci, the summer palace of Frederick the Great. Again fascinating history of the interaction between Frederick and his father and the huge impact he had on Germany at the time.
The palace was designed/built by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff between 1745 and 1747 to fulfill King Frederick's need for a private residence where he could relax away from the pomp and ceremony of the Berlin court. The palace's name emphasises this; it is a French phrase (sans souci), which translates as "without concerns", meaning "without worries" or "carefree", symbolising that the palace was a place for relaxation rather than a seat of power. After World War II, the palace became a tourist attraction in East Germany. Following German reunification in 1990, Frederick's body was returned to the palace and buried in a new tomb overlooking the gardens he had created. Sanssouci and its extensive gardens became a World Heritage Site in 1990.
From Potsdam we headed into Berlin and spent the rest of the afternoon looking at Cold war Germany: Bridge of Glienicke (popular spy exchange spot), the remnants of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie; as well as the Brandenburg Gate; and Reichstag, now the centre of Government in Germany since it's reunification.
A very full day on site seeing in Potsdam and Berlin before getting back on the train for the long journey back to Warnemünde. Well worth the trip and Erik and Tatiana were both excellent.
