Berlin - Day 4

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Geo: 52.397, 13.0586

Today I took a day trip to Potsdam. A pretty little town about 25km outside of Berlin. This is the place that the Kaisers built their palaces. There are and awful lot of palaces out there. The first place we were taken to was the Palace of Frederik II, otherwise known as Frederik the Great. Freddie launched a war on Russia, Austria, France and Sweden known as the seven year war. At the end of the war his enemies whispered that he was broke. So to prove them wrong he built this lavish palace in Potsdam. It was truly beautiful, with hundreds of statues, two freestanding palaces across the driveway for guests and beautifully manicured gardens, complete with fountains. He never lived in it but he proved his point.

Just down the road was Freddies summer palace. Not as grand as the first one but certainly beautiful. The gardens were glorious. I actually felt like I was walking through a french palace rather than a German one. Freddie was heavily influenced by the French. Mainly because his father, absolutely hated them. Freddie's dad was Frederick William I. Now all of these royals were called either, Frederick or William or a derivations there of. The Prussians really liked those names. Even the girls were Whilemina or Fredrica. Freddie 1, the soldier king, (they had to elaborate their titles to distinguish one Freddie from the next I guess) was a fair bastard. He was credited for building up the Prussian economy and the military. However, on a personal level he wasn't very nice. As he was determined to build the economy, if he noticed people dawdling in the street, he would have them flogged because they weren't working hard enough. Freddie didn't like him very much and at the age of 18 he tried to run away to England with his mate Hans Herman von Katte. Their plan was uncovered and as punishment, Freddie I had his son confined to his apartments. One day the guards entered his apartments and held his face against the window. Hans was marched into the courtyard and beheaded while Freddie watched. They left Hans body in the courtyard to rot for three days.

After that Freddie 2 towed the line. He stayed in Brandenburg and learned what he needed to know from his father to rule the kingdom. By the time Freddie 1 died (10 years later) they had found a kind of peace between them. Freddies 2's favourite place was just down the road called Sanssouci (without a care) On one side, there was a valley, and on the next hill Freddie 2, who must have had a thing for roman ruins, had fake ruins built to enhance the view. On the other side was a terrace garden, fig trees grew against the walls and they had these glass doors they could close around the trees to protect them through the winter. On the other side of the terraces were grape vines. We also saw the orangery, which is where the citrus plants, were stored during the winter, in the spring they were re-planted in the garden. The orangery was a palace in itself.

After Freddie 2's palaces, we went for a walk through Potsdam and took a quick break for lunch. Potsdam itself is quite a pretty little town, but its architecture is mixed up a bit. In the 1600's Brandenburg was not heavily populated, so one of the kaisers, I think it was Freddie 1's old man, invited exiles from all over Europe to come and live in Brandenburg. Generally these people were exiled for religious purposes, ergo this man built his nation out of tolerance....imagine that! Because there were all these exiled folk, there is a mix of architecture, French, Dutch, Russian and Spanish. Its really quite eclectic. Finally we made our way to Cecilienhof, which is another palace built in the British style. This was the place of the Potsdam conference. At the end of WW2, this is the place where Stalin, Churchill and Truman met to divvy up the spoils of war. Well that's a bit harsh, they met to discuss what was to be done with Germany in the post war era and figure out how to stop it all from happening again. Pretty much this is where the bitching started and the cold war began. They did not meet again after Potsdam.

After Cecilienhof, we went for a walk around the lake. It was picture perfect, the sun was out, Paul our guide pointed out more palaces and royal residences around the lake, boats sailed across the water and naked people were sun-baking in the park. Yes you read that bit right! As we walked along, there were people taking advantage of the warm day and swimming and sun baking in the parks around the lake. I told you these Germans know how to use their green spaces.

After the park we made our way back into town to see the Church of St Nikolai. It has just been rebuilt in the old style after being heavily shelled through WW1. It was originally rebuilt by the East Germans during the soviet occupation, but they didn't do it right and the building was falling into disrepair. There is a lot of this kind of activity here and in Berlin. Of the old buildings which were damaged or destroyed through the war, many have been rebuilt in the old style. Some have been built in new ways. Kim (guide from Day 2) pointed this out at the natural history museum. We were standing in the street at the back of the museum and she asked us what we thought it was made from. It looked like sandstone blocks. But when I touched the wall it was actually metal. Paul informed us that currently there are over 100,000 construction sites in and around Berlin alone. They're not all reconstruction of old buildings, many are commercial projects. But that is still a truckload of investment.

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