Potsdam - the original Capital of Germany and Prussian Royalty

Sunday – notoriously a boring day for us travelers as everything is closed up and dead.

To combat this we prebooked yet another wlking tour this time in Potsdam where we had been staying the past 4 nights and also the home of the Prussian Kings and Kaisers of Germany.

As we were already I Potsdam about a 45min train ride from Berlin we organised to meet the group there rather than wasting time and money traveling. Unfortunately this was a little more complicated an endeavor than we’d planned as Jim completely failed to locate our position and without any maps to rely on all we could do was follow the train lines to the Hauptbanhof. In doing this we got completely lost and once Jim eventually kicked in 30mins later we realized we had been circling the train station the whole time.

Believing we had now missed the tour (they don’t wait) we thought we had just blown 20€. Right as we were beginning to lose all hope we saw them crossing the road right in front of us on a random street – what luck!

As usual we cursed Jim and thanked ST Anthony (patron saint of finding lost things) for the second time in 1 morning having found our external hard-drive at reception when we checked out – all our photos safe and sound PHEW! WE could only put it down to being “one of those days.”





Heading to central Potsdam

Allied bombs devastated the historical centre of Potsdam, not to mention that once the Soviets were in control they tended to either neglect or level historic buildings especially those symbolizing royalty.

Our first stop was the old town marketplace bordered by the Town Hall, Cathedral and Palace of Elector Freidrich Wilhelm of Brandenberg the first noble to make Potsdam his home.

Picure of the restoration plans

A lot of work is being done to restore this part of the old town, primarily funded by the Eddie Macquire of Germany (who wants to be a Millionaire Germany). Next we saw one of the survivors of WWII and Communism – Potsdam’s own Brandenberg Gate, which is actually older than Berlins gate and used to be the main entrance to the walled town.

Potsdam's Brandenburg gate

More scenic Soviet contributions

The streets of central Potsdam

Parking in Europe - this was not the first time we saw parallel parking Smart Car style

Further on from here we arrived at the Dutch quarters, red brick terrace houses built to entice skilled workers from Holland to come to Potsdam – all expenses paid and earn a tax exempt income. Turns out the Dutch loved Holland too much and not many actually took up the offer.

...more of the Dutch Quarters

Soviet control

Dave demonstrating the quality condition the Soviets kept Potsdam in

We wandered further into town passing 54-55 Lindenstrasse a former Nazi centre for genealogical investigations and much, much earlier it was the headquarters for Friedrich I – the soldier king’s special army division of giants (all members had to be over 7ft tall).

The infamous site for geneological research

The giants door!

After lunch we headed to the Neuer Garten (New Garden) area to see the Schloss Cecilienhof – the palace of Cecilia and home of Germany’s last Kaiser. This was also the palace where the 1945 Potsdam conference –meeting between Stalin, Churchill and Truman occurred, where they divided up Germany and set the stage for the Cold War.

The beautiful forrests all around Potsdam

Schloss Cecielienhoff with the lastin reminder of the Soviets (big red star)

Re-enacting the Potsdam conference with representative from UK, USA and Russia ( he wasnt actually Russian but a stand in)

The site of the famous gathering - Churchill, Truman and Stalin

We made our way through the park and English gardens passing Friedrich Wilhelm II’s Marble Palace and popped out at the Glienicke Bridge – site for swapping spies between the KGB and CIA.

Glienicke Bridge

From here we moved to the final stop Kaiser Friedrich the Great’s (they had a lot of Friedrichs) Schloss Sansouci – a bachelor pad for a king of dubious sexuality. The palace had an extensive terraced garden where they grew grape for the production ofa wine that requires an acquired taste (in other words its pretty foul).

Dave enjoying the sightseeing in the rain

The Schloss Sansouci

The vineyards

BY now the weather had turned pretty foul as well and Dave and I were both sloshing through puddles in our Havianas. So we called it a day for touring and jumped aboard Mulder bound for Dresden, near the border of the Czech Republic.

We arrived at the campground –another 5star-er this one complete with individual sinks with marble bench tops – swanky!

BY now the rain had really set in and we decided to literally park Mulder in front of the amenity block. It was dark so not too many strange looks from fellow campers. Hopefully they just sympathized with us and wished they cam up with the idea of camping so close.