First Day in Berlin

Tuesday, July 19, 2016--Berlin

Dieter and I had a casual morning at his apartment.  We started with toast with meats, cheeses, and jam for breakfast with coffee.  Then I showed him the AIRBNB website to see how he could rent whole apartments when he travels to places in Thailand, Vietnam, etc., each winter.  He's going to Thailand for four months this coming winter.

After we both cleaned up, we headed out.  First stop was the bank in front of his apartment for me to get Euros.  They have no tellers in banks here now.  After getting cash from the ATM, it wasn't able to take the big bills to a window and ask for smaller ones as I often do when traveling!

We headed across the street to a kiosk and bought me two day tickets for local transportation during my stay here.  Each covers different regions according to what Dieter had planned for today and tomorrow.  Fortunately, the owner took the 100 Euro bill and gave me change!!

We took a bus and a train and another bus to Potsdam where we spent most of the day.  I had been there to see the palaces with Arne just a year or so after the fall of the Berlin Wall.  But there is a string of parks including Sanssouci Park that is most famous.  Sanssouci is the most famous of the parks for having several magnificent palaces built by Frederick II (also known as Frederick the Great) who reigned in the 1700s over Prussia.  It was interesting to note that people bring potatoes and leave them at the gravesite of Frederick II because one of the things that made him famous is that he brought potatoes to Germany for the first time.

Leaving the first park, we walked down the main street of the center of Potsdam, a rather elegant small city due to its closeness to the country palaces of the emperors.  We stopped at a meat market and bought four meatballs to share as we continued on our way.

After passing through town, we left the crowds of tourists, which usually visit only the main park and downtown behind us.  We entered the much quieter park named Neuer Garten which has several palaces incluing the Marble Palace and the Cecilienhof Palace which was the location of the Potsdam Conference at the end of World War II where Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met to determine how to govern Germany after its defeat.

As we left that park, we crossed the Glienicker Bridge which became famous as the place where exchanges of prisoners were made between the East and the West during the Cold War Period.  For some reason, I had never realized it was on the outer edge of Berlin.  I had always imagined it to be in the center of town across the river that divided the East from the West.  But it makes sense that it was in this remote, wooded area, since the participants would want to be isolated from the general public while making the exchange.

On the way back into town, we stopped at the Loretta Biergarten overlooking the Wansee.  We each had a radler, a 50/50 mixture of beer and Sprite often known as a shandy in other countries, and shared a large pretzel.

We had been away for 7 hours when we returned to the apartment.  We were both tired.  And neither of us was really hungry.  So we just relaxed for the rest of the evening.