Our plan for the day was to ride to Potsdam with Hans-- Ingrid and Bill decided that they would like to go along. We started with a hunt for rental bicycles and found them without much difficulty. Ten euros for the day and we could have them until 8 p.m. John and I put ourselves in the hands of the Berlin experts and it was decided that we would ride first to the East Side Gallery.
The East Side Gallery is a 1.3 kilometer section of the Berlin Wall that was spared from destruction and turned into a memorial with paintings by artists from all over the world.
The area is crowded with people and we walked our bicycles along the length of the memorial-- then rode back in the direction we had come to get to a train station.
Trains in Germany (except the fast ICE trains) permit bicycles and there is a bicycle logo on the outside of the carriages with bicycle space. There were many more than the five of us crowded into this space and I stressed a little about bike damage, whether they would tip over, etc. but all went well and we soon arrived in Potsdam.
Potsdam is the capital of the German state of Brandenburg and it is about 15 miles from the center of Berlin. It is the location of a series of parks, lakes and palaces and was the site of the famous Potsdam Conference. Held in July and August 1945 at the end of WWII brought Stalin, Churchill (replaced mid-conference by Clement Atlee) and Harry Truman together to work out post war arrangements.
Hans had prepared an itinerary for our day complete with historical information printed from the internet. We made a brief stop at Potsdam's Brandenburg Gate but quickly moved on to our primary destination-- Sanssouci.
Sanssouci was built between 1745 and 1747 for Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. It was a "summer palace"-- little more than a large single story villa. Other far grander buildings, intended for visitors and guests, were built elsewhere on the grounds.
It was hot and unshaded but not unpleasant as we walked up the terraces to the modest palace at the top of the hill. The terraces are used to grow grapes and figs.
The grapes were more robust at other places on the terraces but this photo clearly shows the doors that are closed in winter to protect the fig trees.
We picnicked on the grounds but did not get into the very long line to tour the palace-- we were planning to bicycle around the extensive grounds and much of the way back to Berlin. These two, seemingly identical palaces are on the grounds of Sanssouci. They are connected by a long arcade that partially shows in the bottom photo.
Yet another of the palaces on the grounds of Sanssouci.
Alexandrovka: In 1812 the Prussian Army captured 1000 Russian troops. From this group King Friederich Wilhelm III decided to form a Russian choir. When Russia and Prussian later joined sides, the choir stayed in Potsdam living in 13 wooden houses built "in the Russian Style". The houses came fully furnished and with a "large garden and a cow". These colony has now been declared a Unesco World Heritage Site. There are lots of good pictures of the houses here: http://judy-volker.com/Hometowns/Potsdam/Alexandrovka.html
We stopped at one of the houses, serving as a cafe, and sampled Russian beer. At the bottom right of the photo you can see John's "ice coffee" which is not iced coffee as we know it but coffee with ice cream and whipped cream.
Hans' itinerary then took us to the Glienicke Bridge, the Cold War "spy bridge". The bridge was at an isolated point where U.S. occupied West Berlin met Soviet occupied Potsdam. "Deals" could be made here without involving the other allies and the bridge was four times used to exchange prisoners, most famously Francis Gary Powers in 1962 and human rights activist Anatoly Sharansky in 1986.
We rode across the bridge and turned immediately left and rode many kilometers alongside the lake-- the weather was idyllic and no ride could have been nicer.
Our last stop was the site of the Wannsee Conference, a beautifully proportioned villa overlooking the lake.
The beauty of the spot stands in hideous contrast to the horror of the meeting that was held there. Reinhard Heydrich, an important leader of the SS and a man Hitler called "the man with the iron heart", organized the conference which was held in January 1942. There were 15 attendees, including Adolf Eichmann, and the conference was brief, lasting only about 90 minutes. The purpose of the conference was to discuss logistical and practical aspects of implementing the Final Solution. Heydrich spoke for the first hour then took questions. Eichmann later wrote that Heydrich was pleased with the outcome of the meeting. He had expected more resistance and was pleased to have complete cooperation. Thirty copies of the minutes of the meeting, known as the "Wannsee Protocol" were produced and all but one were destroyed as the war came to an end and the Nazis sought to cover their tracks.
On January 20th 1992, the fiftieth anniversary of the conference, the building was opened as a memorial museum. What can I say... a beautiful place, a beautiful day, a beautiful bicycle ride and the importance of remembering the evil that took place not so long ago.
We rode on subdued and weary, ready for our short train ride back to Alexanderplatz. Leaving the train for the last time we wheeled out into heavy Berlin traffic, joining the scores of commuters heading into the suburbs along the Prenzlauer Allee. We returned the bicycles, had a lovely farewell dinner of Persian food, and walked back through the warm evening to our hotel room and preparations for departure.
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