Today we ran to catch our train (the first of four times we did this today, and we only missed one of them) to Potsdam from Berlin. It was pretty cold, but I’m glad we were able to walk around the city a little before going to Sanssouci.

At one point in history, Potsdam encouraged Dutch immigrants to come to their city because they had an industrious reputation. The image below is of a formerly Dutch neighborhood we walked though, and the houses definitely remind me of the architecture we saw in Amsterdam.

To provide some contrast, this is another street we saw while walking around Potsdam. At this point, I am kind of desensitized to noticing how odd modern things like cars look next to these really old houses because that’s just the nature of our world, but the juxtaposition is actually striking.

After a while, we came to Sanssouci, which is a huge park and the former estate of Frederick the Great. In the park, there were probably more than a hundred busts like those in the picture below. Frederick included these busts of figures from history and various civilizations in his estate to show how cultured and cosmopolitan he was.

The two photos below are of Frederick’s home. He was a Francophile and wanted to grow grapes to make wine, so the metal structures on the hill in front of the house were his attempt to construct a vineyard. Unfortunately, it was (and still is) too cold here for this to succeed.

The French side of the park is very structured and symmetrical, which you can see from the way the flower beds in the picture above are laid out. The British side of the park is more free-formed and winding.

This is a picture of our resident director, Gerd.

We walked through the British side of the park for a while and came across the Chinese Tea House (see picture below). Chinese culture was a popular trend at the time when the tea house was built, but Frederick had had little exposure to actual Chinese people. Therefore the stylistic influences look convincing, but the Chinese figures’ faces have native European features.

One of the palaces at Sanssouci

After seeing the grounds of Sanssouci, we took a break for a delicious brunch.

This is the mill of Sanssouci, and there is some clever story associated with it having to do with tricking the king or something, but to be honest I did not quite catch/understand it.

Frederick the Great played the flute, but this is not him.

This is our tour guide Thomas in front of Frederick the Great’s summer palace.

This is Frederick the Great’s grave. He is buried with his dogs, and the objects on his grave are potatoes. Frederick was homosexual, and he had a wife, but they lived in different places. We did an audio tour of Frederick’s main palace, and it was very interesting to hear about how his tastes influenced the estate and how he handled being raised harshly and ultimately became a great leader.

It was Betsy’s last night in Berlin, so we had dinner at Biergarten. I had Schnitzel and tried Apfelwein, and others in our group had spätzle and Flammkuchen, which is like pizza with sour cream.

After dinner, Betsy, Aundrea, Libby, and I went looking for Berliners, but the place we were trying to find was closed. We walked around some and ended up getting some Eis (ice cream, Haselnuss and Schokolade) in a mall. In the mall, there was also this huge amazing clock (pictured below), which tells the time based on the flowing of liquid through various tubes and containers. The clock was designed by Herr Professor Dr. Dr. Bernard Gitton, which is quite a title.