Potsdam, Germany
Tuesday, October 5, 2004
Day four of my vacation and I am still exploring Berlin. Today I went of the city perimeter to the beautiful suburb of Potsdam. I took the train heading west toward Potsdam thinking that I will get there in 30 to 40 minutes. Thanks to my luck, the train went west bound for about 5 stations and stopped. I saw everyone get out. As scratched my head about what's going on, another traveler came on board and told me the train is going back east bound. I was forced to leave the train and wait for the next train. The next train arrived and dropped me off one station more west bound. I went off the train again waiting for the next west bound train to arrive. It did arrive in 5 minutes said its heading west bound to Wannsee. I hopped on the train and immediately the train started moving the WRONG direction !!! I was forced to get off the train to wait for another train to arrive West Bound. After all the hassle, I finally arrive in Potsdam 2 hours later. As soon as I got off the train, I was herded by the German Tourist Company onto their Grand Tour of Potsdam
. The only problem is the entire tour is conducted in GREMAN, I can only guess what they were saying. My translation came from an English booklet they gave me. It was still worth it since the tour bus took me around the city and saw all the major sites which would take me all day to walk. We saw the Cecilienhof Palace which was built in 1917 and it was were the third WWII meeting between Churchill, Stalin and Truman was held (1945), where Truman secretly decided to drop the 2 atomic bombs in Japan. Next we saw San Saouci Palace, this is where Kaiser Wilheim II play as his summer palace in the 1800's. Finally we stopped at New Palace where Frederick the Great stayed in the 1700's. The building were absolutely beautiful with marble statues everywhere.
I returned to Berlin around 3 :30 pm and saw KaDeWe, supposedly the largest department store in Europe. I also visited the remains of Kaiser Wilheim Memorial Church. There aren't much left after the WWII bombing. The Zoo station area in Berlin is just like the Time Square in New York crowded with people and cabs.
I will be heading for Dresden tomorrow so better go to bed.
Auf Wiedersen.
