Berlin: Day 4

The title is not really correct - we spent most of the day in Potsdam. That's because Frederick the Great wanted to get out of town to build his castle retreat Sans Souci which means "without a care". This is really an elegant little palace (you know, only 16 rooms or so) built in the middle 18th century in the Rococo style. Rococo means every wall and ceiling surface has gold decorations attached. These are not painted on, they are 3-dimensional leaves, shells, fruits, flowers, etc. all connected with curves and lines. They tend to pile up in the corners, where the sculptures get more elaborate. The wood furniture was beautiful inlay and the floors were wood parquet (walnut, linden, oak, and more) in fancy patterns. Other floors are marble, and some of them are works of art if you could only get up high enough to see them. Walls are either marble or covered with beautiful fabric. Lots of paintings. Formal rooms have marble columns with Corinthian capitals, fountains, alcoves with statues.

We saw two palaces. The second is called the New Palace and it's at least twice as big. The second picture was taken on the way from Sans Souci to the New Palace. This is a frozen stream. Spring has not yet come to Potsdam. Today was freezing cold, foggy, and drizzly. I'm sure that this park is lovely, but not today. In the distance you can see the Chinese pavilion (not quite the right name but that's the best I can do right now). It wasn't open but the outside was nice to photograph.

There were life-size statues, all in gold, of Chinese musicians all around. I got this shot for Cheryl Hastings, our percussionist. Maybe one of you can show it to her.

The New Palace was more than twice as big. Oh, I forgot to mention, because of the fancy floors, we all had to wear these huge floppy slippers in the palaces. So instead of walking we kind of swooshed around. The "we" refers to our tour group. They don't let you in the palace alone. Of course the tours are all in German. For those of us who can't sprech Deutsch they have printed descriptions.

Anyway, the New Palace is really better than Sans Souci so I'm glad we walked the mile to see it. Did I mention it was freezing and my feet hurt? Unfortunately they don't let you take photos in the palaces so y'all will have to wait to see the lovely pictures in the books we bought.

Last night's dinner in Gendarmen Market area was really fancy. We had traditional Viennese food but it was prepared really well. Karen wanted me to pass on to you a bit of wisdom: if you are in a fancy Viennese restaurant, don't sprinkle the grated parmesan generously all over your Tirolean ham appetizer. That's because it might be fresh horseradish.

Tomorrow we are going to try and find the Berlin International Church (Alliance) in time to attend the 9:30 service. Then we will collect our bags and hop on the Deutsche Bahn (train) to Dresden. We have three nights there, then we go to Prague on Wednesday.