Potsdam Tour and World Cup Watch Party

This was our apartment in Berlin. Looking out of the living room and bedroom windows was a view of the tiergarten park with the victory column obelisk in the distance.

Out side of the dining area and front door was a view inside the semi-domed Sony Center.

This was still an outdoor area as the roof is more of an aesthetic and shade function. I did not get any good night pictures, but this place turns neon after dark. It was a nice clean and new place to stay, and a great area overall.

Saturday morning we had another bike tour planned. This time we met at the tour office and walked across the street to the train stop. We were getting on a regional train to head to the town of Potsdam. It is just outside of Berlin but was largely untouched by the war. It has many old palaces and it less hectic. Today's ride was going to cover more distance and we were hoping for some great sites. Our guide today was Blakely who is the roommate of Randall from the day before. He was another interesting and very good guide. He has made his career traveling to places that interest him, learning about the places, then being a tour guide for a period of time before moving on to the next place. 

After the 30 minute train ride and getting the bicycles sorted out for the group we were off. The weather in Berlin was not something that we planned or packed well for on this trip. I don't think that we realized they get at least a little rain almost every day. It was very cool again today but a little more threat of rain loomed throughout the tour. 

Our tour started out from the train station inside the city. We made our way to a few of the landmarks before heading to the palaces. Below is the Brandenburg Gate in Potsdam. 

For once we got to hear about history other than WW1 and WW2. The guide focused on the rulers and history of the area from the 16th century forward.

Still taking pictures while riding. At this point I did not realize this probably directly led to the crash from the day before. This was a different bike today and I could feel Katherine moving around a lot more. I was just holding the camera in front of me and hoping the pictures turned out okay.

This is Sanssouci Palace. It was the summer palace and favorite place of Frederick the Great. Past the fountains, those are grape vines. There is a vineyard leading up the steps to the palace. They still make a very limited quantity of wine from these grapes each year. This is not exactly the right climate for grapes so they have to enclose the plants in the winter. There are some cages along each level to enclose and protect the plants.

We did not go up to the palace at this point. Taking full advantage of our wheels the guide took us around the huge grounds of this palace and we eventually wound up on the other side for a later visit. Below was an informal dining area constructed pretty far from the main palace. It was cool to hear how the builders were supposed to create something Asian when none of them had ever been to Asia or really seen the style.

The above and below structures are literally across a narrow street from each other. At this point we were out of the city and in an area that is restricted from cars. There are only bicycles and walkers in the huge area. Above is now used as classrooms for a University. Below is referred to as the New Palace. It was built in celebration after the end of the seven years war in 1763.

Above and below were taken across the street from each other. Above is the Orangery Palace. It was and still is used as a green house.

We did make it back to the Sanssouci Palace. Above is the grave site for Frederick the Great. People leave flowers and these little potato stick figures for him. It is widely believed that he was a homosexual, partially explaining why he was not buried next to his wife. He preferred to be laid to rest next to the graves of his favorite dogs. The palace itself was a single story.

You can see this large windmill in the background of the earlier pictures.

This was just one of those odd things below. Beyond the fountain in the distance there are some ancient Roman ruins, except that they are not. For some reason these were constructed to look like Roman ruins. They were built around a large tank for water. This was apparently something they did back then.

We made our way into town to grab a late lunch. 

The area was a nice town square that had several restaurants and a market area. We opted for a restaurant but might should have sampled some of the street food instead. After a good lunch and a beer I was ready to let Katherine take the lead. Our guide said he wanted to put this picture on their site.

This part of Potsdam has the largest collection of Dutch style houses outside of The Netherlands. Another picture while driving, so it is not the best. It was a very cute area.

You got to see the New Palace earlier, now below is the New Garden. Not real original with the names around here.

This.........this was a beautiful place to ride a bike. We were on our way to my favorite part of the day, a tour of Schloss Cecilienhof.

This is the site of the Potsdam Conference in 1945. We did get to go inside and take a short tour of this palace.

You were supposed to pay to get a photography license, but there was really only one thing I wanted document. This is the actual table that Truman, Stalin, and Churchill sat at.

Here is the same table from another angle. I only know about the fate of Germany and Berlin based on this trip and the tour guides who gave us the information. From what I can tell this was not a good plan. While it did keep Germany from rising up again, it seems to me there was probably a better way. Truman was only recently in office taking over for Roosevelt, Churchill was voted out of office during the proceedings, and Stalin, well...... It is not really hard to believe that they just kind of forgot about Berlin and tried to fix it after the fact. The audio guide for the tour did a great job describing how the translator for Churchill must have felt. Churchill was known as such a great orator. This interpreter had to take his words and style and translate it for the rest of the room. I would imagine he was unable to make the words as powerful or have the same meaning. I like hearing details like that, that I would never think about otherwise. 

We made the ride back to the train station and had a rather uneventful ride back to Berlin. After getting back to the apartment Cindy and I grabbed some sushi in a restaurant connected to the Sony Center. It was great. We had it pretty often back home and it had been a year since the last time. We found some take out for the kids and brought it back to them, then we headed out to watch the Germany vs. Ghana World Cup match at the Fan Mile at the Brandenburg Gate. Crowds are not my thing, and routing for Germany was not the first thing I wanted to do. This was an opportunity to do something we normally would not be able to do. The World Cup is only every four years, so this was our only chance to see what it is all about. 

Needless to say I did not need Google Maps to find the route. Once we left our apartment we just followed the people. The above image we are still about a mile away from where we eventually ended up and it was solid people the entire way.

So the map above shows our route. The Sony Center at the bottom, we were directed to walk to the northwest because of a large unbroken fence with police guarding the paths. Sound familiar? You would think they would be a little sensitive about massive fences being built and guarded. So a short 800 meter walked turned into over 2km. The blue oval represents where people were standing watching the three screens. The yellow highlight path is where we walked. As I said earlier we were following people. At one point in the park people took off on a small path. It led us to a permanent decorative fence that we ended up climbing over. That was fun. Now we made it to the main street called the Fan Mile. It is about 2.4km from the Brandenburg Gate to the Victory Column. I think the term Fan Mile is pretty accurate to how many people were lined up along the street by the time the game was going. 

We could now see the screens in the distance above and we still had some room to move. I started feeling good about the situation, if only for a few seconds. All of the sudden we stopped. We were so far back there was no way to watch the game.

It turns out that we were in the queue to get past security. We needed to make it past the blue welcome sign above. They were frisking everyone and there were only a couple of places to get past the barrier. I was about ready to give up. Hundreds of people were showing up every minute and we were not moving much at all. It became rather uncomfortable quickly with the crush of people as the game was about to start. As usual we had the non-aggressive people in front of us with the pushy people forcing their way to the front. If there is one thing you can count on in Germany, as we have seen in every scenario, Germans do not honor the line. Cindy and I now know how to play this game. We kept a smile on our face as we followed closely behind the pushy people. The game had already started, but we made it through.
We found an area that had a little room and settled in for the first half watching the third screen furthest back. Cindy had to stand back a few feet to see over the people in front of us. The crowd was rather calm and on edge. This stuff means a lot to them.

During halftime we made our way to the middle screen. More and more people kept coming. Above you can see the third screen behind us.

For some reason we decided to get right in the middle of it. Once again the third screen is even further away in the distance and below was the view that we had now. This was still halftime and the camera was showing the fans in front of the first screen. We were still well over half a kilometer from that front screen and it was solid people the whole way. Germany finally scored early in the second half and the crowd erupted. Ghana tied it up soon after and we saw a couple of pockets of Ghana fans going nuts. Then Ghana took the lead. With all of the smoking and being so close in we felt like we had our experience and did not want to fight the crowds leaving, especially if Germany loses.

During our walk home we heard Germany score the goal to tie the game. It was loud. The game ended in a tie and we listened to the rowdy crowd disperse for the next few hours from our apartment. I have to say I thought the crowd would be chanting and jumping around the entire time, they did not. They were very anxious and serious about watching the game. It was fun to be there when Germany scored and to observe the behavior when Ghana scored. I am glad we went out and had this experience.

We have notice the lack of capitalism in the events and amusement parks in Germany. Here there were a few booths set up selling food and beer. The problem was there was not enough of them for the ratio of people, and if you left to go get a beer you might not find your group again. If we did this in Texas it would have been a watch party at the Death Star (Jerry World) with assigned seats and all concession stands open. Much more convenient to have a seat and everything, and much more expensive, but that is how we roll in Big D....er..um... Arlington I guess.

The next morning we got up, packed, and caught the train home. Our stop in Ingolstadt worked well again and we were back at the house about the same time our train made it to the Munich central station. Cindy and I think we wanted maybe one more day to check out Berlin, but it was a fun trip with good memories. 

The kids are finishing up their last week of school. They are out a month before the Bavarian schools. We are going to take advantage of the kid friendly places early on before all of the schools are out. Looking forward to our first full summer break.