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Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Potsdam - Berlin
Tuesday, 8 October. This was disembarkation day so we
were up at 6:15 and had our luggage out in the
passageway at 7:30. After breakfast, we left the ship at
8:45 to board the bus to Potsdam. Our destination there
was the Cecilien Hof Palace (1917), north of the city,
and we saw little of Potsdam, itself.
The palace
was built by Kaiser Wilhelm II for his son Wilhelm, the
Crown Prince. However, it is best known as the site of
the 1945 Potsdam Conference at which heads of the
governments of the United States (Truman), the United
Kingdom (Churchill/Atlee), and the Soviet Union (Stalin)
met to decide on, among other things, war reparations
and other punishment for Germany (which had surrendered
unconditionally nine weeks earlier).
We had to
wait for the scheduled time of our tour inside the
Palace, so Jane and I had time to walk all the way
around the building. It was built with a large central
courtyard and a couple of smaller ones. We found three
separate gardens on our stroll, one of them in a
courtyard. Then it was our time for the formal tour
inside.
A very soft-spoken young woman guided us
on the tour, with a focus on rooms used during the
Conference. It was her first tour, but she was very
knowledgeable and provided many interesting historical
details, including tidbits about the personalities of
the players. Afterward we sat for time with friends at a
table in an outdoor cafe' in one of the courtyards.
Our bus left the Palace at 12:30 and headed for
Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin noted for its large lake. We
had a big lunch at the Haus Sans Souci, a very nice
restaurant with windows facing a marina on the lake. We
finished about 2:15 and had about 45 minutes to explore.
First we walked to the marina and found ourselves at a
large bronze statue called the Flensburger Lion (1862). Then we
remembered that Jutta had mentioned that the Wannsee
House was next to the restaurant, so we rushed over
there.
The Wannsee House, a rather drab looking
villa, is where the Nazis met in January 1942 to approve
the "final solution to the Jewish question." The
solution, of course, was that most of the Jews in
German-occupied Europe would be deported to Poland and
exterminated. The villa is now a Holocaust Memorial and
Museum. The exhibits inside provided a detailed history
of the Nazi policies toward the Jews from beginning to
end. Unfortunately, we only had about half an hour to
see it, and that wasn't enough. We had to rush to get
back to the bus before it left at 3:00 for downtown
Berlin.
We got to the Hotel Wyndham Berlin Excelsior at 3:30 and checked in. Our luggage came to the room about 15 minutes later and we partially unpacked. The room was small, and like the one in Prague, there were no drawers or shelves to put anything. I had been to Berlin probably a dozen times while stationed in Germany (1969-1973), all but once on official business. Jane accompanied me a few times, and once we went there on leave, bringing our four sons along. Then I visited Berlin several more times when I was Deputy General Counsel of the Army (1979-1994), and Jane accompanied me on at least half of those visits. (I should clarify that all her trips were at our own expense.) So we were somewhat familiar with Berlin, but it had been about 20 years since our last visit. We had only been there once (1993) since the Wall came down. Jutta led us on an orientation walk at 5:00. Our hotel was in the heart of Berlin, just a block from the Zoo subway stop an only a couple blocks from the Kurfuerstendamm (often Ku'damm), probably the most famous avenue in Berlin. Our group walked to the subway station. At that point, Jutta led those who were interested on the KaDeWe (KDW), the second-largest department store in Europe. (Harrod's in London is the largest.) Jane didn't want to take an hour walk (round trip), so we just browsed the local neighborhood.
With another couple, we went into what we thought
was a grocery store, but it had almost everything. The
store was only about 40 feet wide, but it must have been
at least a quarter mile long. We finally gave up on
trying to get to the far end.
We got back to our hotel about 6:00 and decided to have dinner at the informal-looking Filmbuehne (Movie Set) restaurant next to the hotel in an hour. Two other couples joined us. The place had a great atmosphere, like a good old fashioned German tavern, was quite inexpensive, and took credit cards (important for us with no working ATM card). We left the restaurant at 8:30.
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