May 24, 2017: A Day Tour to Dresden
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Today is our last full day in Berlin; Fred and I will be leaving tomorrow morning for Prague, and Prudence, Nancy, Karl, and Ron will be flying home to Dallas just before noontime tomorrow. So today are our last outings in Berlin. This morning, everyone save Ron will be going out to the suburb of Potsdam to look at the palaces and gardens. Then we'll return to collect Ron and go on the river cruise that Karl booked.

An Excursion to Potsdam

Before Fred and I left for our trip, Greg suggested that the gardens and palaces at Potsdam would be of interest to Prudence and Nancy (and to us as well), and so I suggested that on our last morning we take the train out there to see what we could see. Ron wanted to visit a local cigar bar he'd found, so for this morning it will just be the five of us.

As they usually did, Fred, Nancy, and Prudence went for their morning walk before breakfast, and after that, we all (except for Ron) met in the hotel lobby for our excursion to Potsdam.

Getting to Potsdam

As has been true for every day of our stay here in Berlin, the day began with a walk down Hardenbergstrasse to the Zoo Garten train station. That station has been the jumping off point for all our excursions.

Potsdam is the capital and largest city of the German federal state of Brandenburg. It directly borders the German capital Berlin (which, like Washington, is itself a Federal District and not actually in any of the other German states) and is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel, 15 miles southwest of Berlin's city center. It is close enough that it is reached via the normal S-Bahn (aboveground train) system; cities like Dresden require a change to the intercity train system at Hauptbahnhof.

Although Potsdam is reached directly from any of the S-Bahn stations in Berlin, like the Zoo Garten station, since it is outside the main train loop not every train that comes through the Zoo Garten station heading in the general western direction will take you there. One must wait, as we did, for the annunciator board to show that the next train is actually going to Potsdam.

As usual, Fred and I helped the others get their round-trip tickets for the train; we thought we should go ahead and get day passes for each of us, since this afternoon we will also be taking the train back and forth to the river cruise. Trains in Berlin seem to run very frequently; we had only to let one train not going to Potsdam pass through the station before our train arrived- maybe a six minute wait altogether.

Fred got a nice picture of us on the platform, and when we were situated on the train and riding the eight or ten stops out to Potsdam, I got a couple of good candid shots:

After a 30-minute ride, we arrived at Potsdam Hbf (remember, Hbf is the abbreviation for Hauptbahnhof which is, generally, the main train station in a city or town). Stations being well-marked, we easily found the exit for the palaces and gardens that we had come to see- referred to as Sanssouci on all the signage.

I thought it was interesting when we came out of the station to see the huge number of bicycles parked outside the station entrance. Obviously, a great many people bike to the station and then take public transit to where they have to go. Less pollution, more exercise; a win-win, it seems to me. And just while we were standing there, people (not all of them relatively young) dropped off their bikes or picked them up. (And I also noticed that many of the bikes weren't locked, and those that were only had locks to keep the wheels from moving freely- another telling sign about the German public.)

To our east there was an interesting new building, which turned out to be a new office structure across the street from the train station and the shopping mall attached to it.

Following the signs, we turn to our left (west) out of the station and walked down to the corner to our west where there was a bridge over the Havel into the town of Potsdam proper. On the corner, part of the station complex, were some stores and at least one familiar restaurant.

Getting to Sanssouci

The one thing I hadn't done before starting out this morning was to calculate the actual distance from the train station to Sanssouci- the palaces and gardens complex we'd come to see. From a cursory look at the map, it didn't appear far, but we had to be cognizant that not everyone in our group might care to walk as much as Fred or I (and we also had the time contraint of having to be back in time for our afternoon cruise).

At the corner northwest of the station we turned to walk across the bridge spanning the Havel River. As you can see from the aerial view, the bridge first led across the Havel to an island, and when we crossed that first section we got picturesque views downriver.

I stopped Fred in this section of the bridge so I could get a view of the city of Potsdam ahead of us across the bridge. The dome that you see in the distance is that of the Church of St. Nicholas, which is located on Potsdam's main square, the Alte Markt.

Fred also stopped the rest of us on this first section of the bridge so he could get a group portrait; that's it below, left.

The bridge continues across the Freundschaftsinsel ("Friendship Island") which is located between two arms of the Havel- the old and new channels. The island is a popular place on weekends; although we did not stop to see them, there are gardens and fountains, mostly located at the northeast end.

At right you can a view looking into the park from the bridge we were on. Near to us was a lawn sculpture of three figures on a blanket, apparently enjoying themselves in the sunshine. Fred got a good closeup view of the sculpture, and you can have a look at it here.

From the island, the bridge continued across the Neue Fahrt (the New Arm) of the Havel. This stretch of waterway is more of a canal than a river. Friendship Island is natural, but the part of the Havel that separated it from the city was not really navigable or even very picturesque, and so over the years it has been dredged and its banks reconstructed to be a more pleasing accompaniment to the city itself. As you can see, the buildings of the Alter Markt, and particularly the Barberini Museum border on the waterway.

Particularly because the bridge carries tram, auto, and pedestrian traffic from the city center to the main train station, there was lots of traffic on it, and Prudence got a nice picture of the pedestrian traffic on the bridge; her view looks towards the city center, of course.

Across the bridge, Friedrich-Ebert Strasse turned to the left to pass in front of the Landtag Brandenburg- also known as the Potsdam City Palace. This handsome building is actually just one side of a large rectangular complex. The Potsdam City Palace was originally the second official residence (the winter residence) of the margraves and electors of Brandenburg, later kings in Prussia, kings of Prussia and German emperors. The original building stood on the Old Market Square in Potsdam, next to the St. Nicholas' Church (Nikolaikirche) and the Old Town Hall.

This building is the new home of what is essentially the legislature of the state of Brandenburg. The original building (at the far end of the complex and hidden as we walked by this end of it) was renovated and new wings (including the building we passed) created after German reunification. The construction was completed in 2013. I was impressed by much of the building's sculptural decoration.

The Town Hall at the Alter Markt

This new building also provided space for the city government, which used to be housed in the Old Town Hall on the Alter Markt. That building is now a museum.

Potsdam has had a mayor (Bürgermeister) and city council since the 15th century. From 1809 the city council was elected, with a mayor (Oberbürgermeister) at its head. During the Third Reich the mayor was selected by the NSDAP and the city council was dissolved; it was reconstituted in token form after 1945, but free elections did not take place until after reunification.

Today, the city council is the city's central administrative authority. While elections were sporadic after reunification, they are now held on a regular schedule- the most recent in 2013. Between 1990 and 1999, the Chairman of the City Council was known as the "Town President" but today the post is the "Chairman of the City Council". The mayor is elected directly by the population. As we looked down the Humboldtstrasse towards the Alter Markt, Fred got a closeup of the Town Hall dome.

Friedrich-Ebert Strasse continued around the Landtag Brandenburg where we saw another sign directing us to Sanssouci. This time, the sign speficied a distance- a little over a mile. At that point, we realized that walking there wasn't an option, so we found a tram stop across the street from the Film Museum, and I went across the street to ask which route we needed to take.

The Film Museum

The Filmmuseum Potsdam was founded in 1981 as the "Filmmuseum der DDR". Since 1991, it has been in the sponsorship of the state of Brandenburg and belongs to the Filmuniversität Babelsberg. In the center of the collections and the permanent exhibition are the oldest film studio in the world, its film productions and the artists. Temporary exhibitions, family exhibitions and foyer exhibitions on German and international film and media themes complement the exhibition program. The museum is housed in the stables of the Potsdamer Stadtschlosses.

As it turned out, the far end of the Filmmuseum building is one of Potsdam's oldest; it was originally built by the Great Elector as an arboretum for the City Castle in 1685. Frederick William I, who ascended the Prussian Throne in 1713 and soon was known as the "Soldier King" did not have much use for an arboretum- he turned the building into a horse stable. Later, in 1746, his son, King Frederick the Great ordered a complete overhaul of the building.

There was a small cafe at the near end of the Museum, and that's where I found someone who could tell us which tram route would take us to Sanssouci, and I returned to the group armed with that information.

The Wrestling Colonnade

Near the tram stop across from the Film Museum there was a row of columns, seemingly out of place in the middle of this open space. These columns have an interesting history.

These columns (and some additional segments) once adorned the connection between the Royal Stables (now the Film Museum building) and the Elector's Palace. During World War II, these columns, and the Graeco-Roman sculptures that gave it its name, were damaged, and when the city center was being cleared they were moved to the Lustgarten at Sanssouci and placed near the Neptune Fountain.

When the city decided to begin a restoration of the Steubenplatz, the grassy area north of the tram stop, one element was to be the moving of those columns from the Lustgarten back to approximately the same location as they once occupied. This move was to be just part of the reconstruction of the Landtag Brandenburg, and the move was accomplished in 2014. The sculptures that once stood between the columns are themselves undergoing restoration, and it is anticipated that they will be returned to the colonnade in the near future.

We only had a few minutes to wait until a proper tram came by, and the five of us piled on (buying our tickets from the driver). We headed off the mile or so to Sanssouci. At the front  of the tram there was an interesting display showing the upcoming stops. The bottom name is the stop you are at, and the top name is the last (furthest)stop. The other names change as the tram goes on, so you can always see the current stop, the next few, and the last stop. We were waiting until Sanssouci appeared in the display and then worked its way down to the bottom.

On the way to Sanssouci, we took a couple of pictures- one quirky, one not so much:

Entering Sanssouci Park

The tram dropped us off right near the entrance to Park Sanssouci, so let's talk a bit about the park itself and then head on into it to take a look at the Sanssouci Palace. Even though this is Germany, you should know that "sans souci" is actually French, and translates to "not a care in the world" in English. Actually, a closer translation is the Australian "No worries".

Coming from town, the tram (actually a bus) dropped us off at Sanssouci Park in front of a building called the Kutscherhaus. This former coachman's house is located on the north side of Sanssouci Park, near one of the entrances to the Sanssouci Palace and gardens. It is one of the oldest buildings in the park and, when the estate was producing wine in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the winemakers lived in the house. The earliest date on which the existence of the house was recorded was on a map of "Potsdam and its surroundings" from the year 1771.

Prince Wilhelm acquired the house around 1850 when he bought the whole area for his palaces and gardens. He allocated it to his coachmen; the house sheltered not only the coachman and his family but also the Prince's carriage. Today, the house is occupied partially by a family employed by the Foundation of Prussian Palaces and Gardens of Berlin-Brandenburg; there is also a pub located on one side of the building. When the bus let us off, we walked up to the corner and across the street to have a look at what appeared to be a large windmill; on that corner some people had crowded around a relief map of Sanssouci made of metal- an unusual touch. You can spot the windmill on the map.

Thanks to the legend of The Miller of Sanssouci, the Historic Mill (Historische Mühle) has become famous well beyond the boundary of Sanssouci and even Potsdam- associated especially with Frederick the Great. The legend first appeared in a 1787 book about Frederick, and recounts how the King, disturbed in his palace by the noise of the mill, offered to buy it from its owner. When the owner refused, the King purportedly told him that he could simply seize it and pay nothing; he was, after all, the King. The miller is supposed to have replied "Of course, your majesty, your majesty could easily do that, if – begging your pardon – it were not for the Supreme Court in Berlin."

Frederick William I of Prussia, gave permission for the construction of a windmill, which was completed in 1738. This first windmill was a "post mill", which meant that the entire structure turned "into the wind". This mill predated the nearby summer palace, which wasn't completed until 1747. A half-century later the dilapidated post mill had to be demolished. The construction of a new mill, between 1787 and 1791, was financed by Frederick William II, and the mill was based on a Dutch prototype.

Following the accession of Frederick William IV in 1840, the mill was renovated as part of a plan to construct a triumphal road to the palace from the east; the March Revolution of 1848 and a lack of funds kept the project from being realized.

In 1858 the last miller finished his tenancy. Because the king refused to allow other applicants to run the mill, the building became open to visitors in 1861. The mill remained a tourist attraction until, in 1945, a Soviet tank was hit by a panzer force between the mill and the drive up to Sanssouci Palace. In the battle that followed the mill and the Swiss house at its foot were set ablaze. Both buildings were destroyed.

In 1983 the Potsdam Chamber of Commerce began the restoration of the stone base using public funds; when these ran out in 1991, the work was financed by donations from the state of Brandenburg, the North Rhine-Westphalia Foundation and the then Potsdam-Sanssouci Foundation of Prussian Palaces and Gardens. The present smock mill is a replica of the one built from 1787 to 1791 and the third so-called Historic Mill. It had to be planned from photographs and measurements of the mill foundations, because the construction drawings were no longer available. The mill is now owned by the Berlin-Brandenburg Foundation for Prussian Palaces and Gardens and is operated as a museum and attraction by the Berlin-Brandenburg Mill Association, founded in 1990.

From the mill, we crossed the street to the entrance to Sanssouci, manned by two young men in period costumes. Walking up the path, we came out at the Sanssouci Palace.

Before we start wandering around the grounds of Sanssouci, let me introduce you to the area- or at least the area that we covered. (We only had a few hours to spend here, even though to see everything in the park could not even have been done had we spent all day here.) We saw so much and took so many pictures that I'll need to group them into sections.

On the aerial view at rightr, I've shown the area that we covered and our approximate route through this part of the park, and I'll use this view as a kind of index for the sections below.

Our first stop was at a gazebo and small sculpture garden (1) at the west end of the palace itself (more about the palace a bit later). We stopped there both on our way in and our way back out, so I'll group all the pictures taken there in one section. Of course, another stop that we made was at the palace itself (2); this large building, oriented east-west at the top of the view- is actually Sanssouci, with the gardens and other areas having their own names or collectively referred to as "Park Sanssouci". The palace is at the top of a sloping hill, and that hill is ribbed with interesting greenhouses and bisected by flights of beautiful stone stairs leading down to the bottom of the hill. These structures, called the Weinbergterrassen (3), will be another section of its own.

At the bottom of the hill is the Lustgarten. I am not sure how much of the park is included in that reference, but one feature of much note was the lovely fountain, ringed by benches and sculptures (4); we'll look at the pictures of that fountain and those sculptures in their own section. The next section will cover the walk that we made towards the east into another section of the gardens that lie at the bottom of the hill below the Bildergalerie (5). Finally, there will be a section for some pictures I took when I followed a pathway west out of the view to another of the buildings in the palace complex (6).

This may all seem like too much organization, but I want you to be able to experience Sanssouci the way we did- feature by feature.

Gazebo and Sculpture Garden

The entrance up the walk from the windmill brought us to the western end of the building that is actually the Sanssouci Palace. Here, there is a trellised gazebo and a semicircular sculpture garden.

When we arrived at the palace, we were actually at the west end of the west side wing of the structure. We'll talk more about the palace itself in a bit, but each of the side wings on the on the garden front are screened by two symmetrical rows of trees each terminating in free-standing trellised gazebos, richly decorated with gilded ornaments.

The location and layout of Sanssouci above a vineyard reflected the pre-Romantic ideal of harmony between man and nature, and the trellised constructions at either end of the building carried on with that theme. Winemaking, however, was to take second place to the design of the palace and pleasure gardens. The hill on which Frederick created his terrace vineyard was to become the focal point of his domain, crowned by the new, but small, palace— "my little vineyard house", as Frederick called it.

With its extensive views of the countryside in the midst of nature, Frederick wanted to reside there "sans souci" ("without a care") and to follow his personal and artistic interests. Hence, the palace was intended for the use of Frederick and his private guests; his architectural sketches refer to areas "pour les etrangers" and "pour le roy" (although guests only visited during the summer months).

We didn't actually get to the eastern end of the palace building, but I wasn't surprised to learn that the gazebo and trellised arbor we saw at the end of the building were duplicated at the other end; symmetry was important in the designs of the age.

The gilded ornamentation on the gazebo was really striking, with the golden ornaments contrasting nicely with the weathered green color that looked like oxidized copper. Many of them seemed to have a musical theme, but Fred was more interested in this gilded sunburst; it is one of his favorite images.

We took lots of pictures of each other at the gazebo; I thought that one of the best was a picture that Prudence took with me in it; that's the picture at left.

As far as the gazebo itself is concerned, I thought that the best of all the pictures we took of the structure itself is the one at right.

Prudence, particularly, was enamored of the gazebo; if she had the space, I think she would like to have something like it in her own garden in San Antonio.

The other feature we saw here at the west end of the terrace was the semi-circular sculpture garden; I could see looking east across the terrace past the palace that there was a duplicate of this, too, at that end of the building.

This charming little garden had a central sculpture that shows a reclining figure and two cherubs and then six busts on pedestals arranged in a semi-circle around it.

I'm not sure that any of the busts had actual names, but they all looked Roman in style (a love of things Roman being a major part of the Romantic style in decoration and architecture). I had Nancy and Karl sit down beside one of the pedestals so I could get a photo.

We all thought that the gazebo and little garden were neat, but then we moved on to the palace itself.

The Sanssouci Palace

Sanssouci was the summer palace of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia; it is often thought of as a German rival to the Palace of Versailles. While Sanssouci is in the more intimate Rococo style and is far smaller than its French Baroque counterpart, it too is notable for the numerous temples and follies in the park. The palace was designed/built between 1745 and 1747 to fulfill King Frederick's need for a private residence where he could relax away from the pomp and ceremony of the Berlin court. The palace's name emphasises this; it is a French phrase (sans souci), which translates as "without concerns", meaning "without worries" or "carefree", symbolising that the palace was a place for relaxation rather than a seat of power.

Above is the best picture we got of the entire Sanssouci Palace, beginning with the trellis gazebo at the western end and looking all the way east down the garden front of the complex. (As with other buildings in the world with extensive gardens, the gardens are actually at the back of the structure; we'll have a chance to see the actual front of it later.)

Sanssouci is little more than a large, single-story villa— not at all the multi-story ambience of Versailles. Containing just ten principal rooms, it was built on the brow of a terraced hill at the center of the park. The influence of King Frederick's personal taste in the design and decoration of the palace was so great that its style is characterised as "Frederician Rococo", and his feelings for the palace were so strong that he conceived it as "a place that would die with him".

During the 19th century, the palace became a residence of Frederick William IV. He employed an architect to restore and enlarge the palace, while a "landscape architect" was charged with improving the grounds and thus the view from the palace. The town of Potsdam, with its palaces, was a favorite place of residence for the German imperial family until the fall of the Hohenzollern dynasty in 1918.

After World War II, the palace became a tourist attraction in East Germany. Following German reunification in 1990, Frederick's body was returned to the palace and buried in a new tomb overlooking the gardens he had created. Sanssouci and its extensive gardens became a World Heritage Site in 1990 under the protection of UNESCO; in 1995, the Foundation for Prussian Palaces and Gardens in Berlin-Brandenburg was established to care for Sanssouci and the other former imperial palaces in and around Berlin. These palaces are now visited by more than two million people a year from all over the world.

The location and layout of Sanssouci above a vineyard reflected the pre-Romantic ideal of harmony between man and nature, in a landscape ordered by human touch. Winemaking, however, was to take second place to the design of the palace and pleasure gardens. The hill on which Frederick created his terrace vineyard was to become the focal point of his domain, crowned by the new, but small, palace— "my little vineyard house", as Frederick called it. With its extensive views of the countryside in the midst of nature, Frederick wanted to reside there sans souci ("without a care") and to follow his personal and artistic interests. Hence, the palace was intended for the use of Frederick and his private guests.

Twenty years following his creation of Sanssouci, Frederick built the New Palace (Neues Palais) in the western part of the park. This far larger palace (built in the Baroque style) was in direct contrast to the relaxed ethos behind Sanssouci, and displayed Frederick's power and strength to the world. The design of the New Palace was intended to demonstrate that Prussia's capabilities were undiminished despite its near defeat in the Seven Years' War. Frederick made no secret of his intention, even referring to the new construction as his way of showing off.

This completion of the New Palace- a grand palace designed to impress- relegated Sanssouci to the role of one of the Trianons (small palaces or country homes). This analogy, though easy to understand, ignores the original merits of the concept behind Sanssouci, the palace for which the whole park and setting were created. Unlike the Trianons, Sanssouci was not an afterthought to escape the larger palace, for the simple reason that the larger palace did not exist at the time of Sanssouci's conception; and once it did, Frederick almost never stayed in the New Palace except on rare occasions when entertaining diplomats he wished to impress. It is true, however, that Sanssouci was intended to be a private place of retreat rather than display of power, strength and architectural merit. Unlike the Trianons, Sanssouci was designed to be a whole unto itself.

Because it is a relatively small building, one would expect its decoration to be relatively subdued, and having been to Versailles I can say that it definitely is. Although there were many sculptural elements on the outside of the structure, the structure was itself so small that these elements were neither oversized or overly grand:

Sanssouci is small, with the principal block being a narrow single-storey row of just ten rooms, including a service passage and staff rooms behind them. Frederick did his own sketch of what he wanted in 1745; his architect turned out to take more of a draftsman's role, implementing what Frederick wanted.

Frederick appears to have accepted no suggestions for alteration to his plans, refusing his architect's idea that the palace should have a semi-basement storey, which would not only have provided service areas closer at hand, but would have put the principal rooms on a raised level. This would have given the palace not only a more commanding presence, but also would have prevented the problems of dampness to which it has always been prone.

However, Frederick wanted an intimate palace for living: for example, rather than scaling a large number of steps, he wanted to enter the palace immediately from the garden. He insisted on a building on the ground level, of which the pedestal was the hill: in short, this was to be a private pleasure house. His recurring theme and requirement was for a house with close connections between its style and free nature. The principal rooms, lit by tall slender windows, face south over the vineyard gardens; the north façade is the entrance front, where a semicircular cour d'honneur was created by two segmented Corinthian colonnades.

The result is that the palace has a single-storey principal block with two flanking side wings. The building occupies almost the entire upper terrace. The potential monotony of the façade is broken by a central bow, its dome rising above the hipped roof, with the name of the palace written on it— remarkably written with a comma and a full stop— in gilded bronze letters. The secondary side wings on the garden front are screened by two symmetrical rows of trees, each terminating in free-standing trellised gazebos, richly decorated with gilded ornaments.

We all thought the building was pleasing, even more so because of its small size; I guess it's always nice when rulers and the extreme upper class can restrain their urge to be ostentatious, as it allows the rest of us to relate to them better. Sadly, even Frederick was later seduced into grandstanding. We moved to the south side of the center bow and go ready to head down into the garden; that's where I looked back for a final picture:

The Weinbergterrassen

The famous garden view of Sanssouci arose when Frederick the Great to create a terraced vineyard on the southern slope of the hill atop which Sanssouci was built. Previously, the hillside had been covered in oak trees, although at the time of Frederick William I, the trees were felled and used for the expansion of the city of Potsdam. Here is a really nice panorama of that garden view:

The area where the Weinbergterrassen now sits was originally a space that had been used as a garden by the citizens of Potsdam; it had a kind of summer house used for garden implements and such (this kind of building is called a "Lusthaus" and ended up giving its name to the park we see today). The first vineyards were being planted on the hillside, and this was the space that Frederick II knew.

In 1744, Frederick II decided to create "wine terraces" in this area. Under the direction of a landscaper, this slope was divided into six wide terraces, with curved walls swinging inwards towards the center in order to achieve the greatest possible utilization of the solar radiation. Frederick had retaining walls built so that the terraces could be fairly level; the result was something reminiscent of rice paddies on hillsides in the far east (although there were much fewer of them and they were all the same shape and basically the same size.

On these retaining walls, plantings could be changed out; originally, the plantings were mostly wine grape varieties, although there were also fruit trees- mostly figs. To address the problem of the harsh German winters, Frederick had these retaining walls lined with more than 150 niches, each of which had double doors that could be opened in good weather but closed during the winter. You can see here a pair of these doors.

This meant that plants could be enclosed during the winter, and this allowed foreign plant varieties to grow. When we were visiting today, there was no glass in the open doors, but I can only assume that the doors could be fitted with glass panes when they were closed. As we walked down the central staircases from level to level and terrace to terrace, we could see these partially-opened doors stretching away on both sides. Here is a view of one of the terraces. This particular view looks back towards the historic windmill. You can see that each terrace now has a pebbled path with a strip of lawn and a row of manicured bushes. Note the rows of niche doors- all partially open.

The garden terraces were meticulously maintained. In the summer half-year, 84 orange trees stood in tubs. In the middle axis, 120 (today 132) steps led down the slope, divided six times according to the terraces and on each side of the slope a drive ramp. The work on the vineyard terraces was largely completed in 1746.

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

I might interrupt my description of these terraces to mention that I made a movie as I was walking down the stairways from one terrace to the next, and you might want to use the player at right to have a look at it.

As you have seen in some of the views above, the six terraces end at the level of the fountain that you've noticed in those views. On this level area was, from 1745, a baroque-style garden with lawns, flower borderies and flanking bosches. In the middle of this parterre a four-fountain basin- the "Great Fountain"- was built in 1748.

The middle of the four-pass basin was adorned with gilded engravings, with representations from Greek mythology, but these no longer exist.

In the next section, we'll have a look at this fountain and we will explore the gardens at the base of the hill, but before we do, I want to include a couple of pictures taken as we descended the central stairways of the Weinbergterrassen.

The first view, looking back up at the Sanssouci Palace, was taken from the first of the terraces below the palace. I let my little camera create this panoramic view:

This last view was made halfway down the six terraces; we have three more to go.

We were all impressed with the work that the Prussian kings put into the landscaping of the slope, and it made us wonder what it might have looked like at its height, when wine was still being produced here. Today, most of each terrace level is pebbles, but at one point it must have been much more green.

We eventually reached the bottom of the Weinbergterrassen, and now had a chance to explore the parterre and its large fountain.

The "Great Fountain"

Frederick invested heavily in the fountain system of Sanssouci Park, as water features were a firm component of baroque gardens. But the Great Fountain, finished in 1748, and the Neptune Grotto, finished in 1757, never worked properly. The engineers who constructed the system that was supposed to deliver water to the fountains found that their designs for the piping system were inadequate, as the mathematician Euler, called in to help diagnose the problem, pointed out to them. They had used wooden pipes when only metal would have sufficed, and the water source was simply to far away and too far below for any reasonable gravity system to work. The system did not succeed until steam power was employed one hundred years later.

Of course, from Sanssouci itself and all the way down the staircases, we could see the Great Fountain below us, and we stopped on the last terrace so Prudence could get a picture of Fred and me with the fountain in the background; you can see that picture here.

At the bottom of the staircases, we were in a huge Baroque ornamental garden, modelled on the parterre at Versailles, that was constructed in 1745. The Great Fountain was built at the centre of this garden in 1748. We took a number of pictures as we walked around the fountain; here are some of them:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

The builder of Sanssouci never saw the fountain in operation, for it wasn't until October 1842 that an 82-horsepower steam engine built by August Borsig started working and made the water jet of the Great Fountain below the vineyard terraces rise to a height of 120 feet. A pumping station on the Havel was especially built to house this machine; it was commissioned by Frederick William IV and built between 1841 and 1843, "in the manner of a Turkish Mosque with a minaret as a chimney".

From 1750 to 1764, a set of twelve marble statues were placed around the basin of the fountain, each its own little hedged niche. Between some of the pairs stone benches were installed. This was another feature copied from the gardens at Versailles.

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The statues are of eight mythological gods and goddesses and added to them are four allegorical representations of the four classical elements- earth, air, water, and fire.

We all three photographed many of these statues, although I was the only one who photographed all of them. But my pictures weren't always the best, so some of these photographs are from either Fred or Prudence.

I've selected the best image of each statue and put them in the slideshow at right. There are two statues on each slide, and they are simply in alphabetical order. For each statue, I've looked up its official title and who the sculptor was. Four of the statues were gifts from the French King Louis IV, and I have noted that as well.

As with all slideshows, you can move through the slides using the little arrows in the lower corners of each slide, and you can track your progress with the index numbers in the upper left.

Before we left the Great Fountain to head east and explore more of the Lustgarten, I let my little camera make a panoramic picture of the fountain, and it is below:

The Eastern Pleasure Ground

Recall from the aerial view above at the beginning of our visit that we next walked east along a garden path called the Hauptallee; this path not only leads east to the pool and gardens below the building known as the Picture Gallery (Bildergalerie) and beyond to the obelisk at the eastern end of the park, but it also leads west from the Great Fountain all the way to the New Palace.

Looking East Along the Hauptallee

In Prudence's picture at left, she is standing east of the Great Fountain, and the view looks east towards an area of Sanssouci Park known as the Eastern Pleasure Ground. This area was laid out in 1745-46 with hedge-bordered subdivisions used for the cultivation of fruit. Together with the Dutch Garden arranged in 1763 and the Western Pleasure Ground with its boscage quarters, it creates the frame for the parterre around the Great Fountain and the vineyard terraces of Sanssouci Palace.

Frederick II (1712-1786) personally influenced the symmetrical structure of this garden design. Fruit cultivation ceased around 1812. And later, under subsequent Prussian kings, the area was repeatedly altered into a style representative of each respectivve era. In 1847, Frederick William IV (1795-1861) enhanced the Dutch Garden with two pergolas, and in 1896-98 modernizations in front of the Picture Gallery and radical landscaping changes around the Neptune Grotto and the Mohrendrondell (Rondel of Moors) were carried out under William II (1859-1941).

As you could see in that last picture looking east on the Hauptallee, the garden is indeed symmetrical. Just east of the Great Fountain, in the similarly-shaped lawn quadrants on the north and south side of the allee, there are ornamental columns with Graeco-Roman figures atop them. There are four of these- east, west, north, and south of the Great Fountain. Walking east, these columns provide a nice frame for Sanssouci Palace atop the hill above the vineyard terraces.

As we pass the columns going east, here are two different panoramic views looking back at the Great Fountain and Sanssouci Palace:

Continuing eastward, we reached the boundary between the gardens of Sanssouci and the Eastern Pleasure Ground, much of which is in front of the Bildergalerie. Right at that boundary, and facing west, were sculptures on either side of the walkway. These were identical save for the sculpted figure atop each one:

After the foundation of the State Palaces and Gardens Foundation in 1927, much of the work that had been begun with the aim of restoring Frederick the Great's original designs dragged on until 1996, due in part to interruptions caused by World War II and the ensuing postwar chaos, but this seems now to have been essentially completed.

The Bildergalerie

The Eastern Pleasure Ground lies mostly on the slope below the Bildergalerie (the Picture Gallery), which is just to the east of Sanssouci itself. The building was constructed between 1755–1764 during the reign of Frederick II of Prussia; it is the oldest extant museum built for a ruler in Germany.

The Picture Gallery was built in the place of a former greenhouse, which Frederick the Great had used to raise tropical fruit. It was replaced with this long, single-story building painted in yellow, the middle part of which is emphasized by a dome. On the garden side, marble sculptures depicting allegorical figures from the arts and sciences stand between the windows.

Frederick II was a passionate collector of paintings. In his youth, he preferred the contemporary French art of the Rococo, and the walls of his rooms in Sanssouci were adorned with paintings of his favorite artists. After his accession to the throne in 1740, the king became increasingly interested in history paintings, which were highly regarded at his time. He collected works of the Renaissance, Mannerist works and Baroque art, mostly from Italian and Flemish artists. When the Altes Museum opened in Berlin in 1829, about fifty paintings and all of the marble statues were transferred there.

In 1929-1930, the Picture Gallery was set up again, and 120 of the 159 works marked in the catalogue as purchased by Frederick returned from Berlin. During World War II, all the paintings were moved to Rheinsberg Palace in Rheinsberg. Only ten paintings returned from there in 1946, and most of the pictures seemed lost. However, a large collection of paintings confiscated by the Soviet Union was returned in 1958. However, some of the pictures are still in Russian collections.

The network of pipes fed by water from the Havel River, parts of which have been in use for 170 years making it one of the oldest systems of its kind still in use, provides irrigation to the grounds and operates all the fountains in Sanssouci Park, including the Great Fountain and the fountain below the Bildergalerie. Here are a picture taken by this fountain and one of my movies that features it:

Photographing a Bildergalerie Sculpture

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Many of the paths and square-like areas are currently in poor condition. Extensive damage due to water erosion has been detected in the areas around the Picture Gallery, and only lawns exist within the quarters subdivided by hedges. We didn't see much of this, because those areas were blocked off (as was the slope up to the Bildergalerie). We could still admire the sculptures that surrounded this fountain:

We couldn't spend much more time here, as we had to return to Berlin for our afternoon cruise, so we all walked back towards the Great Fountain. When we got close, I thought I would take a couple of selfies with Fred:

Sanssouci and the Weinbergterrassen

The Great Fountain

When we got back to the fountain itself, I saw an opportunity to create yet another panoramic view of some of the fountain sculptures, Sanssouci Palace and the Weinbergterrassen. I was pretty careful, and I think the six pictures fit together pretty well. The image is wide enough that I have put it in a scrollable window:

The New Chambers (Building West of Sanssouci Palace)

We all returned to the terrace of Sanssouci Palace itself, and I took a few minutes to follow a pathway to the west that led to a building whose roof I could see above the trees.

The New Chambers

The New Chambers were constructed for King Frederick the Great of Prussia; construction took four years, between 1771 to 1775. The building, which stands to the west of Sanssouci Palace, serves as a complement to the Picture Gallery, which lies to the east. Both buildings flank the summer palace.

The New Chambers and Garden

The chambers replaced an orangery, which had been built at that site in 1745 on plans by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff and held the terraces' potted plants during the winter months. Ramps, on which the tubs were taken in and out, serve as reminders of the building's original use. Master builder Georg Christian Unger was commissioned to turn the orangery building into a guesthouse.

The building's basic elements were left alone, as were its size and floor-to-ceiling french doors. The most obvious change was the addition of a cupola on the middle section. The similarities between the architecture of the New Chambers and that of the Picture Gallery are such that the both buildings can be mistaken for the other.

I can close our visit with one more photo and one more movie; the photo was taken by Fred:

At Sanssouci

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Our Return to Berlin

To begin our trip back to the city, we left Sanssouci via the same path we had entered, turned right out of the gate, and walked a hundred feet or so east to the tram stop (note the electronic display that I told you about earlier). The tram stop was located right below the semi-circular colonnade that is the actual front of Sanssouci Palace.

Across the street there was a stone fountain, and in the distance what appeared to be the ruins of a colonnade; I think the park extends that far. I also made a movie of one of the many horse-drawn tourist carriages that we saw outside Sanssouci:

The Fountain

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I actually can't resist telling you that I modified the picture of the fountain, which I thought was marred by a man sitting on the steps beside the beer bottle, which I intentionally left in. I presume he arrived on the bicycle. If you want to see why I took him out, just click on the area to the right of the bottle.

Our tram arrived and we piled on for the ride back to Potsdam Hbf. Prudence took a picture on the tram, but I spent most of the time looking out the window and snapping pictures of whatever looked interesting to me before we arrived at the station.

I've put Prudence's picture and some of my own below; have a look at as many of them as you might wish:

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Once again, it seems to me as if European transportation always seems to be right where you need it to be. Now, maybe this is partially true when you are thinking about tourists and local attractions, but I got a chance to glance at the tram route map for Potsdam, and it seemed to me as if there was noplace anywhere close to the city center that was more than a block or two from a tram route. No wonder that residents rely on cars a lot less than we do. And the proliferation of bicycles reminded me of Copenhagen from years ago.

We went inside the station and up the escalator to cross over to the platforms. On the escalator, I noticed the tower outside, and thought it an interesting contrast.

The ride back to the Zoogarten Station was uneventful; it was fun to just watch the trackside scenery slide past. Fred took the obligatory picture of the rest of us on the train and a picture of me texting Jeffie. He also took two pictures of Prudence and Nancy- one humorous and the other very artistic, we all thought when we saw it later. It is one of the most interesting pictures he has taken in a long while- and I admired his "eye" for sussing it out:

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Incidentally, in the picture of me looking at my phone, Fred even caught what was written on the red t-shirt of the guy on the platform, and zoomed in on it. You can see that closeup here. We arrived back at the station and walked down the street to the Hotel Am Steinplatz where we found Ron waiting for us for our next excursion. Potsdam was great; I'd like to go back there sometime on a nicer day to see the other palaces and their interiors.

An Afternoon Cruise on the River Spree

We hooked back up with Ron at the hotel, and then headed off as a group for the afternoon cruise on the Spree River that Karl has booked.

Boarding Our Cruise Boat- The Bellevue

Getting to our cruise involved a walk down Hardenbergstrasse to the train station. We've made this walk eight or ten times during our visit; this will be the last time.

I may have mentioned on an earlier page that there was a restaurant- a sushi restaurant I think- along the street that had a glass-enclosed display case out by the street that contained what looked like some of the dishes the restaurant served (see picture at right). Fred and I speculated as to whether the food was actually real; I think not, because it would have been a real waste. But who knows?

We boarded the train for the ride around past Hauptbahnhof to the Friedrichstrasse station. We took a few good pictures at the station and on the train; here are some of them:

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We got off the train at the Friedrichstrasse station, went downstairs and out to the north side of the station. The river was only a few feet away, and we could see our cruise boat docked right nearby.

When we got to the river, I made a movie looking around the area:

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We all took pictures here at the river Spree; common subjects were groups shots of ourselves, traffic moving by on the river, and the Bellevue itself (including a few of us boarding the boat).

When we arrived, the Bellevue was already here; I have no idea how often each day it goes out for one of its cruises. I'd not be surprised if it didn't do a few cruises during the day and perhaps a dinner cruise in the evenings. In any event, here are some of the pictures we took while we were waiting to be called to come aboard and while we were boarding:

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Aboard the Bellevue

Our cruise boat took its name from a district of Berlin near the Tiergarten, and that district took its name from the French for "beautiful view", referring to the course of the Spree River through that part of the city. Today, the district is best known for the Bellevue Palace, which is the official residence of the President of Germany (although not the Prime Minister).

We were a little early arriving; passengers from the previous trip were still getting off.

When we saw people starting to get on for our trip, we made our way down the walkway to where tickets were being taken, and then we went down a ramp to the level of the river so we could step aboard the boat.

On getting onto the boat, one could either go directly inside (which quite a few people did as it was fairly chilly), or you could take the stairs up to the top, open deck and stake out a table.

Even though it was indeed quite cool, we went ahead and climbed to the top deck to get a conveniently-located table that would seat all of us and also provide good views during the cruise. I figured that if anyone got cold, they could go down inside for a while, but at least we would have a "home base" for the ride. As it turned out, the cruise was not nearly full and there was plenty of space. And the weather got warmer as the afternoon progressed, although the sun didn't come out until we'd ended the cruise and gone over to Museum Island to walk around for a while.

Before the cruise began, we took some group pictures. A couple of them are at the right and below:

Karl had gotten tickets that include a refreshment, so we each, at one time or another, went down inside to the cafe to partake. Here is what the inside of the boat looked like:

Aft View

Forward View

And a couple more pictures up on deck at our table:

Before we look at our pictures from the cruise itself, here is an aerial view of the part of the Spree River that we covered during the afternoon:

To help organize the pictures, I'm going to arbitrarily break the boat ride into four segments- east to the locks at Alexanderplatz, back west to the starting point, further west to Bellevue, and the return from Bellevue.  

The Cruise (Part 1): East to Alexanderplatz

Right on schedule at 2:45, our cruise boat left its dock near Friedrichstrasse and began following the river to the east; the eastward trip would round the top of Museum Island and pass the park where we had walked to get to lunch after our museum guided tour and then continue on past the Alte National Galerie and the Berliner Dom to the locks that blocked further progress. If I may, I'll just put the pictures and movies in chronological order.

As we pulled out of the dock, I made my first movie while Fred found a building of interest across the river:

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Buildings Along the Spree

Fred was actually interested in the mosaic on the side of the building; click on it and I'll show you his closeup. Just shortly after, we went under our first bridge. I happened to be downstairs and was coming up; I found that when the boat is going under a bridge, a crewman stands at the top of the stairs to keep people from coming up without looking and getting knocked in the head. I made a movie coming up the stairs, and I discovered later that Fred photographed the bridge just as the boat went under it:

Bridge Decorative Detail

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We went under another bridge, and this brought us around towards the top of Museum Island. There is a bridge there also, and as we approached it, I made another movie. As we passed the Bode Museum, Fred photographed its north side:

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The Bode Museum

Our boat continued southeast and I took a nice photo looking back along the side of the Bode Museum. We were actually right across the street from Monbijou Park; we had walked along the river through this park on the day we had our guided tour of the museum. Here is a picture of the walkway along the river. This brought us alongside the colonnade by the Alte Nationalgalerie (where we'd had our tour) and then we went under the bridge that we'd walked across a couple of times that day to get back and forth to the train station:

The Colonnade at the Alte Nationalgalerie

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As we passed the Berlin Cathedral (the Berliner Dom), Fred got a picture of some of the decorative detail atop the dome. I was occupied making a movie of a passing boat (the movie will also show you the Berlin Cathedral), and as I was doing that, Fred was looking back at the cathedral:

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The Berlin Cathedral

After passing the Berlin Cathedral, our boat continued southeast. I did not know how far it would go, but the question was answered when we came under another bridge and found that the river was blocked by what looked like a set of locks.

The Spree flows through Berlin from east to west from its origin near the Czech border. There is a dam upriver and this, together with the locks, keeps the water level through the city as constant as possible- much like the San Antonio River as it passed through San Antonio. There was a lot of interesting scenery, and here are some of the pictures we took before our boat turned around:

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The Cruise (Part 2): Alexanderplatz Back to Friedrichstrasse

Obviously, after we turned around, we had the same scenery going back to our starting point, although as we were on the other side of the river, sometimes our vantage point made enough of a difference to make another photo of something a good idea.

As we came back by the Berlin Cathedral I got another good picture of it. It would have been nice if the weather were nicer (it actually did clear up late in the day); every picture would have looked better. As we came right alongside the cathedral, I thought that all of the architectural detail was pretty interesting.

Here are a few more different views that we got on the way back to our starting point:

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The Cruise (Part 3): Friedrichstrasse to Bellevue

On this leg of the trip, we were on the north side of the Spree, of course, and most of the interesting buildings were on the south side, so we photographed most of them on the way back. There has been a lot of construction on the north side of the river, especially around Hauptbahnhof, that doesn't show up on the aerial view that I showed you above.

New Construction Along the Spree

Only a very short distance southwest from our starting point, the Spree turns to the north, makes a half circle, and then turns to the south.

Here are a couple of views of the north side of the river just east of the Hauptbahnhof:

You can see that this area of the city is a lot different than the area around, say, Museum Island. I guess that's because most of what we saw in this leg were the new buildings constructed when the German Government moved back to Berlin from Bonn. Hauptbahnhof is also relatively new. You can see in these photos that even the bridges are in the new, tubular design.

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I made just one movie on this leg, right as we came by the Hauptbahnhof. You'll recognize the area, as it was the first place Fred and I stopped at the first day we were here, and it was the first place we brought everyone else when they arrived.

We continued west, going under the old Moabit bridge with the interesting sculptures, and finally ending in the Bellevue area. That's where we turned around, in a basin right next to the Tiergarten and where we could see the top of the Victory Column. Here are those pictures:

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The Cruise (Part 4): The Return to Friedrichstrasse

After turning around in Bellevue, the boat headed back, and the first interesting thing we passed was the western end of the ultra-modern German Chancellery building. It is actually a large "H" shape oriented east-west, and the river seems to actually cut right through the building:

The pictures above were of one of the vertical strokes of the "H" shape, here is a picture we took of the other side of the Chancellery as we went by. Even the new bridge over the river here is ultra-modern. After the boat had passed the Chancellery, I turned and looked back to create a panoramic view of the complex:

I then turned around to look ahead to create another panoramic view, with the Hauptbahnhof at the left on the north side of the river and the Spreebogenpark at the right on the south side:

Then we passed the area where that park borders the river and the restaurants and cafes have put out lawn chairs for their customers to imbibe or eat and watch the traffic on the river. Past that is the area where lots of new buildings have gone up in the last few years (many of which don't even show up on aerial views from Google or Bing). Here are some of those new structures here in "Government Center":

Next the boat came to another set of government buildings; these are, apparently, offices related specifically to the parliament that meets in the Reichstag just a block away. Again, the architects went for the ultra-modern, but these buildings are different from the Chancellery structures.

As you can see in Fred's picture at left, these buildings seem to go right across the river to continue on the other side. Now, I am not sure whether that upper connector is actually a walkway; I don't recall seeing anyone on it. But it very well might be. There is what looks like a bridge carrying a street just above the river, but when we went under it it didn't seem wide enough, so I suspect it is just for pedestrians.bridge lower down is indeed a walkway, although not actually a street, so far as I can tell.

The buildings were very interesting as they and the others in this area are such a contrast with the older buildings elsewhere in the city. Here are a few more views of these buildings if you would like to see them:

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Our boat had a guide who was on the PA system describing some of the places we passed; these announcements were in both German and in English. Of course the commentary was interesting, but then we saw another boat that was taking a different approach. Use the movie player below, right, to see what I mean:

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I guess the folks on that cruise wanted a bit more than some announcements and canned music!

Our cruise was coming to a close, and the last site that we passed was the Reichstag. We got a great view of it from the river, including its signature glass dome. One of the things we want do if we ever return to Berlin is go inside the Reichstag and, particularly, up into the dome. It is supposed to be spectacular inside.

After we rounded that last curve in the river and were heading back northeast, we could see the train station and boat dock up ahead, so we got our stuff together and got ready to disembark.

The cruise was really neat, and even though it was chilly early on, in the last hour or so the weather had started to clear, so maybe we can do a little more this afternoon on our last day in Berlin.

Some Time on Museum Island

We talked about what to do after the river cruise; it seemed a bit early to head back to the Hotel Am Steinplatz, so I suggested that we take the S-Bahn one more stop to the east to Hakescher Markt, have a look at it, and then walk over to Museum Island to see if we could get inside the Berlin Cathedral- something Fred and I had not done on our first walking tour.

So that's just what we did, seeing as how it was now quite a nice afternoon. We had our day tickets, so we went back into the station, and hopped on the next eastbound train to Hakescher Markt station. We actually could have walked (it was only about eight blocks) but the train would take us right to the market square.

We stopped by the 1840 Restaurant as the girls wanted to stop in for a minute, and while we were waiting, Fred took a picture of Karl, Ron, and myself. He also took a picture of the menu in the window, if you want to have a look at it.

When we came through here on the morning of our museum tour, when Karl and Ron were at the concentration camp, there weren't many people about, but now there were lots of folks, and most restaurants had put their umbrellas up for the dinner crowd.

When the girls rejoined us, we walked back through the station to get to the other side of the railway so we could walk down to Museum Island. This little area is named Henriette-Herz Platz; the streetcars run through here (and up to the restaurant where Prudence, Nancy, Fred, and I had lunch the day of our museum tour. Then we walked a block south and crossed the bridge onto Museum Island.

A Musical Interlude

As soon as we came over the bridge and onto Museum Island, we could hear the music. There was a group of string musicians standing just off the street right beside the river, and they were playing something I didn't recognize. We all stopped to listen for a while. I thought about filming their whole performance, but I'd missed the start and had no idea how long it might be, so I settled for a still shot and a movie clip:

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The String Septet

The Berlin Cathedral

We walked over to the Berliner Dom and went up the stairs to the arched arcade that runs the length of the front of the building. I stopped to see what the process was for getting side and whether tickets were necessary. To my chagrin, what I discovered was that the cathedral was closed for today and tomorrow because of a special event- some kind of convocation, I think. For the next two days, only the people attending that convocation would be able to go inside the cathedral.

This was unfortunate, for we have heard that the inside is very beautiful. We had to content ourselves with looking at the outside of the cathedral- which was itself very intricate and very beautiful as well, with its statues, carvings, and mosaics. So all we have are outside pictures, but fortunately we have some good ones:

The rest of the pictures are in the slideshow below; use the lower-corner arrows to move from one picture to the next.

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In the Lustgarten on Museum Island

The open area with a fountain that is located south of the Altes Museum and east of the Berlin Cathedral is called the Lustgarten, and that is where we spent some time next. (I might point out that the term "lustgarten" simply means a "pleasure garden" or an open space where people may relax and admire the area around them.) We've seen photos from here before, but here is another panorama that looks from the west, pans north past the Altes Museum and ends around to the east and the Berlin Cathedral:

The other pictures we took from the Lustgarten this afternoon mostly duplicate pictures that have appeared on other album pages for our Berlin trip, but some are still worth including here- especially this quirky one in which Fred captured a couple of guys on a unique bicycle. I might also add views of the Altes Museum and the Alte Nationalgalerie:

The Altes Museum

The Alte Nationalgalerie

The other two pictures I want to include here are both of the Berlin Cathedral, but since we put a good many of them on the first page for our Berlin trip, I just want to give you links here. First, I have a great picture of the Berlin Cathedral behind the Lustgarten fountain. Then, from the vantage point west of the fountain, I walked around to get closer to the building to get a better picture of the Berlin Cathedral's facade.

We left Museum Island about six-thirty to head back to the Hackescher Markt station, and from there we caught a train back to the Zoogarten Station. It was on the platform at Hackescher Markt that I took my last picture of our party for the day- and the last such picture on our Berlin trip.

We were discussing where and when we wanted to go to dinner, and when we decided on a relatively late hour, Fred and I suggested that perhaps Prudence and Nancy would enjoy getting off the train one stop ahead of the Zoogarten Station and walking the rest of the way through the Tiergarten. Prudence wanted to do that, but everyone else was a bit tired, so Fred, Prudence, and I hopped off the train early to do that walk ourselves.

A Walk Through the Tiergarten

After Prudence, Fred and I got off the train at the Tiergarten Station, we debated whether to repeat our walk down to the Victory Column, but we just didn't think there would be time for that. So we chose to just walk through the park back towards the Zoogarten Station.

I didn't have a map of the park, but there were the occasional signs directing visitors along this path or that to reach one destination or another. We had the Zoo to aim for, so it wasn't that difficult.

I had Prudence take a picture of Fred and I by one of the park's hundreds of antique lampposts and then we started out. You can see our general route south and then along a canal, then across that canal and back across the northern boundary of the zoo to the area around the Zoogarten Station.

The Tiergarten is not a garden at all, but then the German word "garten" doesn't always refer to a place with flowers and plants or of vegetables. Take the word "kindergarten" for example; we've adopted it from the German where it translates mechanically into "children's garden", but in that usage the Germans use a different meaning for "garten"- that of a "yard". It is this meaning that has become more prevalent in Germany, and usually refers to any open area with grass and trees, whether it has some flower beds or not. Recall just a half hour ago we were in the "Lustgarten" on Museum Island, and it is simply a lawn with a central fountain and a row of trees along one side.

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We were simply having a pleasant afternoon walk through the park, so I took relatively few pictures; in any event, how many pictures of grass and trees and pathways does one need? I did think that the part of our walk along the Landwehr Canal was interesting; at one end there was a low dam and a little waterfall. We just walked along and chatted and enjoyed the afternoon, and the trip back to the Zoogarten Station right by the area called "Bikini Berlin" and just a few blocks from our hotel. I think Prudence enjoyed the walk; it was our last activity for the trip (other than dinner tonight at an Italian restaurant that Nancy had spotted earlier in the week.

The Hotel Am Steinplatz

Now that our trip to Berlin is coming to an end, I'm going to take all the collected pictures that we took in and around our hotel and put them in this section. Prudence and Nancy picked the hotel and were extremely generous in having Fred and I stay with them here.

The Exterior

The hotel had three entrances; one of them, usually kept closed, led from the top of a handicapped ramp directly into the lobby. There was a main entrance and another entrance to the Steinplatz Restaurant.

The main entrance is shown at left; its steps led right down to Uhlandstrasse one of the three streets that radiate south, southwest, and west from a small square named Steinplatz. This square is just off the Hardenbergstrasse, and the hotel takes its name from it.

The canopy was pretty interesting, I thought; it is not totally attached to the building itself. This particular entrance leads through two automatic doors into the lobby; the front desk is off to your left and the central lobby just ahead of you.

The third entrance, shown at right, is just a few steps further south along Uhlandstrasse, and it serves as the main entrance to the hotel's restaurant- the Steinplatz. Oddly, this was the most ornate of all the entrances and, consequently, the most photogenic.

Just outside this entrance, and extending down the front of the hotel that faces Uhlandstrasse, there is outdoor seating for the restaurant. We never sat out there; the first couple of days were too chilly and for the last few we had gotten used to the courtyard. Just to the left of the main entrance there is a kind of bay window, and this extends all the way up to the top of the building. Looking at it is a good way to appreciate the facade decoration of this restored boutique hotel.

Public Areas: Lobby and Courtyard

The lobby is essentially a circular room where the guest can find entrances to all the other public areas. In the middle of the floor is a really neat mosaic that adds a lot to the ambience.

The pictures at the right were taken from the hallway to the elevators and the reading room; the door in both pictures leads to the bar. In the picture below, the door to the right of Prudence leads to the restaurant and the door on the other side of her to the courtyard.

The elevators were neat also- at least one of them. There were two elevators, and beside one of them was an open area in the middle of which, hanging from the ceiling of the top floor, were numerous glass spheres, arranged so that there were some of these spheres at all levels from top to bottom. Fred's picture looking up at these spheres will give you a good idea of what they were like. On each of the guest floors you could also look into this tall atrium.

In the center of the building there was a large atrium open to the sky. On the ground floor, part of the atrium was glassed over, and under the glass (and some umbrellas) were tables where people could take their breakfasts or, as we did almost every day, gather for a drink and an hor d'oeuvre before heading out for dinner.

Lots of hotels have these kinds of areas, but it seemed most times as if we were the only guests who cared to make use of what was a really neat area. As it turned out, almost every room has a window that looks down into this courtyard, and ours was no exception:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

Our Room

Because there is a central courtyard, some of the rooms are quite a distance from the elevator as the halls wrap around that courtyard. That's nice because it makes things quieter. We had a really nice room about as far from the elevator as you can get.

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

One of the interesting things was that as you walked down the halls, video screens that looked like artwork would automatically start to play. I don't know about the other floors, but the clips that ours would play were all reminiscent of the 1920s and the 1930s. Two examples are at left. These screens started playing when the lights in the halls automatically came on, and I can only presume that they went off once you rounded a corner or something. It was something unique; I hadn't seen it before.

As for our room, I can orient you to it pretty easily. The room was not a simple rectangle; it seems as if not much in the Hotel Am Steinplatz actually is. But, when you entered the room, the sliding door to the bathroom alcove was on your left. If you went into that alcove, the commode was to your left in its own little room, the vanity was in the middle, and the shower was to your right. Everything was nicely-appointed and, in a nod to people my age, well-lit.

Continuing clockwise around the room from the bath, there was our double window looking down into the courtyard and a couple of chairs. Next came the large bed flanked by a couple of matching nightstands, and then a large closet and a desk. Continuing around the room, and now immediately to the right of the entry door, there was a large table on which the flatscreen TV was placed (there were channels in both German and English, but we spent hardly any time at all watching TV while we were here). We were able to get something like the Weather Channel in English, and that was mostly what we looked at.

The room was very comfortable, certainly large enough, and, hitting another of my "likes", you could get it quite dark at night. Here are views of either side of the main part of the room:

Window and Seating Area (Left)

Desk and Table (Right)

I would recommend the Hotel Am Steinplatz to anyone who tires of everyday hotel rooms and amenities. This was indeed a boutique hotel, designed and appointed in its own style. Hotels like the Steinplatz appeal to Nancy and Prudence, for different reasons. Nancy enjoys places that have a certain level of luxury and which are different, one from another. And Prudence likes places that are well-appointed and where the staff takes good care of the guests- as she herself and Ron did when they were operating their bed and breakfast. We were honored to have Prudence and Nancy ask us to stay with them at this extremely nice hotel.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	May 24, 2017: A Day Tour to Dresden
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