Potsdam/Berlin

This weekend I took myself away for a little trip to see some more of Germany. On Saturday I got up (very very early, sadly) and took the train to Potsdam. As far as I can understand, Potsdam is where the kings used to hang out in their spare time, so they built a lot of palaces and gardens there, which I looked at. I'd never been to visit any castles before, so it was an experience. There was a lot of gilded stuff, and a lot of large statues of people, and a lot of fountains in the gardens. I went into the palace called sanssouci (which means without cares, apparently) and it was very nice. Very fancy. It all seems very bizarre to me that people took all this time and energy to build all these fancy fancy places. I mean, there were hundreds of those statues and each of them must have taken a really long time. The town of Potsdam was really cute, but clearly a tourist city. There was a lot of shopping, and it was nice because it was all outdoors and everyone was out and about enjoying the nice weather (before the huge rainstorm that night). There's also an area called the dutch quarter that was apparently built to house dutch workers, and it's all identical red brick houses, that now have shops in them. That was cute too.

That night I went to Berlin and immediately loved it. Unfortunately as soon as I got to my hostel it started POURING, so I didn't do much that night besides hang out in the bar downstairs in my hostel with some people who were sharing my room. The next day I did a walking tour of Berlin and saw a lot of things. Berlin is weird because they keep destroying important things, and then occasionally rebuilding them, and then sometimes destroying them again. History keeps being rewritten there, and it's weird. But on my walking tour I really learned a lot about the history and the war and so on. I'm glad I went on it because otherwise I wouldn't have had any idea what I was looking at. I did see a piece of the Berlin Wall, and also the site of the book burning, museum island, a bunch of churches, the Brandenburg Gate, the site of Hitler's bunker, Checkpoint Charlie, Reichstag Dome, the memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust (which at first I didn't like but then my tour group talked about it a bit and I changed my mind, but it is weird), and bunch of other stuff. After the tour I walked around more and went back to a few of the things I wanted to see again, and then unfortunately it started POURING again, and anyway I had to catch my train back to Cottbus, so that was the end of my weekend. I really really liked Berlin and would really like to go back and get to know it from the non-historical perspective. We'll see how it goes.

PS. I didn't know what a bunch of the things I listed from Berlin were until I went there, so if you are like me and curious feel free to ask lol.
PPS. I haven't gotten a new camera since I broke mine in Australia, so sadly I have no pictures for you, but hopefully I'll get one soonish to improve future blog entries.