Berlin: 2nd Site- Potsdam

For most of its history Potsdam was not part of Berlin. In fact, Potsdam's raison d’etre is that it was not Berlin. It was a place where the Prussian ruling family could go to escape the capital. It was here that they would build their castles. Yes, castles plural. That is one of the things that jumps out at you on a visit to Potsdam. These people, the Hohenzollern, sure have a lot of castles. In Potsdam we visited two of them and from the garden of one looked up the path at a third. Why would anyone need that many palaces? Obviously part of the answer was that they built them

simply because they could. Still there does seem to be a developing pattern in places I have visited between conspicuous consumption and revolution. Wall Street might want to pay some attention.

Even so Potsdam is an extraordinary place. Before unification it was separated from West Berlin and hard currency tourism on the other side of the famous spy bridge where East and West met to exchange prisoners. Driving through Potsdam one can still make out the occasional East German structure, but they stand out because of their rarity. Potsdam has caught up.

Sans Soucis

Today, it is an upscale tourist haunt, home of Frederick the Great’s version of Versailles and another palace, the last Crown Prince’s Cecelian Hof, home of the famous Potsdam conference, that last meeting of victorious allies at which

Plenty O' Soucis

they contemplated the fate of postwar Germany. There is a great contrast between the two structures. Frederick’s San Souci is rococo. Cecelian Hof is much more sedate as befits a structure built while Germany is fighting World War I.  Still, one wonders who builds a palace in the middle of a war, especially when there are two others just a stone's throw away?  Uh, people about to be deposed?