Winter biking in Potsdam

If Potsdam, N.Y., had such lovely buildings, parks and vistas as we found in its German namesake, Sally might have made a different decision about college! We thoroughly enjoyed touring this charming city with our friends on their bikes on two different excursions. It was a bit chilly, and we regretted missing the flowers and other plantings in the many gardens, but we still had a wonderful time.

Above is a typical Potsdam street. Many of the beautiful homes have been recently restored, since they were allowed to fall in to various states of decline during the dark days of the DDR. But the town's great location, near some stunning lakes, and just a half hour from Berlin, insures that it will once again be a jewel of a city, as it was during its earlier incarnation as the "bedroom" community for the Prussian court whose offices were in Berlin.

We learned from our knowledgeable hosts that Potsdam isn't just a pretty face—it's steeped in history, from the 1600's to the 20th century. Here's the "new palace" at Frederick the Great's summer estate of Sans Souci. And this is just the guest quarters (and only one wing, at that)!


This is the view of the formal terraced gardens from the main palace.


Our friends took the picture at the left of the American tourists in front of the elaborate main window of the palace. Just a nice little summer cottage for an escape from the city heat, right?

Like some other castles we've visited in Germany, there were also charmingly kitschy out-buildings on the grounds—easy to visit on our bikes. This is a detail on the right from one of these, the Chinese tea house.

As impressive as the palaces are (and there are many more in the Potsdam area, which we glimpsed from our bikes), the city's history gets even more interesting in the mid-twentieth century. As the daylight faded on our first day of bike-riding, we stopped by the Cecilienhof Palace, situated in a lovely public park with nice, smooth, bike paths. The picture at the left is of the window looking into the conference room where the decisions were made on what to do with post-war Germany. The Potsdam Conference wasn't as much of a disaster as the Versailles treaty ending World War I, but its shortcomings led to a lot of suffering for people in eastern Europe, including eastern Germany, in the last half of the century.

It's easy to see why our friends have become such avid students of history, when so much surrounds you and is often still incompletely studied. A final historical site, going in chronological order, is one of the first ones we saw on our bikes. It's the Glienicke Bridge, over the river that forms the boundary between Berlin and Potsdam, and thus it was once a boundary between East and West Germany. Some high-profile, and doubtless very exciting, spy/prisoner exchanges have happened on the bridge where Henry and Uli are pedalling in the picture below.


Today it's just a convenient crossing of the river, but knowing its history makes it a sombre memorial of a time not too long past, but happily no longer with us. We were to visit more chapters of cold war history when we went to Berlin on Saturday. But we finished off our biking in Potsdam with Glühwein at the Christmas Market, much needed to take off the chill. [Note: I can't vouch for the recipe in the link yet, but it's something I want to try when I get home!]