Our hotel was near the entrance to Park Sanssouci, which means "carefree" in French, a huge park with a collection of rococo palaces built by the Prussian king, Frederick the Great. Since the park was literally our backyard for four days, I took Oscar for walks through the park twice a day, everyday. We didn't visit the interiors of any of the palaces (the boys become belligerent at the mention of a tour), but we climbed the stairs and explored the grounds around Schloss Sanssouci. From the terrace is a view of what look like Roman ruins, but they were actually built by King Frederick. They make for a nice view, and if one can afford to have his own "ruins"...
Since Potsdam is the capital of Brandenburg, they have their own Brandenburg Gate. Not as big as it's well-known cousin, but impressive in its own way.
The boys don't go anywhere without their skateboards these days, so I had to find them a skate park. Luckily, there is one in the Volkspark Potsdam (People's Park of Potsdam). It has a half-pipe and lots of ramps. The boys learned how to do drop-ins. They loved it. We had to pay to use the park--not much, €1.50 for me and €0.50 for each kid--but there's a conservatory, gardens and playgrounds. There's even a memorial to the former GDR, better known as East Germany.
Of course, we drove into Berlin one day. We visited the Natural History Museum of Berlin, which has the world's largest mounted Brachiosaurus skeleton.
We ate currywurst at Konnopke's (with an apostrophe--usually in German they just add the "s" without the apostrophe), which supposedly is where currywurst was invented. I don't know if this is true, but it was the best we've ever eaten.
We stopped at the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Street. There are several of these memorials throughout the city. This one was not far from the currywurst stand.
Naturally, we had to visit the Reichstag and the Brandenburg gate. And before we returned to Potsdam, we stopped in Kreuzburg for Mexican food. I read an article in the New York Times about Mexican restaurants in Berlin run by Mexicans. We picked one, Santa Maria, and it had the most authentic Mexican we have eaten in Europe. It was so good, we ordered food twice.
We've already decided that the next time we visit Berlin, we'll stay in Potsdam and drive, or take the S-Bahn, into Berlin.
