Potsdam is a fascinating place. It is a suburb of Berlin where we are staying in due to the Berlin Marathon which happened today. It is home of the 1945 conference between Churchill, Stalin and Truman that negotiated the end of WWII. It is also formerly part of East Germany.
We started the day by visiting the Sanssouci Palace. It was the summer home of King Frederick the Great and is often referred to as the German Versailles. The grounds and vineyards were beautiful.
We then visited the Cecilienhof Palace which is where the actual conference was held. We knew it was closed for renovations but couldn't go without visiting such a historic place - there was one small consolation, they had a great beer garden 😏.
Our next stop was the Leistikowstraße Memorial which is the former KGB prison. It is a dire place where the Soviet Union imprisoned anyone they deemed to be a subversive. These days you can substitute ICE for KGB. People might be touring places like this in the States in 50 years.
Our final stop of the day was the Glienicke Bridge which is also known as the "Spy Bridge". It is where the US and Soviets used to swap spies during the cold war. We saw the line that used to separate East and West Germany. There is also a great beer garden there as well. 😊
To end the day off, we (almost) successfully figured out the local Tram system to get us home. The bloody Germans make things far more complicated than they need to be!!
