Schloss Sanssouci

This morning, our group met up to travel together via S-Bahn, in order to meet Peggy and then take another S-Bahn, followed by a bus, southwest of Berlin into Potsdam. We spent the day at Frederick the Great's (Prussia) summer palace, which is modeled after Louis XIV's palace at Versailles. Like the Sun King's palace, this palace too was ornate and delicate and everything beautiful. Had it not been a sunny day outside, our day still would have been filled with the sunny decorations of the Schloss (palace).

Sanssouci--French for "without a care."

We first sat behind the house--it was all so extravagant, it'd be absurd to just call it the backyard!--and ate sandwiches we'd bought at the Potsdam S-Bahn station. I had already eaten my sandwich, so I lay down and took a nap in the hot sun under a big, shady tree, listening to the running water of a nearby fountain in this beautiful space.

After lunch, we climbed back up the hundreds of stairs in order to take a tour through ten large rooms inside the palace. When we were done doing the self-guided audio tour, our group walked for a long time throughout the enormous palatial park and gardens.

Here, you can see the palace in the background, with row upon row of vineyards surrounding the stairs.

It took us a relatively long time to get to Potsdam, so after touring, we headed out and decided to all just go back to our apartments. Some of our group members went out grocery shopping, but Matthew and I came back, had dinner, and are now studying for our final exam tomorrow over this first week course, The History & Culture of Berlin. Hopefully it won't be too detailed, as we saw SO MUCH this week, and I know at least I am still disoriented because we've been going from place to place so quickly, but I look forward to tomorrow, when we will meet up at Peggy's apartment, have breakfast together, take the exam, and then have a final day of sight-seeing as a group.

Bis morgen (Until tomorrow,)

-Monika