Sanssouci

The center of the Reischstag.

The German Congress holds its sessions in this room, the same room where Adolf Hitler and Otto von Bismarck made speeches. Obviously, the plush seats, the digital audio system, and the mobile scaffold are new.

A nice view of the Eagle. Maybe I'm biased, but I like our eagle better. This guy needs a diet.

A model of the area around the Reichstag. The park to the southwest was once filled with buildings, but the War made it a wasteland. The building in the middle of the trees is the Congress Hall from Tuesday.

The Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It's a lovely structure, using steel to create immense open arches with glass ceilings. I saw it when I arrived, but you didn't.

The Sanssouci windmill. Sanssouci is a  castle located near Potsdam (we weren't there long and what we saw looked the same as everywhere else) that we spent most of the day visiting.

Hello fife player!

Part of the castle grounds, this copper trellis (Yes, it's copper--the green color is from oxidation, like the Statue of Liberty) is nicely decorated. Doesn't offer much respite from the sun and rain, though.

The gardens of the castle are breathtaking.

The style is similar to Versailles and Monticello--and for good reason. Monticello was built within a decade of this castle, and Kaiser Friedrich III had similar artistic taste to Jefferson.

The French means "without worries." The comma is a bit of a mystery. The prevailing theory is that it is symbolic: it represents a phallus. Thus the translation is "without a penis, worries." Fitting, as all evidence points to Friedrich III being gay.

A lovely sculpture of Venus.

The facade above actually faces rearward. This is the front of the castle.

You wouldn't guess Germany by the look of it.

Back in the gardens after a photo-verboten tour of the interior. This is the fountain from earlier, flanked by four statues: one of each classical element and four Roman gods.

Looking up at the caslte from the fountain. This is wine country, and those cages in the terraces used to house the vines.

Getting close to a touristy shot here...

The whole group! Sorry about the bag on the right; that's my fault.

I like birds.

The so-called "Chinese Building." It's not actually Chinese; when it was build very little was known of Chinese culture besides the fine China. This building was constructed, for example, based on an image seen on a teacup. The figures (which are decidedly not Chinese) are similarly inspired. Oh, those wacky Kaisers!

Deeper in the gardens.

Coming full circle now...

More gardens.

It was neat walking through these trellises. It felt like a man-made forest.

Shot of a lifetime right here! Everything pretty in my field of view was captured perfectly. The windmill, the bridge, the buildings, the trees, the plants, the cobblestone path, the pond, and the fountain--all perfectly captured in a single photo. I nominate this for Shot of the Trip.

This probably has nothing to do with Friedrich Nietzsche, but it's a nice sculpture anyway.

In case you were wondering what the windmill looks like inside.

German Word of the Day / Deutsches Wort des Tages
die Sorge :: worry
"Sans Souci" bedeudet, "Ohne Sorgen."
"Sans Souci" means, "Without Worries."