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."

Berlin: Day 4

Back to Berlin! We're almost done in the capital, so from here it's a rush to see some remaining sights.

It's a lovely morning here in Berlin.

Nice one of a church shining in the morning sun.

Busy street in hte former West Berlin. I love that round building.

KaDeWe, the reason we came here! Kaufhaus des Westens is one of the largest department stores in the world, eclipsed in Europe only by a huge store in England. But it takes the cake on the Continent with six floors. There's a grocery store, several bakeries, a bookstore, a top-class confectionery, and a top-floor restaurant, among much else.

Oh, yeah, there's a LEGO store. Didn't have time to stop in today, but we did on Friday.

Inside a medieval church that was all but obliterated during the War. Its exterior is undergoing heavy restoration at the moment, so I couldn't take any better pictures of the whole place than this one.

Saw a "new new" Beetle today in a lovely shade of red. I love it; it has all the charm of the original Beetle from the 50s but with the style and class of a Porsche, which brand was clearly no small influence on the designers at Das Auto.

Back at the Reichstag again. I can't keep away, can I? This time there was time to stop for pictures.

Could someone explain to me why this reads "Dem Deutschen Volke" rather than "Das Deutsche Volk"?

Look, it's that guy!

There he is again, but this time with a blur on the lens from when the camera fell in the ocean!

This beautifully-sculpted monument  remembers those who were carried to their deaths on the same rails that helped others live their lives.

Andy took an unprepared photo of me, so here's one of him and our mutual friend, Blurry.

The Market Gate at the Pergamon Museum, whose name sounds like it should be in a certain video game. It was built by the Romans to inspire and intimidate visitors to its city's market square, though it was really nothing but a facade.

This took me by complete surprise. I need not introduce the famous Istar Gate of Babylon. I had no idea it would be here!

This is only the smallest part of the gate. While all the known parts of the gate are stored at this museum,  it would be too big to assemble.

Most of these blocks are originals from ancient Babylon.

In a hall covered with designs of lions like the real road up to the gate stands this impressive model of the gate as it would have looked in ancient times. You can see how small the inner gate in the museum is compared to the rest of the gate behind it!

A beautiful Roman mosaic floor.

The star attraction and namesake of the museum, the Pergamon Altar.

These reliefs would have surrounded the altar. The ones on the right side of the room correspond to the right wall of the altar, and so on.

In a clever (and exceedingly rare for the period)statement of self-identification, the designer of this floor mosaic writes, "HΦAIΣTIΩN EΠOIEI": "Hephaetion made this."

The mosaic is unique in another way: the design is exceedingly intricate for the period, employing similar technique in color and shading as that which existing in contemporary paintings.

An excellent statue of Athena. She is assertive rather than delicate, but still depicted as beautiful. I love classical art.

The Bode-Museum, which houses the largest quantity of sculptures I have ever seen. They were pretty good for the most part.

After an arduous trek up hundreds of stairs, we reached the top of the Deutscher Dom, Berlin's most well-known cathedral. The view is breathtaking.

This image is going on Flickr.

Damn salt! This image of the park below the cathedral could have been really good.

I wish I had been the first to notice this, but I saw someone else taking a picture of it. I think it's grand.

Steven (right) and Gregor (left) being silly at dinner.

After dinner we saw a performance of Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale (DE: Das Wintermärchen). It was very funny and I was surprised how much of it I understood. I certainly got enough to explain the story.

My favorite part was the theater itself: it's an open-air theater arranged in a ring like the Globe. It felt very appropriate to see a performance of Shakespeare here.

German Word of the Day / Deutsches Wort des Tages
das Märchen :: fairy tale
Die Bruder Grimm schrieben viele berühmte Märchen.
The Brothers Grimm wrote many famous fairy tales.