Saturday, October 29, we left Erfut and stopped in Wernigerode, a city with the Wernigerode Castle and lots of half timbered homes. We hiked up to the castle and then walked around the old city. It was very crowded with vendors, musicians and tourists. Sunday, my second cousin Monica and her boyfriend Alexi, who is from Belarus, took us on a tour of Potsdam, a city on the border of Berlin. We visited the Cecilienhof Palace where the last allied conference of World War II was held in July, 1945 and attended by President Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. Cecilienhof Palace was built in the Tudor style during WW I for the son of Wilhelm II. It was interesting to see the conference room and table, still furnished just as it was when discussions for German reparations and the demarcation of Poland's border took place. On Monday Monica took us to Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, the island where a lot of the Berlin museums are located (pretty cool!). I had a nice chat with our US Embassy guard who is from Indiana and has been living in Berlin since 1989! On Tuesday we went to visit the German Technical Museum which had locomotives, airplanes, history of films, photography, ships, textiles, prescription medicine history and the myriad uses of sugar. Tomorrow we head for our last leg in Germany, five nights in Hamburg, before returning to Poland.
Wernigerode Castle
Wernigerode Castle
Alexi (my second cousin Monica's boyfriend), Michael and my cousin Monica. They were are tour guides in Berlin and Potsdam on Sunday and Monday.
In Potsdam where the WWII reparation meetings were held
Checkpoint Charlie
Brandenburg Gate
Art on the Berlin Memorial Wall
Brandenburg Gate with the US Embassy on the left
No comments:
Post a Comment