3 August-- Day 40

This was a huge day. So... let's begin! For class, our wednesday excursion this week was a trip to Potsdam. And when I trip to another city (and technically another state) , it was actually closer to my house than class. So, excellent! Basically, Friedrich the Great and all his Prussian royal family buddies built castles in one section of Potsdam. Friedrich the Great was a pretty snazzy dude- he was an intellectual, and pretty much spent his life sitting around at court, ruling, playing music, reading books in french, and designing ridiculously beautiful castles. At least that's the way I've come to understand it.

Anyway, his favorite castle of all time is Schloss Sanssouci, which is french (well... not the word Schloss) for "Without cares/worries" or something to that effect. Basically, his castle was designed to his exacting tastes. He hated his wife, so there were no rooms for her, but there was enough room for him to have Voltaire live in his castle for 3 years and talk philosophy. Anyway,
it's beautiful and grand, and maybe one of my favorite castles I've seen here.

Sans Souci

The roof of the Marble Room

One of the nature themed rooms- so many decorations

Not sure who or what this is, but I liked the movement of his hair and the mirror together

Pretty much every room here has a theme, depending on what it was gonna be used for, and stuff like that.

Example of a room.

Floral room.

After our audio tour, we went outside to take a look at the front. It's quite spectacular. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

He had a bunch of these little metal pagodas installed.
They're 'copper green' and they have these huge golden suns in metal on the front.

Schloss Sanssouci

Those little retangular things are little greenhouses of sorts.Friedrich the Great's grave. Our prof brought us potatoes to stick on top of the grave. She says it's a tradition.
Everybody looked at us funny as we dropped potatoes onto a Kaiser's grave.

For fun, the Europeans would dress up as Chinese. This is the "Chinese house."

Next, we walked over to the Neue Palais. This was also designed by Freddy, but he really used it as more of a shock and awe tactic, rather than as a real palace. Therefore it's ridiculously ornate, even for back then. We also stopped to eat at the cafeteria of the University at Potsdam. Their cafeteria is literally in back of the servant's quarters of that huge palace. And lemme tell you, the servant's quarters are HUGE.

Neue Palais.
For a size comparison, click the photo, and search out the little teeny tiny people.

Talk to the hand.


The Grotto Room.
It's shaped like the inside of a treasure chest.

The types of rocks that adorn every other stripe on the walls of the Grotto Room

The alcoves in the Grotto Room. If you look closely, you can notice that everything's pretty much made of marble, seashells, or precious stones.

This room has pink marble!

This room was under restoration.

And this is how you do it!

Silver room!

Bathroom! The one and only.
(Not joking)

Afterwards, we split up from the class. Me and a couple other people decided to visit more of Potsdam, and check out other palaces, while we had day passes. Next stop (and almost the last thank god) was the Orangerie. It pretty much looked like the rest of the palaces before.

However, the front looked like a resort....
The Orangerie

Really liked this statue. Wonder what it looked like in copper.

This table has mother-of-pearl and other little goodies inlaid.

And I think this angel is the epitome of happy. I think he's supposed to be a tiny Dionysus.
I love his face.

Hollander Vierteil (Neighborhood)

All the houses are made of brick, a long time ago. I think this is maybe where all the Hollanders and their Hollandaise sauce lived. No idea though... we could only really walk through it on the way to the train station.
And then back home.