Potsdam

My wife and I spent our summer vacation this year on the Polish Baltic coast. It was a welcome relief from the unbearable heat in Central Europe. As the 8-hour drive seemed a bit too long for us, we stopped off for two days on the way up in Potsdam, the former royal residence of the Prussian kings, foremost among them Frederick the Great, who shaped the country like no other. The city is right on the doorstep of the mega-city of Berlin, but has largely retained its old charm, which is no doubt due to the fact that it was part of the former GDR until 1989 and it was only after the fall of the Berlin Wall that the city’s tourist potential could be fully exploited. The absolutely dominant attraction is undoubtedly the palace complex of Sanssouci, which was built from 1745 onwards by none other than Frederick himself and which, 281 years later, still impresses us too. A nice detail is Frederick’s tomb, which has (finally) been located at Sanssouci since 1991, because the Germans still…