A Day Trip to Potsdam

Guten Tag, meine Damen und Herren!

I cannot believe that it is already our third weekend here. By this time next week all of the participants will be reunited with their families, full of good memories of a month gone by too quickly - at least that is our hope! I am not writing this to rush the time away, quite the contrary, I am trying to savor each moment with these amazing young people and write about as many of our adventures as I can.

As you may have noted from the earlier blog posts this past week was full of heavy history. We went deep into the darkest parts of Germany's past and learned a lot about humanity in the process. With so many informative tours and long days, it was nice to have an easy, breezy Saturday to cap it all off, which is exactly what our day trip to Potsdam was!

Potsdam is the capital city of Brandenburg, a Bundesland  (federal state) completely surrounding Berlin. Potsdam is directly outside of Berlin and it takes about 30 minutes to get there by train so, this past Saturday we all met up at 10:00 am and rode out together. Potsdam was once the capital of Prussia and was the residence of the German Kaiser, it was later part of East Germany. It is a very beautiful city, much smaller than Berlin and is very green - it is also home to the palaces of Sanssouci, the largest World Heritage Site in Germany, and Glienicke Bridge or "Spy Bridge." There are so many lakes and parks that one could easily take a week to explore Potsdam thoroughly. Unfortunately, we only had one day but with the help of Rachel, our tour guide and Stefan, one of our language teachers who is from Potsdam, we got a great overview.

We started out our day with a walking tour of the city, followed by lunch in the downtown area. After lunch, we explore the gardens of Sanssouci, the summer palace of Frederick the Great. It is thought of as being quite simple by palace standards but the students had fun picking out their favorite rooms and decorations.

Perhaps the best part of the day was the beautiful sun and the time we had to relax together and explore. Even though we were still on a tour it was nice to take our time, goof off, eat snacks and take photos together. The friendships have grown so strong over the last three weeks and it is such an honor getting to know the students better as individuals.

I hope to write a lot in our last week as well as feature more guest bloggers to be sure to check back for that!

Danke und bis dann!

Julianne