My love affair with Berlin continues apace. But my horizons have expanded massively. Because in all the trips we’ve made here since the younger daughter adopted it as her home, we’ve generally come for weekends and confined our love of ‘Berlin’ to about 3 or 4 of the central areas of the former Eastern part of the city. Or, ‘the good bit’ as I’d always thought. But today we went totally insane (by relative standards), got on a train and went to Potsdam!!! It’s miles from Mitte, kilometres from Kreuzberg, furlongs from Friedrichshain. And its lovely.

Potsdam is the capital of the state of Brandenburg. The state which has the famous ‘gate’ in (proper) Berlin, built in 1780 to mark the spot where just along the road in the Adlon hotel, Michael Jackson would later dangle his baby son over the balcony.

The Brandenburg gate is a lovely structure on top of which is a statue of some horses and other German stuff. And I think that’s a Brandenburg thing. Because on virtually every roof in Potsdam are statues. I haven’t seen so many cherubs since… well, its been a long time. Hundreds. Thousands of ugly fucking cherubs.

But when you arrive at the Palace of Frederick the Great, you have definitely reached Cherub Central. Plus thousands of other statues too. Most of which are on the roofs of every one of the almost obscenely magnificent buildings in the Palace area. Which is a massive park, filled with wonderful buildings which only an Emperor could have built. The word ‘obscene’ springs to mind. His actual palace is said to rival Versailles, which it does. And I’m not just saying that to upset the French. Even though I would if I had to.

Then you leave the park and the town itself is really cute. Not, like cloyingly, sickeningly cute, like many tourist towns, but genuinely sweet and nice and full of people eating ice cream and drinking beer. Some of whom, unlike in ‘real Berlin’, are actually speaking in German! To each other!!

Tomorrow Mel & I leave for Dresden. That’s a whole other City. I’ll let you know what I find.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx