Finally got the images to work after many, many, many tries.

Well it was an intense walking day, starting west towards the main park of Potsdam, where several palaces of old emperors lived. I don’t really know because I didn’t go in them for various reasons, (too expensive/long lines/tours only in German/tours at certain inconvenient times only/pictures were not allowed in any of the buildings or palaces in the park without paying an additional picture fee/didn’t feel like it etc…) So I’ll just copy stuff from Wikipedia.

But the first place I got to in the large forested park was a small Italian style villa, with an “ancient Roman Bath inside”. It was very neat looking from both the outside and inside, but the actual bath was very very small, and didn’t even have any water in it. There were  Roman style statues and paintings on the wall inside. (This is the one building I did pay to go in, but no pictures since I didn’t wanna pay the fee.) Inside the rest of the villa was a little upstairs dining area where royalty used to eat. The villa though was constructed in the early to mid 1800’s by Frederick William IV of Prussia.

Beyond that, further west past that was the little Charlottenhof, a small Roman style villa that served as a Summer Residence for King Frederick William of Prussia.

Northwest of this tiny home was the massive Neues Palais. It was huge, and really neat looking. “The New Palace (German: Neues Palais) is a palace situated on the western side of the Sanssouci park in Potsdam, Germany. The building was begun in 1763, after the end of the Seven Years’ War, under King Friedrich II (Frederick the Great) and was completed in 1769. It is considered to be the last great Prussian Baroque palace. The building of the palace commenced at the end of the Seven Years’ War, to celebrate Prussia’s success. The war is also variably referred to as the Third Silesian War, owing to the dispute over Silesia. In an architectural form, Frederick the Great sought to demonstrate the power and glories of Prussia attributing it as fanfaronade, an excess of splendor in marble, stone and gilt.

For the King, the New Palace was not a principal residence, but a display for the reception of important royals and dignitaries. Of the over 200 rooms, four principal gathering rooms and a theater were available for royal functions, balls and state occasions. During his occasional stays at the palace, Frederick occupied a suite of rooms at the southern end of the building, composed of two antechambers, a study, a concert room, a dining salon and a bedroom, among others.”

Next after the Palace was Orangerie Palace. “The Orangery Palace (German: Orangerieschloss) is a palace located in the Sanssouci Park of Potsdam, Germany. also known as the New Orangery on the Klausberg, or just the Orangery. It was built on behest of the “Romantic on the Throne”, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV (Frederick William IV of Prussia) from 1851 to 1864.

Next was a small old palace which was long and thin, serving as an art colleciton of lots of old pieces of art.

Then to the east of the is the more famous Schloss Sansoucci. Another royal residence, which I more or less visited on my last trip. Last time I was in Potsdam I just took the S-Bahn from Berlin and spent no more than 2 hours when it was already getting dark, and came just two see the palace, but today I got to see it sunny! But there was a huuugee line to go in.

After all the palaces I made a trip down south a ways to the Film Museum! In the Babelsberg District of Potsdam, is the world’s oldest, and Europe’s largest film and movie studio! If you’ve seen any of these:

…then you’ve seen a movie filmed in Babelsberg! The museum was actually… kind of disappointing. It wasn’t very big, and there weren’t many props, mostly just a lot of text displays about the history of, and how movies are made from start to finish. It did have a full size movie theater for when they play movies though. Photographs were not allowed inside. There were lots of old cameras, and microphones, and little stations letting you cut your own movies from clips. Upstairs in the special exhibition was a gallery about some Danish comedy series about goofy criminals. It was called Olsen Banden (The Olsen Gang) and ran in the 60’s. It was more almost exclusively photocopied images of texts related to the show, along with tv screens showing some clips of it.

Then after that it was a long walk south down across much of Potsdam to the area known as the Albert Einstein Science Park. Though along the way I came across this cool area called a “Kletterpark” or Climbing Park. It’s basically a tree/rope/and bridge climbing adventure playground. Starting off you, in a harness and helmet you attach yourself to a support rope and begin climbing and walking along platforms, ropes, bridges, and platforms that slide along ropes up high in the trees. I wanna do it, but it mostly seems geared for young kids. Though I have actually come across several of these in my time sin Germany, though this one seemed the biggest by far, and actually had a lot of people at it. All the others seemed closed.

Though at the park I was looking for the Einsteinturm, or Einstein tower, (which turned out to be a huge disappointment) Along the way I came across and entered a few buildings (the doors were wide open!) They were a Climate Change research building, and another space observatory building. I didn’t really know what I was getting into, as I was wlaking down the halls, there were offices on both sides with open doors, with people working at computers and talking on phones. The top floor of the observatory with a big telescope wasn’t open though. Though eventually I found the Einstein tower, which was a lot smaller than I was expecting, and only available to enter on tours not during the Summer. It’s a tower for observing the sun. Anyways, after that I headed back to my hotel, but not before stopping at a Lindt Chocolate store, and grabbing a chilled Chocolate drink. Basically cold liquid chocolate. Mmmmmmm…

Oh, and there’s several more palaces I didn’t get to yet…