Potsdam

Today the weather was warm and sunny, and we planned to take advantage of this to finally go out to Potsdam, a scenic town outside Berlin, and capital of Brandenburg - about an hour by train. We woke up before 0900 but somehow after burning an elaborate breakfast we didn't leave the house until after 1300, and had to return to take things we forgot - like Leia's wallet with her train ticket. We switched four trains to get to Potsdam, which was unnecessary excess.

Once there we took a bus to the Braumanufaktur - that is an brewery located in a forest, by a lake, south of Potsdam center. The location was idyllic and breezy, with trees all around and a sailboat sailing speedily in the lake when we went down for a look. We arrived at 1500 and sat outside to have a very German lunch there. Leia had a venison "goulash" with red cabbage and potato dumplings (the venison was good, the rest not thrilling) and I had a game meat sausage with sauerkraut and bread made from "spent grains" left over as a by-product of beer malting. The sausage was good but not enough for me so I ordered another.

The German beer purity law (Reinheitsgebot) prohibits brewing beer with fruit, so some types (Berliner Weisse) get around this by adding fruit syrup to pale beer while serving: the result is a syrupy sweet berry-flavored drink consumed through a straw, and Leia had one of these - called Potsdamer Weisse. I debated with the waitress for a while because they didn't have any wheat beer or "seasonal beer", and finally consented to drink their "Potsdamer Stange" - a mix of Pils and Dunkel style beers. It was perfectly all right, but indistinguishable to me from any other Pilsner, and I expect more from a brewery. I bought another kind of beer in a flask to take from there because it was cheap (1.50eu for 0.5l). I carried it around and drank some while waiting for the bus, though it too was nothing special.

From Potsdam train station we switched buses to go to the vast gardens they have there for a pleasant early-evening stroll. This was a residence of King Frederick the Great in the 18th century, and has botanical gardens and many palaces. We left the bus one station before the New Palace on the western end and got some exercise walking to there. Then we strolled through the trails in the wooded gardens, which reminded me of Manhattan's Central Park only flat. I saw a tree trunk with big mushrooms growing on it. We rested a few minutes at a gilded gazebo where I drank some more of my beer, then walked to a Chinese House in the garden. That's a kitschy little pavilion built in rococo imitation of Chinese style, which was fashionable at that time. We strolled from there to another palace, where we caught a bus near a working windmill that was spinning suspiciously fast in the mild breeze.

It took us until 2000 precisely to get home, which is just when the sun sets fully here. We planned the return route better and only needed two trains. Leia made me breaded chicken schnitzel with rice for dinner, though she does not eat.