Potsdam
What a glorious May Day! While people were out throwing bottles at the police, Jeylan, Dan and I grabbed our bikes and went to Berlin's most illustrious suburb, also known as the capital of the province of Brandenburg: Potsdam. It was a short bike ride to the S-Bahn station at Yorckstrasse, then a straight shot on the S1 to Potsdam Hauptbahnhof. It couldn't have been a more perfect day to go, and despite having stayed out til 4 in the morning the previous night (Walpurgis night out with Tom/David/Jeylan after our weird ass Alexander Kluge movie chez Amy), I was excited to go out and enjoy the stunning day.Potsdam was scarred heavily in the bombing of WWII, but despite that, the old gorgeous churches and Prussian summer palaces have more or less been restored to their former glory. We rode around the cobble stone streets to the grounds of the Schloss Sanssouci--I felt as if we should have been sitting in barouches and reciting Goethe aloud. There were "Caspar David Friedrich trees" all lined up along this path, and off the sides to this path were green rolling fields with people picnicking and children playing.
It was postively magical, especially when Jeylan and I rode around a lake my the Marmor Palais and saw a VIKING SHIP take passengers across the huge lake. Yes! A real Norwegian Viking ship, but unfortunately before we could get on the boat was full and we didn't want to wait half an hour. So we rode around ourselves instead. See how the clouds are perfectly reflected? It could be a Delft painting. The sunlight appeared on and off which made those moments of "Jesus light" so miraculously beautiful that I could find no words, just smiles and more exhortations of how lovely, wie schön everything was: the wind in our hair, the smell of spring, the grass fields, the blooming flowers...the entire old section of the town really was something out of a Brother's Grimm tale.
One moment that especially made me feel like I was in a Märchen (fairytale) was this little incident: As we were riding our bikes along a the path that went along the rim of the lake, two little girls were chasing a yellow ball down a slope. Before one girl could catch it though, the ball rolled down to the side and of course, fell inevitably into the lake. The six year old girl's eyes began to crumple up and fill up with tears. An old couple walking a beagle strolled by just then and the old man in a tweed cap pointed his walking stick at the ball, and the dog proceeded to jump into the lake and retrieve the yellow ball. He doggy paddled it to the shore for the little girls. Now isn't that just Grimm-like? I half expected the dog to morph into a beautiful prince and start speaking in self-deferential high German.Afterwards we rode back to the cute main street, Brandenburger Strasse and sat down at Cafe Maximilian for an incredible Eiscafe (with a kugel of vanilla gelato inside, mm) and a piece of torte. Yum. But my stomach is bursting now because I just came back from dinner at Gugelhof, a famous Alsatian restaurant on Kollwitz Platz in Prenzlauer Berg where Clinton and Schröder ate together on Bill's visit. I had Raclette for the first time in at least eight years, and the smell and the texture of it really brought me back to my days at German Swiss in HK and the INCREDIBLE Raclette stands lined up along the courtyard during the Christmas Bazaar, with all those Swiss men handling huge wheels of Raclette that were just grilling underneath real Raclette grills. I'm going to unearth our Swiss home Raclette maker somehow and resurrect my erstwhile obsession with this Alsatian delicacy.
And now I shall go to bed with a full stomach and a satisfied smile that today was a wonderful Feiertag.
posted by joyce @ 12:27 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home