Palaces, Parks, and Persecution

Our final stop before arriving at Berlin itself was the significantly smaller but still very significant Potsdam.

Being the city of palaces, lakes, and parks, Sanssouci park seemed like a perfect place to start with the very fancy Schloss Sanssouci. Despite Berlin being the administrative capital of Prussia and later the German Empire, Potsdam always remained the home of the court of the Hohenzollerns.

Just behind the Sanssouci park was the far less busy Roman ruins. Obviously fake since the Romans never got this far, they were built to look ruined. This led to the amusing situation where they had to be rebuilt to their ruined stance after being bombed in the war.

Still working our way through the parks in Potsdam we stopped at this English inspired royal residence. This was the home to the Potsdam conference which led to, amongst other decisions, the establishment of the UN, the division of Germany, and the decision to bomb Japan with nuclear weapons.

Having had quite a nice day so far and wishing to put a stop to that we visited the house of the Wannsee conference on our way from Potsdam to Berlin. It was in this unassuming house in 1942 that, even before they had had breakfast, 15 leading Nazis organised the murder of the whole of Europe's jews. 

Thoroughly depressed, we made the final drive into Berlin ready for the next few days!