Biking in Potsdam

We chose to spend our second-to-last day abroad in Potsdam, a city about 35 minutes outside of Berlin. We decided to take a bike tour of the city. Fat Tire Bike Tours has an office on Alexanderplatz, which has been our hub during our stay in Berlin. This morning we loaded 16 bikes and eager bikers (our group plus Wolf, our tour guide) onto the S-Bahn to begin a day that turned out to be exceptional.

Above: group in front of a Hohenzollern guest palace; Dru and Tracy (attractive and charming leaders) ready to ride.

Although some in our group hadn't been on a bike in awhile, everyone ended up having a great time and we rode through the city in relative comfort. Our tour guide was funny and knowledgeable, and took us through all of the main sites in the city. The most famous of those sites is Schloss Sans Souci (the Sans Souci Palace), which was built by the husband of Sophie Charlotte (who lived in Charlottenburg, the palace we visited last week) as a summer residence. We didn't tour the inside of the palace and this is probably because the palace grounds completely steal the show:

Above: Sans Souci Palace; the elaborate stepped palace grounds.

Stacy T., Amy, Casey, Ashley, Dr. Slagter, Staush, Lukas, & Dr. Scribner in the garden at Sans Souci.

We also toured the Cecilienhof Palace. This palace is known not so much for the royalty who lived there, but rather how the events that took place there shaped Germany and Berlin in particular. Cecilienhof was the site of the Potsdam Conference, where the Americans under Truman, the British under Atlee, and the Soviets under Stalin decided the fate of Germany after WWII. Inside the palace the meeting room is preserved and our group was able to take an audio tour of the lower level, where most of the key events took place. Since the palace was in the zone of Soviet occupation, the star in the palace courtyard is red.


After a leisurely ride back to the S-Bahn, we reluctantly turned in our comfy bikes and ended our day -- but not before Drs. Slagter and Scribner insisted on some cheesy (but oh-so-cute) photos of the group on our bikes.