Freundschaftsinsel (Friendship Island) with Nikolaikirche (Nikolaus Church) in background
My morning was spent waiting at the Auslaenderamt, where, with two minutes left till closing, they took my passport and told me to come back on Thursday to pick it up. I can’t be certain, but I think this is a good sign permanent-residency-wise.
Buildings on Breite Strasse (Prussian and DDR architecture)
Rainer and I ate lunch at Cafe Heider near Nauener Tor and I had an awesome chicken salad sandwich. It’s a nice, cozy place with typical European coffeehouse atmosphere (if you want American coffeehouse, a Starbucks just opened up across from the Karstadt). Rainer was greedily eyeing the cake display – aha! he’s finely found a place for his Sunday afternoon coffee and cake!
The Havel with Brauhausberg in the background
I then spent the day walking around Potsdam and boy is it some beautiful weather today! Since I’m finally putting together a photo tour of Potsdam for my website (I’ll let you know when it’s up), I noticed I was lacking photos of some key sites and decided to try to stop by a few of these places. I couldn’t find the Stasi prison again, but it wasn’t very exciting the first time round, so I didn’t sweat that too much.
The Neustaedter Havelbucht with Muslim-inspired Wasserwerk Sanssouci (Steam Engine House) in the background
I then spent a couple hours in the Film Museum. Babelsberg (a section of Potsdam on the other side of the Havel from the city center) was the Hollywood of Germany. Some recent movies filmed there are: Bourne Supremacy, Enemy at the Gates, Taking Sides (this looked really good, but I’d never heard of it), The Pianist, and Around the World in 80 Days (yes, the Jackie Chan one). What I found during my visit is that I know very little about German film and that it’s a bit dull reading about films and actors you’ve never heard of. BUT! One very cool thing they had is these little monitors where you could push a button and it would show you a preview of the movie, so now there are a bunch of movies I want to see. And I want to watch “Die Legende von Paul und Paula” again. We saw it in German class at the Goethe Institute and I thought it was completely ridiculous, but the preview looked good, so maybe I’ll like it better now that I can understand it better. I may also have to drag Rainer to Filmpark Babelsberg before we leave, Germany’s version of Universal Studios.
Marstall (the Royal Stables), which now houses the Film Museum
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice photos Christina. I just sent you an email about getting together next week. We were at the Berlin Zoo all day yesterday because of the old WWII bomb they found – this was the second one within 3 months – nuts!
Cheers,
Lynn
Potsdam is a great town. Thanks for the tip about the Film museum– I definitely want to visit that next time I am in Berlin. Paul und Paula is a great film, but you need to have some East German sitting next to you explaining the very arcane references… the film is (at least for the East Germans) not what the movie shows but what it doesn’t show. (My girlfriend grew up in the DDR– Prenzlauer Berg– so I get a lot of these explanations) If you develop a taste for East German films, some I liked were “sommer vorm Balkon”, “goodbye Lenin”, and “Halbe Treppe”.
I love Goodbye Lenin, but haven’t seen the others. I’ll have to look into them. Have you seen Sonnenallee? How is that?