Potsdam

In the past week we've been to the Berlin Botanischer Garten, Wannsee, and Potsdam, as well as finished and seen "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers". The Botanical gardens were very beautiful, especially the parts with water. There was one lake that had about a billion forms of life in it, all living in harmony like a disney movie. That's where I got a picture of the turtle you can see here.

Wannsee was also really cool. Wannsee is a big lake on the edge of town, and we went on a really beautiful day, about as perfect as possible. They've got a long beach (with a nude section!), and they've even got a large waterslide IN THE LAKE! You had to swim out to it and everything. Wannsee also had the most amazing jungle gym I've ever seen. It was made of a network of ropes, and rose in a pyramid shape at least 20 feet in the air, and was intended for kids. In fact, four fiveish-year-olds were actively climbing much faster than us all the way to the top, and then swinging from their hands at the top, and such. It would be immediately banned in the States. For that matter, the waterslide in the lake might have been, too. Also easily ban-able in the States is a park in Kreuzberg, a district of Berlin, which has a near-vertical 10 foot climbing wall, a fully functional 40-foot zip line, and a giant spinning four-person ride that wobbles and whirls. All really fun, and probably not allowed in the U.S., where we can't even have see-saws anymore.

Potsdam was an extremely pretty place. It was founded as a retreat for royalty, so it had many things designed to look good, although much of that was destroyed in WWII and then later by the GDR communist government (they were symbols of Prussia, which was considered by the communists to be associated with fascism, so they blew up beautiful structures). Cobblestone streets, a cool Holland quarter, and Sanssouci palace, a really beautiful expansive summer retreat for Frederick the Great ( Wikipedia).

"Die Leiden des jungen Werthers" turned out to be rather difficult to read, but everything has been. Every paragraph of everything we read has too many words we don't know to effectively be able to look them all up and not be reading for 8 hours, so you have to guess with most and hope. In addition, we've been reading old stuff with archaic usages and the like. Then, we have to come to class and discuss the philosophical point behind it all, in German. These are the times when I feel like I speak and read like a four-year-old. On the plus side, earlier today I successfully bought stamps! yippee! "Die Leiden" actually is an pretty cool book, because it explores the reasons for suicide, and whether suicide is a sin and weakness, or whether certain people are predisposed to it, etc., and all written in the 1700s, when it was shocking. We saw "Die Leiden" earlier today in Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, where they throw modern twists at works. In this one, the three actors mixed with the audience, and in the middle of the play, a mirror was installed on the stage, and other strange twists. It was pretty good, though, but it would have helped if I had understood more of the speech. It's still hard to understand speech in a theater setting. Tour guides, news, etc. I can handle pretty well, but theater not so much.

Earlier today the US women's soccer team lost in the World Cup Semifinals to Brazil, which is a shame, because it would have set up a match against Germany in the final if they had won. The women's cup isn't as big a deal as the men's here, but it's still a big deal.

Tomorrow, I go inside the Reichstag, and I plan to go to the Berlin Zoo soon, where they have Knut, the wildly popular rescued polar bear.