Thursday, 23 May 2024 Weimar to Potsdam (redux), inside Cecilienhof

Written 8 August 2024

After breakfast on Thursday, Leon brought the car around so that we could load it up, wave farewell to La Casa dei Colori, and set off for Potsdam, whose possibilities we had not exhausted during our brief stop there with Viking.

At the right is the rather upscale lobby of a truck stop where we paused on the way.

Also on the way, we overtook this food truck, also topped with a very long bratwurst in a very stubby bun and spread with fiberglass mustard. I don't think it was the same one that had been parked in front of the Black Bear at least since Monday. As you can see in this shot, the weather had brightened up considerably.

We got to Potsdam in time to drop our luggage at the Hotel am Jägertor (you remember the Jägertor, one of the three surviving gates of Potsdam) and drive on for lunch at the Brauerei Meierei, so close to the Cecilienhof Palace that we just parked in the palace's lot and walked to the restaurant. As implied by the name, the place is a real brewery, as well as a restaurant. The blackboard next to this impressive set of tanks reveals that today they started a batch of hell (light, as opposed to dunkel, dark) beer.

The arch in front of it is festooned with dried hops on the vine, and the wrought-iron railing says "Sudhaus" (brew house). An adjacent blackboard listed four "house brewed" beers currently available; because it was actually written in chalk, I assume the assortment changes as new batches are finished and old ones used up.

I think Leon ordered the Berliner boulette with German potato salad.

And the schnitzel and fries at the right is, of course, David's choice. Note that it came with both ketchup and mayo for the fries. Around here, you don't have to ask for mayo!

Tempted though I was by the mixed pickled herring plate, I just had to try the Eisbein "Berliner Art," roasted pig's knuckle. It was good, but not as good as that terrific one I once had on a Viking cruise. Some of the skin was properly tender and crispy, but much of it was too hard to chew. It was supposed to come with with sauerkraut and pea purée, but what I got was slaw with radishes and a dish of mustard.

Gritta ordered the soljanka, a sour and spicy soup with pepper strips, gherkins, ham, and sour cream, which she pronounced yummy.

On our stroll from the restaurant to Cecilienhof, we once again passed the bark-clad hut, where I noticed for the first time that its chimney is disguised as a tree trunk sticking out of the center of the roof. A couple of stovepipes stick out of it, each covered with one of those hinged metal flaps but painted to match the bark.

And here we are again, at Cecilienhof Palace. Here's the central courtyard, this time showing the big red star-shaped flower bed in the middle.

This is the end-on view of the famous terrace where the big three had their photo taken sitting in wicker chairs. They were arranged in a row against the wall at the far end from the camera.

I was pleased to see that the border around the central grassy area, which was all dug up when we were there the first time, had since been refilled with bedding plants and was once more in bloom.

And at the right are the actual chairs, safe indoors behind a velvet rope.

When we were here with Viking, we saw only the outside of the palace, but this time, we had a prebooked, audioguided tour of the interior as well.

At the left here is the actual table at which the Potsdam Conference took place. The big three (Churchill, Truman, and Stalin) sat in the arm chairs. Their interpreters sat on their left sides and their foreign secretaries to their right. Truman presided because (our guide had earlier said) he was the "senior politician." David explained later that he was senior because he was the only one of the three who was actually a head of state.

The rest of the chairs were for additional members of the delegations, and I think the wooden tables were for the stenographers and record keepers. The large window looks out over the gardens to the lake (the one that was on the other side of the Berlin Wall from the palace, starting in 1961).

Life size cardboard cutouts of the participants stood in a nearby reception room, prominently labeled. That helped a lot with recognizing them in period photos as well as just keeping in mind who was there and in what role.

At the left here is the ceiling over the conference table. The illuminated screens visible at table level in this photo were actually close to the velvet rope, where you could see them clearly. They showed the table and chairs with CGI images of the participants in the places they occupied during the conference.

The side of the room away from the large window was occupied by this monumental staircase.

Here are two views of a model of the palace. At the left, the "photo terrace" is at the far right corner, to the left of the three tall chimneys. Both Churchill's and Truman's offices were in that quadrant of the building.

Some "original" parts of the palace had been preserved—that is, parts not relevant to the Potsdam Conference. At the left here is a recreation of an ocean liner's stateroom. Cecilie loved traveling on ocean liners, so she had her favorite stateroom recreated above and to one side of her ordinary bedroom in the palace, so she could climb a little spiral staircase to spend time there when ever she wanted.

At the right is a photo of a ship, perhaps an ocean liner, named after her, the Crown Princess Cecilie.

Along one hallway was a set of parallel time lines from 1937 through 1945 of what was happening in Europe, Asia, and the Near and Middle East, as well as one showing where and when all the conferences took place, from the Atlantic Conference (on the Riviera in 1941) through half a dozen more to the Sextant Conference (in Cairo in 1943) to the Argonaut Conference (in Yalta in 1945) to the Potsdam Conference.

The tour of the palace included a lot more information, including many period photos, both of the conference and of the royal family. In addition, many lively and informative quotations were posted from the letters and diaries of Joy Milward (shown here at the left), a 19-year-old secretary in the British delegation.

But soon it was time to head back to the hotel. Here's one more photo of some of the wonderful carved brick chimneys that decorate the roof of the palace.

On the drive back into the city, I got a little better shot of the Nauentor, one of the three surviving city gates. Still pretty crummy (and too bad about the yellow semi truck that photobombed my shot), but you can at least see the two tall gray towers that flank the gate itself.

And I got a much closer shot of the gilded weathervane from the top of the Garrison Church, in its cage on the sidewalk.

This nice shot of the Jägertor, another of the old city gates was actually taken from the front door of our hotel, which was right across the street from it and named for it.

We had reservations for dinner at a Michelin one-star restaurants called Kochzimmer. Here's David seated in its ivy-covered courtyard while the waiter pours out his champagne aperitif. (Strictly speaking, of course, that's not ivy on the walls but good old Viginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia), which rambles wild all over southeastern North America, including our back yard, where I have trouble keeping it from climbing all over and smothering my potted plants and kumquat tree.

The amuse bouche was a sauce of tomato over a watrmelon cube with shredded verbena on top and lime-infused olive oil. Delicious.

F The first course was soup of smoked Bellarosa potatoes with spring onions and bits of crisp ham.

With the soup came this strange citrusy cocktail, which I didn't much care for.

The second course was morel mushrooms, green peas, and green pea gnocchi, and coffee salt (that's what the menu said), all arranged around a raw egg yolk and topped with a fragile lattice cookie. The idea was to swirl the egg yolk into the intense morel broth that was poured in after I took the photo, then to eat the whole thing with a spoon.

Next came a small bowl of a pinkish foamy soup with half a cherry tomato in the center. It wasn't listed on the menu, and I don't remember what it was.

The third official course was roasted breast of Kikok chicken with amaranth, "Café de Paris sauce, and white onion. Kikok seems to be a brand of chicken, which has a particular flavor because it is corn fed (garden-variety supermarket chickens in the U.S. used to be corn fed until a few years ago and were the better flavored for it). The white onion took the form of a cooked slice topped with a purée of more cooked white onion, all sprinkled with grains of amaranth and garnished with a mint leaf. The chicken is the crescent-shaped slice, turned on edge, crispy skin on the side nearest the camera, and sprinkled with greenish herbs. That leaves just the yellowish dome to be the "café de Paris" butter. That last is common on German menus, but I had never heard of it in, e.g., France. It was more like a Hollandaise.

It was followed another special cocktail, again not to my taste, that was distinguished mainly by the whorl of sweet woodruff leaves embedded in the ice cube.

Dessert was billed as rhubarb, but as you can see it consisted of several elements. The menu listed ginger (perhaps in the rhubarb gel in the center), white chocolate (presumably the jagged white slab), and "Kaiser biscuit" (I assume the ring of cake containing the gel. A quenelle of rhubarb ice cream was balanced on the edge, and there was a lump of something (cooked rhubarb, maybe?) under the chocolate.