the seddin lake.
in the second week of my autumn vacation my parents and i had booked an airbnb apartment in potsdam, the capital of brandenburg state. the reason we wanted to visit this city was, of course, to see the many palaces & castles it has to offer, but also for nostalgic reasons ( especially for my mom ). she had been visiting potsdam in her teenage years and seemed to have quite fond memories of that visit, which for her is motivation enough to revisit places after you haven't been there for a very long time ( it is for me as well, it's nice to see if anything changed about a place or if it is exactly as you remember it ). the fact that my mom still possesses some pictures of that class trip decades ago, which i often admired going through my parent's photo albums, was what i needed to make me want to go there as well. so it was decided and it was a good decision indeed.
it's a city that made me fall in love with it immediately, to be honest. as soon as we entered the first suburbs of the city i already got hearts in my eyes. formerly being the residence city of prussian kings you can see instantly why: frederican splendor is basically the heart & soul of potsdam. frederick the great had a huge impact on this town, he was the initiator for a lot of the buildings & palaces you can find throughout the city. it's also a city of the garrisons, another detail you can recognize everywhere, it's a thoroughly designed city layout with straight centerlines & axes and many barracks surrounding the inner core of the city. but potsdam is also something different: you can see it in the pre-fabricated high-rises ( plattenbau ) of the modern city. those high-rises are what is still left of the GDR era, but not only that, you can still find more than the typical plattenbau over the city, concrete pavillions & sculptures for example, or the representative building of the former university. all those things scream GDR architecture, which is something i got extremely interested in the past few years and it makes my heart flutter wildly. some of those buildings, despite being looked at dismissively by most of the german population, exude a charme that is difficult to explain. many of them were inspired by the bauhaus movement, but they got that special something you cannot find in the west of germany. east germany developed a style for itself while they were disconnected from the west, something that was functional, yet beautiful, abstract, yet perfectly clear. it's brutalism at its finest, with delicate symbols, structured patterns & a beauty that hides in a certain ugliness. that, too, made fall in love with potsdam.
it's also not a very big city ( only about 170.000 people living here ), which means it's very walkable. i love to explore new places by foot, as it gives me orientation & overview, very handy in case of a getting lost situation. in general i'm equipped with a pretty good sense of direction, which i'm kinda proud of. people rely on me & my navigating skills quite a lot, which is so funny to me, because i don't feel it's something that is difficult - like i cannot quite grasp why people don't find their way back to a starting point easily, even though i'm aware that a good orientation does not come easily to a lot of people. well, so walking it is for me, and it helps me tremendously to connect to a city, place, area, to take it all in & process it. sometimes it can be a little overwhelming because there are so many impressions raining in on you in a short amount of time, but then again, it wields so many inspirations & it instills in you some kind of newfound love for your environments, for the world even. i always feel, whenever i'm discovering a new place or area, that this is just a tiny part of the world, and that there are even more tiny parts all over the globe, which sends me into an overwhelming thought: the earth has too much to offer for the lifetime of a human being.
before we entered the city of potsdam we stopped by the big seddin lake and made a short walk along the banks.
a lovely kissing scene on a little shack by the beach of the lake.
we soon made our way to potsdam for checking into our appartment in time and to unpack our luggage. our little flat was really nice. it was situated in the backyard of a townhouse in a little former coach house and basically was a maisonette-like dwelling with lots of art & sculptures & a custom-made stairwell. it was rented out by a writer who apparently had quite some artsy friends who contributed to the interior of the place and made it very quirky & special. i made a little video which you can check out here.
after settling in we decided to head out again for an evening walk, you know, to get a first taste of the city. it started raining very heavily so we kept it rather short.
inside st. peter & paul's church. the altar paintings were made by antoine pesne. it's an example of eclecticism, an architecture style that was en mode around the 19th to early 20th century. it was known basically for incorporating old traditions into a new way of building structures and you often ended up with a wild mixture of styles in one building. i really loved the altar apsis and its golden paintings.
a better overview.
the front view of the church.
pater bruns house. it is part of st. peter & paul's and basically used for events.
a bad picture of a really nice building, thought i had to include it for laughing purposes.
the first houses of the dutch quarter. the dutch quarter is apparently the biggest structure of dutch houses outside the netherlands. they were built around the 1730ies by jan bouman. as you probably know by now, i'm a real sucker for anything brick-related so needless to say i was totally hooked.
loved the detailed front doors & shutters.
by now it was raining real hard, but it made the cobblestone pathways look really neat.
i have some more pictures of the quarter that i will post later. shot them on a much sunnier day, so raindrops on the lense are basically inexistent there ;P
the nauen gate illuminated in blue light. it's one of the last three remaining city gates in potsdam ( the other ones being the small brandenburg gate & jägertor ). the illumination was part of a weekend installation which projected brightly coloured lights onto the old buildings all over the city. made for a beautiful first encounter with the potsdam, right?
the steam engine house for sanssouci palace. this building was not far from our appartment. by the way, you probably wonder, why it looks like a mosque. this was something that was really in fashion back when it was built in 1841/43 - moorish archicture was THE deal when it came to showcasing your wealth. the engine house was built for providing sanssouci palace with water for its water games, as it sits directly next to the neustadt havel bay, the natural source for the pump station. you can find example of moorish architecture all over germany, which is quite strange, actually, because it does not belong to our culture at all... i often wonder what muslim people must think of us when they see moorish architecture that is not intended for its real use. i think it's quite a controversial style.
thus, our first day in potsdam ended... stay tuned for more of it!
Comments