garden tagged posts

In Learning German 2003, Europe On  09/08/2003  One comment

A short trip from Berlin is to spend a day in Potsdam visiting palaces and gardens. Our first stop was the Sanssouci Palace (Schloss Sanssouci). We did a tour (in German) in the interior of the palace visiting many rooms. It is like others palaces I have already visited, something unreal for me, exaggerated and exuberant.

From there we walked on the beautiful gardens to the Chinese tea house (Chinesisches Teehaus). Once more; exuberance. The house is surrounded by golden statues. We continued to visit the Roman baths (Römanischer Bäder). It is incredible to imagine how they lived here. Everything it is so pompous that looks like it lacks life, that it is really cold and distant.

We got late to the new palace (Neues Palais), it closes at 5pm. Since I was tired I lay down on a branch in the shade and waited for Lorena. She went walk around the palace to see its architecture.

By dusk we walked to the lake to see the marble palace (Marmorpalais) and the Dutch village...

In Europe, Eastern Europe 2002 On  16/07/2002  No comments

One of the most incredible places here is the subway “metro”. There is the largest and deepest escalator I’ve ever seen. I looks like we are going down into a big hole. The decoration is all from the 50s. There are some stations that are totally closed, dark. You don’t see when the train is coming, there are iron doors that open only when you can board in. It gives a claustrophobia feeling, the walls are thick and the iron doors always closed. It reminded me the film “The Cube”. Some people told me that the doors and thick walls are due to the pressure from the river and canals above.

I decided to visit Peterhof, a palace with nice gardens and lots of water fountains. If before I compared St. Petersburg to Paris, Peterhof is their version of Versalles. After an hour squeezed in a bus I got to the palace. The line to get in the museum was huge, it reminded me what it is to travel in Europe during the summer. I spend a few hours waking around the gardens...