Potsdam

We crossed the river heading south out of Berlin and entered Potsdam which was part of the former East Germany (as only West Berlin was carved out of East Germany to form part of West Germany).

The town is beautiful with tree lined streets and gorgeous houses. It almost looks like the grand old towns of upstate New York, like Geneva, in their heyday.

One house is subject to three competing claims: 1. The original Jewish owner who had the property confiscated by the Nazis; 2. The subsequent owner during the Nazi era who then had it confiscated by the East German state; and 3. The current owner(s) who bought the land from the East German state. The courts have been dealing with it for 10 years and is very complicated. The Jewish family has to show that in 1938 they were forced to sell and the second owner has to show that it wasn't complicit in the original confiscation.

Some of the architecture is in the form of wooden Russian style houses. There are 20 such houses in the middle of a park in central Potsdam and were a gift from the Czar.

We're going to grab a light lunch at Movenpick and then head into the Sanssouci royal palace. (In German the word for palace is the same as the word for castle with fortress being a separate word.)

It looks like we're now switching to a mindset removed from both the Nazi period and the Cold War.