A day off from the World Championships...

If you're reading this just for the throwing/World Champs stuff, skip this entry. I wanted to go to see all the throwing finals. There were no throwing finals on Day 6 of the world champs, so I went to Potsdam, rented a bike, and rode around all day. (Yes this was my 2nd day in Potsdam, for those of you keeping track.)

Berlin, and Potsdam, as I found out, are very bike friendly cities. They actually have separate sidewalks for bikes, and even seperate traffic signals for bikes!

So after what was a series of wrong turns and long rides in the wrong direction, I finally got to one of the places I wanted to go, Park Sanssouci. Its a Central Park-type place, but instead of being a park built for the people of Potsdam, it was a backyard for King Ftiedrich II. Here are some pictures of things in the park:

A building in the "Chinese Tea garden", not sure of its significance...

and a sculpture on one of the buildings up close.

I continued walking and came across this garden...

where you could walk through a tunnel made of plants. Sweet.

Another side of the same garden.

Windmill.

Schloss Sansoucci is at the top of this hill. This was the King's summer home...yes, the guy built a summer home in the backyard of his regular home.

A close-up of the fountain from the last picture.

An outdoor bathtub! I guess the king was into that...

A cool shot of a bridge and a river running through the park. This is still someone's backyard, mind you...

and THIS is the palace! I was standing as far back as I possibly could and still couldn't fit the whole thing in one picture, so I took this video.

Tats where one guy and his family lived. Its good to be the king.

So I left the park and kept riding my bike until I came across the river that runs out of TieferSee (Lake Tiefer), and I just snapped some pictures.

The last one is a picture of some graffiti under a bridge...Germany is so punk rock!

So as you can see from the pictures, it was a beautiful day, but it was HOT. And, I had been riding a bike around all day, and hadn't drunk enough water, so at this point I was very dehydrated, and if you know me (and how much I hate the heat and hot weather) was not in a pleasant state of mind. However, riding along the river I saw many people just hanging out, some were sunbathing, and some were even swimming, despite the numerous "Swimming Forbidden" signs all along the river. I figured if those people were doing it, I could too. I chained my backpack to one of the wheels on my bike, and jumped in the river for about 5 minutes. That cooled me off, and my happy mood was restored for the day.
On my way back to drop the bike off at the rental place, I snapped this picture of a castle. I don't know what it was really, there were no informational signs or anything like that explaining when it had been built or who lived there. I guess thats Europe though...there are so many old castles spread around that people don't really think they're anything special.

So I went back to my hotel, tired from all the bike riding. I brought back a Turkish Pizza mit Donerfleisch (I seriously want to go back to Germany just so I can have some Turkish Pizza, its that good, my mouth is watering just thinking about it!!!), and of course, some bier. This is Rex Pils ("Pils" being short for Pilsner, which is what a lot of beers over there were), and Schwarzbier. I'm not beer-literate enough to describe how they tasted, but trust me, they were delicious.

So the last thing of my day away from the championships...I obviously didn't go to Germany to see what was on TV, but occasionally I turned it on and one night I came across this.
You'll have to turn the volume up to hear it, but not too loud because halfway through I start laughing. Can anyone tell me just what the HELL this is??? I came across many American TV shows and movies overdubbed in Germany which were funny to watch, but this was on a level of its own. Whatever this thing was, it was on for literally hours every single night. No commercials, no change of camera angles, nothing except this little loaf of bread (or whatever he is) looking at the camera and talking for hours straight. I guess some weird people have their say in TV programming in Germany...

Berlin...T-minus one day to the championships

I slept until around noon the day before the championships. I had read about a beach on a large lake that was only a train ride away from the Berlin city center called Stradband am Wansee (which I think roughly translates to "The beach at lake Wan") so I decided to go there. I bought a Tageskarte, or Day Ticket, at the train stop. For 6.50 euros, this ticket would allow me unlimited rides on any train, subway, or bus in the entire city from the time I bought it until 3 am the next day...not a bad deal, considering I had to take two trains and a bus to get to the beach. Once again, it was fairly easy to get to, though...Berlin has one hell of a public transport system. So anyway, I got to the beach...

It wasn't as late in the day as some of the pictures might make it seem, it was just cloudy. It rains 300-350 days per year in Berlin, so I guess I got real lucky with the weather! Another one of those big chess boards was at another beach I saw while I was there, I guess they're a staple of German beaches? The rest of the pictures just show the beach, which was very nice. The water wasn't too cold, but did have lots of (what I'm hoping was) algae floating through it that kind of gave it a greenish hue. It wasn't too bad though, and there were showers for when you got out of the water if you wanted to rinse off. There was a nude beach there as well (with a strict no photography rule), but it was not well hidden, at all. There was a wall on the beach dividing the nude beach from the regular one, but it didn't extend all the way up or down the beach, and if one of the nudists wanted to go for a swim, you could see them in the water anyway. Its amazing what a lifetime of meat and beer will do to the human body.

After I left the beach I realized I was literally one train stop over from Potsdam, so I decided to go check it out a bit. Here's what I found after wandering for a bit...

The first picture is of Nickolaikirche (St. Nickolai's Church), which was a church built in 1837 that was currently undergoing renovations - it seemed like a lot of Potsdam was. The other picture is the Altes Rathaus, a town hall from the 1800's with a statue of Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders on top. I decided to go into Nickolaikirche for a closer look.

A picture of the altar......and a picture of the dome. The dome was HUGE and as you can see, I couldn't even fit the whole thing in a picture. There was a small room that had an exhibit on the history of the church and explaining the renovations it was undergoing, but it was all in German so I couldn't understand most of it. I did, however, find out you can go walk around the top of the dome. So, after going up two VERY narrow spiral staircases (it would have been impossible for one person to go up while another was coming down, so the staircases had traffic lights!) I arrived at the top, and what a view!

In the last picture, you can see the statue of Atlas on top of the Altes Rathaus. It was an amazing view indeed. After walking around the top of the dome a few times it actually started to get late so I decided to head back to Berlin. Before I went back to my hotel though, I decided to get off at a random, major train station and just get out and explore. I ended up getting out at Zoologischergarten, a stop near the Berlin zoo. The part of the city it was in was almost like Times Square in NYC, just a little calmer and not as bright at night. I snapped this picture in in a store window, which was an advertisment for the world championships. You can't see it in this picture, but the guy ironing his shoelaces had javelins next to him. It seemed to be a big deal that the World Championships were coming to Berlin.

All the walking around got me hungry, but I didn't know enough German, or have the cajones to try and order food in a restaurant. I came across a food stand with english translations on the menu, and one of the things available was "Pizza with Meat", which of course I decided to get. I grabbed a beer out of the cooler (yup, they sell beer everywhere in Germany, and you can drink it everywhere) and ordered the pizza with meat. This is what I got... It turns out I really ordered Turkische Pizza mit Donerfleisch, or Turkish Pizza with Doner Meat. A Doner (there should be those little dots over the O) is Turkish fast food, from what I understand...lamb meat with salad in a square pita bread type thing. Turkish pizza is a round, flat thing like the pizza we know, but when you get Turkish pizza with salad and meat, they wrap it up like you see in the picture. It was DELICIOUS. I need to find a Turkish district in NYC or something so I can have it again, it was that amazing.

If you're wondering, Berlin has the highest Turkish population in the world, outside of Turkey. Hence the Turkish influence on Berlin's culture, and the popularity of Doner Kebaps. I'm getting hungry for Turkish Pizza now just writing about this... The best part was the German beer (this time, Warsteiner) to wash it down.

A little side story, I finished the Turkish pizza before I finished my beer...so I just brought my beer with me on the train and finished it on the way back to my hotel. Yup, you can drink beer anywhere in Germany. What a country!