Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - Berlin (Liz)

Today was quite a full day. We were able to fit in a lot thanks to riding around in Mark's parents' rental car. We started at the botanical gardens, where Janet would often take Mark and siblings. They have a gigantic greenhouse section which is where we spent most of our time. In the main greenhouse there is a pond where Mark and Kurt would often go to look at/play with turtles. We were disappointed to find that the turtles no longer exist - just some big fish in the pond. Honestly I'm not too much of a plant lover so the greenhouses didn't appeal to me too much aside from the nice pond.

The best shot we could get of the greenhouse. There was a lot of construction.

Claire likes the peonies.

Liz is unaware she's been caught in the tendrils of the Venus Liz Trap.

Koi pond, formerly the turtle pond.

Mom and dad in the greenhouse.

From there we went to the neighborhood of Zehlendorf, Mark's old stomping grounds, and saw the first house they lived in for about 1.5 years in Berlin. They lived very close to Mark's school, JFK school. We lunched in a park just outside the school grounds and then we were lucky enough to be able to tour the school grounds (an assistant principal was standing at the gate and told us to come on in). This was by far Mark's favorite part of today. It was the first time he was able to be on the school grounds since his time as a student.

House on Leuchtenbergstrasse.

Front courtyard of JFK school.

More of the elementary section of JFK school. Most of my classes were in this building.

After a brief drive by some other memorable places for the Abersolds, we went to their other old neighborhood, Krumme Lanke. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day and we started at the lake they often went to for swimming and biking. The lake was beautiful and had a nice green hue to it (not the nasty kind of green lake color). There were also a fair number of nudes sunbathing, mostly men. I am happy to report that I avoided seeing all naked men's fronts but I definitely saw more than my fair share of rear ends - all shapes, ages, and sizes.

Trail around Krumme Lanke

Then we walked to the Abersold's second Berlin house, the mansion. The house is incredible deep so it doesn't look as impressive in picture as it actually is. Eight bedrooms, 8 bathrooms (some half baths), 3 floors plus a basement, and a 2 bedroom MIL attached. From there we walked to Mexicoplatz and found some ice cream. After we had each eaten 2 scoops, Janet discovered in their menu that they have a spaghetti ice. I had never experienced this delicacy so we all shared one. It is vanilla ice cream pushed through a mold in the shape of spaghetti, with strawberry sauce and shaved coconut on top. It was pretty awesome.

The Kleiststrasse house.

Spaghetti Eis!

Then we headed to Potsdam, a town southwest of Berlin, former home of the king's summer palaces. This is a very impressive complex and the Neue Palais and the Sans Souci palaces which we visited were interesting. They are in the process of restoration, but it seems to be taking a very long time. This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There were also some fake ruins which was kind of fun. There was one random gray cloud in the sky, and towards the end of our time in Potsdam it poured down rain for at least 20 minutes. It was so weird because everywhere else there were blue skies with small cumulus clouds. We got a little wet.

You can see which statues have been cleaned and which haven't.

Claire amused herself with a stem. She didn't mind the rain at all.

Sans Souci.

Our final stop for the day was dinner at the Rakow's house. The Abersolds first met them in Berlin, and then about 20 years later they were Dale and Janet's mission president. The Grunewalds were also there, the Abersolds' former stake president. He was later president of the Freiburg temple. Mark and I didn't have much to contribute to the conversation but the company was nice and it was fun to listen to their stories.

We didn't get back to our hotel until around 10. Claire was zonked and so were we! All in all, this was a day of nostalgia.