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The Smaller But Older Gate for Me

At left you see Berlin's Brandenburg Gate. I took the picture Monday night around dusk, just before we climbed the Reichstag dome. This is probably the most famous symbol of Berlin -- particularly reunited Berlin. While the wall was standing, it ran just along the side of the gate (you can see a picture of that from 1969, here). The gate itself stood in the "death strip," a no man's land in East Berlin that lay just within the wall.

Today, the gate is a symbol of reunited Germany. It has been renovated in the past few years and now traffic no longer drives through it (the fumes were damaging to the gate).

The nearby town of Potsdam also has a Brandenburg Gate, shown in the picture on the right. According to our tour guide in Potsdam, this gate is smaller but older than the one in Berlin. Potsdam, formerly in East Germany, is probably best known as the site of the Potsdam Conference during the last days of World War 2, where Truman, Churchill, and Stalin met to determine the future of Germany. This is the meeting that resulted in the divided nations of East and West Germany. During the East Germany days, much of Potsdam was taken over by the KGB; today these buildings are being renovated as private homes again. Potsdam is also the home of some beautiful palaces built by Frederick the Great, including Sans Souci, which we toured on Wednesday.

And now we come to the Laura Petix portion of our travelogue. I only wish I had a picture of the other Shrunkin', which was inside the Easy Internet cafe on Kudamm. Shrunkin' and the web, all in one easy location! (I should mention that I've seen neither Starbucks nor Dunkin' Donuts in Munich; I was very surprised to see them in Berlin. However, London was full of Starbucks when we were there last March.)


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