Recollections: Kladow, Sacrow, Pfingstberg, Russische Kolonie

This should have been written a while ago, but alas! My project is eating up my time like it's made of chocolate. Yum.

For the 16th Wandervogel on the weekend of Pentecost we...what did we do? There was a big ferry we took from near the S-bahnhof Wannsee to Kladow (still in Berlin), where we looked around for some good old German Schloesser or Schloesschen or whatever else that was good and old and German-Brandenburgian. At some point we made it to Sacrow (Potsdam) where we stumbled upon the Kleingartenverein located near the Heilandskirche (Church of the Redeemer).

Besides walking past beautiful garden after beautiful garden, we accidentally found the beekeepers' residence we thought we would never find unless we were really stubborn. There's so much trust in this community, even towards strangers, it seems. But it may also be a village thing that you can just walk into somebody's yard, sit out by their goldfish pond and have a cup of mineral water while they show you their delectable selection of self-made honey and discuss life before and after die Wende (when the wall came down).

Since Sacrow became incorporated into Potsdam in the 1930s, it was part of the former east, but it was physically separate from the the urban areas under communist control by the Havel river and a big forest on the other side of Sacrower See. Kladow would've been the easiest urban area to reach, so if you lived in Sacrow and wanted to get some supplies from the city without going for a swim/boarding a boat, you'd have to show your passport each and every time, since you were crossing into Berlin from Brandenburg. Pain in the arse, no? Yes!

The Imkerei/Apiculture in the Kleingartenverein has been run by the couple whose front yard we were sitting in (before it started to rain). If there was ever a display of German Gemuetlichkeit, this was it. There were anecdotes, photo albums, and even entry into the the small house once it started raining (looked just like it did in the old photos!). I wish my lack of confidence with the German language didn't hinder me so much, that I would've asked more questions and had a larger part in the conversations, but it seems that I'm much too much better a listener than a talker, as always. That, however, does not negate the utter neatness of the experience as a whole.

But eventually we reluctantly decided it was time to end the visit if we were to run to the Heilandskirche before the rain got much worse, which was not an unreasonable assumption. In fact, it turned out to be an accurate assessment, as shortly after we got to the place, it was pouring. Our fearless leader, Jacob, has an impeccable sense of timing. The inside is not so spectacular, but the outside is just plain lovely, and the architecture made me think of my recent trip to Milan. Even better, the back side was right on the river. The rain was pouring, the wind was blowing, but we were having a blast under what little roof we had, watching between the columns as the river tumbled wildly about.

Eventually, it let up, and we dared to come out from our narrow shelter and head towards the nearby Schloss, which wasn't that grand. No, rather, the 1000-year-old oak that was falling on itself in this and that direction was quite *deep breath* AWESOME! ButIhaveyettouploadpictures,soyou'lljusthavetowait.

Afterwards, we somehow ended up on Pfingstberg, one of the tallest places in Potsdam, whose Belvedere was unfortunately closed once we got there. It was still nice just looking around, and guess what: we made it! Since the German word for "pentecostal" is "Pfingst", we just had to do ascend, but whether the name of the mountain/hill (hard to call anything in Berlin a "mountain") had anything to actually do with Pentecost, none of us were really sure at the time. Accroding to the above-linked Wikipedia article, it was either renamed in memory of the Prussian Queen Luise Pfingsten after her death or due to an alleged visit by the Prussian King/Elector of Brandenburg Friedrich Wilhelm III, on Pentecost.

In the vicinity of the hill was our next and last stop, the Russian Colony Alexandrowska (the "w" is pronounced like a "v" in German). Even in the gloomy shadow of the clouds, the lovely woodwork on the cozy houses were still visible, and even though our plans to catch an open-air showing of Battleship Potemkin was foiled by the weater, we still managed to enjoy a lovely, traditional Russian dinner at, well, the one restaurant we found there. Can't miss it, as it's near the colony's historical museum/open-air cinema site.

A day like this was definitely worth walking around in wet socks and shoes for hours on end :-)