Berlin Day 2 - Films

 Once again it was another late night. It's crazy how late I am staying up, but the night doesn't feel like it
even starts until the sun goes down at 10:00 pm. We slept in and had a lazy morning so I could read and answer some emails. Around 11:00 am this morning we hopped on a train towards the Glienicker Bridge. For those who are Tom Hanks fans or history buffs, the Glienicker Bridge is the bridge of spies. Halfway across the bridge was the division between East and West Germany and it was used several times to exchange prisoners between the east and the west. I loved the movie with Tom Hanks about the prisoner exchange of Francis Gary Powers, the American pilot who was shot down while spying on The Soviet Union and Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, a top Soviet spy arrested in the U.S, so it was fun to walk over the actual bridge that was both used for the exchange and used in the movie.

Yesterday, Kate had told us we should go visit Potsdam if we had the chance. Potsdam is the city on the other side of Glienicker Bridge, so we crossed the bridge and caught a bus into town. We missed our planned stop, but serendipity allowed us to get off right in front of a film museum, so we went inside. Apparently, Potsdam is the home of Babelsberg Studios, a well-known film studio. It is the largest in Europe and is used to make many different movies and TV series. It has been around since 1910 and has survived through Germany's rocky history making films before during and after the World Wars for all political parties. The museum was filled with everything you want to know about film-making and Joe especially enjoyed this unexpected stop on our journey. Some of the American movies filmed at the studios included The Hunger Games, The Bourne Conspiracy, Bridge of Spies, Inglorious Bastards, some of the Avengers movies and more.

We had a late lunch at a restaurant near one of the train stops. One of the things I am noticing is that all of
these German restaurants offer homemade lemonade of many different flavors. I had Sweet Orange Lemonade, Joe had Watermelon Lemonade and Zach had Passion Fruit Lemonade. They were all very tasty. For lunch, I had Fruity Tomato Soup with some crusty toast and also a salad with a baked potato. The potato was covered with a thick white sauce called Quark. It tasted a lot like sour cream and according to Google it is a type of cheese made from warming milk until it curdles. Sounds delicious, right? It wasn't bad and it added flavor to the potato.

We took the train back to our apartment which was about 40 minutes away. Even though Potsdam is right on the border of Berlin, Berlin is a big city and we are staying in the city center. As we walked back to the flat, we stopped in front of the U.S. Embassy. We have seen several embassies around the Brandenberg Gate including the United States, British and Swiss Embassies. Gathered around there were a bunch of people wearing race number bibs in company shirts. A 5.5K race was about to start. It was the 20th annual Berlin Company Run. About an hour later, they various company teams ran past our apartment and we watched them out of the window while Zach called down to the runners "Schneller! Schneller!" which means "Faster! Faster!". It was strange to see a race happen so late in the day. By then it was around 7:30 pm, but it was also much cooler and definitely still light out, and after work.

Tomorrow is our last day in Berlin. We will take another high speed train back to Frankfurt in the evening. But before we do, we will be visiting the DDR museum as well as one or two others.