The Potsdam experience. They came for a carefree weekend to the town of Potsdam, these 45 AFE members and partners.
Located just to the southwest of Berlin, Potsdam was the garrison town of the Prussian kings. It attracted great minds like Voltaire, who lived in Sanssouci Palace on the invitation of his friend Frederick the Great. The scientist Albert Einstein lived in the nearby village of Caputh; he liked the orderly town nestled between woods and crisscrossed by rivers, lakes, and canals. In the 1920s and 1930s, Potsdam was a major center of the film industry. Since the reunification of Germany in 1990, Potsdam has again attracted people who like its sober, old-world charm, including creative designers such as Wolfgang Joop and scientists working in the newly-established university and the science park.
The ex-ADBers gathered here on 5–7 September at the invitation of Peter and Marilies von Brevern, recent migrants to Potsdam. Fascinated by its splendid past and its current vibrancy, they came not just to have fun but—as Ahn, wife of Philippe Benedic put it—“to touch base with good friends and reconnect with ex-colleagues, and to walk around sanssouci—carefree—in this our age of retirement.”
The gathering started with an informal dinner in Hotel Travel Charme, where most of us stayed. The hotel is located right across from Hunters Gate, one of several that access the 1,000 year-old town. After the usual hellos and how-are-yous, everyone sat down to a delicious meal of salmon on spinach with herb-flavored risotto and saffron sauce. German white wines and Potsdam beers added to the high spirits.
Saturday morning started with a tour of the park and palace of Frederick’s Sanssouci summer residence. The whimsical name was chosen by Frederick the Great under whose supervision the rococo palace was built in the 1740s. Frederick’s antechamber, library, bedchamber, private study, and all 300 odd rooms still stand in rococo splendor with paintings, mirrors, antique furniture, and stucco adornments everywhere.
After all that history we needed to unwind, and had a brief lunch, then a water tour of the lakes and rivers surrounding Potsdam. Unfortunately, the weather god required umbrellas to open midway, but that did not dampen our spirits.
The day concluded with a sumptuous dinner, showing off the best of today’s German cuisine at Hotel Bayerisches Haus, a former hunting lodge in the woods, built by King Frederick-William IV in 1841.
Over dessert, host Peter von Brevern delighted his guests with an inspired speech.
On the Sunday morning, members held their annual business meeting while the spouses took a walking (or was it shopping?) tour through the Dutch Quarter. The typical Dutch redbrick buildings, built during the 1740s, were erected to house “guest workers” from Holland. Today, the Dutch Quarter is a fashionable area for shopping, dining, or just having coffee and cake at La Maison du Chocolat. Members and spouses reported successful outcomes to their morning’s work.
The gathering concluded on Sunday afternoon at the von Breverns’ spacious, artistically decorated 19th century villa. The villa has extra large rooms and high ceilings. Sipping kaffee on the balcony overlooking a quiet tree-lined street of similar alt-bau villas and eating delicious kuchen, everyone enthusiastically thanked Peter and Marilies for an expertlyarranged program and for their gracious hospitality.
Most of the participants then went their own ways, back to Austria, Canada, France, Luxemburg, Switzerland, and the United States, already looking forward to the next reunion in Bremen on 4–7 September 2009. But a few wanted to see more and so the executive secretary, a Berliner, led a walking and bus tour of Berlin proper.
Among the highlights: the Brandenburg Gate, where in 1987 President Reagan called on General Secretary Gorbachev to tear down the wall and open the gate; the Holocaust Memorial of 2,711 steles; the newly-opened glass-domed Reichstag; and of course remnants of the Berlin wall where streetwise operators wearing the uniforms of the old German Democratic Republic’s police offer visa stamps to the now defunct country.
See you in Bremen!