From Schwerin to Potsdam: A Busy Weekend

Guten Abend everyone,

I had a great weekend full of spur-of-the-moment travelling. Last weekend I had no idea I'd be travelling both days this weekend, and I initially thought I'd be going to Hamburg or Kiel, as some of my new friends originally planned, but I ended up doing neither. Instead, I spent Saturday in Schwerin, the capital of the neighboring state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and a city I had never heard of until Sam (another American, whom I did not meet in person until Saturday morning) suggested going there on Friday. Rui and Akshay joined us as well. While Amanda still had plans to go to Kiel with her coworkers on Sunday, Rui and I discussed the possibility of travelling somewhere further to take advantage of her rail pass before it expired, and after returning to Lübeck she suggested Potsdam, which is near Berlin (about 3.5 hours away by train). While Potsdam is a bit far for a day trip, both cities were a lot of fun, and the travelling resulted in a great weekend, as well as an opportunity to get to know my new friends better.

Schwerin is a small city (even smaller than Lübeck), and we were easily able to walk around the city during the day. However, unlike Lübeck, they had a tram system. After spending my first weekend in the larger city of Bremen, I have found Lübeck's public transit to be disappointing, as there are no trams (probably because downtown is located on a small island), and the buses do not run very late at night. Additionally, Lübeck's buses come less frequently and do not stop everywhere at night, which is an issue for my friends who live towards the end of the bus line south of the city. While I don't know if the comparably-sized Schwerin has the same issues with public transit late at night, the mere fact that they had trams seemed like an improvement over Lübeck, although we did not need to use them.

After wandering downtown Schwerin, which I would definitely describe as "quaint," we headed over to the city's main attraction: Schweriner Schloss, a large castle possibly dating back in some form to the 10th century, and currently the seat of the state parliament. The castle was both enormous and beautiful. We even saw a wedding reception on the premises. After exploring and admiring the castle and taking a self-guided tour inside, our hungry stomachs dragged us back downtown to find lunch. After only finding several expensive touristy places and more affordable places that were closed, we finally found a place to enjoy brats and beer outside. Sam had currywurst (which I tried to order, but the man misheard me), and he offered us all a bite. This was when I learned how delicious currywurst is! It's essentially a bratwurst cut into bite-sized pieces and covered in a sweet curry-ketchup sauce (which Heinz sells here). We took our beers (Lübzer Pils) to go, celebrating the fact that there are no open container laws in Germany and we can walk around with "street beers" (or straßebier) as I refer to them. Additionally, many places sells bottles of beer in both a kleine (small) size (0.33 L) and groß (large) size (1.5 L). Since I finished a small bottle with my lunch, I of course needed to get a large one to go.

After lunch we headed to an art museum next to the castle. Some of the modern art, such as a music video and short film, only confused or mildly offended us, but much of the classic art was very beautiful. After the art museum we walked around a bit more, and then stopped by a grocery store to buy some more beer (Paulaner Weißbier, which I of course had to try due to my last name) to enjoy while sitting and relaxing in a small park. After an afternoon of exploring, we finally took the train back to Lübeck, and had dinner downtown while watching the first half of the Czech vs. Poland football match. Despite being the newest person to Germany in our group, I was able to suggest something on the menu that no one else knew about, Flammkuchen, which is similar to pizza and I had for my first lunch in Germany after landing in Hamburg. However, I couldn't resist ordering a spicy currywurst, but Akshay shared his large portion of flammkuchen as well. I also had a third type of beer, Carlsberg (which is actually Danish) with dinner. The day was very relaxing and fun, and I feel lucky that the other interns I have met in Lübeck are so nice and fun to hang out with. You can see my pictures from Schwerin here.

I woke up early again the next morning to head to the train station and head to Potsdam. Rui and I were worried we might miss the train because she was taking the first bus that stopped at her nearest bus stop, which was only scheduled to arrive at the bus station (across the street from the train station) a minute before the train was scheduled to leave. Because Potsdam is 3.5 hours away, it would not have been worth it to take a later train for a day trip. However, our backup plan was to join Amanda and her coworkers in Kiel. I attempted to arrive at the station with plenty of time to activate my Eurail pass and wait for Rui, but several people took an absurdly long time at the ticket window. Finally Rui arrived and I got my pass activated just in time for us to catch the train. We transferred trains in Hamburg, and we got to take a nice intercity train to Berlin. This train was faster, and the time went by fast. Because it was an intercity train, we thought it was going straight to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (main train station), but we accidentally got off two stations early in a part of Berlin called Spandau. While we lost a little bit of time, getting off early was not a big problem, and we hopped on the next train to the hauptbahnhof, and then caught an s-bahn (a smaller metro-type train) to Potsdam (but only after having a quick lunch at the Berlin train station). Finally we arrived, and while the travel time was well over 3 hours, it seemed to go by quickly.

When we walked out of the train station, we found that Potsdam was clearly a large city, and there was no way we would see that much of it in one afternoon (it was already nearly 1 PM at this point). However, we wasted no time, and started walking towards Sanssouci, a palace that Rui was very excited to see. While the palace was not as large and extravagant as the castle in Schwerin, it was beautiful, placed on a hill with a great view. While in walking distance from the urban city, the palace in a forest/park area. Behind the palace there were "artificial ancient ruins" built by Frederick the Great to provide his palace with a scenic view. We hiked through the woods to the ruins, and further explored the area, which also had a windmill. We eventually made our way to another nearby palace, the Orangery Palace. While Sanssouci is older, I found this palace much more interesting. The palace was larger, with a very beautiful lawn. We took the self-guided tour inside, and we able to climb up the tower (on a very narrow spiral staircase). There was a very beautiful view on top of the tower.

Since we had a long trip back to Lübeck, we realized we already had to slowly make our way back in the direction of the train station. We were able to see several other beautiful building from a distance during our walk in the park until we eventually arrived back in the urban city. We got back to the train station with plenty of time to spare, but we were exhausted, and sat down in a large field to relax for a while. We had done a lot of walking during the weekend, and it was nice to just sit and enjoy the weather, which was the warmest and sunniest since I arrived in Germany. Finally we had a quick dinner in the train station before the journey back to Lübeck. Despite travelling so far to see only a small part of Potsdam, the day was a lot of fun and I did see some beautiful sights. You can see my pictures from the day here.

After doing so much exhausting travelling this weekend, I found it hard to get up this morning for work (especially since I don't have a defined schedule), but I eventually dragged myself there. I missed most of a lab meeting that I wasn't informed about, but I accomplished a good amount today. I solved my circuit issue by taking out an unnecessary component (granted it was only an engineer's solution, I know I fixed it, but I don't know why it didn't work before), and I also learned about servos. I successfully used the flex sensors to control a servo motor, and hopefully tomorrow I'll actually build a flex-sensing glove (I might have to take a trip downtown to buy a glove to use). Hopefully I will finish this project soon, and then can start working with the BCI system, the reason I applied for this internship. Now it's already nearly time for bed, these posts take a long time to write. Hopefully I will have more travel stories next weekend, and hopefully I will have some interesting results in lab by the end of the week.