The afternoon and the evening of Tuesday, August 21st, are devoted to an excursion to Potsdam with a visit of the famous park and castles of Sanssouci, followed by a four hours boat trip on the Berlin-Brandenburg lakes with dinner on board. As all of you will know, Potsdam has been of enormous importance in the Prussian history. It is a separate little city close to the southwest border of Berlin and not more than 25 km away from the centre part of Berlin, that is where the conference takes place.
After
finishing the morning session at 12:15 we will leave from Unter
den Linden at 12:30 by bus for Potsdam. Please pick
up one of the lunch packets (ordinary or vegetarian) hold ready for you
before leaving the conference site.
Ten buses will wait in front of
the conference building, enumerated by Gr.1, ... Gr.10 and
bound for different destinations in the Sanssouci site: New Palace, New
Chambers, Orangery Palace and the Picture Gallery (see the Potsdam map
in the enclosed flyer "Prussian Palaces and Gardens").
Every
group will be accompanied by a guide. The travel to Sanssouci will have
the character of a sightseeing tour through part of Berlin (governmental
quarter, Potsdamer Platz, Kurfürstendamm, etc.) as well as through
Potsdam (Cecilienhof castle, historical Russian settlement Androvka etc.).
We will arrive
in the Sanssouci area at about 14:30, where
we will leave the buses for a two-hours visit of the park with its famous
buildings and one of the above-mentioned castles.
The
buses will depart again at about 16:30 and will bring us
to the Dutch Quarter, the pittoresque city of Potsdam (see the map).
The following one-and-a-half hours are at everybodies own disposal.
You can use it for a walk or some shopping.
We
strongly recommend that you have the above-mentioned map with you,
because we expect you in time between 18:30 (begin of boarding)
and 19:00 (departure time) at the boat La Paloma,
which lies at the Lange Brücke (bridge over the Havel, see
lower part of the map, the place of its berth is marked there by an anchor).
If anyone intends to skip the excursion but to participate in the conference
dinner he should note that Potsdam Hauptbahnhof (see map) is
the terminus of the Berlin S-Bahn line S7 (your badge is still valid
there) and is situated only a few
hundred metres away from the Lange Brücke.
On
the boat we will have a buffet and drinks which hopefully everbody will
enjoy. The boat will sail the Havel to the north and will then return.
The landing is planned at about 22:45 at Wannsee. The landing
place lies close to the S-Bahn station Wannsee, from where you can
use either line S7 (first staircase within the subway, departure
times 23:12, 23:32, ...) or line S1 (second staircase within the
subway, departure times 23:13, 23:33,...) to reach your hotel.
One
final remark:
At
the end of August we have Late Summer in Berlin, usually a comfortable
and stable weather situation. It should be mentioned, however, that even
when the days are warm it may become fresh in the evenings and nights.
This is even more true on the lakes, so that we recommend to have
some adequate clothing available.