Despite ( or more probably) because of all our drinking, we decided to go and see Fred’s Palace at Sans Souci. We statrted off with our ususal breakfast and tea and toddle off down the road to the station. Now as Paul is puffing away on his magic fags he discovers he hasn’t got his travel pass and so we go , eyes downwards, back to the room, searching as we went. Cursing his luck we returned to the room and behold – there was his travel ticket, left on top of the cupboard, beneathe the TV.
Feeling quite relieved we would not need another travel pass, we toffled off back to the station. Strange occurance at the station; there were Police cars and Fire engines all parked up outside. We carried on down to the station, having worked out we only need the S7 to Sans Souci and we’d be away. Ha! Blasted train was in the station crawling with fire brigade dudes telling everyone to leave and catch a tram as it was “buggered up” althouh it only looked like the engine had caught fire and was not going anywhere in a hurry.
Of course we had the non English speaking fire dude who told us to get a tram and catch the train from there, except the trains go in both directions. So we decided to head southwards and pick up the trains from somewhere down there. A brilliant plan you might say except it didn’t work as we ran to the end of the line and saw no rail connections. Once again we consulted the “magic” but, “microscopic” map of the underground and saw lots of wiggly lines, one of which looked like it might lead us back towards the middle of the city.
So we jumped onto the next tram and off again about half way along where we were looking for U5 or some blasted thing to get us back toward towrds the middle. It eventually left us with the S bahn we wanted to get the Fred’s palace and off we went once again. However, as I haddn’t got a clue where we were going and the palace was too small to locate we went off towards Spandau which stuck in my mind because (ah, it all comes back to me) the Prussian armoury and Marlene Dietric museum as good place to visit.
So we get off the modern looking place, with not a sign of Sans Souci, we decided to ask the non speaking English lady at the help desk. She has no idea of what we were after but, we did pick up a full scale mad that was big enough for us both to see where we wanted to get to Sans Souci. Slight Problem though as we were at the wrong end of the map, as far as we could tell. So off we go back down to Sans Souci both feeling a bit under the weather and hungry by now.
A couple of beers later and stomachs full of German snacks we got back on the train and arrived in one piece to catch the tram to the palace. This time there was no tram crashed along the line and we got there easy like and found our way to the Windmill at the top for a look around. Well that should have been a full on Deutchsmark alert as we found they wanted 15 euros each to enter the damn thing. To think me and Andrew were working all the inside little bits for nothing and now they wanted paying to go upstairs! Well we gave that a quick no thank you and went to get another drink. While we quenched our thirst, I went back into see how much it would cost to vist Sans Souci and I went back with the two tickets. Paul wasn’t too impressed with 15 euros each to enter the palace but, agreed for a walk round as it was getting a tadge dark by now.
So we went through Fred’s home and got a good earfull of memories about the place, although the narrator did very much forgett to tell everyone that King Fred loved his dogs and wanted to be burried with them when he died (all still in the grounds) and not to be disturbed by his wife. It was still a pretty little tour and we had a stroll down the hill to see the dogs and the rest of the palace grounds. Paul was impressed by Fred’s grave and his dogs, and enjoyed the walk down to the front of the palace grounds where we got the bus back to the station.
We got off in the midle to see if the Chinese was open, we were a bit t0o early again, but were seated and given the menus to have abuthcers at. I saw there was a Chinese beer for sale and some nice nosh so we wated until we got the chance and scoffed the lot. When you way it up we had done a fair bit of walking around and we did get to see Fred’s pad so it wasn’t too bad a day out and we had a fantastic Chinese meal too.
We got back safely to the hotel in one piece but, somebody had beenin and left the door unlocked. Not a pleasant reminder to take all our cash with us but, we did anyway.