Every European city worth its salt boasts at least one castle (it’s a bit like US cities and Starbucks). I’ve been to a considerable number of European cities and by the transitive property of whatever that is, I’ve been to a lot of castles. Some small. Some large. Some charming. Some completely and utterly useless. High on my list of castles that sucked two hours from my life that I’ll never ever get back is Schloss Sanssoucci in Potsdam. The Summer Palace of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, it was named Sansscouci because Frederick didn’t know how to spell Hakuna Matata. My least favorite of the castles we visited, we were forced (though not at gunpoint) to wear recorded audio devices, despite the fact that we’d come with a PAID private guide. We were literally locked into each of the 11 castle rooms, one after the other. A surly female guard turned on her recorded device, allowed the recording to play just adjacent to her ear, and not until every last riveting recorded word had been spoken did she unlock the next room, shove us all inside and then lock the door behind us. Thank heavens it was cool and stuffy. If we’d been locked inside hot and stuffy castle rooms, forced to move at her glacial pace I’d have staged a peasant (not “pleasant”) revolt. As it was I found myself counting down the castle rooms, hoping against hope for some surprise form of escape to emerge - perhaps a diversion, or even a modest (but preferably bloodless) invasion? Most of the room decorations were, in my humble opinion, hideous. The least of my least favorites was the room decorated with brightly colored ceramic fruit and beasts attached to the walls and ceiling. Tasteless royals with an endless capacity to spend are a frightful combination. One of my favorite things about Sansscouci is that Frederick liked ruins because they give any good castle a certain sense of gravitas. Since Sansscouci didn’t have any actual ruins nearby, Frederick had some made. Stand at the front door of the castle and gaze off into the distance at Fredericks’s faux ruins, you’ll be humming Hakuna Matata in no time.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Apr 2014 02:50:04 +0000
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