Far From Over

On the way I found a long walkway bordering the Potsdam Univerity Botanical Gardens. The walkway was wooden, decorated in an oriental style, and seemed quite charming. I stopped in my path and studied it, contemplating paying the garden a visit. On cue the rain started coming down harder. I started walking again.

Before long a familiar windmill came into view. Now I knew exactly where I was. What I hadn’t seen from afar had been the garden in front of the windmill, more welcoming in appearance than the Potsdam garden had been. Plus there was a place to sit down!

I took my rest sitting in a small wooden hut, scantily created from garden twigs and vines and roofed vaguely by leaves. It didn’t shelter me very well, but it was a place to rest my feet. As I looked around, I was better able to appreciate the myriad assortment of flowers that speckled this garden within the Sans Souci garden.

Of course, flowers weren’t all this garden boasted. It also offered, statue-framed fountains, shimmering pools of water, and my favorite – more tunnels crafted from living shrubbery. On another day I might have spent an hour or so here. Today, it seemed quaint in comparison to the previous wonders I’d seen.

So eventually I stood up. It was nearing 5, when all the palaces closed, and I had some fear that the tourist busses might stop running around 5 as well. So I stood up with the intention of making my way to the bus stop. To do so, however, I had to look to the right just enough to absorb three new facts.

1) The people few people coming in and out of this windmill might be dismissed as workers, except that some of these people had young kids with them, which in this area might label them as tourists. 2) I had never been inside a windmill previously in my life. And 3) The pass in my pocket almost certainly would allow me free entrance into this windmill if it was, indeed, open to tourists.

Once I put these together, I had no choice really.

Oh, there were lots of steps. There were an awful lot of steps. God there were a lot of steps. The thing was a hulking windmill. So I went in.

There’s not much to describe. The inside of a windmill, even a huge one, is pretty much what you’d expect. But it was cool to see the huge weird-ass wind-catchers spin by the windows, and I really enjoyed the experience.

After that I went back to my beloved hostel. In my entire life, I’ve never been so grateful for a half-hour train ride.

Back at David’s Youth Hostel I had a long and wonderful night of pretending to write in this journal while chatting with two Slovanian girls about the differences in our countries. They really didn’t make me want to leave the following day.

When they decided to call it a night I tried again to write, but ended up having my palm read by a middle-aged asian woman instead. It is sometimes hard for me to tell the age of women, especially some asian women. I was fully prepared to believe that she was younger than I was until she mentioned her 24-year old son.

I’ve always loved having my fortune told. I mean, I put no stock in the process, but it’s always interesting to have someone focus their attention on predicting how your life, specifically yours, will be likely to turn out (and in the knowledge that it will probably be a positive prediction).

She told me that I will have a long life, many women, and will do alright financially. She also said I have not one, but two career paths and suggested I might become a politician. I’d be surprised at how accurately she guessed one of my ambitions had I not spent the last half hour talking politics.

She said I should avoid marrying early and not to do too much worrying. She called me a warrior too. Fun fortune.