I was supposed to go to Austin for a work meeting Oct 21 - 26. It was canceled due to It which must not be named. My initial thought after the cancellation was the same as that of any clear-thinking Berlinophile... "I'm already scheduled to be out of the office. I wonder if I can find a cheap flight to Berlin." So I looked... and I found one... so... off to Berlin for a Kurzurlaub (short vacation/break). As an aside, airfare + lodging for Berlin < airfare + lodging for Austin.
I'm going to forgo my typical long-form trip report and just mention a few places I visited that have zero to minimal mention on the RS website.
Bad Belzig
A search for "Belzig" on this site yields zero results. Bad Belzig is a town about 1 hour southwest of Berlin in the former East Germany. I enjoyed my few hours there quite a bit and would like to make it back some day for a more extended stay. It is in the midst of Naturpark Hoher Fläming. It has a great castle (with a 13th-century keep) that is still a living, breathing part of the community. It has an oddly-shaped church with a huge bell tower where Martin Luther preached on January 14, 1530. It has a cute old town with a number of half-timbered buildings. It has nature/bike paths that connect all the surrounding villages. It has a Therme. It has a TI staffed by an Englishman who is super proud of the area and who found himself searching for a forgotten English word or two to help a rare English-speaking visitor explore the area. He added my hometown to the page-long list of recent visitors to the TI -- all or whom had German postal codes.
Schmerwitz
At Schmerwitz, a village just outside Bad Belzig, one will find the workshop for Königsblau Keramik. I kind of love the pottery made by this company. The workers at the small workshop all have a history of addiction and are learning a useful trade. I speak German like a 3-year-old, and no one there spoke much English, but it was an interesting place to visit. The English speaker apparently was out of town! Adjacent to the workshop is a cafe that serves cake and coffee (and brunch on weekends). Nearby is the creepy Schloss Schmerwitz -- built in the late 18th century, used as Nazi youth military school during WWII, used as a Soviet military training facility postwar, and abandoned after German reunification. It is in the early stages of restoration (and is going to be gorgeous when restoration is completed).
Marienfelde Refugee Center Museum
The former village Marienfelde was incorporated into Berlin long ago and has a large facility that during the Cold War processed 1.5 million East Germans who immigrated to West Berlin. It provided refugees with documents, food and housing as they waited to be spread around West Germany. The main building is now a museum that documents the history of the facility. The exhibition has limited English, which is okay for me (though not ideal). The front desk person was unable to locate the English audio guide. One of the more interesting facts learned was that one of the administrators who interviewed refugees (including escapees) was a Stasi informant and passed on information gained from interviewees on how they escaped East Germany. The museum is free to enter. It will be of interest to hardcore Cold War history buffs, but certainly is not a "must see" (if such things exist 🙂). For a more recent history of the center, see this Medium article.