We make it to the train unscathed and load ourselves and our bikes on the train. There's a special section of the train for bikes - it's the same as we have here for prams and wheelchairs but many more of the chairs fold up to allow for the length of a bike.
On arriving in Wannsee we cycle to the summer home of the German-Jewish impressionist artist Max Liebermann, which is now a museum exhibiting a number of his works. Liebermann died in 1935, but his wife was forced to sell the summer villa to the Nazis in 1940. It would not be returned to the family until 1951.
So the villa has a bitter back story and one that sits in a larger, darker shadow. Wannsee is remembered as the place in which the Wannsee Conference took place, the meeting at which representatives from the Nazi party, the SS, the police and the government administration met in 1942 to discuss "the final solution to the Jewish question", the systematic murder of the Jews of Europe.
It's difficult to equate the idyllic Lake Wannsee with its chilling history, especially on a sunny autumn day when the gardens of the Max Liebermann villa are awash with vibrant floral colour.
From the villa we ride to the House of the Wannsee Conference, which has been turned into a museum about the genocide of the German Jews and a memorial to those who were murdered. As with the Jewish museum, no detail is spared. This is a place that is confronting its past. As devastating as it is to visit these museums and memorials, there is also a kind of strange... comfort? reassurance? I'm not sure but it means something to me, to be in Berlin, as a Jew, in these houses of atonement.
We haven't had lunch yet, and I find the House of the Wannsee Conference hard to take on an empty stomach, but Mike is keen to show me one room in particular and I am glad that he insists. Called "The past is present", the room is simply made up of quotes stencilled on the wall, from survivors, children of survivors and children of perpetrators. Perth has had a number of survivors in its midst and my family knows a number of children and grandchildren of survivors. The past is, indeed, present.
We have lunch in a little lakeside restaurant and then set off for Potsdam where we will be staying the night.
Potsdam isn't very far, maybe half an hour's cycle up a gentle but relentless slope. We seem to be ploughing upwards for a very long time. Something seems to have gone wrong with my gears too and I am soon grumpily lagging behind Claire and Mike. Still I look happy enough in this shot which Claire managed to snap whilst riding herself (impressive!):
Having divested ourselves of our overnight bags, we decide to give our (my) saddlesore bottoms a rest and walk down to another lake (I can't recall now what this lake is called) for a swim. On the way we stop to buy some drinks from a petrol station (another novelty for me, that alcohol can be procured from a servo, also novel the incredible cheapness of said alcohol). I get another shandy. It really is delicious. I must drink it more at home.
We arrive at the lake. The sun is just starting to make its descent on the far shore and I decide that I should join Mike for a swim before it starts to get dark. I express concern about where to change. Claire and Mike laugh and point out to me that there are various people lounging about both in and out of the water, stark naked. I still change as discreetly as I can. You can take the girl out of Australia etc.
The water is surprisingly mild and reasonably clear. I am a little shocked by the sharpness of the rocky-lake bed - my feet are used to soft sandy sea beds. We swim out of my depth and as I tread water Mike points out to me that the lake, being fresh water, is not as buoyant as the salt water to which we are accustomed.
Once the sun has set we make our way into Potsdam to find somewhere to have dinner. Potsdam is quite gentile with cobblestone streets and well-to-do looking restaurants. I eat some kind of delicious and unusual ravioli but without being able to read the German menu I am unable to remember what type it was beyond "vegetarian" and "some kind of lemony sauce".
We walk back and I sleep well in my child's bed.