Even we cool kids take the bus sometimes.

Berliner Dom

There are many who look down on us that use the ‘tour bus’ when visiting a city. It is seen as too ‘touristy’ and no decent ‘traveller’ would consider it (though the fact I haven’t sold my house [that would be the house I don’t own], quit my day job [that would be the non-existent day job] and taken off for years of non-stop travel around the world means I am not really doing this travel thing properly. It seems I’m not the only one who thinks a lot of this is just immature snobbery.) But as of today we have used the tour bus in cities three times, and there are various advantages:

• When we travel without the human GPS (aka the father of our little trio) inevitably I end up getting lost at least once. Which can be fun, but serendipity can soon lead to disaster when you have a six year old who is beyond hearing ‘just around the next corner’ one more time which leads me to
• Travelling in a bus with a six year old is sometimes preferable to walking. I am a big believer in making the little blighters walk. Today alone Willem probably did a total of 4 km pavement pounding, and closer to 6 or 7 km on Tuesday. But most kids get a real kick out of sitting on the bus, especially the top of a double decker, double especially if it is open topped.
• Tours can give you a good overview of a city/area. So even if you do plan on exploring the place yourself on foot or bike, a tour with a commentary will perhaps point out places you hadn’t thought about, or at the very least teach you some facts you didn’t know.
• It’s a good way to cover a large area in a few hours. Berlin centre is rather compact and easily walkable, and the public transport is good, so you could probably miss a tour and still see everything. But somewhere like Potsdam, especially if you only have a day (and many people do Potsdam as a day tour from Berlin like we did), is a big area that is covered pretty efficiently on a tour bus.

In Berlin, for our first day of seeing the city, we took a tour bus first. Like other cities, Berlin has a hop on hop off City Tour, and there is a reduction with a Berlin Welcome card. The commentary was ‘live’ and in English as well as German, and did a good job of outlining the basics of what we were looking at. It takes you past most of the major sights, and as it is hop on and hop off you can use it to move around the city all day. Willem has constantly pointed out things since we took the tour, telling me when we saw them and what they were. It was also a good orientation to the major tourist sights in Berlin.

Sansoucci, Potsdam

Today we took a similar bus tour in Potsdam, but with a different company. After the large and agitated group of Spanish tourists on our bus got themselves sorted we were away for nearly three hours that took in most of the major sights of Potsdam. The commentary on the bus in English was via headphones, but we stopped off at three places to walk around and our guide gave his spiel in English as well as German, and was happy to answer questions (and listen to Willem’s observations). We had a quick walk around the outside of Cecilienhof Palace, which was the place where the famous Potsdam Agreement was hammered out and signed by the Allied Powers at the end of the Second World War.

Fredrick's gravestone, with requisite potatoes.

We also stopped at the opulent Sansoucci Palace, where Willem was impressed to see that Fredrick the Great’s dogs were now buried alongside him with their names on their graves, and even further impressed to learn their names were from Greek and Roman mythology. He was also quite taken by the fact that the tradition is to put potatoes, not flowers on Fredrick’s grave stone (Fredrick is responsible for introducing the potato into general cultivation in Germany. Can you imagine German cuisine without potatoes?!?!?) Our last stop with a talk from the guide was the Neues Palais, which is now partially a tourist attraction and partial buildings for the Potsdam university.

If you want to do your own ‘tour bus experience’ using public transport in Berlin, here’s my tip – do a return trip between Alexanderplatz and Zoo, using the 100 bus one way and the 200 bus the other. You will go past many of the major sights. Extra tip – make sure you are waiting where the back of the bus pulls up. As soon as the doors open, race up the stairs (carefully of course) to the top deck and then to the very front seats, and you will have the best view. It is usually crowded and the front and middle, but most tourists don’t seem to realise there is a back door. This bus can be very crowded, so try to get on and get seats quickly. They are very frequent, however, so if it is just too full wait for the next one!