hanging with the old fritz

the old fritz would be king frederick the great. of course he's already bitten the dust a long time ago. but that's essentially a good thing as i got to visit his old haunt of sanssouci last week and i'm pretty sure i wouldn't have gotten that far during his lifetime.

apparently sanssouci is considered one of the 1000 places to see before you die. at least i once read so. thus i had been pretty excited and must admit that my first impression was rather subdued. with my memory of visiting versailles fifteen years ago still vivid, i discreetly turned up my nose at sanssouci's size at first. it's just got twelve rooms. this proletarian princess grew up in a house of thirteen rooms (plus one closet and a guest wc).

and then i stepped inside. where i was promptly informed that this had of course only been fritz' weekend getaway. ah. actually he resided in another castle on the grounds. with 200 rooms. oh. and then i stepped further inside and... ooh...aah... is that real gold all over the room? ooh... aah.

i got to see the room that voltaire used to chill out in. apparently he and fritz were pretty close chums. and then there was the library with its more than 2000 books. and then there was the music room where fritz used to play his flute all day long. no pun intended. although it is to note that the castle doesn't include any rooms for mrs. fritz. after all, sanssouci means "without worries". makes one wonder if fritz might have been the original creator of "no woman no cry". ultimately i found no info on that, though i found a pop art portrait of fritz by andy warhol.

now this all seemed pretty suspicious to me. hanging out with voltaire all the time instead of the mrs., the warhol worshipping, his love of music and gardening. so upon the return to my very middle class 5-room-digs, i looked him up and got confirmation that he was indeed a homosexual. which also explains all that glittery room deco. also, he never wanted to be king and even tried to run off on a regular basis - sometimes in male company. desperate measures which his dad countered with sending the poor chap to prison. ah, the good old prussian discipline. also for sure is that it was fritz who was responsible for cultivating potatoes in germany. which causes my compatriots to lay down the lovely earth apples on his grave site.

but back to my visit. while wandering through the park, i eventually came upon two buildings that i couldn't identify at first. they seemed to be two smaller castles and i supposed that they were separate ball rooms or something like that. but one look at my map of the grounds and i learned that those were the staff quarters. which was the final blow. i admit sanssouci is impressive and the old fritz seems to have been a rather cool dude too. even though he probably never would have socialized with me.

one down. 999 places to go.


some side notes about my own humble or not so humble origins:

my dad's side of the family owns a family crest and apparently a castle somewhere in switzerland too. though i don't know how many rooms it's got. but it sounds pretty good, right? especially if you consider that my mom's family consists mostly of coal miners.

so recently my dad claimed that his family were wealthy land owners who apparently left switzerland for germany 250 years ago because of the decline in moral standards (!). i decided to do some research on that and it didn't take me long to dig up some of my ancestry online. and the emphasis here is on "digging up". instead of land owners, my ancestors' occupation was commonly described as field workers. the old fritz would not have been amused.