I am seeking a good introductory reference that could lead to an understanding of the properties of geodesics in complete CAT(0) metric spaces. I am especially interested in learning the differences between geodesics in these spaces and those in an $n$-dimensional Euclidean space with its usual Euclidean metric, which is of course CAT(0). I am ultimately interested in simplicial, cubical, and polyhedral complexes, but I am willing to start anywhere. Thanks for educating me!
           alt text http://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0925772112000752-gr001.jpg
           _{[Image from "Shortest path problem in rectangular complexes of global nonpositive curvature" (Elsevier link)]}