Travelog for: Pepita

A surpise parcel arrived! It's not another TV, but a package made by students for students. It contains some things which you can use in the lectures.


When Katrin opened the parcel, Fed and I couldn't wait and crawled into it.


This is what we've found:
a writing pad
a pen
a highlighter
and poster stripes

Look at this mess on the desk! While Fed and I are relaxing and talking about life in Canada and Russia, Katrin is doing homework and a lot of other stuff. Let's hope that the desk is clean again on Sunday evening...

Katrin's class is on a field trip to Wolfenbüttel today. It's a small town in the state Niedersachsen, and it took about three hours by train from Hamburg until we arrived. Right now we are on the way to our destination.


And were do librarians go on a field trip? Right, they visit a libary. This is the main building of the Ernst August Library, it collects books from the 17th century and before. Inside the biulding it wsn't allowed to take photos, but I prefered to stay outside and enjoy the sun between the legs of this huge lion.



During the break we started to discover the town a bit.


We found old houses,


a wolf, the mascot of Wolfenbüttel


art


and the castle.


Before the train back home left, we spent some time at the Christmas fair. I loved the little huts with the fairy tales.



In the train back home, Katrin's friend grabbed me and let me read with him.

Katrin got very excited when she came back home today. Her TV Etwas came back home after a year of travelling around the world. He will take a rest from travelling until the end of the year. Right now he is telling us from his adventures.

At the weekend Katrin got a great surprise from her boyfriend: a self-made Advent calendar! There are 24 presents and she will open one each day until Christmas. In Germany Christmas is celebrated on December 24th. It's common for children to have an Advent calendar fillded with little pieces of chocolate, but today there are Advent calendars filled with everything. Katrin says that she used to got a self-made Advent calendar from her parents when she was younger. There were 24 little bags and they were filled with sweets.

Katrin was again on the way to a library for doing some research and since she was early, we left the subway at the station "Landungsbrücken" and had a look over the Hamburg Harbour.




This ship is one of the ferries which cross the river Elbe and in the back you can see the theater building where the musical "The lion king" is played.


And of course there is a huge ship which is now a museum, it's called "Rickmers Rickmers".

Today I visited a very famous town of northern Germany: Lübeck! This is me in front of the most famous building of the city: the "Holstentor".



Lübeck was part of the Hanseatic league in the Middle Ages and next to the river Treve you can still see the typical old Hanseatic buildings.



In the Christmas time Lübeck is also famous for its Christmas market. Katrin says she didn't like it very much because in every hut you could either buy something to eat or something to drink. And there were many foreign people from Denmark, Norway, Sweden or Finland.



Next to the church there was a Christmas market for the children with a "Fairy tale forest". Again there were little huts with figures from fairy tales in it.


I also found between two huts this cute little guy: the devil!

When Katrin came back home from her trip to Schwerin today, there were some surprises waiting for her.

AbbyB has send a Christmas surprise from Canada: a candle and sock yarn (which reminded Katrin that she haven't even finished the first pair...)


The other surprise has brought the "Nikolaus". In German it's a tradition that in the evening of December 5th the children clean their boots and during the night the "Nikolaus" fills them with sweets, nuts or even little presents. Katrin got tea with bamboo flavour. That sounds a bit weired, but it tastes like lime.


Then Fed, Etwas and I went into the living room and who do we meet there? Santa Clause! He tells us a bit about his job and how everything is prepared for the big night.

Today was a big saying goodbye day. Fed is travelling on to Poland and Etwas is visiting Fed's mum in Russia. And me? I'm the only one who stays here...But hey, now I'm the one who will ALWAYS go somewhere with Katrin.

While Katrin was bringing my friends to the post office, I sneaked out in the garden and guess what I saw there? The first snow of the year!

I'm on my way to another Christmas market, this time I'm in Schwerin. We've been walking through the city for a while, but there were many, many people in the mall, all doing the big Christmas shopping today.


On the market place there were a lot of huts, in this one there was a crib with Maria and Josef and baby Jesus.


I loved this band...


and this huge Christmas Pyramid.


What you can't see on the pictures is, that it is very, very cold, there are about -10° celsius. That's why we neededsomething hot to drink: a typical drink on a Christmas market "Glühwein". It's usually red wine with spices. It warms you perfect in this cold!


On the way back home we found this woman sitting in the snow. I went over to her and wished her a merry Christmas.

It's the day before Christmas Eve and Katrin's family decorated the Christmas tree. Well, Katrin, her brother and her dad decorate the tree, than her mum comes and wants some changes.


My favorites are the wooden stars:

Merry Christmas to you!

In Germany you open the Christmas presents already in the evening of December 24 th.
Right now we are waiting for the typical Christmas meal of Katrin's family: goose with potatoes, green beans and red cabbage.


Now there is a whole bunch of presents under the Christmas tree. All presents are facedown with the name tag and we are playing a game. We are rolling the dice and when someone got a 6, he or she takes a present and it is opened by the one it was  meant for.

I've already travelled again to Schwerin and this time I'm finally going to visit the castle garden.
On our way to the castle we went by the little harbour. I hope you can see it, the water here is still frozen.


Here we go, the bridge leading to the castle:


In front of the castle was still a huge Christmas tree.


The backside of the castle - and the sun was hiding behind clouds again....


One of the huge angel statues

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I'm sorry that I can't show you nice photos from my New Year's Eve party, but Katrin has been sick during the last days and didn't take any more photos. But we had a nice evening playing board games and drinking colorful cocktails. And we watched a TV play which is shown every New Year's Eve again in German TV. It's called "Dinner for one" and it's very funny. You can watch it here: part 1 and here part 2. Don't worry about the beginning, the first minutes are in German, the rest is in English. The man explains in German, that there is the 90th birthday of the lady and she is celebrating it with her four friends. There is just one problem: the four friends are already dead!