Travelog for: Moony

Hello everybody,

my name is Moony and I am a dog.
I am living together with my sister Sunshine and my mummy. She has a boyfriend who is living here, too.
Mum rescued me and my sister from a 1-Euro-Shop some month ago and after a long time at home, we decided that it is too boring here. So mum told us, we can become a ToyVoyager.
I read the site and looked at different TraveLogs and then I said: "Okay mummy, now let us go!".
But she said it is not as easy as I think...so now I am waiting for my first host.


That's me !

So, if you want to host me, contact my mummy please !

Moony

Host list
1. olgamaus
2. dandilion
3. Charda
4. StormHound

Today is a bad day for me.

Here you can see my sister Sunshine and me...

Sunshine has found a host and she left us today. She is flying to Australia now ! And I am all alone...


I gave her a hug and then she went away.

I was crying a long time...hopefully she will arrive safety and with a smile on her face...

sad Moony...

Hello everybody,

I am on my way to Remscheid now ! I hope, I will arrive soon. Today, the post office here was striking...we will see.


This is me and my little present for the first host !


Goodbye mummy, I will miss you!


I will show you when I arrive mummy. No matter, I won't forget you!

So now, I am on my way to my first host in Remscheid ! *wink*

See ya soon,
Moony

Hi Mummy,
I arrived savely in Remscheid. Katja came home at midday and found me in my envelope on the kitchen table. Her daughter arrived earlier from school, but she did not let me out. She has thrown all the mail onto the kitchen table and went into her room to turn on some music. She did not hear me calling.

But when Katja arrived she saw the envelope immediately. She opened the envelope and I got out of it. I was welcomed by her and Shaggy Bear. I gave her a nice postcard and I am carrying a letter to all my hosts with me.







Katja promised me to talk a walk later. First she had to put the vegetables she bought on the market away.



You will hear from me soon.

Bye,
Moony

Hi Mummy,
we just returned from our first walk. The whole afternoon the weather was looking good, but when we left at 5:15 pm, it started to drizzle.

The first exciting thing was this. Of course I did not intend to  do my business on the sidewalk!



The language on this sign is neither German nor English: It is Dutch. I hope that all German dogs will understand the sign.

We walked along this narrow lane.



Can you see what there is in this enclosure? I know, it's not easy to detect: It's a pot-bellied pig. There must be more of them, but only one was outside the stable.



This stork is not real, of course.



We arrived at one of the larger sports halls of Remscheid.



Close to the sports hall there is a cemetary including a memorial for dead soldiers of World War I. We will visit this memorial when the weather will be better. The cemetary is placed close to a forrest with a nature trail. You can find such presentation boards with interesting facts about life in the forrest. This one is showing local songbirds and other birds that are living in the forrest.

Then Shaggy and I rested on a pile of wood. Katja said that last year in January they had a terrible storm in this region that destroyed large parts of the surrounding forrests.





We took the bus back home.

We're looking foreward to dinner now - we'll have pizza.

Bye
Moony

Hi Mummy,
today we took a walk in the evening, Katja, her daughter, Shaggy Bear and me. We went through an old district of Remscheid, called "Blumental", in English it would be "Flower Valley". In this district many streets are named as operas written by Richard Wagner, for example we have a Valkyrie-Street, Tannhaeuser-Street, Rhinegold-Street, Parzival-Street and some more.

In this district you can find some beautiful old houses like these:





When we left this district we had to walk a short distance through a forrest. I saw this tree cave (I don't know how to say for such a large hole in a tree) and I tried to detect if maybe an animal would live there. But I could not see any.



From here you can see the silhouette of Remscheid. The sun has already begun to go down. Look, you can even see the tower of the town-hall, almost exactly in the middle of the photo, a little bit left of my nose.







When we arrived at Katja's home it was already dark. So we went to bed. Tomorrow we will go with Katja to the law firm.

Bye
Moony

Hi Mummy,
today Katja took us with her to work. We had a lot of fun. We read today's newspaper in the waiting room. Later we helped her to arrange some dates, we helped to make photocopies and to type something.







The most fun we had with the postage meter.



In Germany you have  to collect your mail with postage meter stamps in such large red envelopes before you put it into the mail box.



Then we brought today's mail to the mail box.

On our way home Katja had to buy some batteries in the shopping mall. Today we saw an artist!



In the afternoon Katja will take a walk with a friend. Shaggy and me are  looking foreward to it, I like running and playing in the forrest.

Bye
Moony

Hi Mummy.
in the afternoon we took a walk with Katja's friend. She has two boys, one of them was going to his basketball lesson and the smaller one visited his grandma.

We saw some interesting signs in the forrest today. I
This sign means that this area is a nature reserve.



This sign is showing the course of a subsurface gas conduit.
In the forrest some people built their houses and of course they need gas for heatiing or cooking.



We walked back along the railway route.




Then we went to the sports-hall to pick up the son of Katja's friend. The boys are already gone to the changing room.



We went home because Katja has to do a lot of updates 

Tomorrow we will go to Wuppertal, the town with the world famous "Schwebebahn", a suspension railway.

Bye
Moony

Hi Mummy,
today we went to Wuppertal for shopping. Wuppertal is a neighbour town north to Remscheid. We got there by bus. As the name of the town implies it is built along the valley of the river Wupper.

Let's begin with the Concert-Hall, inaugurated in 1900 by the German emperor, William II, and his wife.



One of the most famous jewelers in Wuppertal has a museum for clocks.



Now two photos of the town centre are following.





We had lunch - can you see where  ?



Along the river Wupper the "Schwebebahn" is built. The Schwebebahn is a suspension railway that was opened in 1901 A.D. It is the oldest monorail system in the world.

The suspension railway travels along a route 13.3 kilometres long, about 12 metres above the surface of the river Wupper  and approximately 8 m above the city streets.  At one point the railway crosses the A46 motorway. The entire trip takes about 30 minutes.

I like the Schwebebahn. It's swinging in curves. We made some photos.









Here you can see the "Kaiserwagen", a historical waggon. You can hire it for special events like marriages or birthday parties, it's not used for regular transportation.



We're resting a little bit, 8 m above the street.



Here you can see one of the old stations, "Landgericht", the district court.

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Here is a station that was restored some years ago. It is the station "Schauspielhaus". The Tanztheater Wuppertal, headed by Pina Bausch, is world-famous and regularly plays at theatres in New York, Tokyo, Paris, London etc.





We were very tired and drove back home by bus. At home Katja cooked pasta with vegetables, cheese and tomatoe sauce for us.  Moony and me went to sleep without watching television.

Bye
Moony

Hi Mummy,
this is Shaggy Bear's last evening here. He is a little bit sad that he has to leave but on the other hand he is looking foreward to see Hamburg. Katja told us that Hamburg is a beautiful town with an inner port.

To light up Shaggy's last day Katja had a surprise for us: Ü-Eier! Their correct name is "Kinder-Überraschung", but everyone is calling them "Ü-Ei".

Here you can see us opening the Ü-Eier:











Shaggy Bear found a little toy with a flying ring in his egg and I found a little orange bunny.

We played with our toys and went to bed early because Shaggy will have to get up early tomorrow.

Bye
Moony

Hi Mommy,

today Katja came home with fresh vegetables from the farmer's market. She wanted to cook a soup with red lentils. I helped her though I don't like vegetarian soups. I am a dog, not a rabbit! In the afternoon we planned to take a walk in the forrest, so I didn't want to argue about soup.

I helped to cut the vegetables.





But then I saw something better than soup! There is already missing one - who was this? Hmmm, there's nobody but me





In the late afternoon the weather became really nice. Katja met her friend at the shopping mall for taking a walk.

Here we are on our way into the town centre.



Now you can see the rear side of the townhall



and here another part of it.



This road is leading from the central station into the town centre. On the left side behind the trees you can find a large cemetary. We walked across the cemetary to a supermarket.



I like this statue very much. Can you see me?



I found this sign at the supermarket door (it means: Dogs have to keep out) but I climbed into Katja's bag and nobody could see me.



To get into the forrest we had to walk down Remscheid's steepest street with a 25 % gradient.



As a real little dog I was happy to run through the forrest.





I'm very tired now, I think I'll go to bed now to dream of this  chocolate covered sweet stuff I stole from Katja today.

Bye
Moony

Hi Mummy,
today Katja and me visited a friend of her, Kerstin. The two ladies wanted to take a walk and have dinner in a restaurant called "Sunshine Ranch". They planned to walk there through the forrest. But first they had coffee at Kerstin's home. In the meantime I had a look around and saw this sleeping cat on the sofa. His name is simply "Kater", the German word for a male cat. He was almost asleep.



Then I saw somethin large and hairy, the same color like me. This was Jimmy, the family's dog. Jimmy is a former stray dog from Portugal who was adopted by Kerstin's family. He is really nice. Have a look at him and me (by the way, one of my life missions is fulfilled - a photo with a real dog!)



We walked through the forrest to the restaurant. On our way me came through this part of the forrest, where a terrible storm in January 2007 caused heavy storm losses. In the background you can see the district of Remscheid called Lüttringhausen. Katja's fried is living there.





We saw a parked car, an older Mercedes Benz, with something really typical German on the rear window shelf: A crotched toilet paper cosy. The plastic lawn and flowers next to it are also weird, but the toilet paper cosy is as typical for elder Germand drivers as garden gnoms in front of a terraced house.



Finally we arrived at the Sunshine Ranch. First we had a look on the menu in front of the restaurant.



Katja and Kerstin ordered potatoe squares with salsa and aioli and calamari with salad and large beers.



This stuffed cattle was hanging on the wall.



Here you can see some more decoration.



Now we are back home and we are both tired. We have to feed those funny little animals with round ears, long tails and sharp teeth and then we will go to bed. Katja is certainly going to read as every evening.

Bye
Moony

Hi Mummy,

today Angus, Katja, a friend of her and me took a walk. We planned to walk for about 90 minutes so we could see the “Müngstener Brücke”, Germany’s highest railroad bridge. This bridge is overstretching the river Wupper, which is the border line between the towns Remscheid and Solingen. One part of the bridge belongs to Remscheid, the other one to Solingen. This bridge is more than 100 years old and about 107 meters high.

We walked through the outskirts of Remscheid. Here we found this sign. This confirms my suspicion that dogs are not very welcome here. They are not allowed to go shopping and obviously we have to hide in the forrest or to use a water closet. Katja told me that many dog keepers don’t want to walk far with their dogs, so they let them do their business somewhere in a garden or on the way to the forrest because they don’t want to walk so far themselves.

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We walked through a forrest where many smaller creeks are flowing downhill into the river Wupper.



Not far from this creek you can find a beautiful viewing pavilion. It is called “Diederichstempel”, it was donated by a rich director of Remscheid in the year 1901. From this pavilion you have a stunning view at the Müngstener Brücke, the river Wupper and the landscape around.

On our further way through the forrest we saw this little waterfall. It is not a real waterfall but there is a lot of water flowing down the rock face.



We reached Solingen-Unterburg where we saw an old little church and a graveyard with graves of the years about 1750 until 1850. The tombstones are all made in a similar style of a special sort of brownstone. Some of them are really weathered while some of them still are in a good condition.

First we rested among some beautiful flowers in a flower bed.



Now we will show you the front door of this little church and some of the tombstones.









Now we are walking towards the bus station to take a bus back home to Remscheid. Here you can see more of Solingen-Unterburg, in the background you can see Schloss Burg, a medieval castle.



Now Angus and me are going to play a little bit.

Bye
Moony

Hi Mummy,
today Katja's daughter is celebrating her 16th birthday. That is a very important date in Germany because at the age of 16 you are allowed to buy beer.

Angus and me even bought a little present for her - chocolate sweeties filled with wafers. From Katja she got a new backpack.









She really was delighted to get a present from us  .

When the postman came he brought an envelope with another ToyVoyagers. Chompers arrived today! He is also a cute dog, but he is larger than me. And of course larger than Angus.





We told him that today was the exactly right day to arrive because of Alex' birthday. So we could celebrate in the evening. But before joining the party Katja took us to the fun fair.









Here is a big wheel!



After the fun fair it was party time!

Bye
Moony