Travelog for: Crush

Whew! Took awhile to get this log set up, but I'm ready to be on the way to my first host! Apparently I'm going to Germany. I'll see you soon!



Crush

Yay, I arrived in Germany! And just in time to go and pick up my host's pet bird from the pigeon clinic. I asked if she keeps pigeons, but she doesn't. However the German Federation of Homing Pigeons has its seat in Essen and also keeps a clinic that treats all kinds of birds and some reptiles. In the waiting room we were greeted by these homing pigeans looking out the windows of their boxes.



On the way I looked out the window. This used to be a coal mining and steel work area, still is as much as any area in Germany atill does coal mining. In fact, we are only few streets away from Zollverein coal mining complex, a UNESCO world heritage site. Maybe I can visit it one day.

Here are some typical houses of the centers of the former villages that now make up the city of Essen

and some one family homes as they were built in the 60s. (Plus busses, the main way for many people to move around in this and the neighboring cities, there are also trams, a subway in the city center and of course regional as well as faster trains.)


Garden communities for people who live in flats are often along the railway lines.

Here is the patient: Hugi had surgery but seems to be recovering nicely.

At first she was a little shy, but eventually we could have a conversation.

This weekend there's the PYROFORUM 2010, a meeting of all kinds of professional pyrotechnicians and producers of fireworks.

On the evening of the 2nd day the producers usually present their current products. Some in the form of a fireworks display, others fire the single products and name each. In the end we saw about 4 hours of fireworks. Here are some pictures with me. Sorry, for being so blurry on most:







As you can see there was some wind, a little stronger at himes, so the formations didn't all look as planned.









This is a huge kite with fireworks on the line. They were amazing esp. in the dark and the varying light from the other fireworks.











There were also some other effects like these bright torches.

We brought away the old bottles and newspapers or kartons to be recycled. These containers can be found in many places throughout the city:
For glass - please separate green brown and white glass

One is only supposed to use it on weekdays between 7a.m. and 7p.m. because it can make a lot of noise when glass breaks but most people probably do these errands on weekends, esp Saturday, when going grocery shopping.

for paper

and for shoes and clothes.

Don't let me fall in, please!

Time to get out of the city a bit. This is the beginning of the Bergische Land. (mountainy land)

In preparation for Easter, we went chasing after little white balls today.

All this wood is for the big Easter fire next weekend.

Sometimes they are quite hard to find, but I managed to find everyone. I am ready for the egg-hunt!

It's very windy here, but when the sun comes out it gets nice and warm.

The bakeries are very busy these days de to Easter coming up. Here I am waiting for Vienna style layers for a torte. I think my hosts are planning on making Schwarzwälderkirschtorte (Black Forest (cherry) Cake) and Buttercremetorte (Buttercream Layer Cake).
See what other ready-made goodies they have here:

I'm taking you on a little tour of the center of Essen, toward the area called Rüttenscheid today.

This used to be a girls University preparatory school, then became a mixed prep school and has been somewhat in limbo in recent years after it was closed because there wasn't any need for so many different secondary schools in the center of Essen. Other schools like the Burggymnasium, the previous all-boys counterpart, now also a regular school, are using the building now.


The former Deutsche Bahn (formerly the state train company) head quaters with a statue of Bismarck in fromt of it:


Protestant church with a very nice portal:


This building was completely renovated a few years ago, the only left the old facade standing and built a modern office building inside it.


The newly reopened Folkwang Museum:

It was enlarged and renovated after the original concept, using a lot of natural light. It was reopened this year in time for the European Capital of Culture year and is currently doing an exihibition of all the famous and not quite as famous artworks it has in its collection, many of which were banned during the NS regime. It finally has enough space to get a lot of stuff out of storage. There are also many world famous exhibts here, with art work from private collections and other museums, that are shown only on few museums around the world. Esp. since this is a long weekend, there are many visitors not only from this area, but also from the rest of Germany and neighboring countries like the Netherlands, France or Belgium.

After getting lucky snatching a parking space in Rüttenscheid on market day, we passed this elementary school:


And here's the market:






Turkish or Libanese stands with bread, olives and spicy cheese are uite popular.

Yum, all that bread!


See the Easter bunny?



On the way back we passed this great shop window:

Hmm, I got to atually eat the promised goodies today. Here's the Schwarzwälderkirschtorte an the Buttercremetorte:

It's Egg-hunt time! I started out by getting a good look from above.


I know I saw one here...

There's another.

I got a happy yellow one!

What's in there?

"Hello! Are you the Easter bunny?"



A few chocolate and truffle eggs could be found inside.


Happy Easter!

I went on a little trip with my host who has exams over several days here, so we are staying in a B&B.

Don't worry, Mom, I am still here and doing well. It's just that my host seems to be sitting over some book or another or in front of a monitor all day long. Today I simply jumped into the shopping bag and got a picture in front of the local museum, tiny Fellenberg Castle, built as an industrial's mansion.

Next I saw an old Romanic Church with a small monastery and it's tiny remaining orchard.

I promise I'll update much more next month!

Here I am waiting at the train station. Can you see the little chapel on the hill behind me?

This is me in a regional train. It was very slow travelling because this train stops at every tiny station there is, even though they seem to be in the middle of nowhere sometimes.

I visited an outlet "village" with some cute older houses.

It's at the river Saar where some boats start for cruises around the Saar loop. There used to be lot of traffic on the river to transport coal, steel and iron. There's still some transport left, but most of the ships we saw were for sport or recreation.

The ride to Trier went through some very narrow roads alongsteep vineyards.



These are some houses we passed in Trier. The city looked very nice but was also busy with rush hour, so I only took some pictures while we were stuck in traffic.