Travelog for: Pippi

Hi Mom!

Today I will show you Graz as seen from the Schlossberg, a small mountain in the city center of Graz. In my last entry you saw the clock tower up on a mountain and that is where we went today!
You can see me with a model of the Uhrtrum, once again made for blind people, and in front of the real clock tower. Unfortunately it s being renovated...
We had a great view over the city from up there and looked down at the Kunsthaus and the Mur. Many other people enjoyed the beautiful day and had a coffee in a café there!
It was a wonderful, sunny day and we also loved to look at the autumny trees with the colorful leaves!

Hi Mom!

Yesterday we went to Southern Styria, the area where they grow wine! It is so beautiful here in autumn and a popular destination for tourists. You can take a walk through the wineyards or just enjoy a glass of wine on a balcony!
We had a nice plate with delicious meat and had a nice dry white wine with it!
Later my hostmom bought roasted chestnuts for us tvs and we really enjoyed this relaxing day!

I'm off to Brussels now, so do not worry about me, Mom! I will update when I get back!

Salut!

Hi Mom!

I'm in Belgium now! We arrived here in Brussels today and went to our hotel. Because we were so hungry, we decided to walk to the city center for a meal. Of course we ate the delicious mussels and french fries! Look at the huge pot of mussels!

Then we did some sightseeing! You can see me in front of a funny sculpture, then looking down to the city, in front of some exhibition and later on the Grand Place!
I have to tell you, there is chocolate everywhere in this city - truffles, chocolate bars and even the Maneken Pis, the tiny man, who is kind of a landmark, can be bought made of chocolate!
Yummi! I'm also writing in chocolate brown today!

Hi Mom,

today we decided to drive around in Belgium, so we went to a car rental. You can see me in the car. We then drove to Ghent, a really nice city with lots of churches.
And we saw some rubber duckies in a fountain...But I'm not sure how they got there!

Hi Mom,

we are back from our short holiday! It was sooo cool, and so much chocolate and beer 

When we came home, there was a new toyvoyager waiting! It was Drilo, a nice dinosaur. We told him about our adventures and shared our chocolate with him!

It's time to say goodbye to Austria now!

I am leaving for my next host. We enjoyed a nice breakfast today, in front of the tv where we were watching the skiers! Can't believe it's ski-season again!

All right, Mom, next update will follow from my next host!

Love you!

On my way to my next host I met another TV in the mail. His name is Dusel, who is now back home after travelling the European Trail. Together we travelled the last meters and knocked at the door of Katrin's apartment. And guess who is wating for us? Two other TVs, Muumipeikko (he says hi to you mum) and Bubo from Wales.


Dusel brought a postcard from his last host, I shared some sweets. It has been a while since there was such a big group of TVs together here and we had a lot themes to talk about.

Today the first snow has fallen. Okay, it has fallen during the night, because when I left the house, the snow started to melt again.


This candle shows us, that the advent time starts on Sunday. Just four more weekends until Christmas!


Katrin decided that it is time to prepare the first Christmas presents.
Muumipeikko helped her to wrap this chocolate for her American penpal,


I decorated the present for the boyfriend,


Dusel was writing a card to Mummipeikko's mum...


and Bubo discovered a present from St Nicholas. The words say, that the present shouldn't be opened until December 6th.


We surprised Muumipeikko with a little surprise. It was his last afternoon here in Germany. Tomorrow he will travel back home to Finland. after spending a nearly a year in Germany.


He wasn't the only one who leaves Leipzig, Dusel will travel on to his next host, too.

It has been snowing a lot last night and the temperatures had fallen below zero.
When I woke up this morning and looked out of the window, I discovered footprints of a bird on the window sill.

Although there were degrees around -10°C and snow falling the whole day Katrin took me with her to the city center of Leipzig.

Behind the church of St. Nicolei there was a part of the Christmas market. The Christmas market is in nearly every street of the city center and you have always the smell of bratwurst and "Glühwein" (hot spiced wine) in your nose.


We followed the street to the café Riquet (known for the elephant heads at the wall).


The market square in front of the old town hall is the main Christmas market. There is also the huge Christmas tree and even a mailbox from Santa Clause. I heard some people saying, that Santa Clause is sometimes here to give little presents to children, but I missed him today.




On the square near the church St Thomas is a "Märchenwald" (enchanted forest).
I had a closer look at the fairy tales Snow White...


...and The Princess and the Pea.

Hi mum,
I hope you didn't worry about me. Life here became a bit boring, Katrin spends her days going to university, doing the household or reading.

Talking about books, look at this shelf, it ist totally cramped with books. Katrin has become a member of bookcrossing (www.bookcrossing.com) and with every meetup she brings more books home


Bookcrossing is like toyvoyagers, you just send books around the world instead of toys. I became a bit curious and took a book which I would like to register. We logged in to Katrin's profile page and entered the name of the book.


On the next page I filled out all the information about the book like title and author, a description of the book and a rating.


At the end we got a number which Katrin wrote on this label and put it into the book. The number is an ID number like the one on my plate.


In another shelf Katrin collects all the books that she has already read. She will give them to other Bookcrossers at the next meet up or release them in the wild.


This book is going to start it's journey tonight.


I wanted to see what happen to the book. Katrin wants to meet a friend and decided to walk because she was not sure whether any trams would come.


There was so much snow and I couldn't resist to make a "Schneeengel" (snow angel). I moved my arms up and down and my legs to the left and right.



Seems like this car hasn't been moved for days...


Here I said goodbye to the book. I hope someone will take it home soon because it was a very cold night.


When we arrived at university to meet the friend, I found out, that we are going to watch a movie! It is called "We feed the world". It is part of a general studies class which deals with the topic sustainability.

It's a sunny Saturday and we travelled to Halle, just about 30 minutes north of Leipzig by train. What we want to do here? Look for new bookcrossing books
This is supposed to be an open air library but there weren't any interesting books to take home. Katrin wanted to put us inside one of the boxes for taking a photo, but they were frozen and we couldn't open them!


This was a bit disappointing, but when we arrived at the city center we smiled again: there was another Christmas market


In front of the curch there was a skating rink


I also discovered a wooden crib.

I'm going to spend Christmas with Katrin's family in the northern part of Germany. We arrived today just in time to decorate the Christmas tree!

Merry Christmas mum!
In Germany the "Weihnachtsmann" brings the presents in the evening of December 24. Bubo and I were really excited when we heard that someone was knocking a the door.
It was Santa Clause! He even had some time and read a Christmas story to us.


Here is a close up shot of the two of us.

The sun was shining and the snow was glittering - the right weather for a walk around the town.
Kellinghusen is a small town, but this "dish tower" in the middle of the market place shows what it is famous for: faiences


The next stop was the town hall.


The church


The street with the oldest houses of the town.


And our last stop: the lake in the park. You can't see the lake? Well, it's just behind me, covered with ice and snow.