Travelog for: Peti

And we celebrated christmas in Wasserstraße. There were the parents of my host fiance and the brother with his girlfriend. First we ate Raclette:

and later we made a walk through Wasserstraße before the Santa Clause (in German: Weihnachtsmann) arrived. My hosts son Fynn (who is 6 years) was so excited. The Santa Clause brought him a lot of toys and books. In Germany, Santa is coming on the evening of 24th December.

After some days in Wasserstraße and Seggebruch, we finally are back in Hameln. Yesterday we spent the day in Seggebruch (where my hosts family lives). There we had a great dinner and also had presents.
Back in Hameln we are here we helped to put the presents under the tree:


and we also found some presents which Santa left here for some friends of my host (who'll visit them for the next week):

now we are playing with Fynn he got a lot of playmobil and we are playing it with him:


and we played with Fridolin (a new cuddle toy of Fynn):

Hey Mum!

yesterday we were at the "In Extremo" concert in Hannover. It was really great. But we didn't made any pics.

Yesterday also some friends of my host family arrived and we made a little trip to the castel Polle (built 1285). It is also called the castle of Cinderella. Here are we with some pics with it:




the view from the castle ruin:


it is the view on the "Weserbergland". The river is called "Weser"..











we are driving to the next castle:



Castle "Hämelschenburg".. It is a castle of the "Weserrenaissance", a stil of the buildings in this area.



theres a pyramid in the back:




the lake in front of the castle was frozen, it is very cold here in the moment.






and we also saw some geese:

Today we were in Hameln. It is a really beautiful old town with a lot of different buildings. Mainly it is around the legend of Pied Piper.
A statue of the Pied Piper:

at the right you can see me with the Museum of Hameln and left the “Stiftsherrenhaus”

The “Hochzeitshaus”, there is a police in and the register office:

a map for blind people, also with the legend on it:


The Münster (a church)

some more old buildings:





The “Rattenfängerhaus” with oldest type of the legend (of 1284) at the wall:

Today we celebrated New Years Eve..
we made the preperations for the party:

the raclette:





and we watched "Dinner for one", it is always shown on tv on New Years Eve in Germany:



we drank a bowle:

and at 0:00 we had sparkler:

and we also had table fireworks:



and these are we at an later hour (ups, drunken too much beer):

but I could drink some more:

hey Mum!
You won't believe it, but in Hameln it is really cold outside. We have -15°C at night and it was -10°C at the day.. it is the coldest winter since 20 years my host mum said.. but it also snowed, so we went sledging. it is the last day for chris here in Hameln and tomorrow he'll leave for England, but we enjoyed our day:

Today another toyvoyager arrived here. It is Dottie Mouse. She is coming from Germany, but was in Teneriffe before. It must be a shock to be in this cold weather now.

3 days ago we celebrated the birthday of my hosts son. He got 7 years old. And today they made a childrens birthday party with 6 other children. They made a little pirate party out of it, with a pirate cake and treasure hunt. Here you can see us with the pirate cake, doesn't it look great and delicious?

This weekend wasn't so nice. The weather was good, but my host mum was ill and my host dad had to write for his diploma. That's why we walked through the flat and wanted to look what we should do.
Here I am with the big map and the postcrossing cards in the living in room:

I also found a card from Hungary:

Then we found all the crystals which my host mum collects, they should help with different health problems:

And we didn't know what we should watch, Mumu wanted to see a Horror movie, Dottie wanted to see LotR, Harold wanted to see Star Trek and I wanted to watch Gilmore Girls:

so we decided to play a game, but there where so many games again, that we didn't know which we should take, it seems our host mum is board game addict:

so we looked for a book:

and the we read all our own books, I took a crime book of Terry Pratchett:

And later we thought of making decos, those are little booklets which are sent through the world:

This is a full booklet:

And here we are decorating one:

It was a nice weekend finally as we had a lot to do..

Hi Mummy,
I arrived in Remscheid today at my new host Katja's home. I was travelling with Harold Giraffe. We had a lot of fun in our envelope, it wasn't boring at all.

We were welcomed by many ToyVoyagers. We took a welcome photo in the kitchen window. I hope you can see that it's snowing.



In the evening Elston Echidna had a surprise: He has made lamingtons, a special cake from Australia, for us. He will leave tomorrow so it's his farewell dinner.



Lamingtons are squares of sponge cage, dipped into chocolate icing and dessicated coconut. They are really good!

Bye
Peti

Hi Mummy,
today the weather was sunny and of course we wanted to go outside.

Katja wanted to meet a friend who is living in one of the other districts of Remscheid, in Luettringhausen. Luettringhausen is a really old district, with a lot of woodland around. We went there by bus. We went to the bus station in front of the central train station. On the next photo we already reached it.





The next photo is showing the town hall of Luettringhausen.



Katja's friend was already outside with the family dog, Pepe. Pepe is a four month old puppy.

We took a walk in the forrest.





The next photo is showing Pepe with another dog he met in the forrest. Pepe is the brown dog. He is a former stray dog from Portugal. He was adopted by Katja's friend's family. He is now four months old and will propably grow to a verly large dog.



When we came home we played in the garden. They have a hanging basket-chair here!





Sweetsy, the cute little gingerbread man, and Louis built a snow man.





Katja got a piece of carrot from the kitchen and soon the snow man was ready.



We were chilled to the bone than and went inside. Katja and her friend already made coffee. They also had sweets for us.



Bye
Peti

Hi Mummy,
we took a walk today to the district Hasten and to the outskirts of Remscheid. Hasten is one of the oldest districts of the town, dwellings and mostly old factories close together. This district was not destroyed in World War II, so most of the old houses remained.







Hasten is surrounded by woodland. We saw a hedge of holly, covered with snow. I liked it very much.



We than went to pick up Katja's friend who wanted to walk with us. She is living in a district close to Hasten, it is called Rath, a housing area with mostly one-family-homes and terraced houses. From here you can see Hasten again, in the background.





From here we went into the forrest. First we had to cross a road in the valley, than we had to walk uphill again.



Katja told us that in summer many horses are grazing on these pastures. In the background you can see the hill with the town centre, unmistable the silhouette with the water tower and the tower of the town hall.





We were walking along the border of the neighbour town Wuppertal. Hidden in the forrest are a few more small hamlets like this.



We had so much fun in the snow!



On the way back it started to snow again. Can you see it?



Back home we all had to sit on the heating because our bums were wet

Bye
Peti

Hi Mummy,
we had a party tonight!

Do you know why?

Theodore is Voyager of the week, so he had a reason to celebrate. Fluffytail and Louis even made a medal for him.





We had delicious food: cheese, olives,  tiny tomatoes, sweet pepper and nachos with cheese dip.











I shared a delicious fruit juice with Harold.



Maybe I will also become VOTW one day. Than I'll throw a party, too.

Bye
Peti

Hi Mummy,
we visited the carnival procession in Lennep today. Lennep is one of the oldest districts of Remscheid. Katja's partens are living here and it's the only carnival processioin in town.

It is helt for about 30 years on Carnival Monday. There were about 25 floats and marching bands.

First we went to Katja's parents. They are living in the seventh floor, the top floor, of a multi-storey building in Lennep. From here you can overlook the whole old town. Many of those old houses are older than 250 years.





The carnival procession started on a fairground and made its way through the town. It came around the street where Katja's parents are living, so we only had to go down to the street to see it.

It was a rather small procession. In other regions of Germany, in Cologne, Duesseldorf and many parts more in the south of Germany, hell is breaking loose at carnival time, from  Thursday, called „Altweiber“ (insuffiently translated to Woman's Carnival Day) until Tuesday. Almost nobody is working than, schools are closed and almost complete the population is celebrating and drinking gallons of beer (that's the part Katja also loves )

Still waiting for the procession ...



It was coming than ...





Traditionally they throw sweets from the floats into the crowd. We collected some of them and had a lot of fun.

Bye
Peti

Hi Mummy,
Katja showed me the town hall today. In front of the town hall is a space where the farmer's market is taking place twice a week. There is also a pillar showing a lion, the heraldic animal of the town.



The following photo was taking on our way back to work, after Katja's lunch break. I'm also living in a pretty art-nouveau-house, built in 1904, at the moment.



Bye
Peti