Travelog for: Jelle

We spent most of the day in the car on a little road trip. Here are the pics:


We passed by some vineyards and sunflower fields, as well as corn and wheat fields. I also saw some castles but we couldn't get a recognizable picture.

There was supposed to be a photo-tour of the city today, but as you can partially see in the picture it's raining once again, it has hardly stopped for any usable time all weekend. Hopefully we'll have some nicer days again soon. But we'll find something else to occupy our time instead.

Some of the tvs here like to cook and our host told us we could all help her bake something. We, that is Drilo, and TravelingTuffy and Crush and I.

We looked through some books and magazines and decided on apricot tarts.
We got out the form and the ingredients.

We measured and added flour, sugar, eggs and butter for the dough.

Plus peeled a line for some more flavor.

We kneded the douhg (the Kitchen Aid did most of the work) and wrapped it to put in the fridge for half an hour.

We prepared the apricots by cutting them in half, taking out the stone and marinating them in orange liquor and powdered sugar. Actually one's supposed to take a special aprocit liquor, but we made do with what we had.

This too has to rest for half an hour.
Meanwhile we made the filling, preheated the oven and oiled the form.
Then we took out the dough and made the bottom.

We baked it for 15 min and then added the apricots

and the filling of eggs with powdered sugar.

We baked it for another 40 min and now have to wait for it to cool down before we can taste it.

We saw another part of Essen today, called Kray.
Here's the townhall:

It now houses a small sub-division of the library and some offices of course. There was a mayor just for Kray-Leithe, a town that mainly consisted of farms, until 1929. During the industrialization som of the farmland was sold for coal mining instead and there are still some of the old miner's neighborhoods and a few buildings of the mines, that are now used as dance clubs, for expositions or for private parties.

We walked some way and found this residential street. We had to highlight the colors because in the bright sunligt/shade the camera didn't display them very wel, so we now look extra bright.

And here's a football club where some boys are getting ready for training and where it can get loud on the weekends when there are games of the local leagues
.

Today I visited the old town of Hattingen. There are about 150 old half-timbered houses, dating back to the 16th century.
Here the modern ciy center merges with the old town:


This is part of the old town hall.


Lot's of the Ruhr area used to look like this but was "modernized and improved" in the 1960s and '70s, something the inhabitants of Hattingen prevented in their town.

This house is called Bügeleisenhaus (flat iron house).



Parts of the old city wall still surround the old town.





Some houses are hard to access. They are all very close together but usually not attached. There are even windows and stairs in these narrow alleys, or they are the only entrance to other houses.
Here you can see an old lavatory that emptied onto the street:


The Kirchplatz (church square) is very well preserved in its original layout of houses that have a lower level that leads to the street


and one higher up that leads to the church place, where they surround the church in an oval form, with narrow stairs leading from the street to the church place between the buildings. (These are the same houses photographed from 2 different sides and levels.)

We visited the parrot park in Bochum today to get some new toys for the budgies.
There are some aras free in the middle of th shop area. They seemed friendly, but when we wanted to get closer to say "hi", this one wanted to get a bit too friendly for my taste, so I stayed at a save distace after that.

HEEELP!

I felt safer around these guys:

This one is a really pretty red and seemed very curious about foreign visitors.

He wanted to chat.

We enjoyed the view on the way back.
Former police headquaters



The convention center

On the Autobahn


Fields between the cities of the Ruhrgebiet




A newsstand with soccer magazines

Chocolate Müsli (cereal) anyone?

The budgies completely destroyed their old toy, so we as toyvoyagers were tasked with getting creative and making new ones for them. Here's the pack we bought yesterday:

This is what we got to work with:

The budgies love leather and aren't allowed any fibers.



Do you like it?

We went to the famer's market in Rüttenscheid. There are farmer's markets in many parts of the city, but we like the one in Rüttenscheid best because it had the largets choice of fresh vegetables, fruit and cheese.
We had to park quite some way away because many people think the same.

They had some very pretty flowers,


pretty little arrangements and dried flowers, this booth smelled like roses.


These wreaths are hung on the front door or put on the table as fall decoration.

We're still here and because TravelingTuffy likes to try out the candy of the world, out host unpacked some. Of course we other tvs were there at once and had to try some, too.
We started out with some swiss chocolate with 70% cacao, our host's current favourite. My favourite, too.



Personally, I prefered the sweeter kind. Here's a Butterkeks (butter cookie):
They come as regulars, whole wheat, with or without choclate cover and sometimes, as in this case, with a yoghurt cream. Yummy!

Swiss chocolate also come in variations, of course. Napolitains are small pieces, individually wrapped and often come in packs of different kinds:
Zartbitter/dark chocolate, Haselnuss/hazlenut, Milchschokolade/milk chocolate, and giandor(or a variation - a kind of chocolate/nut cream)


Here's Brause. It bubbles and prickles on the tongue. Ahoi is a favourite kind of that sweet here and these little bears come in coke, strawberry, banana or peach flavour.

There's also powder to dissolve in water, big chunks or other small forms with different flavours.

Maoam is another favourite brand. It's chewy candy in all kinds of forms now, regular or extra sour flavours (which should be "sauer" in German, but for some reason it says "sour" on the wrapper).


No list of favourite brands of candy would be complete without Haribo. Here we have their licorice mix, called Matador, but licorice is Lakritz in German.

There's salt licorice or other kinds in there. Here's the favourite licorice snail: Lakritzschnecke. It can be eaten like this or be unwound, or even separated into halfs before eating.

I'm stuffed!
I think I ate 10x my weight in candy today.

We were in the city center today after our host got off work but we had to hurry in order to complete our errand before closing time.

This Sunday there was a German-Dutch "Tuchmarkt" (cloth market) in werden. It was very busy and nearly impossible wo find parking in the whole town and even a long way out the roads leading to it.
The actual market wasn't that big but there were other small attraction and food booths and it was generally very busy.


Slate covered houes again.
These 2 black und white spotted lambs with their mother were very cute, along with some calves, little chicks and fluffy rabbits.

We visited Cologne and this is me in front of Cologne cathedral. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site. The towers are 157 m high. Many visitors try to count the steps when going up but usually mess it up at some point. Officially there are 533 but when walking up one might thin they've missed a few (thousand). There's space intended for 4000 people inside. You can find more information via the link. It's a constant contruction site, never really without a visible scaffolding or something smilar. Nevertheless it was quite impressive and it's in the heart of the city at the banks of the Rhine. We walked around and looked a some shopwindows. People in Cologne like the Carnival and have a big one in winter. Now the windows are stocked with halloweena dn winter things.

Our real reason to visit Cologne was the exhibit of Tutanchamun's tomb. Philbert, Crush, Knopf and I had a good time. It's kind of a modern multimedia installation to simulate the discovery of the tomb and give an idea of the historical context, both of Tutanchamun's death and of the discovery of his tomb by Howard Carter. They only showed replicas of the original finds but added some photos and copies of drawings etc. from the original dig.
Some informational boards gave a rough overview of Ancient Egypt and Howard Carter, to start the exhibition.
Next came short films and audio information before being led by the audio guide(pretending to be Carter) into the simulation of the tomb as it was originally found.

Here's a model of the grave. Above it was the grave on Ramses V. Carter already dug there 5 years before he actually found the tomb and had to stop so as not to make the other tomb, a main tourist attraction, inaccessible. He also stopped when he found some od worker' huts because he didn't think anything would be  found under them. He only went back to them in the last dig he could finance, when he had already tried all other parts of the Valley of the Kings. You see the depression were the worker' huts were, the steps leading down, which were finally discovered during the last dig, the first walle dup entrace, the corridor leading to the 2nd walled up entrance, the entrance chamber, an additional side chamber behond that, and a wall with the burial chamber behind it and an entrance to the treasure chamber beyond that.

Grave-robbers must have been in the side chamber shortly after the tomb was originally sealed, so that was in disarray, but they didn't get much further and the tomb was re-sealed.

Something like this was the first view Carter had when they made a hole into the second walled door, looking into the entrance chamber:


The outer-most sarcophagus out of 4:

It's as big as many rooms. Inside it are engravings of the story of the end of the earth.
It must have been very hard to remove the different sarcophagi from a chamber that was only about half a meter bigger in each direction that the biggest one. Photos show how Carter and his men were working with pulleys on site. In the end they had to take out part of one wall. The sarcophagi consisted only of 4 walls and a top, they rested on the ground as the bottom.

The famous mask was much in demand, so we couln't get a really good picture or one with me in it.


This is one of the amulets he wore under the mask. It's very beautiful, isn't it?

This is a copy of Carter's original drawings to document how the amulets and pectorals were distributed on the corpse:


In the end there were replicas of the furnitre shown individually. any looked amazingly modern. (Or maybe our furniture is amazingly old-fashioned.)

Hi Mom!

I have arrived here in Vienna, with lots of snow. I was so happy when I could finally step out of my envelope and enjoy the warmth in the flat. There was already another toyvoyager waiting, Drillo!

He gave me a warm welcome and we talked about our adventures. Then I was ready for some sleep!

Bye!