Travelog for: Joe

Hey Mommy,

today I decided to do a short walk through the city. The weather isn't that good.
I went to the Brandenburg Gate. It is one of the most well-known landmarks of Berlin and Germany.


From there I walk to the Museum Island. I just stopped in front of the "Altes Museum" (old museum).


Next to the museums you can find the Berlin Cathedral.


Last but not least the highlight of my tour. The television tower next to Alexanderplace. It was constructed between 1965 and 1969 and with its height of 368 meters, it is the tallest structure in Germany. There is a visitor platform and a revolving restaurant in the middle of the sphere. The tower is part of the World Federation of Great Towers (WFGT).


I hope the weather will be better soon!

Yours,
Joe

Hello Mummy,

today we had to say goodbye to Beate, Chrissy and Tapsi.



We went to Halle today. It is the largest city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is also called Halle an der Saale (literally Halle on the Saale river, and in some historic references simply Saale after the river) in order to distinguish it from the town of Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia. The current official name of the city is Halle (Saale). The University of Halle was founded here in 1694. The famous Baroque composer George Friderich Handel was born in Halle in 1685.

This is the Technical Hallors and Saline Museum. It was founded in the buildings of the former Royal Prussian Saline, Halle upon Saale in 1967. Hallors had been members of a brotherhood of salt producers .


Here you can see me in front of the main radio studio of MDR .


This is the "Marktkirche Unser Lieben Frauen" (Market Church of Our Dear Lady), also known as St. Mary's Church and Market Church. It was built between 1529 and 1554. Its four towers, together with the Red Tower of the city hall, make Halle the city of five towers. In German, its official name is shortened to Liebfrauenkirche and it is also referred to as Marienkirche and Marktkirche. It is the church where George Frideric Handel was baptized and received his first organ lessons, where Johann Sebastian Bach inspected the new organ, and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach was an organist.



I also went to a the Christmas market. It smelled sweet everywhere and I finally got the feeling of Christmas.



In the evening we met some lovely animals!
A turtle named Ines, a hamster without a name and 5 lovely budgies.




I'm off to bed now.

Yours
Joe

Hey Mom,

today is not a good day. It is stormy and rainy outside! I don't like it. But I didn't stay inside. Greeny, Crawfish and I drove through small villages, forests and fields by car to Kemberg. It is a small town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. The town lies on the north edge of the Dübener Heide Nature Park.







When we arrived in Kemberg it stopped raining for a short time, so I could take a picture outside the car. The town's most striking sight is the soaring Church of Our Lady ( "Unser Lieben Frauen" ) which can be seen far away over the Elbaue (natural polder). It is a hall church with a nave and two aisles dating from the 15th century (or so it is believed) with an 86-m-tall tower built in the 19th century.


Hopefully it is not raining tomorrow!

Yours,
Joe

Hello Mommy,

today we went to Oranienbaum and visited the area around the castle. At the moment the castle is closed because of winter time and we couldn't go inside. But we saw the castle from outside and went to its gardens. The Gardens had its origin in the 17th century, when the marriage of Leopold's great-grandfather Prince John George II of Anhalt-Dessau to the Dutch princess Henriette Catharina, in 1659 brought a team of engineers and architects from the Low Countries to lay out the town, the palace and a Baroque garden in the former settlement of Nischwitz, which was renamed Oranienbaum in 1673. The Dutch influence remained prevalent in the Principality of Anhalt-Dessau for many decades.
Oranienbaum Palace was finished in 1683 as the summer residence of Henriette Catharina, where she retired after the death of her husband in 1693. From 1780 on Duke Leopold III had the palace and the park rebuilt in a Chinese style with several arch bridges, a tea house and a pagoda. In 1811, the orangery was built, with 175 m (574 ft) in length one of the largest in Europe, which still serves to protect a wide collection of citrus plants. It was too cold to go to the orangery!
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Princess of Orange-Nassau, inspected the restoration works on March 3, 2004.

This is the castle from the front (street view):


The castle from the backside (garden view):


The garden. I heard there are lots of palm trees in summer!


We walked to the Chinese pagoda...


Below the pagoda:


The beautiful Chinese pagoda:





Love,
Joe

Hey Mum,

today I visited the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm again. But today I went to Wörlitz. The central Wörlitzer Park lies adjacent to the small town of Wörlitz at an anabranch of the Elbe river. It was laid out between 1769 and 1773 as one of the first English gardens on the continent. According to the ideals of Duke Leopold III the park would also serve as an educational institution in architecture, gardening and agriculture, therefore large parts were open to the public from the beginning. Most buildings were designed by Erdmannsdorff, while the gardens were laid out by Johann Friedrich Eyserbeck. The gardens are protected from floods of the Elbe river in the north by a dam which is also a belt-walk offering numerous views along the park's sight lines.
Wörlitz Palace finished in 1773, residence of Duke Leopold and his wife Louise of Brandenburg-Schwedt, was the first Neoclassical building in present-day Germany. The palace and its interior with valuable cabinets from the studio of Abraham and David Roentgen as well as a large collection of Wedgwood porcelain were publicly accessible. Louise had her private home in the adjacent Graues Haus (Grey House). At the eastern rim of the palace's garden stands the Wörlitz Synagogue built in 1790 as a rotunda modelled after the ancient "Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, Italy. The Neo-Gothic St Peter's Church in the west with its 66 m (217 ft) tall steeple was finished in 1809.
The philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the aesthetic of Johann Joachim Winckelmann underlie the design of the park. Wörlitz Lake featured an island atop which was a model of Mount Vesuvius. The duke would stage fireworks that seemed to issue from an erupting volcano to entertain his guests. At the foot of the mountain on the island was a building intended to suggest William Hamilton's home at Pompeii.
Few years ago my host worked as a tour guide in the castle and the park.

Here you can see the castle from the front, the side and the back.




This is just a small part of the big Wörlitz lake.


At the end of the lake you can see Mount Vesuvius and Villa Hamilton.


This is the synagogue.


This is St Peter's Church. We could see the tower 10 minutes before we arrived to that village!



Yours,
Joe

Hello Mommy,

today we went to Dessau for some shopping. Dessau is situated on a floodplain where the Mulde flows into the Elbe. This causes yearly floods. The town is surrounded by numerous parks and palaces that ranks Dessau as one of the greenest towns in Germany.
We didn't have so much time. First we bought all Christmas presents. Later we had time to see the town hall. And we have been on stage at the Christmas market! Now we're famous! 





Yours,
Joe

Hello Mum,

today I show you the difference between two Christmas trees in Berlin.
The first one is a "traffic tree" at Breitscheidplatz. It is made of waste, found in the streets of Berlin.
The second one is hanging in the Sony Center (Potsdamer Platz). It's full of bling bling. 




Love,
Joe

Hey Mom,

today I did a short stop at the Christmas market. It was really nice and extremely cold!





Yours,
Joe

It's raining outside...
So all I can do today is having a good breakfast.

MERRY CHRISTMAS MOM

Santa has been here. I've been a good boy so I got a present. We found the presents under the Christmas tree. Everybody got it's own color of ribbon. We unpacked it and whoohooo look what I got... my own scarf!!!








I hope you've been a good girl, Mom and Santa gives you a nice present.

Love you Mom!

Joe

Hello Mom,

today I went to the KaDeWe. It is the most famous department store of Berlin and the largest department store on the European continent, famous above all for its gourmet food department on the sixth floor.


When I came out of the store it became dark outside. I decided to have a look around if there's anything else interesting. I found a nice building. It's the "Theater des Westens". This private theatre designed by Bernhard Sehring and constructed in 1896 is a well-preserved example of magnificent bourgeois architecture. The form language floats in eclectic quotations, a mixture of styles from the antiquity, and the medieval and renaissance ages.
They have a famous show inside: Dance of the vampires!


I also met this lovely guy. He's a Buddy Bear. There are so many all over Berlin and there exist also more than 140 country bears with most of the countries of the world. And these bears are travelling around the world. They are tall toyvoyagers!!!
Can you see me on his right shoulder?


And I found a huge snowman. WOW. Amazing!


Look, there's a Buddy Bear copy of the Quadriga, which is original placed on the top of the Brandenburg Gate.


That's all for now.

Yours, Joe

HAPPY NEW YEAR


Hello Mom,

I hope you had a lot of fun last night!
At 6 pm we went out for dinner to a restaurant. It wasn't that special so we didn't take pictures.

At 8 pm we went to the Europe Center to watch a big firework!


Then we walked a little bit around and took a picture of the KaDeWe again. Sadly it was already closed.


So we went to the Christmas Market. Yeah, it was still opened. It was a little bit cold outside so we went into one of the cabins and enjoyed an original German Glühwein (hot spiced wine). It was really good to get warm.


At 10 pm we watched again a big firework at Europe Center!


Then we went to the Railway station to watch the big firework at midnight at Brandenburg gate! We didn't want to go to the party area.
Brandenburg gate is at the laser lights.


The firework at midnight was amazing! Maybe you saw it on tv! The party area is one of the biggest in Europe.


I'm still tired. Need more sleep!

Love, Joe

Hey Mum,

it is still raining outside  I don't like the weather at the moment.
But we had to go out and visit the Museum Island.

This is the Old National Gallery


My next stop was the Berlin Cathedral
Behind the Cathedral you can see the famous TV tower


This is Lustgarten behind me. And the blue box is called Humboldtbox.
The horse is not a real one. It's a statue in front of the Old Museum.


Once again Berlin Cathedral.


This is the Altes Museum (Old Museum) from the front.


My last stop was the Reichstag building.


Then I used the fastest way back "home". I want sun!

Love, Joe

Hello Mom,

today we welcomed a new tv. His name is Mr. Furrington. He arrived from England.

I opened the enveloped with a scissor.



Mr. Furrington gave all of us some sweets. Very tasty!


And he brought some cards with him and showed us his presents he got from Santa.




Lovely guy!

Yours, Joe

Hello Mom,

today Greeny left us! He'll go back home to Munich.

Crawfish, Mr. Furrington and I cuddled him a lot. It was a little bit sad to say goodbye. Maybe I'll meet him again one day.



Yours, Joe