Hi Mummy,
today we made a trip to the neighbour city Wuppertal.
One of the city’s greatest attractions is the suspended monorail (Schwebebahn), which was established in 1901. The tracks are 8 m above the streets and 12 m above the Wupper River. The Schwebebahn is crossing some streets and even a motorway!
Here you can see one of 20 stations along the 13,3 km long route. This one is nearby the local court and district court.It was rebuilt last year in its original historic style. It is the one we just had left.
Katja told us that we would make a side trip, outside the city centre, just for ME! We went to the Botanical Garden.
The Botanical garden is situated high upon a hill called "Hardt" and we had to climb stairs after stairs for what felt like an eternity.
You can find the former country house of a textile manufacturers named Eller, which contained a villa (built 1820), orangery, residential and farm buildings, and the Elise Tower (built 1838) which provides the garden's focal point.
Katja took me into one of the greenhouses. Fighting with fog on the camera we found a banana plant!
Okay, it was green and looked like a banana plant, but where were the bananas? I would have liked a banana than. Katja told me that there were bananas in summer, they probably would have been harvested in the meantime. And indeed, we found a photo which was taken with Alberto this summer.
Katja showed us a special tree in the garden, this one.
It looks more or less like a dangerous animal, but not like a tree. It is a monkey puzzle tree, (Araucaria araucana). It originally came from South America, from Chile and Western Argentinia. Due to similar climate conditions it can grow here.
Because a Botanical garden is not so exciting in winter we walked back to the city centre because we had only about 90 minutes until it would get dark.
Walking stairs downhill was much more fun
In the city centre we saw that Wuppertal is much larger than Remscheid. The pretty city hall was hidden behind a scaffolding.
We saw the Schwebebahn again, next to a bank and a car park.
Here you can see one of the other stations, a modern one this time.
Later we met Katja's daughter here and we spend some hours in the shopping streets.
Love
Suny