Travelog for: Klaus

From Panadamao's window we had a good look of the little village of Rosenberg.

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Today we strolled through the main shopping street leading along nice old houses in Heidelberg's old city centre.

Winter is back!

It was foggy this morning when I walked the dog along the Isar river.

After the walk I helped to take care of my host’s plants. Pandamao loves plants and flowers and she has a lot of African violets.
I learnt that it is easy to reproduce African violets. You have to cut a leave from an older plant and put it into soil.

Then you have to wait and some weeks later little green leaves will peep out of the soil. When they are strong enough you can take them out, separate them into their own pot.

There are lots of different varieties of African violets. I did not know that because in the garden centers you only get two or three different varieties. There are hybridizers that have specialized in African violets, mainly in the USA and Russia.
I want to show you some of Pandamao’s varieties.

This one is called Optimara Millennia (hybridizer Holtkamp).


Here is Ness’ Forvever Pink (hybridizer D. Ness)


The Russian hybridizer Elena Korshunova also has
beautiful varieties like EK-Dyhanie Grozy. The flowers are about 6 cm.


And  another Russian one:  Buket Nevesti (Hybridizer Morev). Buket Nevesti can be translated to “bridal buket”. It is still a very young plant and just starting with the first blooms.


African violets come in different sizes – large, standard, semi-miniature and minituare. Here is a minituare one, called Baby Jay (hybridizer Gall). You can see that it is really tiny.

A small envelope arrived - I am curious what is inside. I opened and watched .... first some kind of claw reached out, then more body parts came out but .... ..... no head on the body, horror!! Well, in the end it turned out to be Lazarus, another toyvoyager, who had mislaid his head due to heavy traveling. Welcome Lazarus!

Spring has come!

I went on a trip to the North-East of Bavaria - Amberg. It is a nice little town and I strolled through the old city center.

There are some really nice old houses.

For the Easter weekend we went back to Sulzbach-Rosenberg. For Easter wells are decorated with painted eggs and ornaments. We visited a well near the house - really nice decorations!

I was invited to a day trip to the Bavarian mountains. I had to get up early and take the train to Tegernsee.
There are a lot of traditional houses, nice to look at. But we did not stay in town but hiked up to the mountain top. It was great to take a rest in the sun ... with beautiful view.

After our rest we climbed up to the top of the Riederstein. On top of the Riederstein there is a small chapel. It is just space enough for the chapel and a small bench to sit on and admire the view down to the Tegernsee.

I spent a nice week-end in the garden and helped my host to set up some mulch beds for the garden.