Travelog for: Curio

Hello World!

My name is Curio. I am a very pink, very friendly, super sweet hippo.
I wish to travel around the world so i can learn everything there is to learn. I am going to write travel books about my adventures and become a very famous hippo!
I love things that sparkle. Disco balls are my favourite. I like the colours spinning around when i am dancing.
I am really excited to start my travels, my mentors tell me i might get to take part in a challenge here on toyvoyagers, i do hope i can!

I arrived at my first destination. It was already dusk by the time I got out of my envelope. I was greeted by my host. I checked out my surroundings and found the laptop to go online.

Let me first tell you a bit more about the challenge I am part of:

The rules:
- send a little TV to the person i give you the adress off.
- keep in mind that this person also have to send the TV back to you, so don't send large TV's or notebooks.
- this challenge close at october 14th. You have to send your toy before october 21th to the adress i give you and you have to send the TV back to the mentor after having it three weeks. I don't write down a date here, because it depends on the country how long it takes a TV before arrive at someones home. It also means you have a week to send your toy after i gave you the adress.
- if you don't have a TV at home, you can ask the host your toy is with right now to send it to the adress i gave you before october 21th. Please make sure that this host is reliable and send the toy!
- If your TV have a password for updating, also pm it to me, so i can pm the password to the person who's gonna  host your TV
- Your TV has to have a travellog, otherwise the host isn't able to show you the pictures

What to do?
- you have to send your tv to the adress i give you
- when the tv arrived at your house you have to make a picture of:
* local food
* at least two sites that are typical for your country. For example the mills in Holland, Eifeltower in Paris, Pralines in Belgium etc.
* if you have them, you can show your pets
* show your house. Keep in mind that your adress isn't showing on the picture and also don't show children on your pictures
* Show something you do a lot, like school, work, sport etc

Well, I already accomplished the first task:
Here's me meeting (left to right) Hugi, Loki and Eddie. I like the sparkly pearlz on the toy they have there... wonder if I can move in with them.

After all those Halloween sweets yesterday, we decided to make a helthy salad for lunch. I cleaned and cut the tomatoes, spring onions and radishes, added some fleur de sel, pepper, curry, dried & minced chilli and garlic and sprinkled apple balsamico and olive oil over it.

I got to try some typical breakfast foods today. There are different kinds of breadrolls, butter, jam and honey. raditionally Germans eat bread with jam or honey for breakfast and with cheese, sausages, ham etc. for dinner. Most now offer both alternatives for each meal, though, so there's also thinly cut chicken roulade and cheese.

We made a trip north and took a very long walk there in the sun. It was warm in the sun, nearly t-shirt weather in November.

The colors were beautiful with late autumn forest, green grass and the sun.

We saw a few horses. One of them tried to eat us, so we took flight.


We walked by some old farm houses with the whitewash and black beams.

The leaves look lumescent like this.

All these ups and downs are exhausting... are we nearly there, yet?

This photo turnes out funny but we like it.

This is the Colloseum. It used to be an factory but is now a musical theatre. This modification of former industrial buildings is esp. common in the Ruhrarea, because it used to live off coal mining and the steel industry.

Right next to it is the Weststadthalle. It contains cultural facilities, e.g. the Folkwang school of arts uses it for dance and music lessons. The towers behind it house a big movie theatre with 18 different show rooms, a few bars, a bowling alley and offices.

Here's the view out of the shopping center Limbecker Platz unto one of the two mainshopping streets in the inner city. You can't see it wel in the picture, but there are arches of lights from house to house. Essen was the first city to initiate 'light weeks' in winter.

This is the side of the Grillo Theatre and some more light decorations.

Did I mention that I like thing that sparkle? Look at this moon and the clouds around it. They are just beautiful.
You can also see the hotel on the "castle-mountain". I could watch this scene change for hours.

We got to go long with our host to class this morning. We had to go into the bag with all the notes and school stuff.

It was very cold and foggy. At home everybody is getting ready for summer. I wish someone had thought to pack me a jacket and shawl fr my journey. Some gloves wouldn't be amiss, either. 

Here we are in front of the school yard.

And here at the bus stop in front of the school.

Let's take a look around the place we live in:
Here's our hang out place between a souvenir from Paris and a picture of our host's greatgrandmother.

The day has actually turned sunny and the windows faces the southwest, so the blinds have to be closed against the sun unless you want to wear sunglasses for the summery atmosphere.

Books, CDs and postcard chaos: Do you see me? I'm making room for something else... not sure what, yet.

Lady Sirina and I are in the "girly vitrine".

More souvenirs from art museums around the world.

Part of the postcard wall, the whole appartment could be decked out like this but more cards seem to be arriving almost daily.

And finally the kitchen. It's really small but more then one whole shelf seems to be rserved for different kinds of tea. When we were in the bag being arried around last weekend our host looked at more tea things but instead of buying stuff, she wrote a letter to Santa. Maybe I should  do the same and ask for something warm to wear.

It's time for some Christmas decorating! I love it because I love sparkly stuff and I am sure I've seen some sparkly stars in the shelf containing the Christmas ecorations. My hosts says she usually uses the colorful glass ornaments. The sparkly starts seemed nice in the store but make a lot of dirt with the glitter falling off and she's not quite sure what to do with them anyway. I had an idea: We took some yarn and I cut off long pieces of it,

threaded it through a safety pin and the hangers of the stars

and had my host fasten them through the curtain rollers.

Voilá! Aren't we pretty?

We also arranged some candles.


And the first Christmas cards have arrived!

We came back late at night/early in the morning, with -2.5°C (I think that's about 28°F) outside. It was could and freezing. The road led through the forest. We scared some deer here with the headlights and luckily they ran away. It was really spooky.

We were glad when we saw signs of civilization again.



We did you the opportunity to play in the snow a bit when we felt save again.

It's snowing again!

Sorry for the bad quality of the picture (again). We were in a rush an the lighting was difficult. I hope you can still recognize us in a sandstome cave. It's part of one of the old houses (1700) in the town that are built directly into the rock that the castle was built one. Many of them used to be connected to the Schlossberghöhlen, the biggest manmade sandstone caves in Europe. It was a retreat and a safety measure. This one is now decorated for Christmas with a little "Krippe". If you touch the walls or ceiling they crumple a bit. Sandstone is pretty soft.

When my mentor goes home from class it's already dark this time of the year. Sill here are some pictures of our way back:
This sign asks bikers to cycle slowly.

This tunnel we have to take to pass under the street.
The walls are full of pictures.

Street lights are very bad in this city. The use kinds that are supposed to save energy, plus there are big distances between them and they are very high up. esp. old people have problems getting along without help. Only the real city center is illuminated well.


This "Adventskalender" shows some palazzos along the Canal Grande of Venezia: Palazzo Dario (gothic with polychrome marble decorations, built in 1479), Palazzo Pisani (17th century), Ca' d'Oro ("Golden House" of 1440, originally it had a gilded front) and the Palazzo Contarini (from the second half of the 15th century).

[color=sienna]We opened the first door today and saw... Basilica di San Marco as seen from the Piazza San Marco.


The second calendar is one with little angels where one can put a tea-light inside and the light will shine through the pictures.


In the first window there's a snowflake. (In reality one can see the snowflake better and the still closed pictures not as well, as in the photo.)

Another day, another picture:

The Venetian winged lion from the gable of the Basilica di San Marco.


A cloud in this one