Travelog for: Cute Knut

Central Market used to be a wet market, now turned into an arts, cultural, & handicrafts centre. Aliah said it is one of her favourite place to be in Kuala Lumpur.

Hello!

I arrived in Vienna/Austria a few days ago and had a very warm welcome from the other toyvoyagers who were already waiting for me. There were Alfie Langer and CK the 2 crazy bears from Australia who are happy to escape from winter this year. There was Florence, the beautiful flamingo from Florida. Then Paz, the little crab from Brazil (he is an inofficial toy voyager but a very friendly one...). And Taro, a pretty shy but very nice bear from Japan. Then there is Benedikt a friendly dog who takes care about us very well (he belongs to my host's oldest son Leonhard). Well - and then I met somebody very, very special: Eisbär!!! He is my great-great cousin and we never met before but I was soooo happy to see him!!! He has been living here in Vienna all his life with Niklas, the 4-year-old son of my host and he is a really happy and loved bear. Eisbär and Niklas offered me to share their bed with them - so I really feel very comfortable here!

The weather hasn't been very friendly here in Austria so far. But nevertheless we already did a bit of sightseeing. So my host showed me the famous Big Wheel, the Danube tower, the building of the UNO here in Vienna and the colourful house created by Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Beautiful, isn't it? We also went up a hill where we had an impressing view over the city. As I said it is a bit cold and rainy at the moment so some of the photos are a bit dark - sorry for that

Oh, what alot of sightseeing I did during the past days here in Vienna! Our host really took me and the other toyvoyagers everywhere. Look where we have been:

First we vistited the City Hall. In front of it a film festival takes place during summer and there were tons of different little restaurants. Yummy...

Just opposite there is the old imperial theatre and next to it we visited the rosarium. We really had great fun there playing "hide and seek" in the roses. I really found the best place to hide and the others almost didn't find me again, ha, ha!

We also saw the Hofburg which was the residence of the emperors. Nowadays it hosts the Austrian national library, some museums and the president's office.

Everywhere in the city we saw these horses with their carriages. They are called "Fiaker" and are just a tourist attraction, but in former times they were really used by the people to get around.

We also saw St.Stephen's cathedral with its colourful roof and the famous opera house.

Then we had a little rest in the park next to the museum for historical arts with the ball-shaped bushes and we passed by the parliament. We only saw tourists there since all the politicians are already on summer holidays.

I spent the last day in Vienna today because this evening my hosts will go on holiday to an area in Upper austria called "Salzkammergut". I was told that the scenery is very beautiful there and since they asked me whether II'd like to join them I of course agreed. So I'll spend a few more days there and then continue my journey. My hosts will show you my photos here after their return, but it will take a while and I'll probably already be at my next host's then.

I'm spending a wonderful time here in Upper Austria. My hosts took me to lake Attersee where their grandparents have a flat and since it is really hot here at the moment it's the best place I can imagine to be right now. The lake is really beautiful with clear blue water and it is located very close to the mountains, so it's an absolutely nice place.

One day I went up a real mountain with my hosts. It was called "Hochlecken" and it was about 1.600 m high. Puhh, how exhausting - but the view from up there to several lakes was really amazing and the food we had up there in the hut tasted better than anywhere else. On the first picture you can see Hochlecken in the background and the lake in the front on the last picture it's just the opposite!

I also visited another lake - Traunsee. It's not far from the place we are staying but even a bit closer to the mountains. Imagine, they have a castle there IN the lake, situated on a very small island. I also listened to the bells at the city hall which play a melody every hour - how nice. And I saw a very old ship: a paddle-steamer called "Gisela" - more than 100 years old. Even the swans which see it every day are always impressed by it

On a pretty cold day my host decided to go to Linz with the kids. In the cellar of an old church there is something called "Grottenbahn" which is pretty exciting (at least for little kids and polar bears...). There is a kind of "home of dwarfs". To visit them you have to do a ride on a dragon and during this ride you can see all of them lightened in different colours. And after this ride we went a floor down where they built various scenes of Grimm's fairy tales (unfortunately the pictures taken inside the building didn't come out but you can see me together with the dwarf near the entrance). Pretty exciting was also the way how we got there: since the church is on a hill called "Pöstlingberg" we had to go up there with a special "hill tram" - also about 100 years old.

Another lake today - Wolfgangsee! In my opinion it was the most beautiful lake I saw here in Austria.

First we took a cable railway up to a mountain called "Zwölferhorn". From there we had an amazing view over Wolfgangsee and some other beautiful lakes and of course also to many other mountains. We walked all the way down to the lake again (my host had pain in her legs for the next 3 days then. To be honest, I didn't suffer at all I must say...).

Afterwards we really felt like having a swim so we went to a place where a stream called "Zinkenbach" leads to the lake. The water was pretty cold (excactly the right temperature for me but the others claimed a bit...) which was just opposite St.Wolfgang. Do you see the nice church on the photo? We stayed there until evening and watched the sunset - it was sooo beautiful!

There were quite a lot of rainy days during our stay in Upper Austria so we spent the time visiting many different places.

One day we went to a park called "Agrarium" in Steinerkirchen. The main aim of the park is to show various plants to the visitors, trees, flowers and whatever. But they also have some animals there like these Austria-Hungarian donkeys which are really rare. I was told that there are only between 50 and 80 of them in the whole world - and I saw 3 of them - great, hm?

But at the moment they also have some even rarer creatures there - dinosaurus! Have a look how close I was to them!! I can't say that they were cosy, but also not very frightening!!

2 days afterwards we did a pretty different but not less exciting thing: We visited a "Tree crown pathway" - the longest one that exists in the whole world. It was completely made of wood, about 1 km long and it took us up to a hight of 22 m - so we were really walking "face to face" with the tree crowns. Luckily no-one of us felt dizzy so we all enjoyed this adventure.

I was back home today!!!!!!!! My hosts did a trip to my great, great, great hometown and I was sooooo happy about that!! We only stayed there a couple of hours but it was wonderful to breath some Munich air and listen to some Bavarian dialect again. And of course I had a little bit of real Bavarian beer, ate a "Weißwurst" in the morning at Viktualienmarkt and enjoyed a "Schweinsbraten" in the evening. We visited an exhibition in the new "Pinakothek", had a walk in the Englisch garden and then went to the center just to have a look if everything was like it should be. Oh, it was really hard to leave Munich again but I'm an adventurous little polar bear...

Back to Austria I quickly forgot about my homesickness because my hosts took me to a perfect place (for polar bears!). We went up Austria's highest mountain Grossglockner (3.892 m)! There is the "Hochalpenstrasse" which allows to go up to 2.500 m by car, they highest point that can be reached by car in Austria. The views during the way up were really breathtaking at the highest point called "Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Höhe" were directly at the glacier "Pasterze". I'm not sure if any of my relatives ever went up there - at least they should because it is almost perfect for polar bears!!! Unfortunately the glacier is melting quickly (we saw some pictures how it looked like about 50 years ago and there was a BIG difference) but it was still very impressing.

I left Austria yesterday and I'm on the way back to Malaysia now. There will be a big Teddy bear picknick in September which I don't want to miss so I decided to go back to somebody I already know quite well: Aliah. Good bye, Austria!!!