Travelog for: Philbert

Hello, I'm Philbert.  I'm a Canadian reindeer, and I came from Abby's work.



As I don't have any back legs, I spend a lot of time around the home, and therefore, I would love to see the mny sights that your area has to offer, but I would also like to see your home life; I love pets and playing 'reindeer' games at home, as well as comforting things, like cooking.  I also have a special fondness for building and hardware stores, because a hardware store is where I came from.

Things are nearly ready for Christmas at Abby's household; all we need now is Santa to come visit.  Abby's family didn't have room for a real tree this year, but they had this nice toyvoyager-sized one!



Eagerly awaiting Santa`s visit!

It's Christmas!  We got chocolate as a gift!



I also listened to the Queen's message at noon.

Hi, Philbert here.  Actually, Philbert #2.  Unfortunately Abby purchased my twin cousin, promptly lost him in her room (which she would like to add that she has recently cleaned!), and so as soon as I was brought into her workplace with the Christmas items to be sold, she asked me if I would like to take his place.

That being said, would anybody like to host me?

Hi Abby! I made it to my new home-for-a-while right on time to go to a museum exhibit tomorrow. I'll send photos then.
Philbert

The exhibit was in Cologne and this is me in front of Cologne cathedral.

It's a UNESCO World Heritage site. The towers are 157 m high. Many visitors try to count the steps when going up but usually mess it up at some point. Officially there are 533 but when walking up one might thin they've missed a few (thousand). There's space intended for 4000 people inside. You can find more information via the link. It's a constant contruction site, never really without a visible scaffolding or something smilar. Nevertheless it was quite impressive and it's in the heart of the city at the banks of the Rhine. We walked around and looked a some shopwindows. People in Cologne like the Carnival and have a big one in winter. Now the windows are stocked with halloweena dn winter things.

Our real reason to visit Cologne was the exhibit of Tutanchamun's tomb. Jelle, Crush, Knopf and I had a good time. It's kind of a modern multimedia installation to simulate the discovery of the tomb and give an idea of the historical context, both of Tutanchamun's death and of the discovery of his tomb by Howard Carter. They only showed replicas of the original finds but added some photos and copies of drawings etc. from the original dig.

Some informational boards gave a rough overview of Ancient Egypt and Howard Carter, to start the exhibition.

There was also a statue, as an example of how pharaos liked to erase the names of their predecessors. In that case the statue stood against a wall and they forgot to erase the name on the back, facing the wall. Carter was interested the the name of a previously unkown pharao and apparently started systematically searching for his tomb.

The Rosetta stone, that led to the deciphering of the hieroglyphs.

It had the same message in hieroglyphs, in a fast script used by the Egyptian scribes and in Greek.

Here's a model of the grave. Above it was the grave on Ramses V. Carter already dug there 5 years before he actually found the tomb and had to stop so as not to make the other tomb, a main tourist attraction, inaccessible. He also stopped when he found some od worker' huts because he didn't think anything would be  found under them. He only went back to them in the last dig he could finance, when he had already tried all other parts of the Valley of the Kings. You see the depression were the worker' huts were, the steps leading down, which were finally discovered during the last dig, the first walle dup entrace, the corridor leading to the 2nd walled up entrance, the entrance chamber, an additional side chamber behond that, and a wall with the burial chamber behind it and an entrance to the treasure chamber beyond that.

Grave-robbers must have been in the side chamber shortly after the tomb was originally sealed, so that was in disarray, but they didn't get much further and the tomb was re-sealed.

Next came short films and audio information before being led by the audio guide(pretending to be Carter) into the simulation of the tomb as it was originally found.

Something like this was the first view Carter had when they made a hole into the second walled door, looking into the entrance chamber:

There are different beds, a throne, weapons and a chariot in its parts, provisions, furniture...

This is what the treasury, beyond the burial chamber, looked like when it was opened.


It must have been very hard to remove the different sarcophagi from a chamber that was only about half a meter bigger in each direction that the biggest one. Photos show how Carter and his men were working with pulleys on site.

In the end they had to take out part of one wall. The sarcophagi consisted only of 4 walls and a top, they rested on the ground as the bottom.

These are the second and third sarcophagus.
Inside the 3rd one was a forth, made of stone and originaly probably made for a different noble. The wings of the goddesses were added later to make it fit the pharao.

In the back is the outermost gold-encrusted coffin. To the front the middle one that's decorated colorfully.

The innermost coffing was made of pure gold and all three of the rested on a bed of wood that lasted, bearing a weight of about 1200kg, for over 3000 years.

The famous mask was much in demand, so we couln't get a really good picture or one with me in it.


This is one of the amulets he wore under the mask. It's very beautiful, isn't it?

This is a copy of Carter's original drawings to document how the amulets and pectorals were distributed on the corpse:


Here's the throne we saw earlier in the entrance chamber. I love the winged snake on the armsrest. Aren't the the feather-fans very cliché? But I guess in the Egyptian climate one might be glad for them. On the foot-rest there are pictures of the pharaos enemies from different cultures, allbound up and literally lying under his feet.


This is an ornamental bottle for oils.


In the end there was some more information about the scandal involving rowdy toursists taht cost Carter his career in Egypt, as well as how he was seen by most archeologists of the time, claiming he wasn't a real scientist. He was originally hired to document the archeologists' work by making detailed drawing, ome of which were shwon. No matter their claim, I was fascinated by the pain-staking detail and the indexing apparent in his work at this site. Dissembling the whole grave took a long time because everything was conserved on site before transport and it must have been hard to carefully extract some items, seeing how they were stacked in the tomb.

It's hard to make updates because this is what it looks like when our host leaves for work and what it looks like when she comes back. It's kind of pretty but hard work, clearing a path for pedestrians every morning and again in the afternoon because there's so much snow. For here anyway. I told everybody about snow in Canada and that this is harmless. The road doesn't get cleared here, though, so driving is admittedly hard.

It's St. Nikolaus day today. On the evening before, children but their boots, or special plates outside their doors and in the morning, they see what St. Nikolaus hs brought them. Traditionally it's nuts and oranges and chocolate. Some small presents are also common. Our host's grandma told us of a time, when oranges were a real luxury and very few people could afford them, or had the connections to get any. They weren't sold at the supermarket. (There weren't any supermarkets...) More common were apples and cookies.

Schools, Kindergarten hospitals and some big companies have special festivities, were either a person dressed like what we know as Santa Claus, or as the actual St. Nikolaus, a bishop,  comes with his servant, Knecht Ruprecht, who deals out punishment to children who were bad, while the good ones get the presents. It can be quite scary for the little ones.

Some photos from our long walk along the river Ruhr:



Hello there!



This is one of our hosts footsteps. I get carried, no way am I digging around in this.

Unless it's to play, of course.
Some geese stay here all year round, but some also come from further up north to spend the winter months here. I wonder if this is what they expected when they booked their camping spot in the South at the beach.

The sun is there, somewhere...





There are several ol factories along the way.




I'm not good a reading prints but this looks like a bird to me. Whatever was ist doing?

Pretty reflections in the water.




Some men made holes into the ice and were fishing.



And now everything with some pop-art color:

Most of the snow melted and now we only have a little bit left. But it's still enough to play and to decorate the landscape.

Here I am in front of the Old Synagogue, it became a museum in 1960.

My host has a new job, and when you start or leave a position, or do something new there, you should bring food for everybody. So we baked:

This is a book with recipies for mostly salty cakes. Good for lunch to-go.
Basically We took flour, baking powder,

eggs, oil, milk, and shredded cheese.

Dipped some tomatoes and hot water and peeled them (It doesn't cost as much effort as it sounds like.)


and stir them in oil with salt and pepper until the fliud is gone.

Add fresh basil and mozzarella when cool.



Repeat the procedure with slight adjustments in oil (sunflower istead of olive)


And add some smoked salmon

and chives.



Bake for 45min.

And for the best taste, let rest for at least one night.

Sorry for the bad pictures! We had to rely on the cell phone because my host's camera broke.
This is the so called "Stadttor" (city gate) of Düsseldorf:

On this nice and sunny day, we rested along the Rhine to catch a few rays and tried to get the tv tower in a picture with us.

No success. And the media harbor, but the light came fromt he wrong direction:

Anyway, it'S really ncie here this afternoon. A lot of people are out on their bicycles or on foot and watch the ships go by. There are the strangest things on them, whole houses or ship loads of new big trucks.


We found this old loading crane here:


These are the funny buildings of the media harbor:

And I got the tower after all: