Travelog for: Little Tex

Here is my final itinerary:

1. channi (postcrossing), Germany
2. Apperveilchen, Germany
3. CathyB, Germany
4. ChristinaB (postcrossing), Austria
5. inkie1010 (postcrossing), Netherlands
6. Fleurdunord, France
7. Oksana, Russia
8. Mosuha, India
9. kjw, New Zealand
10. lepmel (postcrossing), Canada

...and then back home to Texas!



I'm here at home getting ready for my journey... here are some pictures of where I live! This is my front door... and here's my metal armadillo buddy on the back porch. 

Here I am with Sara at Summermoon Wood Fired Coffee, enjoying an iced latte. I'm leaving for Germany this week and I'm so excited!! 

So I've said goodbye to all my friends...


And off I go! I'll see you when I get to Germany!! 

Hey everybody at home!!!

I finally arrived in Germany!!! channi seemed pretty surprised when she saw all the stuff that was inside my package. 
I instantly made friends with her dog Shadow who sleeps in her bed every night. Normally I find dogs rather frightening, but that one is hardly taller than me. 
In the afternoon channi and I went grocery shopping together to make a yummi dinner for the flat share. 
Later she took me to the city center but it was too dark to take pictures. She promised me we'll go there again, though.
channi is a little buisy at the moment, but she takes me with her to everywhere she goes - travelling in a bag is much more comfortable than in an envelope!

Howdy folks!
Today, channi and I went by at the Poppelsdorfer Schloss (castle Poppelsdorf). It is surrounded by a lake and some meadows and really beautiful. It used to be the home of a prince but now it is part of the university and poor students have to learn about biology there. The garden is turned into some kind of a zoo - but for plants. Very strange. There is a huuuuge parkway coming up to it from the inner city on whose end the main castle is situated. channi said, we will go there another day. She isn't too fond of it though because it is also the main building of the university where she has all her lectures. But not now because she is on holidays and supposed to work at home. 

Channi has been very busy, but I tried my best to help her.
For example I took a look at her notes about Götz von Berlichingen and changed her interpretations a little. In my opinion it is too much about knights and too little about armadillos.

I went to work with channi today. She works as a tutor and her students were very friendly. They didn't know what an armadillo was!!! channi explained it to them and so they learned something new in English and biology. I'm proud of myself. 

channi and I went on a little trip through the city center with some friends of hers. She showed me the castle which today is the university's main building and the castle's garden where the students hang out in summer. After that I came to see the Bonn cathedral. It's not a huge one but quite nice though. Unfortunately it started raining and we had to interrupt our little tour.

Today we continued our tour through the city center.
You can see me in front of the statue of Beethoven, the famous composer. He was born and raised in Bonn before he moved to Vienna for his musical career.
The statue is on the square before the cathedral, we took another photo of it from this side. In the background you can see the tower of the Kaiserkirche (Emperor's church).
After that channi took me to the Sterntor (Stargate ), a rest of the old city wall of Bonn. It looks like a fortress. Bonn was really well defended I guess.
I also came to see the house where Beethoven was born. It is so tiny and unimposing! I would have imagined a big villa or something! I told channi to make a photo of the sign saying "Birthplace of Beethoven" so that you would believe me.
Bonn also has a beautiful pink city hall. Well it used to be the city hall, nowadays there are only the offices of the local parties in there. The real work takes place in a new multi-story building.
The last thing we saw today was again the university/castle but from the other side. Here you see the main entrance. It actually is the longest castle in Europe. There are even some streets going through it and the castle forms like a bridge over them.

I finally got out of my paket! I arrived in this town March 26th but only today did I actually arrive at my host's.
I was locked in way too long, so I decided to try hibernation and today I was very confused when I saw the light again. But Aoi and Philéas were there to reassure me. Apparently my new host wasn't expecting me this soon and I was left with the neighbors until she came back to Homburg.
After making everyones aquaintance, the we looked at the different sports classes offered this semester to pick one or two. Maybe Yoga? or Capoeira? Salsa? Aerobics? Many sound good but for now I am wondering when I'll get food. Traveling makes me hungry!

I got my dinner, which doesn't look very appetizing, but was just right after a long journey.

Today we went to the European sultural park that lies across the German-French border.
On the German side, there's a the tomb of a celtic 'countess', several burial mounds, a celtic settlement where animals are now housed and a Roman villa with gardens and agricultural land.
1. the celtic settlement
(Isn't the pig peculiarly furry?

2. the celtic tomb and burial objects

3. Roman villa
It was actually more of a manor house with amenities plus farm and slightly fortified.
You can see me with rests of the walls or of a column, and in the gateway to the yard that was enclosed by the houses and a wall connecting them. The gate is in the little tower. We're on the ladder and also climbed up to look out over the area.
Small animals were in the yard, bigger ones outside in the pastures.

Pssst, I had to sneak across the border to France, because I'd forgotten my passport. But we all wanted to go to see the Roman town and I've always wanted to go to France.