Travelog for: Aurelius

Hello world - here I come!

May I introduce myself? My name is Aurelius von Hippo. I am a Teenie Beanie Baby from Germany.

I have lived on my mom's shelf for quite some time. But my friend Nook told me about his travelling adventures around the world and that is why I have decided to start life as a Toyvoyager, too.

However, for the moment I will still stay at home with my mom. She doesn't host any TVs right now and feels alone. So I will accompany her for the time being.

Halloween!!

We went to a Halloween Party but first we had to prepare some spooky food:

eyes



fingers



brain





There were also cut off hands and rotten cake.





Though it might look awful it tasted great and we had a good time!

We got a visitor today!

Harold Giraffe will stay with us the next weeks.

I welcomed him today.







The cats living here also said hello.

Today Herold Giraffe and I welcomed a new TV in our house: Hello Monkez from Russia!

After a long day we took a rest in the sauna!

We had a wonderful warm and sunny Sunday and decided to go for a walk in Finsterbergen.



Are we in the USA?! That's what I thought when we came across this Ranch.

Today we welcomed a new TV at our house. It is Taru from Germany.

For Christmas we went to my mom's parents.

We sat around the Xmas tree



and I also loved the fireplace. The big one...



and the small one - just for us TVs! So warm and cosy!



In Germany it is typical to have the Xmas pyramids on the table.

Now it is time to leave home and to travel in the big German RR.



Monkez and Harold waved me Goodbye!







I think I will be on the journey for quite some time. My aim is to visit all the German federal states. Let' see if I can complete this life mission!

My first destination is Baden-Württemberg where I will stay with fam-united.

I just arrived in Bruchsal, which belongs to Baden-Württemberg. The weather is more than lousy: it's raining cats and dogs.
After this long time in my package, although I only traveled within Gemrany, I'm curious to get to know more about Baden-Württemberg and of course to meet all the guests at my host's home. I've heard, that I will meet many other active and inactive toyvoyagers here.




I'm sure, that all the other toyvoyagers here will be happy about the sweets I brought with me. Petra says thank you for everything.




I told Petra, that it is my mission to get to know a lot about Baden-Württemberg, so she went and brought this book for me to read. I'm not sure, if I want to read so much about Baden-Württemberg and also Petra said, that there might be some old long forgotten stuff in it, because it is from 1987.




I liked Mandy Sheep's idea to draw the coat of arms, though. It was fun and I think, I did it really well.






Then I got a map and was told to colour the place, where you find Baden-Württemberg in Germany. I coloured it green. It has borders to Bavaria, Hessen and Rhineland Palatinate and to the countries France, Austria and Switzerland.




Here I show you Stuttgart and Mandy shows Bruchsal. You see, it isn't far away from the main city of Baden-Württemberg, but I'm not sure, if we will find time to go there.




Baden-Württemberg has two main parts: Baden and Württemberg and although they are together, they still are really different. One song is important for Baden: the Badner-Lied.

The weather isn't the best one, but today we've seen some blue sky
I decided to join my host and her daughter, when her daughter delivered a journal of the catholic church to some people.
On our way we saw some nice old houses.

In the evening we went to take the stars from a storeroom of the church, where our hosts belong to. Petra takes care for the stars, which will be carried around by the starsingers on 6th January. Some of the stars are old, some don't look nice anymore, so Petra creates new covers and we decided to help her today.
Here you see a star, that still looks nice. Nevertheless it isn't, if you take a closer look. Last year it rained a lot and the star got wet. Now you can see white glue running down, where it should be only clear yellow. Some said, that it doesn't matter, but our host didn't like it and she asked us to cut out new yellow transparent paper and a new black star silhouette.




We didn't like the yellow side of this star, so we decided to spray it bronze and cut out a new yellow transparent paper and black star silhouette too.




We had to work really hard.






We also didn't like these two stars and we had to throw one into the bin, because it was broken on the back totally.





Then we had to outline the first star on the transparent paper.












Priscilla helped to cut it out.






But it was rather difficult for her, so Lintilla offered to help her.






While we worked, we found some marzipan potatoes.




We tried to speak really low, because Mi-Go had been fallen asleep in our back and you know, that he always runs to get it, if he sees something to eat.




But we should have knows it better. Of course he also feels, if something to eat is around. He jumped up and caught the marzipan potatoes in the same second. Only Lintilla seemed to take no notice of it.






Proud Mi-Go! We tried to keep calm and go on with our work. We had to outline the black star now.






Mi-Go was anything else, but no help for us.




But to our surprise, he was the one, who asked us, if he could be the one, who was allowed to cut out the black star silhouette.




That looks really difficult, but it seems, that he's the one, who knows, how to do it.




And yeah, it just looks great. Now you can be really proud, Mi-Go.






But, oh dear, we had done a mistake, when we outlined the yellow star. It was the wrong side of the paper and so the star didn't fit perfectly to the wooden star. We were very disappointed.




We had to cut out another yellow star and black star silhouette, which fit perfectly then.




Then we had a break and read the newspapers. We read, that Wulff is the Federal President and that there are some problems, but they aren't really interesting for toyvoyagers. But it was really interesting for us, that they wrote about a storm, which should hit Germany soon - no toyvoyager weather




For me it was interesting to see a photo of the wife of Baden-Württembergs Minister-President Kretschmann. I read, that she doesn't want to be called a First Lady. I did want to read this whole news article, but the others didn't and so we went on to the next page.




We saw a photo with a little bit of snow. Wow, there's snow somewhere in Germany.




But then we turned to read the Bruchsal news and the first thing we saw, what a nice bird singing and a pussy willow blooming. It seems like springtime here.




Did you know, that petrol in Germany is that expensive? I'm not sure, because we didn't know about this. Diesel costs between 1,37 Euro and 1,48 Euro, which means between 1,8092 US-Dollar and 1,9544 US-Dollar. It would be interesting to know, how expensive it is in other countries.




On Karlsruhe page on the right we read about a big construction area, where they build a new way for the city tram.




Here is an interesting page. It shows items, which you can buy in the newspaper shop. They sell items of Baden. Maybe we should go there and take a look, but surely they will cost some money.




And of course it was interesting to read about the weather in our region.




Although we took a closer view we only could read, that we will have storm during the night and rain and a temperature of 8°C - rather warm for winter weather.




We asked Petra to zoom it, so maybe - if you can read German - you will be able to read about the weather too.

I like this Christmas decoration on the window. It's on the same place each year. If you like it too and want the originals to cut them out for yourself, please send a note to Petra.
It's a nice place for us toyvoyagers, too. It is warm and you can see everything that's going on on the street






The first photo is without flash, just to show you, how dark it is outside although it is early midday. If Petra hasn't done a mistake, then there are 26 toyvoyagers sitting together. Some are her toyvoyagers, some her daughters and some are rescued toyvoyagers, which still are at her place and of course some are guests, who will move on again.

After the big group photo session we finished the stars.




The other toyvoyagers were really curious and came to take a look at the beautiful stars.







Later a group of starsingers visited our house, but we just had been too slow, so we aren't on this photo. Nevertheless we thougth, that it is a good idea to show you, how starsingers can look like. They don't carry one of our stars, though. They belong to the church region, were our hosts live, but our hosts go to another church, where they lived before. It's a bit complicated




In the afternoon we all helped our Petra to bake two cakes. She told us, that tomorrow isn't only Epiphany, but also her husbands 50th birthday and that we will go to the parish hall and carry cakes with us. At first we baked a Hermann cake. It is a cake like a round robin, that's how it seems for me. Petra told us, that she received a part of the cake a few days ago and that she had to stir it and to feed it and that now it is ready to get baken. Of course we added some more stuff like flour, sugar, almonds, cinnamon, chocolate pieces.

We read the recipe.




Then we had to get some more dishes for the "kids" of this cake.




We had been really busy.



























We also added some apple pieces.






We wondered, if this dish would be big enough and decided, that it wasn't. So we took a star for the dough of Hermann.

Today some of us joined Petra, when she went to the parish hall to sort the sweets for the children, who walked through the streets as starsingers. They had bags and sorted the sweets so that everyone nearly received the same amount of sweets at the end. You can see the bags on the table. There were about 50 bags. Some of the bags were brought to a day care center, some to a children's home and some to a nun, who knows several poor families, who surely will be happy about some sweets.