Dortmund, November 30

November 30:

I've spent some nice, quiet days indoors with Yvonne and her family, they really seemed to like my tales of past adventures. On Monday, the weather finally was nice again and we went to see some more of the Weihnachtsmarkt.



Those guys on the photo are called 'Räuchermännchen' - you put incense in them and the smoke comes out of their mouth. It looks as if they were smoking a pipe. They seem to be pretty common in Germany around Christmas, Yvonne told me that her grandparents had one when she still was a child.



Later, Philipp took me on a carousel ride, it was fun - especially as I might have used my sonic screwdriver to make it go faster... Philipp didn't mind at all.



And of course we had to have a Glühwein, that's one of the things that are just part of a visit at a Weihnachtsmarkt. Never had it before, but it was good, almost as good as Banana Daiquiri.

Now I'll leave Germany again, my next stop is in the US, Ozark to be exact.

Dortmund, November 25

November 25:

The last few days have been quiet, but today I went to the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) with Yvonne and her son Philipp.



Lots of angels around, but I think it is safe to blink around them - at least nothing happened when I looked away.



They have a really large christmas tree there, build from 1700 Norway sprouces and thousands of lights. Height is 45 m, diameter at the base 14 m and it weighs 140 tonnes. I've heard it takes them 4 weeks to build it.



Unfortunately, it started to rain so we went to Starbucks for a hot chocolate and cake. This caramel brownie was really good, but I'm glad that I do a lot of running - with all the nice food I'm getting here I might gain some weight otherwise.

Later that night, Yvonne took me to knit night and I've met a bunch of nice ladies, all of them knitting along on something or other. Really interesting, especially the yarns - I never would have thought that someone made yarn from silk and stainless steel, but I've seen and analyzed it myself.

Dortmund, November 19 and 20

Late Afternoon, November 19:

That's what I call a great entrance, I arrived on the sofa at Yvonne's place and startled her, her son Philipp and her partner Mark quite a bit. As it was already late, I joined them for dinner. Later I told a few stories about my recent travels and allowed them to have a look at my souvenirs.



November 20

This morning I helped Yvonne to select beads for the keychains she was making and she promised to make one for my TARDIS key as well. It's a beautiful and sunny day, so I might explore my surroundings a bit.



It's nice here, a lot of green despite the fact that we are in the middle of a city. From the living room window I've spotted a radio tower and to my surprise it was in a beautiful park called "Westfalenpark". We've wandered around for a bit and found some interesting art displays. Then we went up the radio tower and had a brilliant view over Dortmund.



I spotted Yvonne's house from up there, saw the local football stadium and lots more. But we were almost blown away by the wind at 140 m height, so we hurried down again.



There was a stop of a little train right besides the tower and we took it to get a look around the park. The sun then started hiding behind clouds and it got a bit chilly, so we decided to have a nice cup of hot chocolate at a café at the base of the radio tower.



The mugs were almost big enough for me to have a bath in them - and the hot chocolate tasted great.

A little tired from all the interesting things we've seen, we headed back to the apartment and spent the evening in front of the TV.

That's all I've got to tell for now, but come back soon, I have a lot more tales to tell