"What do you know about the Deathly Hallows?"




Ron, Dobby, Hargid, Crooksanks, Katie Bell and Moaning Mrtyle!

 

Living in Europe defintiely has its ups and pluses. One of which where we definitely reaped the European benefits had to do with Harry Potter. Yup, this is the beauty of living in Europe! :) haha We saw the first part of Harry Potter 7 a whole 14 hours before anyone at home could have! So what do we do? We officially make ourselves a part of the wizarding world. With the clothes and material we could conjure up, and combined all of our resrouces to make some of the sweetest costumes ever! (Even with these limited resources!) Everyone became a different character or object from the movie: we had Harry, Ron, Hermione, Malfoy, Ginny, Cho Chang, Hagrid, Bellatrix, Sirius Black, Dobby, Crookshanks, Tonks, the Patil twins, Fleur Delacor, Moaning Mrytle, Lavendar Brown, Katie Bell (that was me!), and even the golden snitch, a Nimubs 2001 as well as a Firebolt!!

 

Ginny, Ron, Lavendar, Hagrid and Malfoy

Adorned in our fabulous costumes, we went to Theology class. Fr. Stefanos got a complete kick out of all of us. It felt just like Halloween all over again! Right after class, with wands and broomsticks in hand, we walked to TGI Friday's for dinner. Never have I gotten more weird looks from other people than we did on this night. People were laughing and some actually made confused faces at us. The thing is though, Harry Potter is not even close to as popular as it is at home. We went the night that it opened (no midnight premiere) and the whole theater wasn't even full. That made me really miss home and all the excitement there is to be had there, especially since this is the last one. Everyone is so enthusiastic and excited with anticipation. At least the 30 of us were here for it though! It was fabulous to celebrate this momentous occasssion with these amazing other 29 individuals! After a delicious (and yes, I know, American) dinner, we made our way to the movie theater. The group of us reminded me of little kids on Halloween! We were quite the sight, especially since we were the only ones that dressed up for this once in a lifetime event!

The whole gang at dinner!





Fleur, Malfoy, Patil Twins, Dobby, Katie Bell and Luna

 Holy Harry! This movie is definitely the best one yet! ( I feel I say that every time a new comes out, but they are all just that good!) Can I just say incredible?! I could have sat through part two right then and there! I did not want this movie to end!! Oh, and P.S. I love Ron Weasley.

I have come to love our group soo much over these past three months. I could not have imagined celebrating Harry Potter with anyone else in Greece! They have very much become a family to me. For all of us to go out dressed up to a movie and all be in the same point of excitement?! It just doesn't get much better than that!

I love Harry Potter

Katie Bell, one Patil twin, Tonks and Moaning Mrtyle

We are a herd of mountains goats!



Byzantine Monastary



Ambiguity: (n) The possibilty of interpreting an expression in 2 or more distinct ways. AKA: things simply not going according to plan. This was actually a question we had for our initial interview for studying abroad: How do you handle ambiguity? Pretty sure most of us had to ask for a definition of ambiguity and I think this weekend in Delphi was a legit answer for us all. Quite the "ambiguous" weekend and not a single complaint from any of us. Except maybe the professor...(Wow, how many times did I just say ambiguous?!)

 

Anyways, we were all bright eyed and bushy tailed at 8:30am Saturday morning. However, on our way to our bus, we were greeted by a horrible scene of a dead cat on the sidewalk. Lovely. Let's just say not the most pleasant  sight to see in the early morning. We hopped on out jumbo tour bus and the 3 hour bus ride to Delphi commenced. I think everyone had their headphones in and the head bobbin' (as in sleeping) was running rampant in a matter of 15 minutes--myself included. Our first stop was St. Luke's monastary, Byzantine monastary (I think that's what the name was). Once seeing it, it reminded me of Subiaco or Assisi back in Italy--it was chilly and rainy in the moutains which is perfect monastary-visiting weather. It was a gorgeous Orthodox Church--frescoes and icons covered every inch of wall (part of the ceiling was actually gold) and the views were spectacular! The monastary actually makes its own homemade honey among others goods and it supported by those profits, so of course I had to get some real homemade Greek honey (apparently made from Thyme?) I have yet to try it! I even got a thank you hug for buying some. haha



That is lamb



Food. Pretty sure that's what was on everyone's mind at the moment and thank goodness lunch break was next on the agenda. We were dropped off on the outskirts of this quaint town on a mountain side and were told to meet the bus on the other side of town. That's helpful, there's more than one road the bus could be on. Eh, oh well, we wandered through the streets of this town, called Arahova I belive, in search of restaurants. It's a little ski town and reminds me so much of down town Stillwater--Home!! That's beside the point...6 of us, Ryan, Lauren, Brittany, Beth, Mark and myself stop at a  little tarverna along the way and we share a delicious lunch of fried cheeses, bread, chicken soup and lamb. Let's just say I have yet to eat a meal here in all of Europe that I did not thoroughly enjoy--that's how wonderful the food is!





We looked at our watches and realized we had to bounce! Plus we didn't exactly know where our bus actually was. Expecting the 6 of us to be the last ones with everyone waiting for us, we speed walked through the hilly streets, found the bus only to discover we were the very first ones. Sweet! So, to pass the time a little rock hill climbing was in store and enjoyed some breath taking views (little did we know what was in store for the next day though...). Once everyone found our hidden bus, we had our next stop to get to for some lecture/note taking. Where? Only the sanctuary of Apollo, of course (Probably best known for the Oracle that was dedicated to Apollo)!

It's a beautiful sanctuary of ruins, especailly at sunset. We listened to Anne (our Art History prof) tell us about the various, interconnecting myths of the gods and the oracle and so forth as we watched some mountain goats on a ridge above us. Too cute! Well, it was closing time for the sites, we were kicked out and had to trek up the swtich back pathed hill all over again. We got our work out today. Luckily Mike piggy backed me up the last portion of the hike! Next stop: Hotel! Hotel Acropole with spectacular views from our balconies and just in time to see the sun fully set behind the mountains! A group of us girls chillaxed for a bit, turned on the TV and to our surprise found a channel playing movies in english! That's definitely the first! Not to mention the very first movie I've seen since being over here. I didn't really watch much of it, but none the less. We eventually rolled out of bed to check ot the shops around Delphi's town--jewelry is definitely a big thing here! I couldn't really afford much of it, but it was fun to window shop!

Stomachs were growling...what else is new though (with this deliciously nutritious food, we're always hungry :) ) We walked to our fancy restaurant and started with some typical Greek appetizers: fried cheese (like a mozzarella stick), spinach and feta pie (P.S. I officially love feta cheese now!), grape leaves with rice and crab stuffed inside, eggplant/olive and tzatziki sauces with bread. It reminded me of what we had for our welcome dinner here and our girls dinner with Elaine! Yum!



Greek Appetizers

 Course 2: cabbage salad. This is the easiest most delicious salad: cabbage with shredded carrots and vinegar. woo-la! Course 3: grilled chicken with a side of egg noodles in tomato sauce. Soooo good!! Gah! Good thing I love to try new things! Then, dessert: no idea what it was. It was some sort of white cake with a sweet syrup. We were stuffed! This calls for a glass of wine and some card games back at the hotel with the chicas. Stellar evening!! (some even got some Brazilian cigars to try! haha!) We had an early wake up call the next morning, so I called it an early night.

Whose ready for four hours of museum visits/art history lecture?! (Breakfast first of course--with famous Greek honey on bread!) Well, we were all prepared with our notebooks and pens in hand to look at ancient pottery and Greek archeaological sites for the day. However...

Now, what are the chances thast the day we go, the whole musuem + site are all closed for municipal elections?! Yup, that's right. We drive 3 hours just to see this site and it's closed. Well, what can ya do? Here's where our ambiguous selves took over. Let's go rock climbing!! We were all in the mountain goat sort of mood this weekend anyways. So we had a massive changing session on the bus (good thing we're all comfortable around each other haha!) I mean, how can you climb a mountain in jeans? Shorts were a necessity! But what moutain? Mt. Parnassus of course! (Those that committed heresay back in antiquity were thrown off this peak. Comforting realization. ) and let me tell you, it was awfully high! (Over 8,000 ft I think) Believe me, we climbed to the top of it! Even with sketchy directions we still made it! Not to mention coming across a ton of shot gun shells and seeing a guy walking around with a shot gun. We all thought he was going to shoot us for being on his property. Don't worry though, he was just hunting. Our guess: mountain lion. And we weren't on his property...I don't think. We found a bunch of animal bones. One of which was a vertebrae from the lumbar region of some animal (thank you anatomy for helping us identify!) We scaled (legitimately) mountain sides, hiked switch back rocky paths, scrambled through horribly thorny plants, got lost, ran into a guy with his shot gun to see the most gorgeous view in the entire world! It felt as if we were in fact on top of the world (far from it, I know) I could see for miles! It is something pictures just don't do justice to. Wow. Enough said. I wish you all could have experienced along with me! I kept thinking of how much Dad and Sara would have completely dominated and loved this cilmb! Here's some of the pictures!



That's the peak we climbed up to



What goes up, must come down. Us included. Great. now we have the whole trek down. Our knees and legs were sore towards the bottom from the hiking down steep hills for the whole way. Once at the bottom, we admired out accomplishments--sweet! We just spontaneously climbed a mountain. No big deal. One thing is for sure, you could definitely smell the evidence that we did back on the bus. Wow! Long story short, we ALL needed showers. So worth it though! P.S. I just would like to take this time to thank my chaco sandals. I could not have done this climb without them! So thank you! I have cuts/scars all over my feet (and sweet new chaco tan lines!) but they were stellar companions! Gotta have some battle scars anyways! Best purchase, hands down.

We needed some nourishment, we all sweated off our breakfast. Gyros! We return back to Arahova to enjoy gyros, or to be technical, souvlaki pitas. Oh man, that hit the spot! Picture this: a flaming hot pita with fresh veggies, veal, tzatziki sauce, mustard and topped off with nothing else but spicy pepper and french fries! That is what's up! French fries inside totally makes these gyros! Satisfied and tired, a 3 hour bus ride of sleeping sounded wonderful. Which is basically what went down anyways.

I think we all found our honest answers: we all handle ambiguity like champs! Wouldn't have changed it for anything!

Not your typical Halloween...This is Athens style!

Athens in simply spectacular!! Granted I was most excited for Athens, so I might be a little biased, but I absolutely love it here (However, I feel like I have been saying that about everywhere I've been) For one, Greeks are so helpful. We wer trying to find out apartments, struggling with all of our luggage and a random lady comes up to us and helped us with directions, since we can't exaclty speak or even read Greek--never got the in Italy. haha! Two, everything is in walking distance! That means no metros, no buses needed and no more invasion of personal space on public transportation. Three, the food. is. amazing!!

On Saturday, Elaine, our program director, set us up with a huge picture scavenger hunt that lead us all over creation around Athens! We had to take photos of our group acting out various scenes with monuments to finding the most stray animals in one photo (There are stray dogs and cats all over the place here!) We found ourselves in a crazy fish market as well! We still don't know who the winner is yet...but here are a few pictures. We had some fun with this!

Our battle scene



'Sup Midwest?"





Craziest thing in the flea market. Dinosaurs?



Marathon runners!

 And then there's Halloween....

Handstands in the sand!



Halloween is by no means celebrated here at all, so as a group we avoided the American celebration and instead spent the day at the beach of the Aegean Sea and watching the sunset from the Temple of Poseidon. can a day seriously get anymore perfect?! Picture this: a nice nap in the warm sun (it wasn't too hot either), playing soccer in the sand, skipping rocks, swimming, snacking on the beach surrounded by friends with the waves of the Aegean sea crashing up on the shore. I'd call that a picture perfect day! Around dusk, we hiked up the mountain to the temple of Poseidon to see the Greek sun set behind the sea. It was one of the most spectacular sights I've ever seen. What a treat! (No pun intended, seeing as is was halloween..ha ha ha) So not your typical halloween by any means, but definitely one well spent--I'll take it! :) Enjoy!

Wow

Temple of Poseidon

"Oh Yah, Weinerschnitzel!"

I am going to say it short, sweet and to the point: I love Germany!! Everything was absolutely phenomenal--what an adventure!! It all started off with an 11 hour night train ride from Rome to Gesisenhausen (which is a town about an hour outside of Munich) where our host family lives.We met quite a few interesting people on that lovely train ride. One of which was a young guy, about our age, from Australia, Nathan, who was backpacking acorss Europe--just got up and left for Europe. Very nice guy. There there was the guy with his smelly dog that could barely walk and Brittany's drunk Indian "friend" who liked to visit our cabin on ocassion. The combination of these people definitely added to the adventure! :)

  

Enjoying our pastry at 6am!



We had a "layover" (I don't know if they actually call it a layover for a train ride, but I'm goin with it) in Rosenheim that arrived at about 6am and we were exhausted. Seeing as we met our new friends from the train, sleep was obviously close to nonexistent. I'd say we all got about an hours worth of sleep that night. We transferred trains after enjoying a delicious and much needed german pastry. I have no idea was it was called, didn't matter--we were hungry and tired. Reaching Geisenhausen was such a relief. The mom of our host family was there waiting for us with open arms ready to pick us up and had a delicious breakfast of eggs, warm milk, bread and chocolate cake waiting for us when we got to the beautiful home (chocolate cake for breakfast, you ask?! Yup! pretty much every morning as well!) Nothing could have been better. It was soo cold! (I'd say in the 30's and 40's!) and a hot cup of milk with cocoa definitely hit the spot. Brittany, Christian and I crashed after stuffing out faces with breakfast. A warm, comfy bed at a home was so perfect! Living in that family style again was just what I needed. I honestly don't know how to explain how wonderful of a feeling it was. I get excited again just writing about it. It reminded me so much of home--obviously, I am living with a family, but just the atmosphere and weather as well. It was cold, the leaves were changing color, we were out in the sountry side AND they even heat their house with a wood burning stove! What do ya know?!



My chocolate heaven dessert!



In Landshut!



We all finally woke up again at about 2pm and went to enjoy more German food that Michaela, the mom, made for lunch. The rest of the family (dad and Nadine, their daughter whose our age) drove us to Landshut to us around. Such a cute, historic town. It reminded me a lot of Stillwater. There was a castle to see, but it was closed. However we enjoyed watching the sun set on top of a hill overlooking the city. So I was definitely ok with the fact that the castle was closed--the sunset was too pretty. We hiked back down for some ice cream. Not just ice cream, but chocolate lovers heaven basically. It was out of this world. Ironically enough, the shop was called "Florence." hehe



The Hein family is jsut so much fun. They always have music in their kitchen, so when we returned home, Michaela made us all tequila sunrises and learned some traditional German songs and dances that are typically seen at Oktoberfest (which we unfortunately missed by 1 week). "Bruhst" (I have no idea if I'm spelling that correctly) is the German "cheers" and we did plenty of that. The thing to remember with this is that you have to make sure sure to make eye contact with the person you are "cheering" with. Why? If not then you are apparently stuck with 7 years bad sex. Don't ask me, that's Michaela told us! haha



At Neuschwanstein Castle!

 To get an idea of how cold it was, picture is having a little snowball fight and making snowmen on our hike up to Neuschwanstein castle in the Alps. Yea, it was cold! Thank goodness for all the scarves I got in Rome! They definitely came in handy this week! Neuschwanstein is a castle beautiful nestled in the Alps that was occupied by Kind Ludwig II in the 1800's. Most of it is actually unfinished, but what we saw on out tour was beautiful and the outside looks amazing with the Alps as the back drop. Oh Benjamin...this is our tour guide. He was about, I'd say, in his late 20's and probably the most fragile looking young man I've ever seen. But that's beside the point. First of all we entered the castle and we were greeted with "helloooo" (explaining this in person is much easier, so make sure to ask about Benjamin when I get home). We get to the first room of out tour and he begins his speech and begins to point out certain artifacts and paintings to us. But he barely points, he jsut ever so slightly lifts his whole hand and maybe 2 inches from his permanent position which is hands crossed over his chest. Too funny! But anyways, he was a good tour guide none the less.

The beautiful Alps

The day was still not over after hiking the Alps, not even close! The night life was just beginning. haha. Nadine took us to a party that night. It was actually a party celebrating Lanshut's shopping center's 7th birthday! And did we ever dance the night away! There were 4 stories in the mall and I believe dance dance floors on all 4! We definitely had our groove going on all night and when I say all night, I literally mean all night--we didn't get home until close to 6am! :) We had a very relaxing Sunday to follow.



At Great Grandma's house!

 Me and Brittany were up by noon and ready to go. Michaela was having company over that afternoon for coffee and dessert. For one, I have come to really like coffee now and two, Michaela is a fabulous cook. She made apple wine cake and these amazing coconut balls. I am definitely going to be bringing home some of these recipes! It was so much fun listening to German conversations. I couldn't understand any of it, but Nadine was able to translate some for us. I now want to learn German. A tour of Geisenhausen was next! Again, another beautiful town, fit with about 14 churches for 6,500 residents! We stopped over at great grandma's house as well for some mid afternoon beer, which she loves! She is 97 years old and still living in her own home, so that beer must be helping :) She is an incredible woman. This family is simply amazing! We were all pretty chilled again so what better way to warm up that with some mixed drinks?! Take your pick, Michaela can make them all! I don't remember the name of mine but it was delicious: half a lime mixed with a big spoonfull of brown sugar, cup full of ice with a shot and a half of Bacardi and water to the top. Dinner was even better! It was some sort of Chinese soup with deep fried chips and bread! Now the day isn't complete without some dancing, of course! This time with the traditional dress of the Germans. Grab your steins, some German beer because you got yourself a party! We all felt 100% German that night!

Steins in hand!



We were cold!

 Next morning we got up to catch a train to visit Dachau's concentration camp and Munich's famous Hofbrauhaus! We get there and low and behold the one day we chose to go there, it happens to be closed! It's open all weekend but conveniently closed on Mondays. Good timing on our part. Oh well, Christitan, Brittany and I enjoyed wandering around the town and ending up sitting in a cute coffee/pastry shop for 2 hours chit-chatting.



Gotta love the Hofbrauhaus!



We hopped back over to Munich to meet Nadine after her classes were over and we were off to the Hofbrauhaus for dinner! Holy moly! That place is definitly everything it is cracked up to be! It was sooo much fun! i ordered my first beer, which was a Radler (beer and lemonade) along with half a bavarian roasted chicken with homemade german potato salad. I'm just going to leave it at that--it was just too good! We met so many awesome people but this blog would not be complete without mentioning Ted and James! They are 2 Englishmen, 23 and 22 respectively and both teachers. They bought us another liter and we thoroughly enjoyed the rest of our night talking, games and eating. We actually ran into some other people from our study abroad group as we were leaving! Ted and James didn't want me and Brittany to leave. They promised they'd come and visit us in Athens as well. We got quite a few laughs out of these two. We had been there for 6 hours!! And unfortunately it was time to catch the train home. Quite an unforgetable night!



Our Austrian and English friends!



This is Ted and James, too fun!



Barracks at Dachau concentration camp



Dachau round 2! We decided to try and see Dachau again and this time we knew it was going to be open! it was an incredible site to see, but at the same a horribly eerie feeling the whole time. The museum is huge and there's so much to see and read, it was so interesting. The museum is actually set up in what used to be the "administrative" building during the 12 years Dachau was open from 1933-1945 (It is actually the only concentration camp to be open the whole 12 year span). We walked down to the crematorium and I felt sick to my stomach the moment we stepped inside--too eerie. I'll just say it was very profound to see.

The sun was finally shining that day so we decided to go to the Olympic tower in the heart of Munich to see the sunset. We hopped on the elevator which took us straight to the top for an overlooking view of all of Munich! What a perfect way to end our last day in Munich!

 

We woke up bright and early to catch our plane to Athens where the next adventure would be begin.

I cannot thank the Hein family enough for their hospitality and generosity. It was truly an amazing experience and I learned a great deal in that short week! I really had been missing the family life and home and they made us feel so welcomed and not to mention, made me want to live in Germany! One of the most memorable experiences of this whole trip!