The Whole Fam-damily, or Bavarian Travels

..And my ridiculous travel lifestyle continues.
The day after I get back from New York, my family flies into Munich. It was really good to see them, considering I hadn't seen them since September. They spent the first day (Saturday) in Munich, meaning my brother slept most of the afternoon and my parents napped and then got lost in the city. Really fun trying to guide them around via cellphone. That night we went to Starkbierfest, which is a bierfest during Lent when the Monks would brew stronger beer to feed themselves because they were fasting and needed to eat something...? Doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but it's a fun excuse to sing along to old American pop music and dance on tables and drink Maßes. It also meant that the first introduction my parents had to my friends was a drunk, table-dancing one. Quite the first impression, I would say. I think they enjoyed it though. My parents really loved the old music (think Elvis, Sinatra, the soundtrack to the first Dirty Dancing) and my dad and my brother got drunk and my mom just took lots of pictures. I've never seen my dad drunk before, so that was a lot of fun.
The next day we headed out to Schliersee, a smaller bavarian town cuz that's where our timeshare was for the next week. It was a beautiful place. The weather was still kind of cold and the lake was frozen over, but it was still really pretty. Crystal and Jana came out to visit us one day and also we did day trips to Salzburg, Neuschwanstein, Zugspitze, and just hung out at the hotel, played pool, sat in the hot tub!!, and just relaxed. I'd been all those places but it was cool to take a fresh pair of eyes there and to spend time with my family. Also, I finally got to go into the Catacombs in Salzburg. Really cool. Really creepy....but really cool. I was picturing like secret meetings and underground religious cults but I was disappointed when I found out that wasn't the point of the caves and catacombs. And apparently the little chapel in the cave is still used today. I thought that was cool.
It was a nice trip but I was definitely reminded of the things about my family that bothered me, rationally or irrationally. The weather was fairly good while my family was here so it was nice to be able to walk around in only about two layers instead of the usual 10. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but not by much. Munich winters are freeeezzzing. So not fun.

The next Saturday we came back to Munich and I gave my parents the tour of the city. We went to the Residenz, Frauenkirche, Marienplatz; all the typical, cool, tourist sites that I walk by all the time and that I really should notice more often. The curse of living in a beautiful place. It all kind of blends in at some point. We also went to Dachau, which was a major downer. I'd never been to Dachau before but I have been to a concentration camp so I sort of knew what kind of mental effect it had on me but my family didn't. It was a rough part of the trip. Concentratin camps are never fun places to visit.

That Monday was really sad because we had to say goodbye to my brother and dad. :( It was really, really good to see the family and let them see what my life was like here. I miss them already but I will see them soon enough. I just wish everyone I know could move over here cuz I never want to leave Europe but that's a side tangent. The next installment of my European travels is coming. Slowly but surely, I will catch up on this blog.

New York: A brief re-entry Stateside

So I decided that I would wander over the ocean for a brief little bit cuz I had lot of time to kill. It was a great trip. It was only about ten days but lots of fun. I've never really been to New York before so being able to see it was cool. I don't think I could ever live there but it was fun to visit. I hung out with some friends there and saw my cousin for a bit. This is gonna be a shorter post, just some of the highlights of the trip, but it was a good little interlude in my European travels.
I hung out at Union Square one day and was just chilling, reading a german book and this one guys asks me what I'm reading. So I say, "it's a German book," which prompts the guy sitting next to me to start speaking to me in German. Turns out, he's Italian and speaks French, Italian, German, Spanish and English and is trying to major in art in New York. Anyway, we start talking about Europe and life in general and then a bunch of his homeless friends show up and they join the conversation and there's another kid from Spain. It was a great little European reunion. I spent a couple hours with these kids and it was eye-opening for me. All these kids were either homeless, drug addicts, really poor, or down on their luck. It was not a group that I've ever encountered or hung out with before and it was fun for an afternoon. We actually had some good conversations and compared life in the US vs. life in Europe. It just made me feel very blessed that I come from the background that I come from. I do not envy that lifestyle at all.
Another day my friend and I walked around Battery Park and gazed upon the Statue of Liberty. One day I will get there... We also walked around Central Park and saw the Metropolitan Musuem. Wow. What a building. What amazing collections in there. You could spend a week in that museum and not see everything. It was fun.

Like I said this was gonna be a short post, but one of my favorite parts of the trip was all the American food I got to eat! Hamburgers, bacon, hot breakfast food, Rootbeer, tastycakes, cheddar cheese :). I gorged myself the entire time. It was great. It was a nice, short little excursion stateside that was a reminder of the (short) list of things I missed about the States and the (ridicuously long) list of things I love about Europe. Then it was back to my Europe adventures. To be continued in the next post...

Eurotrip: Athens (or the city of dogs, pretending to be dead)

BY FAR my favorite. Absolutely fell in love with Athens. We flew in around 13:00 and met up with our host, Jannis. He showed up his apartment. So amazing! It was one of the nicer apartments I've been in. We had our own room and and had full use of the kitchen. He unfortunately had no coffee machine...
Anyway, he was a yoga instructor so he couldn't really show us around but gave us all sorts of tips and maps. He was also in his 40s so I guess we would have gone to different joints to hang out in but the maps and tips were incredibly helpful. The first day we unpacked, went to dinner at this Greek restuaurant whose name I don't remember, nor could I spell it cuz it was in Greek. By the way, Greek is a ridiculous language! Since LC has no Greek system, I have never had a reason to learn the letters of the Greek alphabet and I had a lot of fun walking around looking at funny shaped letters that looked like toys to me. Jana didn't find the letters nearly as amusing or confusing as I did, but she's in a sorority and deals with them in math so she had seen them before. Me. no idea. Really want to learn the Greek alphabet though.
Regardless that was so off-topic. The Greek restuarant was really good and the feta cheese in Greece in unbelievably good! It helps that I love cheese, but the feta was amazing. Anyway, got dinner that night, walked around the area where Jannis lived, found a bank and then came back and watched a movie and passed out.
The next day was Wednesday. This was important because Wednesday happened to be the day when everyone in Athens was on strike to get better wages. Great for them, bad for tourists. Jana and I walked around more of Athens, walked up to the Parthenon but it was closed due to the strike. We walked to Zeus's Temple, which was also closed due to the strike. We then walked to the Stadium, that had been renovated for the Olympics and is never closed to observers. It is closed to work out in, but we just wanted to look at it so everything was ok. We also saw FC Barcelona there. Really cool. From there we walked to the top of Lycabettus Hill. Three remarkable things about it: 1) The walk to the top of Lycabettus Hill is very long and constantly uphill. 2) The view of Athens from the top is one of the most jaw-dropping things I've ever seen. It was so pretty! The only minor downside is that there was a minor layer of pollution but it was still beautiful. 3) We saw three turtles on the walk up and down. Three! We asked someone about the turtles later and they said they hadn't seen one in a couple of years. Maybe we just got lucky.
Anyway, we got done admiring the view and walked down to catch a bus to Syntagma, the main square in Athens. We finally made it into the square after some directional issues and ate dinner at another good restuarant that I can't write down. Getting home from there was the fun part. So...this is still Wednesday. Which means the entire city was still on strike. Which meant none of the subways were running. Which meant we were more or less stranded in the middle of Syntagma where all of the signs were written in a language with a different alphabet. We ended up working past all of these roadblocks and finally catching a bus to our stop. However, we couldn't really tell where our stop was so we ended up getting off two stops early and had to walk to our stop. And once we got there, we realized we didn't recognize anything cuz we normally got there by subway and not by bus. We resorted to calling Jannis and he gave us directions, which were actually amazingly simple. Life is never dull when Jana and I travel.The next day we successfully went to the Parthenon, where we discovered that entrance to any historical site in Athens is free if you are a student at a European university. Go us. So we walked around the Parthenon, saw the Theatre of Dionysus, and drank in the beauty of the ancient Greek ruins. It was amazing. I loved all of it. And the day was beautiful and clear so it made walking around enjoyable. After that, we explored the area at the base of the Parthenon, including Ancient Agora. Another really beautiful experience. I even did push-ups in the former Roman gymnasium. I'm so cool. :) Ancient Agora was the old city/city center. It was really cool to walk around. Like most of ancient Athens, a lot of Ancient Agora was in ruins but it was still neat. I prefer old Greek churches to most European styles of architecture. The only downer to this day was that Jana's wallet got stolen. Whoever stole it was really sneaky because we can't figure out how they ever got a chance or could fit their hand in her bag. But somehow her wallet dissappeared.
On Friday, we visited the Acropolis musuem. Really cool! They have a reanimation of the history of the Parthenon and what it would have looked like when it was first built. There was also all sorts of artifacts and little tidbits about Greek history. I really enjoyed the musuem a lot. Also, it was interesting because the musuem was built on ruins, what archeologists believe to be part of the ancient road of Greece, and you walk over clear glass panels to look onto the ruins below you. Quite a unique experience. After that we went to the beach and spent a couple hours there. Except for a really creepy encounter with one dude, it was a great afternoon. We "swam " in the Mediterrean (February = cold water. Shock right?), drank wine, hung out, and just relaxed. It felt so good. And watching the sunset over the Mediterrean was amazing! So pretty...I never wanted to leave. Except the sun did actually set and it got cold, so that was kind of a buzz kill.Anyway, Saturday was (supposed to be) our last day in Athens. So we got up early, walked to the Temple of Zeus and explored that area for a little bit. It was cool to see but almost completely destroyed so there wasn't as much as I wanted there to be but still cool. We went back to Jannis's, got our bags and went to the airport.
Here's where it gets fun. So supposed to be our last day? Turns out we had misread the time
when our flight was and so we got to the airport right as it was taking off. Needless to say, I was livid. I had had a great time on the trip, it was amazing and fun and excited and I learned a lot, but I was ready to go home. I wanted my own room, different clothes, etc. So we sitting in the airport trying to figure out how to get home, me trying to control my temper. Turns out the only thing that we can swing financially is getting on the next EastJet flight the next day (Sunday) and spending another night in Athens. Cool.
As luck would have it, there happened to be a CS meet that night in Athens. So we roll up with all our shit and we're tired and hungry and I'm still sort of angry and start talking to all these people. We meet Tareq and Elias, who kindly offer to let us stay with them for the night and take us out to a club. So we drive out to their place, the others go out and I stay in cuz I was too tired to go out.
Anyway, the next day we pack our bags, head to the airport and FINALLY get to Berlin. It was cheaper to fly to Berlin than it was to fly to Munich, cuz Munich is annoying that way. So it then takes us all of Monday to get back to Munich (the day Jana was supposed to start work) and when we finally got back, I was so happy. I've never been happier to see Stusta. It was a convulated, exciting, and frustrating adventure at the end of our amazing trip. So many good stories and memories, even the ones that were less-than-positive at the time.