Halloween Weekend… and Other Stuff That I’m Trying to Remember

Truth be told, I can’t remember everything that happened between right now and my last post. This means that I shouldn’t be letting so much time pass between updates, should I? I’ll do by my best. Maybe it was just that I didn’t do much of anything memorable up until a certain point. Life hasn’t been busy but it’s been productive and I do have a lot to catch up on.

I didn’t do much last week aside from the usual au pair stuff. On Thursday I took the girls to their music lesson and so for an hour, I just wandered around the English Gardens taking pictures. It was a beautiful day and I found the most wonderful and serence place in all of Munich. I hope it’s this beautiful when it snows.

After their music lesson the three of us went to visit Brittany and her au-pair kiddo for a double play date. Brittany and I just sat around and talked while the girls played. Pretty standard. Thursday night I went out with some friends to a ToyTown get together. We hadn’t been in weeks so it was nice to see some familiar faces again. I got home super late, barely made the train home, and I don’t even remember crashing in my bed. Apparently I set my alarm but didn’t turn it on because my host-mom had to come wake me up at 7 am when she noticed I wasn’t downstairs. Oops! Needless to say, I was fairly useless on Friday morning from my uncomfortable hang-over but I slept it off for most of the morning. My host-family left for a vacation on Friday afternoon so I was really just looking forward to a little vacation from my ‘responsibilities.’ I know that Halloween might not be a big thing for the Europeans but a weekend of celebration was in order. anyway. Being an American and all, I needed to show my patriotism for our neglected holidays. We do them so well, after all.

Halloween 2010 (Munich Style)

For Halloween this year, I opted to go for something scary. I’ve never been scary before so I thought I’d change it up a bit from the last few years of Where’s Waldo and Pippi Longstocking clichés. So I picked an even better cliché. I went out as a zombie! I wasn’t sure that I could pull it off but by God, I did. And it was awesome! If you are my Facebook friend and have sufficiently stalked this weekends array of photos, you’ve probably noticed by now that I make a pretty kick ass zombie. I used a palate of colorful face make-up and created nasty, bloody wounds on myself by using a concoction of flour, water, and glue and then painted over it once it dried. And I topped it off with fake blood dripping down various parts of my body. It was brilliant. Fortunately, I had a venue for my fantastic costume as both Jessica and I were individually invited to a Halloween party by way of our mutual friends from the US Consulate. I got Jessica and Eric to go as zombies too and we rocked the streets of Munich so hard as we made our way to the party. Of course everyone stared but the best was when they smiled because it shows they’ve got good spirits. Needless to say, we felt pretty silly but it was all in good fun. We partied all night long (or at least until 1 or 2 am) and enjoyed good American company, good German company, and other types of good company, too. I’m surprised that we were all able to go out like we did because on Thursday night, we’d enjoyed a night out with ToyTown at the Clubhouse and the results were pretty much the same as they had been for the last time that we went to that bar. We were all ridiculously hung over all day on Friday so kudos to us for being able to rally for a night of good Halloween fun.

Zombies don’t eat cats! Don’t be afraid!

Jessica, Eric, and I – the living dead!

We didn’t go out on Saturday night – I’ll get to that in a bit – but we did go out again on the 31st, the actual night of Halloween. Our spirits weren’t nearly as high but we had fun anyway. And I did the whole zombie thing again. Our favorite hostel bar was having drink specials and Halloween happy hours so we went there for good spirits. Costumes earned you a free drink so we definitely took advantage of that. We just had good old fashioned fun, enjoying all of the drunk people in costume and making new friends.

This time, they got me on the arm.

Honestly, I tried to do THREE zombie bites this time but the kitchen-concoction that I made irritated and inflamed my skin so I had to wash them off before I passed out from blood poisoning or something. But it all worked out well anyway. I bruised myself up and made the bite on my arm especially gruesome. Win-win for all!

No worries, there’s just a gross zombie sitting next to you.

  On the way home, I zombie talked the polizei. They weren’t amused.

Harry Potter Movie Marathon

On Saturday Eric, Laura, and I initiated our long-awaited HP movie marathon. We took a break from Halloween theatrics and spent the ENTIRE DAY in my living room eating food (a lot of it) and watching all the HP movies. Seriously… all day. You wouldn’t think that five movies would take up so much time… but it does. We started at about 10 am with a few interruptions here and there. We made homemade Oreos and they were DELICIOUS. I found the recipe online and managed to scrape up all of the necessary ingredients here in Germany. Laura and Eric helped me with the mixing and baking and even though the cookies themselves were a little crunchy, they were wonderful. They definitely made our HP movie night a bit better. I didn’t think that was possible, to be honest. Ha. It was already so great. Oh, and then by the end of the night, after Brittany and Nathan had come by, we made up Harry Potter themed drinking games like, “Everytime anyone says a spell, drink!” or “Any time they say the word ‘goblet’ or ‘triwizard, drink!’” Worked like a charm. I passed out a fifth of the way through Order of the Phoenix somewhere around midnight and then went to bed after I got tired of my friends drawing obscene artwork on my face. Thanks, guys! Ha. Eric and I rewatched Order of the Phoenix in the morning and in the late afternoon, after a delicious lunch at Killians Irish pub, we watched Half-Blood Prince. It was a wonderful 12 hours of my life, spread out, and definitely not wasted. Now we’re ready for The Deathly Hallows in 15 days!

Euro version versus the American version.
Even the Euro version of the movie had the word exchanged.

Cookies!

  Delicious!

Definitely making these again!

Regensburg, Germany

On Monday I got up early and met Eric at Hauptbanhof for a trip to Regensburg that was being organized by his university exchange program. It’s so nice of him to invite me to all of these parties and trips and things – I can live vicariously through real university students and pretend that I am still studying. Ha. Our train left around 9:30 and we got to Regensburg just after 11. We didn’t really know anything about it, we just went for the sake of going somewhere and meeting new people. Apparently Regensburg is the oldest city in Germany and is home to Europe’s oldest bridge. It wasn’t very exciting but we met some interesting people and had good Bavarian food and I took some beautiful pictures. And I got out of Munich! Now… when am I going to to be able to afford to go to another country? Sigh.

Regensburg

Students getting the tour info

   A pretty park that I couldn’t get enough of.
Thank you, Eric, for walking around with me and being my photographer/model.

GORGEOUS.

You know how I adore autumn landscapes.

I love the yellow.  

Now this week looks super promising. The fam is leaving for the second half of their vacation on Thursday so I’ll hang out with them tomorrow, go shopping and do some baking  with the girls (either banana bread or Oreos – I have to decide which one I don’t want to share with them, ha!) and then they’re off on Thursday and I’m free again until Sunday. Some of my friends are going to Prague but I don’t know if I can afford it right now or if I can fit in their rideshare but eh, I can go on a different weekend! Such is life in Europe! It’s only a train ride away.

I’m looking forward to Christmas – it’s coming so soon! Fall is almost over, nearly all the trees are naked now. I’ve become a master at raking leaves even as the wind blows more leaves down in the middle of my process. Silly. The Christkindl markts are soon, soon, soon! Can’t wait! And then New Years in London and seeing old friends and LAUREN FREAKING DEVINE. This girl is excited!

Now, I’m off to Brittany’s for movies and pizza. Our staple food. Seriously, I’m going to get so fat off of pizza. Not Bavarian food or bratwurst or potatoes…. Pizza Hut. It’s just better here in Europe and that’s my final excuse.

Das ist alles.