Greece, Pt. 1

    Hallo ihr alle! Sorry for the short hiatus, as you’ll see I’ve been up to quite a bit recently and haven’t had a lot of time to write any blog posts. But now that I’ve got a fairly normal weekend I have some time to get a few posted. So here we go, Greece Pt. 1!

   I’ll pick up the Monday after my great weekend in Amsterdam (see previous post), and the beginning of “Abi Woche.” Abi Woche is the final week before the 12th Grade takes their Abitur exams, which are pretty much the equivalent of the SAT and ACT in the US. Because they are about to take such a big step in their school career, they theme every day in the final week before, and dress accordingly. For example, at my school the themes were childhood, vacation, casino, and halloween. (This is just a random picture of my school because I'm not allowed to take pictures inside).

    Friday was the final day, when they did their big senior prank. It started with all the school entrances being blocked except one, with a tiny opening big enough for one person to crawl through. As you went in, the seniors standing above would shower you with flour and water. Inside, all the lockers were arranged to block the hallways, and all the desks were tipped onto their sides. Throughout the day, they would run into our classrooms, and spray us with waterguns until we were soaked. Despite all the pranks, it was a very fun school day. The final prank was a competition between all the teachers, which involved an obstacle course, bobbing for apples, and many more games designed specifically to embarrass the teachers. It was pretty funny.

   Finally the weekend was here, and I was very excited for the beginning of spring vacation. Another huge plus was the fact that German spring break is two weeks long, so we had a lot of time off of school! As you have probably figured out, our big trip was to Greece! I was unbelievably excited to see Greece, and couldn’t wait until Sunday, when we left. I spent most of Saturday hanging out at home, and packing for our big trip. A friend of my host mom also came over, because she was coming with us to Greece. She had actually lived there previously, and knows the country very well. At 4 o’clock Sunday morning, we woke up and headed to the airport, boarded our flight at 7, and we were on Crete before we knew it, around 12 o’clock.

   We flew into Heraklion, the largest city on the island Crete, which is actually the largest of all the Greek islands. Flying over the island, we got glimpses of the crystal-clear Mediterranean water, and I couldn’t wait to spend the week there.

   After getting through the airport and renting a car, we drove to Rethymno, a smaller city about an hour away, where we would be staying. From that point, we just explored our hotel and sat around for the rest of the day, relaxing a bit after all the traveling. Our hotel was really nice,and had direct access to the beach, which looked just as nice as it did from the airplane. I also found out that evening that our hotel included dinner, which was actually really good (including a good dessert selection, the most important part of every meal).

   The next day, Monday, we slept in and decided to go explore the city with the rest of the day. Our hotel was kind of far outside the city, but the way there went along a nice beach strand, so it was a nice walk. Once we were in the city, we saw the harbor and got some goat-milk ice cream, which was surprisingly good. Afterwards we spent a good amount of time walking around and looking down the small streets, seeing what a Greek city is like.

Our final stop was a visit to the Fortezza of Rethymno, a 16th Century Venetian citadel, looming over the city. The majority of the Fortezza survives today, and it was very interesting to explore a major part of the old city and see it’s rich history. Plus it gave us an amazing view of Rethymno.

      

   After a fairly busy Monday we had a nice and completely relaxed Tuesday, playing volleyball on the beach, going swimming in the freezing cold water (apparently it takes the Mediterranean a while to warm up after Winter), and reading in the sun. It was fantastic. For dinner we went to a nearby Cretan restaurant, where we tried tons of different traditional foods. They were all amazing, from the zuchini balls to the saganaki cheese. I was completely stuffed in the end.

   I think I’ll go ahead and end this post here, and continue Greece in two other parts. So stay tuned for more of my adventures in Greece!

Tschüß!