Harry Potter

Me in Potions class witih Snape (that pot in the background actually stirs itself).

Brendan and I have been to quite a few Harry Potter spots over the year.  I still have yet to go to "platform 9 and 3/4" at King's Cross but for my birthday my parents got me tickets to the Harry Potter Warner Bro's Studio Tour!!!  It was amazing, absolutely amazing.  I would even return there a second time in the future because it was that cool.  It was basically a Harry Potter museum with all the sets and props.  You also get to learn all about the people who helped work on the set, design, script, etc.  For example, there were 20 make-up artists working each day, the film had it's own engineering team, and there are SO MANY PROPS that had to be made for these films.  You simply wouldn't believe how many things were not just computer generated.  My friend Elisabeth (from Austria) came with me to tour the studio.  We spent about six hours there so honestly, if you go, make it an all day event haha.  Well, if you like Harry Potter.  Anyways, hopefully you'll recognize the spots below.  I'd go into more detail about the studio but I don't want to completely spoil it for anyone who has yet to go and if you don't want to know how the magic of the films is created, then don't scroll down... :)

Courtyard at Oxford

Stairs at Oxford that were used for a few scenes inside the castle.

The infirmiry and the place where McGonagall teaches them to dance for the Yule ball. 

The infirmary / door that Harry and Hermione run through after using the time turner.

Me in the room that inspired the great hall and the tree in the courtyard where Moody turns Draco into a ferret.

The bridge that the death eaters destroy in London (the Millenium Bridge).

Harry Potter Warner Bro's Studio Tour

The cupboard under the stairs!

Gryffendor Table

professor's table

The Great Hall

from the Yule ball 

Dumbledore's hair and the jackets Daniel Radcliffe wears for the scene in the seventh film.  He had four jackets that got progessively more torn and burnt.

Umbridge's decrees

The common room and a hallway that wasn't actually a hallway.  The chair is only about five feet from where I was standing and far too small to fit a person.

The moving picture frames!

Hagrid's hut

A stair case, the entrance to the chamber of secrets, a Gringot's vault door, and a door to Hogwarts.

Hagrid's Hut

The Weasley's

Magic is Might and Umbridge's Office

Death Eaters and Voldemort

Chocolate Frog!  You could buy one--for 8 pounds...

Harry's Letters

The Hogwarts Letter

Plastic coins (from Harry's vault)

Marauder's Map

Ministry of Magic and Umbridge's Office

The thing with the hoarcrux in the 6th film.

Over 3000 Wands were made for the film!

Moody's trunk with a mirror showing a small photo of Moody in the bottom and the door to Hogwarts with a stair case (used for close ups).

Hoarcruxes!

Dumbledore's Office and Pensieve

The Snitch!

Step into my office... the stairs that come up are actually functional.  They had to have a 12 foot deep well under what you see.

The mirror of Erised

Gryffindor Common Room

The Black Family Wall Paper

Tom Riddle's Tombstone

The bridge!

The Potter's

The chess pieces!  Some of them actually move/explode.

Butterbeer!  So good--basically it's like butterscotch-y cream soda with whipped cream.

 Elisabeth with her butterbeer.

Elisabeth trying to flag haha.  The Knightbus!

Elisabeth infront of 4 Privet Drive

4 Privet Drive!  And then we entered the third stage with the animatronics/masks--this is fenrir greyback's mask.

Harry masks, Griphook, Voldemort/Quirrell, and Dumbledore's hands.

Hagrid's animatronic head!  This was only used when they needed Hagrid to be walking somewhere or something.

Engineering!!  If only I could've helped build these things... they actually had engineer's on site to work on these things--even Scabbers was animatronic!  For the werewolves they had someone wearing that head and those feet.

More animatronic items.

Grawp's head.

Buckbeak was animatronic too!

More models.

Diagon Alley!!  So cool.

Shops in Diagon Alley

Owls in Diagon Alley

Models of The Three Broomsticks and The Burrow

The castle!  The lights changed the "time of day".  A day was probably two minutes long.

More of the castle grounds.

Sunset?

Daytime?

The entrance to the studio.

 The gift shop.

That's all!  Thanks for reading :)

Tottenham Threat

I was walking home from a review session today to find a police line blocking the path. The last time I saw one of these was down the street by Euston.  It was something about a lorrie catching on fire or something.  I figured it was the same kind of thing and walked around to cross at the next street up.  After passing a huge crowd of people and making a big loop to get back to Maple St, I checked the internet to find that there is a guy with gas canisters strapped to his chest at the Starbucks.  I'm not too worried about it but the story is pretty crazy.

Read about it here.

I've also been reading this guy's updates on twitter.

Horray!  He was arrested.  Back to studying...

Stats and Advice

I was thinking maybe people were wondering how we planned a trip like that--30 days through Europe on a pretty decent budget.   Well here's how we did it!  If you're confused by the above photo, I just didn't want the cover photo for this to be the Excel sheet, hah.  It's a caricature of me and Brendan from sophomore year.

Our Google Doc

We started out with our dates, a general outline of cities we wanted to go to, and train times.  We must have made 10 different itineraries.  In the end we had to cut out places like Budapest, Coppenhagen, and Krakow but ended up adding Belgium and Amsterdam.  For train times, we used the Austria site (see link below).  Then if you want to book your tickets you can go to each country's site and buy them.  They're usually around 20-30 euro unless they're international.  You can also go for the Eurail pass but be careful and read the fine print because we opted not to do it since it was nearly just as cheap to buy the tickets individually.  I also don't think you have to buy your tickets in advance as much as we did but it doesn't hurt if you can make all the times.  I think we got lucky but we didn't miss a single train.  There were a few, though, that we bought the day we left so I'm sure that route is possible too.

Links to get tickets:   France   Italy   Austria   Germany

By the way if you travel in the UK, you can typically just buy tickets on the day of.  It's also worth it, in the UK, to get a 16-25 Railcard at the info counter.  It will likely save you money even if you buy just one ticket.

Our Rail Map (link)

We struggled the most with the trains going from France to Italy.  Generally speaking, the "international" trains are the hardest ones to find but trains from, say, Rome to Naples run pretty frequently.  We also saved money by sleeping on a train or two.  If you get lucky and have a fairly empty compartment then that's probably fine but they're not all that comfortable for sleeping.  The busses were also not so great for sleeping but we managed.  I'd probably do it again if I was crunched for time or on a budget.  Flying works too if you can check your bag.

You can budget for as low as 65 euro per day ($86 or 53 pounds).  If you figure you're travelling every two days (like we did) then that's about 20 euro per day for travel (I'm accounting for a few 70 euro international tickets), 20 euro per day on a hostel, 15 euro for food, and 10 euro for entertainment.  In Paris, for example, you'll spend a lot on sights but in Nice you might just go to the beach (or maybe spend your entertainment money shopping!).  You can eat cheaply if you make use of the grocery stores.  Whenever we looked to have a nice meal here and there, we typically relied on Trip Advisor (link).  I don't think it ever steared us wrong.  Generally though, France is never cheap, Italy has cheap pizza, Berlin has really cheap kabab/doner/currywurst, and the Czech Republic is just cheap in general.  Switzerland is so expensive we didn't even go there.  Amsterdam was pretty pricey too and Vienna can be too.

Also, everything we booked in advance was on Brendan's credit card so we could split the booking fees in half.  You also have to consider the exchange rates and fees.  We took out about 250 euro a few times from ATMs rather than carrying 1000 euro with us from our bank.

I don't have any regrets about our trip.  But if someone were to do exactly what we did, I would advise them to choose a different city in France from Lyon (maybe Aix-en-Provence, Marsailles, or Avignon or something), don't bother with Genoa--go to Cinque Terre, and spend more time in Munich!  The other German cities like Nuremburg, Dresden, and Hamburg are interesting but try to see if you can take a tour or if you have a local friend have them show you around so you know what's going on.  Otherwise they don't seem so different from a regular city I suppose.  And lastly you can get very exhausted and drained pretty easily.  We met a lot of people on the road who said the same thing--it's a good idea to just take a day off once in a while if you're traveling for a long time.  Just stay in and read a book or watch a movie.

Packing.  The hostels have laundry facilities (usually around 6 euro to wash and dry a small load).  I packed: 1 athletic shorts, 1 regular shorts, 1 jeans, 1 pants, 1 rain coat, 1 sweater, 1 hoodie, 1 pair of sneakers, 1 pair of sandals, 1 umbrella, 1 water bottle, and then about 4-5 shirts, maybe 5 underwear, and maybe 7 pairs of socks?  Obviously we had to wear a lot of our clothes for more than one day but we couldn't fit much more than that in our bags.  I'm also excluding quite a few things of course like my school notes, laptop, camera, phone, chargers, etc.  Also, we didn't pack towels because most hostels have them for free or hire.  And one thing we should've packed but didn't (for Austria): a hat and maybe even gloves.

Other useful items that you might almost forget that came in handy: nail clippers, a pad lock, mini-first aid kit for blisters, tupperwear, power converter for europe (they're different from the UK outlets), small backpack (we usually leave our big bags in lockers in the hostels or train stations), and something for entertainment on train platforms like a book.  Sometimes we made sheets of paper with common phrases if we didn't know the language (i.e. Italy for us) but they're not necessary.  Maps are also useful but we mostly relied on Brendan's tablet.  Plus, especially in London, if you ever get lost in a city you can just go to a bus stop and you're bound to find a map.  London actually has great maps all over the city in addition to the bus stops--it's pretty hard to get lost here.  We often used maps.google.com to create maps as well with the attractions we wanted to see marked on them.  For example, here's the map I made for when Kevin visited London.

London Map--Color coded by area/proximity, **means time specific, a dot means it costs money (except I didn't put a dot in St. Paul's but that costs money too just so I don't confuse someone).  And ignore the HMS Belfast altogether lol.

I'm sure I didn't cover everything but hopefully that gives you a good idea of how we planned it!  Now for a few stats that you may be interested in:

Days Spent Travelling: 30

Cities Visited: 23 (excluding Versailles, Pompeii, Dachau, and Potsdam)

Countries Visited: 7 (excluding Monaco and Vatican City)

Transportation: 1 Ferry, 1 Plane, 3 Busses, and about 24? Trains (quite a few transfers here and there)

Missed trains: 0

Items lost along the way: 1 -- I accidentally left my shower sandals in Rome... but 0 stolen!

Days of rain: ~5

Popular Souvenirs: postcards/stamps, keychains, leather items (Florence), murano glass (Venice), Motzart Balls (Salzburg), coasters (Germany), mugs (Munich), Berlin Wall pieces, flower seeds (Amsterdam), and Belgian chocolate.

I hope this post will help someone somewhere in the future haha.  Thanks for reading!  Feel free to comment below if you have more advice to share or have any additional questions.