Durmstrang (was: Focaccia and Harry Potter

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 872

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Firebolt" <particle at u...> wrote:
> The three most spoken languages in Europe (this is mostly 
> guesswork, here, could someone confirm this?) are probably English,
> Russian, and French, which corresponds to the Triwizard schools, 
> and those are the largest ones.
>   (snip)
> So there should be multiple ones in Russia, as well, meaning that
> Durmstrang is the largest and there are a couple of smaller ones 
> elsewhere. Unless Durmstrang is Bulgarian, which I don't believe 
> because Russia is a lot bigger than Bulgaria, so it should have a
> bigger school somewhere - and anyway it's not such a stretch for 
> Krum to speak Russian.

Durmstrang can't be in Bulgaria and can't even be in the southern 
half of Norway, according to Tigerlily from Norway who was in one of 
these e-mail-lists and said that the shortness of daylight of 
Durmstrang as described by Krum was further north than where she 
lives in Norway.

I believe that Durmstrang is in Latvia (which is in Europe and was in 
the former USSR) and its language of instruction is German: for a 
couple of centuries, there were a LOT of Germans living in Latvia. 
The students whose first language is something Slavic wouldn't be any 
worse off than all medieval students whose schools taught in Latin!

I believe that the locations of the greatest wizarding schools is 
less related to the current location of Muggle national borders than 
to the location of said Muggle borders 1000 years ago when the 
schools were founded. Okay, I really am thinking less than 1000 
years when I suggest Beauxbatons as the school of the Bourbon 
Empire (and Mme. Maxime telling Dumbledore that her giant flying 
horses only drink single-malt whisky is a pun on Bourbon whisky) 
and Durmstrang as the school of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.