Tuesday was a quiet sort of day. After Babel disappeared off to teach his lesson, I decided not to attend the progresanta kurso (much as I had enjoyed it the day before) because I wanted to wash my hair and, more importantly, call my mother because it was her birthday. Phoning home was rather expensive, although I think it was worth it because she hadn’t expected it so it gave her a nice surprise. Washing my hair went relatively smoothly, although it took me a while to figure out the complexities of the shower, and as I hadn’t thought to pack a hairdryer with me, it was a rather damp Radio which eventually emerged at dinner time

From what I remember, Tuesday afternoon was not a very productive one. For some reason I decided I wanted to go for another walk in the town, but this time decided to rope Babel into coming along as well. We were literally just about the leave when Rolf kidnapped him to do something with a computer, so I had to loiter for ages outside a notice board and read about the history of youth hostelling in Biedenkopf. Hmmm. Whilst doing this I ran into Benny (whose blog everyone should read!) and he decided to come along too to buy batteries for the outfit he was planning to wear on New Year’s Eve. Don’t even ask!

Finally Babel reappeared and we set off through the town. It was nice to have a stroll but it was a grey sort of day in general, and it was equally nice to get back to the youth hostel and get warm again. I don’t think that anything especially exciting was happening on Tuesday evening, because from what I remember, Babel and I lazed around in bed for hours playing with the laptop. I was inducted into the strange mysteries of Transformers (which were actually less boring than I might have expected) and I think there may have been some wrestling clips at some point too. Babel was supposed to be on duty that night, so around midnight he went downstairs to show his face, informing me that he was going to be back very shortly. I stayed awake for a bit longer, making the most of having his laptop to myself, but when there was no sign of him I decided to go to sleep around one. Luckily I’m a sound sleeper and would have had no idea, had he not told me, that he actually didn’t return until round about five…!

Wednesday was New Year’s Eve. In the morning I went to the progresanta kurso again, and in the afternoon I attended Rolf’s lecture on the theme of “Kiel savi Esperanton de la Esperantistoj”. Obviously the real excitement started in the evening, however It was rather a long wait until 8pm for the special buffet, but once we saw the food it was certainly worth it! That is to say, initially when I walked into the room and was confronted with a display of nothing but severely undercooked meat, I was a little concerned. But raw ham aside, there were some excellent dishes on offer, including a rather delicious lasagne We were lucky enough to be on the same table as the katalunoj, with the result that we had the added bonus of being able to drink red wine at our table too!

The theme of the New Year’s Ball was catastrophes, and some people had really made a tremenduous effort to dress up. Rolf looked prettier in his dress than I did in mine, and even Tim made an effort… although there were several people at the event who legitimately dressed the same as he did on a regular basis, so he didn’t stand much chance of winning the competition! I shan’t embarrass anyone by uploading the photos…

Once the meal was finished and the tables were neatly stacked away, it was time for the dancing competition to begin. I wasn’t terribly interested in this, but stood by the door and watched for a lack of anything more fulfilling to do. It turned out to have been a good decision because I accidentally bumped into a couple of people who I very much wanted to speak to. There was a German Esperantist who I had met at the IJK during the summer and who had been very kind to me when I got confused during an activity involving molten lead. I had no idea he was going to be at the IS, so it was a really nice surprise to see him again And I finally got chance to have a proper conversation with someone whom I used to correspond with many years ago, but whom I had never met before this week. She currently lives in Marburg so was able to give me some tips on what to visit for the sightseeing trip I and a guy from Brazil had planned later in the week.

Eventually I returned to the room and located Babel, who had retired to remove his costume. Somehow we both ended up helping out in the bar again, although Babel did have the presence of mind to close it so that we didn’t miss New Year itself. New Year was actually celebrated several times, to reflect all the different time zones the participants hailed from, but the main event was 12am in Germany itself. I was a little confused as to what one was supposed to do to celebrate New Year, never having bothered with such a thing before, but it transpired that the done thing is simply to hug everybody within sight, even if you don’t particularly like them or even know who they are. It’s the sort of thing which is less horrendously, excruciatingly daunting after three glasses of wine.

The celebrations went on until the early hours of the morning. I think it must have been nearly five before Babel and I decided we were fed up of serving beer and wanted to go to bed. To be fair Babel served much more beer than I did, as I ended up sitting and talking for quite a long time. The great thing about Thursday being New Year’s Day was that breakfast was being served much later in the morning, and so there wasn’t any pressure to wake up at 8am. As Sod’s law would have it, the overwhleming brightness of the day outside meant that we woke up at 10 anyway We had a very lazy start to the day, which was ultimately probably one of my favourites of the entire week. It wasn’t just the fact that we had the best shag of the holiday, although since you asked actually we did, but the fact that we had an absolutely scrumptious breakfast, which Babel very kindly volunteered to fetch from downstairs, and then proceeded to laze around for several hours liking Sharpe. I must confess that I wouldn’t have thought of myself as a natural Sharpe fan, but I actually got really in to it. It was dead exciting, if a little scary in places, and I’d definitely watch it again

The evening of New Year’s Day was karaoke again, back by popular demand. There were some genuinely good performances, as well as some truly horrendous ones, but all in all it was a lot of fun I retired to bed some time after four, and promptly fell asleep. Babel appeared upstairs sometime after five, I believe. I vaguely registered his presence but that was about it until all of a sudden he jumped up in the bed in a most peculiar manner. It was so sudden and violent that I thought there was something seriously wrong with him He was looking about frantically and then started mumbling some sort of gibberish about how sorry he was and how he didn’t mean to be in the bed of another girl who I shall tactfully only refer to by the initial E. I shan’t pretend to understand how the drunken male mind works, because I really don’t. But somehow he appeared to have woken up, not recognised me, decided I was a completely different Esperantist and that therefore he must have cheated on me. To say it was confusing would be an understatement, and Babel actually seemed quite distressed by the whole experience, until he finally realised that I was indeed myself and he hadn’t actually cheated on anyone. To say it was one of the most surreal experiences of my life would almost be an understatement!!!

Tags: biedenkopf, Esperanto, internacia seminario

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