Travels in Esperantoland
I was fortunate enough to have two weeks of over Christmas (mostly because I’d accumulated so much overtime throughout the rest of the year) and it was really lovely, both to have so much time without auditing and to have chance to celebrate Christmas with Tim for the first time in our own home 
The days before Christmas Day itself went by in a flurry of last minute present buying (once we’d got them under the tree, it looked like Tim had bought me twice as many as I’d bought him, so I had to go out on a last minute spending spree!), as well as a burst of last minute food buying, which resulted in us venturing as far as the hell that is Coventry in order to stock up on last minute food. On Christmas Eve we went to tea at my parents’ house and pretended to be continental by opening all our presents to each other on the spot.
Christmas Day I got up madly early because I wanted to go to Mass at 8.30AM. My church isn’t terribly big as churches go, and Christmas Day being rather a busy day for religious folk, I figured it would be a good idea to get there early so as to get a seat. I therefore instructed my taxi service… I mean, Tim… to get me there for 8.15. This turned out to have been a bit of a mistake, as surprisingly few people had actually chosen to get out of bed so early on the most relaxed day of the year, and so the church was pretty dark and cold and empty. It soon filled up though, and Tim was nice enough to stay for the service so that I didn’t have to wait outside for him afterwards in the cold
The business of the day out of the way, it was time to head back home for the presents. I got so many lovely things that I don’t even know where to start with describing them. Tim bought be several games for our Wii – Mario Kart (which is my particular favourite at the moment), EA Active (which I discovered this morning is surprisingly tiring), an Agatha Christie game and a new Sonic the Hedgehog game (which I still haven’t tried yet!). I also got loads of books – my sister bought me the new Hitchhiker sequel (which I’ve now read and can thoroughly recommend), as well as the new Winnie-the-Pooh book, which is beautifully illustrated. Babel had set up various relatives to buy me murder mysteries from different series that I’m following, and he himself had bought me Alice in Wonderland and Winnie-the-Pooh in Esperanto translation, which I was particularly excited about I had all kinds of other things too, including a beautiful new overnight bag from my parents, and various additions to our mug collection. Babel’s parents bought me a boxset of Jurassic Park DVDs, which I was particularly keen to watch after my recent visit to the Natural History Museum, and we now have an entire cupboard full of sweets and biscuits, which is somewhat hindering our chances of succeeding with the New Year diet! First prize for the best present has to go to Babel, however, who designed a personalised calendar for me, with a different duck for each month of the year
We were having Christmas Day dinner at home, which was a tiny bit stressful because we’d never cooked anything approximating a roast dinner before. Nevertheless, it went remarkably well – nothing burnt and there was almost more food than we could eat In the afternoon we headed of to Babel’s sister’s house where we had a pleasant evening of Wii games.
Boxing Day was a bit more hectic as we had to pack and get the house in order in preparation for our holiday to Germany. We’d booked to attend the Novjara Internacia Semajno in Saarbruecken, Germany, but in the week leading up to Christmas it seemed an increasingly unlikely prospect on account of the fact that we’d booked to travel by Eurostar, and the Eurostar trains had virtually ground to a halt 
I was particularly stressed as it was me who had made the bookings and paid the money, and we stood to lose quite a lot if everything went wrong.
Nevertheless, we checked the Eurostar website on the evening of the 26th, and it seemed to imply that they were running a fairly normal service, so we relaxed a little with some wine and some Mario Kart before bed. We opened a bottle of Rose which Tim’s sister had bought me for my birthday, and it was so incredibly nice that I accidentally managed to down a glass of it within 10 minutes or so, with the result that I suddenly felt exceptionally drunk 
I felt a little hungover when I woke up on Sunday morning, and not at all like an early start and a brisk walk to the local station with a suitcase in tow, but nevertheless it had to be done, and we arrived at Nuneaton station with plenty of time to spare before our first time of the day. I thought I’d been rather clever by booking our tickets and reserving our tickets on line, but the train had commenced its journey at Liverpool Lime Street, and whilst we had indeed got a reserved seat, that unfortunately didn’t guarrantee us any space in the luggage rack My fairly small suitcase managed to find a home for itself under my seat, but Tim’s had a brand shiny new suitcase which was nearly as big as me, and he didn’t stand a chance! In the end, his suitcase sat next to me and he found a space elsewhere.
I was somewhat apprehensive on the walk between Euston and St Pancras, worrying that at every turn we would come across a queue of 2000 disgruntled French people who had failed to get back home in time for Christmas. Happily, we arrived to find that there were no queues at all We whizzed through security, met up with some fellow Esperantists also travelling from the UK, and before you knew it we were sitting happily on our scheduled train, which departed 100% on time!
I must confess to being slightly scared at the prospect of going through the tunnel, not least because of all the horror stories which had been on the news with people getting stuck the preceeding week, but it was actually perfectly fine and I would definitely do it again. There wasn’t much of a view, not least because it was pouring with rain as we sped through France, but all the same it was pretty impressive to see raindrops running horizontally across the train windows in demonstration of how fast we were travelling
Having arrived safely in Paris, we had about 50 minutes to get from Gare du Nord to Gare de l’Est and find our connecting train. I was terribly excited to be in the elusive Gare du Nord, having spent most of my French GCSE saying “Ou est la Gare du Nord?” in a seemingly futile attempt to find it. My overriding impression of my ten minutes in Paris, however, is of dog mess, as the streets appeared to be coated in it. Hmmm
We found the second station with little trouble and made our connection with time to spare. The German ICE which was taking us straight to Saarbruecken was without doubt the most sophisticated train of the entire holiday, with more legroom than you get on most planes and plenty of space for luggage to boot. Unfortunately, when at 7pm we finally arrived at our destination the heavens had opened We were lucky in that one of the Esperantists we were travelling with had lived in the town some years back and hence had a good idea of the direction we needed to go in to get to the youth hostel, but it took us the best part of thirty minutes to get there; plenty of time to curse my stupidity for having left my umbrella on the floor of Tim’s car :cry:
It was a group of rather wet and disgruntled Esperantists which finally arrived at the Youth Hostel, only to be greeted by one of the finest examples of Esperantist disorganisation which I have ever had the misfortune to witness. I would like flatter myself that I am quite a placid person, and I am certainly not a person who swears very often at all, but if I remember correctly I nevertheless was provoked into losing my temper and using a couple of F words within the first 15 minutes of being at the event.
For a start, we walked through the door and there was no one there to meet us, no one to tell us what to do, not even any terribly visible instructions. Then, as per usual, there were hordes of other Esperantists randomly blocking all available doors and corridors because they have their heads so much in the clouds that it genuinely doesn’t occur to them that someone with luggage might actually, y’know, need to get past them. Eventually we figured out that there was a notice board, displaying the names and room numbers of all the participants. Great. Except for the fact that there was no further information, such as where your room might be located or how you were supposed to acquire the key. Hmm.
Luckily I speak German, and so I was able to ask the lady on the youth hostel reception desk. She explained to me that my room wasn’t in the youth hostel at all, but in a local hotel a 5 minute walk away. I asked her if she could give me directions and she said she was sorry, but she didn’t know where it was. She told me I would have to ask the main organiser. Fine, except I’d never met the guy before, so had absolutely no idea what he might look like. The lady was nice enough to give me a reasonable description of him, and we bumped into him shortly afterwards anyway, but the point is that I shouldn’t have had to go through that rigmarole, and what the hell was I supposed to do if I hadn’t, like, had the foresight to learn German in advance?!
Deep breaths. We acquired both our room keys and some verbal directions to the hotel, and made our way to the dining room to get some dinner and calm down. Much as I love attending Esperanto events and find it a truly valuable experience, every time Tim and I attend one we both end up so wound up on the first evening that we could easily hit someone. Whether it’s standing for half an hour in a queue of people in Hungary to have a flipping name badge laminated, waiting three hours in a ridiculous ticket system in Liberec, or being addressed by idiots in Bialystok, arrival is never a pleasant experience.
Humph. On entering the dining room, I was delighted to see that the dinner was spaghetti bolognaise, one of my favourites My delight was shortlived, however, when upon having piled a generous helping onto my plate and gobbled the first few eager mouthfuls, I realised that this was in fact not spaghetti bolognaise. Oh no! Spaghetti it most certainly was, BUT THERE WAS NO MEAT IN IT! Now I don’t know how other people feel about this, but I believe quite deeply that you cannot call something spaghetti bolognaise unless there is MEAT in it. You can call it “a vegetarian rip-off of spaghetti bolognaise”, or perhaps “spaghetti veggie-mush-aise”, or something more catchy if you can think of it, but spaghetti bolognaise it is not. As you can see I was quite wound up about this, in particular because when I checked, there was no meat option which I had missed. I decided to give the organisers the benefit of the doubt at this stage, however, on the grounds that it was the last half hour of a two hour dinner-serving, and perhaps all the meat had simply been eaten already? More on that later.
Babel led us to the hotel, which really wasn’t very far away at all. We struggled to find the door initially, the reception of the hotel being completed shut up and locked, and the premises consisting of two buildings on opposite sides of the road. Eventually we found what we figured must be the correct place, and Babel attempted to enter the door code which we had been given by the organiser.
It didn’t work.
He tried entering it again.
It still didn’t work.
We entered it multiple times, to the accompaniment of much cursing and swearing.
The door remained quite firmly closed.
You have to try to picture our frustration at this point. It’s nearly nine o clock at night and we’d been travelling since nine in the morning. We’re standing outside in the freezing cold, soaked from the rain, with a pile of heavy suitcases, and we can’t get into our hotel. Tim looked like he might just kill someone 
To cut a long story short, Tim jogged back down to the youth hostel in an attempt to find out the correct code. In the meantime, a Belgian Esperantist who had been given exactly the same code turned up and failed to get the door open either. We shivered and grumbled for 15 minutes or so until Tim reappeared and explained that we were standing in front of the wrong door. The door we were supposed to be entering through was on the opposite side of the road, through an archway and up a flight of stairs, making it invisible to anyone who might be standing outside the hotel reception. Of course, why hadn’t we thought of that! :ninja:
Happily the code worked on this new door, and I have to say that when we got inside we were all pleasantly surprised by the rooms. Considering we’d only paid a couple of hundred euros each for the entire week, it really was accommodation of a very high standard. We ended up with our own little apartment, complete with a private bathroom and a little kitchenette with kettle, sink and fridge 
This proved to be particularly useful during the week as we were able to stock up on alcohol at the supermarket round the corner and store it in the fridge for several days. There was a slight snag for the first few days as we all struggled to find a bottle opener (note to self, never go on holiday again without a bottle opener), but overall it was excellent We settled down to watch Jurassic Park on Tim’s laptop, not feeling much like any socialising, and when a good friend of ours turned up with a bottle of wine, the evening really couldn’t have got much better.
Monday morning dawned grey and slightly miserable. After breakfast at the youth hostel we met up with some friends and went walking into Saarbruecken to explore our new surroundings. I have to say, I was a little disappointed and of all the towns I have ever visited in Germany (which is really quite a few) this is the closest I have ever come to describing a place as ugly. Saarbruecken really doesn’t seem to have much to recommend it. Admittedly, there are some pretty churches and the town hall is quite impressive, but overall most of it looks like it was built by a 60s town planner who only had his mind half on the job.
That said, there were some compensations A little bit of the Christmas market was still doing business, and so I was able to get a welcome mug of Gluehwein to stave off the cold. Actually I sort of ended up with two glasses of Gluehwein, as I bought one for Tim as well but he didn’t like it The result was that I felt fairly drunk for most of Monday afternoon. There was a nice bookshop which we enjoyed looking around, and we stumbled across a stationers where we purchased two beautiful postcards of ducks. One of them shows two rubber ducks dressed up as wedding costumes – they’re so cute, it would be amazing if we could have something like that on the top of our wedding cake
We found the tourist information office too, and acquired a map and some useful information about what we could do in the wider area. One advantage of Saarbruecken is that it’s very close (about 5km) to the French border, so if you decide you want to get out of it, it’s very easier. By Wednesday, we’d decided that we did want to get out of it, and set off on various adventures.
Unfortunately, the programme at the event left a bit to be desired. That is to say, you may judge that I am not qualifed to comment on the programme on the grounds that (with two exceptions) I failed to find anything in it that I wished to participate in. I don’t wish to sound too harsh, because this is an event which has traditionally been aimed at families, and if you were an eight year old child, the activities on offer may have been excellent. But this year it was being marketed as an event for young adults too, and activities for that age group were severely lacking. Yes, there were some lectures but they were all in the vein of “Why Esperanto hasn’t conquered the world”, “What we need to do so that Esperanto conquers the world”, and that sort of crap. There were some concerts, but Esperanto music isn’t really my thing. If you wanted to get up at 6am in the morning, I think there was some Tai Chi. That was about it.
Tuesday it poured and poured with rain, and we spent the morning confined to our hotel room. I was pretty disappointed because I hate feeling cooped up, but without an umbrella I was too much of a wimp to go through with my original plan of going for a walk in the woods. In the afternoon Tim was chairing a discussion group session on the theme of “fumado” (smoking). Initially it seemed worryingly like no one was going to turn up, but happily people did and we had quite a civilised and intelligent discussion. It could have gone a bit wrong, as Esperantists can be strongly anti-smoking, but actually it went pretty well and it’s a shame there weren’t more things like that in the programme; opportunities to talk *in* Esperanto but not *about* Esperanto. Talking about Esperanto is really rather dull
Tuesday evening we participated in a magnificent session which for me is the thing that redeemed the entire programme: “Kiu estas la murdisto?” (Who is the murderer?). We had signed up for this in advance and been allocated a character by Fabien, who had worked tirelessly to translate all the background and character notes from French to Esperanto. I love detective fiction so had been really looking forward to the evening, until I received my notes and read the first line “Gratulon! Vi estas la murdisto” (Congratulations! You are the murderer!).
I was playing the part of a pregnant woman who shot her husband dead because she was having an affair with his identical twin. This made me very stressed indeed – I don’t like being in the limelight at all, so I hadn’t wanted such a key role, and I was worried that everyone would see straight through me and the evening would be no fun because everyone would know I did it Trying to make myself look pregnant was fun – in the end we rolled up a couple of Tim’s T’Shirts and tied them round my waist. Not a good look!
I needn’t have worried, because the evening actually went really well. I have to admit that chickened out of giving birth to the baby (as I didn’t have a doll or teddy bear to use as a prop). The plot was so well written that there were some major twists and turns, even for me who knew that I’d done it, and it was a really fun group of people who were playing, which made it all the more cool. Tim took us all hostage with a gun which was quite amusing, and when it came to the revelations at the end, no one had guessed that it was me, so I felt quite relieved
By Wednesday we had 100% had enough of the food in the youth hostel. Now I don’t wish to sound rude, because I 100% respect other peoples’ right to be vegetarian, but there is a difference between the right to be vegetarian and the right to prevent other people from eating meat. There was some watery ham for breakfast in the youth hostel, and a token taste of meat at lunch (say, a couple of pieces of hotdog in a stew, or some miniature pepperoni on a slice of pizza) but the evening meal was exclusively vegetarian, which quite frankly I found shocking. Not only were we in Germany, a country which is normally famed for its meat-eating, but we had quite clearly signed up the event as meat-eaters. I completely understand the need for there to be a vegetarian option on every menu, in particular at Esperanto events where perhaps the majority of people are vegetarians, but I 100% expect there to be a valid meat option as well. Why this wasn’t the case, I don’t know. I can only assume it was at the request of the organisers, who felt that the high proportion of vegetarians within the participants negated the need to serve meat every day. Or else there was a vegetarian somewhere on a power trip. God knows, but I wasn’t impressed :cry:
So, on Wednesday we got on a little local train and hopped across the border into France. The nearest town had the very unFrench-sounding name of Forbach, and was a mere 10 minutes journey away. It wasn’t the most beautiful place in the world but it had a pretty old town, complete with a picturesque castle which afforded us a not inconsiderable amount of exercise when we attempted to climb the hill it was situated on. Best of all we found a lovely cafe where we were able to get the first decent meal of the hotel – a beautiful gratin with cheese and onion and bacon
Thursday was another rainy day, but we decided to go further afield and catch a bus to Luxembourg. It was a surprise to me that you could do this, but it was actually only 1 hour 15 minutes away, so it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss Luckily we remembered to pack our passports, as two rather scary German police boarded the bus and demanded to see an Ausweis before we set off. What would have happened if we hadn’t had them I have no idea, but I doubt that it would have been pleasant.
I knew very little about Luxembourg when we arrived there – in fact I still know very little about it now – but I liked it immediately. It must be the most linguistically confusing place in the world, signs being in French, German or the local language Luxembourgish with no particular method to the madness. Still, it was good to have options as to which language to communicate in Before we set off on a sight-seeing stroll, we found a delightful restaurant where we were able to fill up on a much needed steak and chips. Ah, steak, how I love thee! I very rarely eat steak at all, but following the meat-starvation in Saarbruecken it was very welcome indeed.
I have some nice pictures of Luxembourg on Facebook if you want to see them. There were a lot of very posh shops and banks, presumably a lot of accountants too, but there was also an amazingly tall city wall with a beautiful park below it, and despite the somewhat miserable weather we were able to have a lovely walk in the urban greenery.
Thursday was actually New Year’s Eve, so when we got back to the youth hostel we got dressed up in smart clothes and headed off to the buffet. I was expecting great things from the buffet, the one at the IS in Biedenkopf last year having been truly splendid, but this one was a little disappointing. For a start, although we didn’t arrive late, the only seats left when Tim and I arrived were crammed into a little corner, blocked in such a way that we couldn’t stand up without asking other people to move. This is quite a disadvantage in a buffet situation. Secondly, if you get over 150 Esperantists sitting in a room, then place vast quantities of food on relatively few tables and unleash them at it, queuing chaos will clearly ensue. To give the organisers their dues, they did try to suggest that rather than queuing horizantally in a great big line, we should all queue “vertically” in front of the food we actually wanted, but all this achieved was to enable an aggressive old biddy to shout at me when I was standing beside the soup, having let a child push in front of me. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to queue vertically?!”. Hmm. I think perpendicular might have been the word you were looking for
As for the food itself, I didn’t eat very much of it. There was some nice pate for the starter, and for the main course I had a little bit of goulash (made from veal so unethically tasty) and a small amount of chicken curry (I don’t like curry, but I was attracted by the thought of chicken). That was about it. The room was unbearably warm by virtue of the fact that there were twice as many people in it as it was designed to accommodate, and that combined with the claustrophobia of being hemmed in against a random obstacle meant that we soon had to get outside for some fresh air. Upon doing so, I was particularly annoyed to find that our coats, which had been hanging on the back of our chairs, had brushed up against some sort of fake snow made from cotton wool, and were thus absolutely covered by a fine white fluff. I spent the best part of twenty minutes trying to pick the hairs of mine, but the result was so thoroughly unsatisfactory that I have had to come home and purchase a clothes brush on Amazon. I only have one winter coat, and I need it to look smart for work
We were in such bad humour by this stage that we went back to our room and decided to stay there. There had been the promise of icecream after ten but it was too long to wait, and neither of us fancied participating in the ball anyway, dancing not really being our sort of thing. So we read for a bit, and went to bed pretty much on midnight. What an exciting start to the new decade!
At least we weren’t hungover on New Year’s Day We got up relatively early and embarked on an epic walk across the suburbs of Saarbruecken to get to the local swimming pool. Contrary to expectations, this actually proved to be well worth it, having not only a virtually empty sports pool for swimming quiet lengths, but a series of smaller pools linked together by slides and whirlpools and all sorts. I was too scared to go on the slides at first but we had a lot of fun in the whirlpool, a circular channel with a strong current to sweep you along as you swim We were there for about 90 minutes, and by the end I finally worked up enough courage to confront my combined fears of vertigo and drowning, and tackle the slide.
To call it a slide is actually a bit misleading, because it was an adventure in three parts and really only the last bit of it was what I would conventionally describe as a slight. You started by climbing a staircase to a deceptively calm pool of water. At one end of this there was a big bump onto which you had to haul yourself, and when you pushed off you were swept down and along a channel by a strong current of water. I survived this first bit and felt pretty proud. The second bit was more daunting and involved some screaming as I was swept into a pool outside the building, whilst having water poured on my head. I became thoroughly submerged and began to see my life flash before my eyes (chiefly as a series of standing in pointless queues at Esperanto events) but before I had time to speculate as to whether there would be steak in heaven, Tim managed to grab me and I was saved 
Somewhat traumatised by this experience I nearly didn’t embark on the third slide, but I eventually felt shamed into it when a five year old girl went down in front of me, but in the end I did and it was pretty cool; one of those things you’re glad you’ve done once it’s over.
There was just time for a quick McDonalds (we’re such bad Esperantists, we need to work harder at cultivating a proper hatred of all things American!) before we met up with a friend to go ice-skating in the town centre. This was not such a successful experience. I’ve only been skating twice in my life, both times on a date with a previous boyfriend. The first time was amazing and I really loved it; we were there two hours and after a lot of holding onto the edge and a few falls, I was able to do circuits of the rink no problem. The second time I was just getting into the swing of it again when some kid decided to stab another kid and a van of policemen turned up to raid the rink, just like we were in the Bill. A couple of weeks later, someone burned the rink down, and since then there hasn’t been anywhere in Birmingham to go skating at all
So I was kinda looking forward to this opportunity, it may even have been my idea, but I was absolutely hopeless I even needed Babel’s help to get the shoes on properly, and whilst I managed to walk to the rink without falling over, that was as good as it got! I wanted to do a couple of circuits pretty much holding on to the edge before I felt brave enough to let go, but there were so many people outside the rink leaning against the edge that mostly there wasn’t a lot left to hold onto, and I just got kinda scared. The only highlight of the experience was a lovely German man (also struggling to stay upright) who told me that he was glad there was someone worse than him here, and, upon passing me twenty minutes later seemingly still on my first circuit of the rink, laughed and said “Eine Stunde, eine Runde”
Saturday was our last day and we decided to head to France once more, this time to the beautiful town of Strasbourg. We were fortunate enough to be with a group of very capable Germans, who knew to purchase a group ticket and hence saved us rather a lot of money on the train fare It was a pleasant journey on the train, and when we arrived Strasbourg was beautiful, albeit in an bloody freezing sort of way. Having seen the cathedral, which is possibly the most enormous cathedral I have ever seen in my entire life, we found a restaurant serving Flammkuchen and hence had what was possibly the best meal of the entire holiday After than we wandered aimlessly around the town until the light faded, strolling along by the river and noting to our surprise that the audio on the boat tours has Esperanto as one of the language options. Sadly we weren’t able to test it out, because the water in the river was too high for the boats to be running
When evening fell we met up with everyone once more for an evening meal, and I had the best burger I have ever had in a jacket potato restaurant(!), before catching the train back to Saarbruecken. It was gone nine at night before we got back to the hotel – just time to pack and finish the remaining bottle of wine before bed Packing went surprisingly well – Carolin had very kindly brought no fewer than eight German books along for me, and there was no way they were going to fit in my suitcase, but Tim managed to squeeze them into his with no problems. The journey home on Sunday was uneventful, and we were back safe and sound in Nuneaton by 7pm.
Overall… I’m glad we went; it was nice to be in Germany, and fun to travel to France and Luxembourg. It was a good week in fact, but only because there were a few nice people who we knew and because we organised our own entertainment. Would I go to Saarbruecken again? Probably not, unless there was a very good reason. Would I go to NIS again as an event? No, I think not. Will I go to JES, which is supposed to be taking place in Germany next year? I honestly don’t know – Tim and I are going to give it some serious thought and perhaps opt to spend New Year at home, playing with our Christmas presents
Tags: Esperanto, Germany, Saarbruecken