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

It seemed like less of a good idea at 3.45am on Saturday, when my alarm went off Well, strictly speaking it was Tim’s alarm, because in a moment of madness, Tim had volunteered to get up and drive me to Birmingham airport. I had no idea how long this would take from Nuneaton, and there’s always the potential for us to get lost when I’m in charge of the navigating, so in all honesty we could probably have had an extra half hour in bed and I would still have got to the airport for 5.30 as required.

I feel rather guilty for having abandoned Tim for the entire weekend in order to go on holiday without him… especially because it was the weekend before his birthday… and in particular because today is his birthday and I’m not at home because of work He claimed he didn’t mind though, and he would have been thoroughly miserable if I’d brought him with me, because I was going to visit the Christmas markets in Nuremberg, and Tim is not exactly a big Christmas market fan!

We flew from Birmingham to Munich with Lufthansa, which would have been quite a pleasant experience were it not for the fact that Lufthansa have switched from hard cheese to soft cheese in their regulation cheese sandwich, and soft cheese is a rather revolting thing to try and eat at 7am in the morning. Especially when it’s a Saturday morning, because the best sort of Saturdays are those which don’t start until midday

We landed in Munich around 10am I immediately felt exceptionally happy, because if it doesn’t sound silly, Munich is my favourite airport ever I think it’s because I’ve flown there so very many times that I know exactly where everything is; the location of all the toilets, where the best place to eat a Vanilleschnecke is, and all kinds of other non essential things which make landing there a completely stress-free experience. Unlike landing at Frankfurt, which makes me wish I’d jumped out of the plane while I still had chance.

45 minutes on an S-Bahn later we arrived in Munich proper, where we had precisely 90 minutes before we had to catch our connecting train to Nuremberg. 90 minutes is a very insufficient amount of time to spend in Munich, but it was just enough time to rush to the edge of the Christmas market at Stachus, gobble down 3 Nuernberger sausages and a delicious Nutella crepe, then rush all the way back again

We actually rushed a bit too much, arriving at the station by 12.30 when we didn’t need to be there until 13.00. We speculatively approached the platform we were expecting our train to come in on, in case it happened to be there early, and to my not inconsiderable surprise, we found that there was indeed a train sitting there. Now I have travelled enough by train over the past four years to know that it is not necessarily to jump on trains indiscriminately if there is any doubt in your mind as to whether they are The Right Train, but I was with my family, and jump on it they did…

Five minutes later, it unexpectedly started moving. As you can imagine, there was not inconsiderable shock in our carriage Happily, the conductor made a timely announcement to the effect that the train was indeed going to Nuremberg, but even so it seemed a little odd, especially when this train didn’t feature on the Munich-Nuremberg timetable which we’d printed off the internet for reference.

Oh well, we sat back and began to enjoy the journey. The scenery was rather spectacular because it had been snowing on Friday night, and there was a light dusting of snow across all the fields. I flinched slightly when we stopped at Dachau, mainly because my geography of Bavaria isn’t terribly good and I didn’t realise it was on our route. My mother said she’d seen a TV programme about Dachau recently and how the residents were trying to rebrand it, but I imagine that must be rather a difficult task

We were expecting the journey to take somewhere in the region on 90 minutes, but by 2pm we’d made it as far as Ingolstadt, which I estimated to be about halfway. Another lady in our carriage was obviously concerned and she stopped the conductor as he walked through to ask him what our expected arrival time in Nuremberg would be. Imagine our surprise when he said 15.30!! It turned out that we’d accidentally boarded a very slow regional train, which called at every barn between Munich and Nuremberg and hence took the best part of 3 hours to reach its destination. Oh dear

By the time we finally reached Nuremberg we were all rather exhausted from sitting on trains, and had to pop into a cafe for a reviving Latte Macchiato… or possibly we just all have a dangerous addiction to Latte Macchiato, which causes us to book expensive flights to Germany several times a year Revitalised by caffeine, we squeezed our way along the packed streets of Nuremberg to our hotel.

The hotel was a little odd. I suppose there was nothing seriously wrong with it, but there were several things which were a bit unusual. There was only one lift, for example, and whilst the sign inside claimed that it was suitable for five people, it was rather a struggle to cram three in. My sister and I decided to use the stairs instead and managed to locate them by consulting the fire escape map, but imagine our surprise when we discovered that the staircase was furnished with windows that opened directly onto outside (that is to say, they had no glass in them!) and that when we got to the bottom, we opened the door and found ourselves outside in the street, as opposed to in the reception as we imagined!

I took the opportunity of being in the hotel to change into my thermal underwear, which I know is not a terribly glamorous thing to do, but I was so exceptionally cold when I went to the markets in Munich last year that I thought I was going to collapse and die, and I didn’t want the same premonitions to ruin this weekend for me

Suitably clothed, we headed out to find somewhere to eat. It so happened that we stumbled across a branch of Vapiano where I seem to end up eating every time I’m in Germany, despite the fact that I can never decide whether it is the most wonderful or the most disturbing dining experience I have ever had. If you’ve never been to a Vapiano, you need to organise a short break to a city which has one Basically you choose what you want to eat off the menu, and then stand in front of the chef while he cooks it. This is kind of amazing if you’re a fussy eater like me and want to tell him to leave the green things out, but also kind of stressful when you’re abroad and trying to make polite small talk in a foreign language.

Fed and watered, we set off to explore the famous Nuremberg markets. I’d always wanted to visit the famous markets in Nuremberg and I wasn’t disappointed Don’t get me wrong – it was horrendously busy, and especially on Saturday night, it was a real crush to get round the stalls, but the atmosphere was really, really good and despite the crowds, there was no aggressive pushing. People were content just to go with the flow and have a good time… or else they’d all drunk too much Gluehwein to care where they were going The market itself was the most tasteful I’d ever seen – no tacky Christmas displays or naff music And the quality of things for sale far surpassed a lot of the tat which the Germans try to sell in the markets they bring to the UK.

A lot of people have asked me why I bothered going to Germany when we have a German market in Birmingham every year, but it really is completely different. Things are cheaper for a start But apart from that, it’s so much more fun. In Germany you don’t get just one market, the whole city centre can be taken over by a series of markets with different themes. I went to the Cologne one year and experienced a Christmas market on a boat on the Rhine. In Munich last year, we found a medieval market with a hog roast and fire eating. This year in Nuremberg there was a special children’s market (complete with the most wonderful model train display you ever did say) and also a special market dedicated to stalls from the towns with which Nuremberg is twinned. We tracked down a stall from Glasgow, where a couple of Scots were bravely trying to sell “hot toddy” to some rather unenthusiastic Germans.

I have to confess that after our hideously early start, none of us were up for a late night and I was safely tucked up in bed by 9.30 Nevertheless, Sunday was another day and we didn’t have to leave Nuremberg until 5pm. After a rather sparse breakfast at the hotel, we headed out to see the sights of the town with less people around. We saw the house of Albrecht Duerer, although I have to confess that being as ignorant as I am of art, I didn’t recognise any of his works except for the praying hands, which I think I have seen on Christmas cards in the past

As we climbed up the slope to the castle it began to snow, and by the time we had reached the top and were looking out towards the town, there was a veritable blizzard. I took lots of lovely photos involving snowflakes which are on Facebook if you want to see them. I may not have the energy to resize them and upload them here

The disadvantage of snow is, of course, that it makes you rather cold, which was our cue to find another cafe for another Latte Macchiato After that, we commenced Mission “Eat as much German food as possible, before it’s time to go home again”. We found a lovely stall in the main market selling the famous Nuremberg sausages, so each had three of those in a roll but whilst delicious, it didn’t quite hit the spot. We were too embarrassed to go back to the same stall for a second helping, so we had to hunt out another stall selling the same sort of sausages for the following three. A spot of pudding was in order after that, so we polished off our second Nutella crepe of the weekend and washed it down with the best Gluehwein I have ever had in my entire life After that, there really wasn’t space for any Nuremberg Lebkuchen but, well, it had to be done

We did a bit more sightseeing in the afternoon in an attempt to walk off some of the food, and the most impressive thing which we came across was the church of St Sebaldus, an obscure German saint from the middle ages, who I have to confess I had never heard of before in my life. There’s been a church there since the 13th century though, which is pretty impressive, and it was very beautiful inside. The building certainly gave the impression of being very old, and so it was with great surprise that I noticed a display of photos from the church’s past. It turned out that the building had been completely destroyed by Allied bombing towards the end of the war, along with most of the centre of Nuremberg. Sad, but not entire surprising when you contemplate the city’s infamous history. What was surprising, was the fact that immediately after the cessation of war, reconstruction of the church had begun, with the result than in 1957 it was essentially looking as good as new You can see some of the photos of the destruction of Nuremberg here.

On a lighter note, we used our last hour in Nuremberg to do a bit of Christmas shopping and I finally succeeded in buying a nativity scene for our new house – yay!! It’s a really tasteful wooden one, with sheep and a palm tree, and it wasn’t as expensive as you’d expect a carved wooden nativity scene to be. We also managed to pick up some elusive Ritter Sport to feed our addictions

All too soon it was time to catch the train back to Munich This time we succeeded in catching the correct train though, which was an improvement, and the journey passed off without event. Babel met me at the airport, and I was safely home by 11pm. It was a very exciting weekend, but I certainly paid for it with extreme exhaustion at work on Monday. Oh well, by this time next year I don’t doubt that I will have forgotten the pain of getting up at 3.45 on a Saturday and have planned another trip ;)

Published in the late 1950s, the book tells the story of a random group of people who all find themselves in the small German harbour town of Rerik in Autumn 1937. They each come from quite different walks of life, but are brought together by the one thing they have in common: a desire to leave Nazi Germany. From Rerik it is theoretically possible to escape to Scandanavia by boat, and thus the action focusses around one character, the unimaginative fisherman, Knudsen. Knudsen, who owns a boat, is the only member of the cast with the ability to attempt such an escape, but paradoxically the only person who has a good reason to stay where he is. His mentally disturbed wife would certainly be taken away to a concentration camp if he were to leave her unattended for too long.

Knudsen is a (somewhat unenthusiastic) member of the communist party, and one of the party faithful, a young man called Gregor, has been sent to Rerik to give him a bit of a talking to an inspire him to under some propaganda action in the area. Gregor does his best, but he himself has already become disillusioned with communism and before he even arrives in the town, he has decided that he is going to flee from his responsibilities. Whilst holding a secret meeting with Knudsen in a local church, they meet the local vicar Helander, a nice elderly gentleman who lost a leg during the Great War and appears not to have long left to live. Anyone as squeamish as me will feel an urge to be sick when there are detailed descriptions of his wound and his false leg! He himself is clearly too frail to flee anywhere, but inside his church there is a magical piece of sculpture which he calls “Der lesende Klosterschueler”. The powers-that-be have decided that this is so-called ‘entartete Kunst’ (sorry, I don’t know how to translate that… degenerate art perhaps?) and therefore they are sending officials to come and take it away in the morning. The sculpture, which portrays a boy utterly absorbed in a book, is presumably considered dangerous because those in control do not wish to encourage the population to read. As soon as Gregor sets eyes on the figure he becomes strangely haunted by it, and together he and Helander convince Knudsen to help them rescue it.

Things are complicated further by the arrival of Judith, a Jewish girl from a wealthy family who is on the run from the Nazis. Her mother committed suicide a few days previously, and her last wish was that Judith should attempt to escape to Sweden via Rerik. Arriving in Rerik, Judith quickly becomes disillusioned when she realises there are virtually no international boats in the harbour, and she immediately runs into difficulties when the owner of the hotel she is staying in asks to see her passport. She can’t show it to him because that would immediately betray her as a Jew, so she is fast losing all hope when suddenly Gregor takes pity on her and decides to rescue her.

Together the unlikely bunch set off on a perilous adventure which involves rowing a small boat across the harbour in the dead of night, trying to avoid the searchlights of the police boats which patrol the waters looking for those trying to escape. It’s a wonderfully tense book which brings to life the fear and hopelessness of the era in a highly readable way. Somewhat unexpectedly, it more or less ends happily with Judith and the statue making it to Sweden and Gregor cycling off into the distance. Poor old Helander ends up with a back full of bullets, but his days were numbered anyway and he manages to shoot down a Nazi first!

It’s impossible to do the atmosphere of the book justice in such a short review, but I thoroughly recommend it and I’ve categorised it in my list of books which I most definitely want to read a second time

I chose this one, being honest, because it was the shortest. It’s a long time since I last read something in German – probably at least six months – and I feel like I’m getting a bit rusty. Plus I actually enjoyed the relative novelty of reading in English with my Akunin book (as opposed to months of stuggling through ‘La Lada Tambureto’ in Esperanto), so I felt a bit luke-warm about more foreign language reading. Happily, once I got into it however, German came flooding back to me and I started to enjoy it

The action takes place in an unnamed town in the DDR. In fact, Braun wrote and published the novel in the DDR, several years prior to its downfall. The main character is a girl called Karin who has just left school and is about to enter the world of work. She comes from a family who have a strong sense of duty towards the state. Both her father and her mother are very concerned with being politically correct, and Karin has been brought up to respect the authority of the state and to want to serve it. Karin’s father is some sort of local government official, in fact, and it is in this role that one day he comes to her and tells her she needs to split up with her boyfriend Frank. It has come to his attention that Frank is under investigation for some (unspecified) illicit activities.

Frank seems on the face of it to be rather a bad sort. His family, when we later meet them, are rather unconventional, his father is seemingly permanently drunk. There are allusions to Frank already having spent time in prison, and all in all his background sounds a bit wild. Nevertheless, Karin seems to believe that he has turned over a new leaf, and has no evidence to suggest that he’s about to become involved in something criminal. Furthermore, not only does she loves him, he appears to love her almost obsessively, and there is nothing she less wants to do than terminate their relationship.

Karin is therefore plunged into a difficult inner conflict. Her parents are very important to her, and if she stays with Frank she risks alienating them completely, as well as perhaps ending up with her social reputation tarnished. She thinks about it long and hard, and in the end she decides to do what her father wants and dump Frank

Poor Frank is rather upset, and Karin’s resolve soon weakens. The new job she is due to start at a local newspaper is based in his home town, and before too long they’ve met up and reconciled. Frank claims not to be involved in any dodgy activities, and the only thing either of them can think of that might be arousing suspicion are some letters he recently received from a friend in the West. They’re innocuous enough though, and it hardly seems grounds for so much fuss. Karin settles into her job and begins to enjoy it. Ultimately she moves in with Frank and falls pregnant by him.

Her parents are outraged and continue to put pressure on her to end the relationship. Once news of her personal circumstances spreads, pressure is put on her professionally too. Karin’s boss at the newspaper gives her an ultimatum, a choice between her job or the relationship, and Karin is utterly confused. At first, she thinks he must be joking. When it transpires that he isn’t, she genuinely doesn’t know what to do. She views her job at the newspaper as her way of contributing to society, and she has been brought up in such a way as to believe this is of the utmost importance. Were she to lose the position, her only way of contributing would be to take a job in a factory, difficult for someone who is already four months pregnant. Following more pressure from her parents she cracks and walks out on Frank.

Oh dear To cut a long story short, Frank is rather a highly strung sort of chap, and after taking a dose of sleeping pills he sticks his head in a gas oven By a stroke of amazing good fortune he manages actually not to kill himself, but instead falls into a coma. The doctors have no idea whether he will ever wake up again, and Karin feels highly responsible. She’s lost her job anyway, and there follow many pages where she mopes about in a confused sort of distress. Frank eventually wakes up, though I find it ambiguous as to whether he still retains all his mental faculties, and then with little warning, the story abruptly ends. I guess that’s why it’s called “Unvollendete Geschichte”.

As you can see, it was a rather sad story and not one you’d want to embark on if you were already feeling depressed. It was written in a rather curious way, with very short sentences and key words or phrases being written in block capitals every few pages. Beyond the fact that living in the DDR was stressful, I’m not entirely sure what the message was supposed to be. I wouldn’t go as far to say that I didn’t enjoy it – it held my attention, was easy to understand, and passed the afternoon – but it’s not a book that I’ll be reading again in a hurry!

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from the film, as I hadn’t actually heard anyone say it was any good. I heard a lot about it while they were filming it, mainly because of the controversy which was caused in Germany. There’s some sort of German law which says that Scientology is a dangerous cult, and because of that many people were very unhappy about the inclusion of Tom Cruise in the cast. There were refusals to let the crew film at certain locations within Berlin, and the family of Von Stauffenberg were said to be suspicious about the idea of a film in general. Since it’s been released, however, I’d scarcely heard anyone mention it on the tv, which perhaps isn’t a terribly good omen.

Nevertheless, I think it was rather good. Nowhere near as good as The Reader, although admittedly it was also sad at the end, but it didn’t bore me and even Babel didn’t (hardly) fall asleep. There was more talking than action, and admittedly I didn’t perfectly follow all the twists of the plotting, but it was a very tense film and the suspense was built up well. It’s waaaay too complicated to summarise it all here though, so if you want to know what happens you’ll have to go see it yourself

I have to say I knew very little about the July 20th bomb plot to kill Hitler. We did study German resistance when I was doing my AS Levels, but for some reason we seemed to spend a lot more time on the White Rose movement. There were some things in the film which really surprised me, so now I’m off to have a google and see how much of it was true!

Other than that, not much news to report. Babel had to restrain himself from murdering me in public after he learnt of an embarrassing mistake I made when purchasing dvds, but despite that it was nice to see him. Even if he keeps saying he’s bought me an ironing board for Valentine’s Day

If you have never read The Tin Drum I congratulate you, and hope that you might long remain in this state. Essentially, it tells the story of a thoroughly unpleasant child called Oscar, who is such a freak that he can remember his own birth. The book is basically his life story, written from a mental asylum when he is nearly thirty, which I can assure you is the best place for him. He is born in Danzig, as it was then called, some time before the Second World War, and has a startlingly clear recollection of his mother promising him a tin drum for his third birthday not long after he emerges from the womb. This gives him the motivation to live until his third birthday, whereupon he finally receives the cursed drum and proceeds to spend the rest of the novel banging on it in a noisily obsessive manner. When I say obsessive, I mean that the drum is the most important thing in his life, ranking well above any human beings, and he is prepared to let other people go to their deaths if it means he can retain it. Also on his third birthday, to prove what a freak he is Oscar decides not to grow anymore, and spends the rest of his miserable existance as a dwarf. This causes considerable embarrassment to his longsuffering relatives, to the point where his mother is reduced to killing herself by overdosing on fish. I am absolutely convinced that she only does this to escape from the incessant drumming of her evil midget son.

As time passes, Oscar becomes older if not taller and war breaks out. The lover of Oscar’s deceased mother and his own possible father is employed by the Polish post office in the city and is involved in trying to defend it from military attack. Oscar, who has tracked the poor man down in the hope that he can be persuaded to buy him a new drum, gets caught up in the battle and is locked in the besieged post office whilst the army attack it. The army of course soon wins against the handful of Polish postmen, and when they eventually storm the building and try to capture the inhabitants, Oscar incriminates the poor ex-lover and saves his own skin by sending him to certain execution. Nice.

People have told me that this book is a comment on the war, hence the fact that it has won a Nobel Prize. I’ve not read an interpretation of the book, so I have no idea what clever people think it means, but as far as I’m concerned this is a book which says nothing useful about the war at all. Oscar hardly notices the war, because Oscar is not interested in anything other than his own well-being and his drum. The only time the war gets a real mention at all is right at the end, when the Russians come to his house to capture the inhabitants. Oscar is in the cellar with his mother’s husband who is presumably his father if his mother’s lover wasn’t, and observing that he is in a highly nervous, hysterical state, hands him a badge with a Nazi insignia. The father knows that if he is found with a Nazi badge, the Russians will kill him, so he attempts to swallow it. It’s only small, but Oscar deliberately handed it to him with the pin off the latch so that he would choke and die a horribly painful death. Why Oscar would want to do this to a man who has been nothing but kindness to him for his entire life is beyond me. I fail to see that Oscar demonstrates the slightest little bit of remorse. In fact, he gets so full of his own selfimportance that he decides he’s Jesus. Hmmm.

Other than that the book rumbles on in a tedious manner, full of Oscar’s oh so terribly interesting thoughts about the most important subject in the world: Oscar. He moves to West Germany after the war, spends a while working as a nude model in an art college, then accidentally becomes a famous jazz musician. Since early childhood he’s had a bit of a fixation with nurses, trying to take any opportunity he can get to them into bed (horrible mental image considering he’s about two foot tall and a hunchback!) and he develops a dangerous obsession with a Nurse Dorothy who happens to lodge in the same house as him. Despite the fact he’s never even seen her because she works shifts, he decides he’s in love with her and breaks into her room one day so he can sit in her wardrobe and smell her clothes. Right. Some time later, he then jumps on her in the corridor in the middle of the night, tells her he’s Satan and trys unsuccessfully to
rape her. Hmmm. Indeed.

The book concludes with Oscar walking alone in a park with a borrowed dog. Don’t ask. The dog runs off and comes back with a human finger. It’s that sort of book. What happens next, for me illustrates the complete inhumanity of the protagonist. Most people, upon being handed a finger by a dog, would be shocked and horrified. Most people would wonder where the rest of the body was, try to get the dog to take them to it, and ultimately take the evidence to the police. That would be the normal reaction. Our dear hero, however, decides that the finger would be a nice souvenir. Coincidentally, it happens to belong to the very Nurse Dorothy whom he has essentially been stalking, and who now appears to have been murdered. Whether or not Oscar has committed the murder is ambiguous, but in any case he is convicted off it and put in the asylum. More or less the end.

So an utterly pointless book about a totally unlikeable character, whom I detested so much that I couldn’t even enjoy the prose when I felt I was supposed to. I wouldn’t, on principle, recommend anyone read a book which conjures up such mental images as a woman inserting a live eel in her vagina. I’m sure that the fact that I have failed to appreciate what is clearly a great work of art demonstrates the depths of my personal stupidity. Doubtless the fact that the reader hates Oscar is some sort of clever literary device which is supposed to help me understand some deep and meaningful point about the Nazis. Nevertheless, the only character in the book who I felt was halfways normal and with whom I had any sympathy at all was Oscar’s official father, he who was killed by swallowing the Nazi party badge. In other words, the only character who I managed to identify with rather than despise was the Nazi – certainly not what Grass intended. There is either something seriously wrong with the book, or something seriously wrong with me

In walking to Brindley Place, it had caught my attention that the Odeon was showing the film ‘The Reader’. I desperately wanted to see the film, but the timetable at the Odeon was rubbish so I googled it and found that the cinema at the far end of Broad Street had a showing at 5.25. Babel agreed to come along with me and watch, and we just had time to stroll back towards the shops and grab a coffee before the film started.

‘Der Vorleser’, as I prefer to call it because the English translation of the name loses half the significance, is without doubt the best German language book I have ever read. I would go further, and say it is one of the best books I have ever read, punkt. My copy of it is one of my most prized possessions in the world; I won’t go as far as to say I would save it from a burning building, but if I were going to save one book from a burning building, this is the only one I would think of. A Christmas present from someone special in 2002, this is the first book I ever attempted to read in a foreign language. My German at the time was honestly not up to it, but the person who gave it to me had helpfully gone through and added pencil translations of the more difficult words. Nevertheless, I think it must have taken me two months of painful stumbling to get to the end of it. I spent so long on just the first page I think I could almost recite it: “Als ich fuenfzehn war, hatte ich Gelbsucht”, that’s the first sentence and peculiarly one of the relatively few details they changed between the film and the book. Inexplicably, in the film Michael has scarlet fever rather than jaundice.

Having read it once, I was so moved by the story that I proceeded to read it over and over again for several years. My copy is now so well-read that the pages are falling out of the spine, and I don’t dare to read it again for fear it will be completely destroyed. Next time I am in Germany I am going to buy myself a new copy to read and keep the existing one purely for sentimental reasons

It was with some trepidation then that I actually approached the film, worried that like with Bambi, a film crew might have seen fit to change a sad ending into a happy one. It is with no small amount of relief that I can report that this is not the case, and the film was as excellent as an English language film of this story can be. It would undoubtedly be better if the film had been made in German, because in my opinion the English translation of the novel is very poor and not just the beauty, but the significance of much of the language is lost too. I don’t even like ‘kid’ as a translation of ‘Jungchen’.

If you don’t know the story, it starts off in West Germany in the 1960s with a 15 year old boy who becomes involved in an affair with a woman in her 30s. It’s a strange relationship, characterised by the fact that either before or after they make love, she asks him to read aloud to her. One day she randomly disappears and the boy is devastated, for the rest of his life seemingly unable to form normal relationships with women. Nevertheless, time passes and he begins to study law at university. One day, his lecturer takes him along to see a trial of ex-Nazis which is taking place in the local town. Several women are accused of being SS guards and responsible for the death of hundreds of women. Amongst the defendents is his former lover.

I won’t go into the intricacies of what happens next because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read it yet. I just want to make the point that this is NOT a novel about the Holocaust and it annoys me when I read comments from critics, be they German or foreign, complaining that the Holocaust is not treated in a serious enough manner or that it is not right that we are made to feel empathy for one of the perpetrators. The novel is about a society struggling to come to terms with what it has done, a generation of children growing up unable to comprehend the acts committed by their close relatives. It’s a novel about guilt, both collective and personal, and how far people are responsible for their actions. It does not ask us to excuse what was done by the SS, but rather than demonise them it makes the point that they too were human and in the same situation, we might not behave any better.

Definitely one of the most moving films I have ever seen; the book makes me cry and the film even more so. I would have cried more were I not sitting next to Babel, who looked a bit bored and tried to go to sleep

Marburg would naturally be a delightful place, but the atmosphere was accentuated by the fact that it had been snowing during the night. Not a lot by any means, but enough to cover the streets in a thin layer of white which, whilst it made everywhere rather slippery also made it rather pretty When we came out of the station we were a little unsure which direction to go in, but there was a helpfully placed map outside which we proceeded to study, trying to locate the whereabouts of the famous castle. We set off in what we thought was vaguely the right direction, although we couldn’t actually see the castle itself and it was pretty slow going as a result of the snow and ice. We were suddenly diverted in our tracks when we unexpectedly came across the Elisabethkirche. My friend who lives in Marburg had told me that night before that the church in Marburg was very old, but knowing that it was Protestant I hadn’t expected it to be quite as beautiful as it was, if that doesn’t sound silly. It was actually totally amazing, a wonderful example of Gothic architecture so grand that it reminded me almost of the cathedral in Cologne. There’s been a church on the site since the 13th century, which I believe makes it one of the oldest churches in Germany.

We stayed a while to soak up the atmosphere and take some photos. It also gave us an opportunity to warm up, because it was bitterly cold outside. Daylight hours were limited though, and we needed to press on to the castle. We seemed to have lost our bearings slightly, so one of the people I was with suggested that I stop someone in the street and ask for directions, me being the only one of us who spoke German. I had actually been keeping a little quiet about the fact that I spoke German so that I didn’t get nominated for such communication exercises, but I’d accidentally given the game away when we arrived at the Elisabethkirche and I went up to the man behind the desk and asked whether we needed to pay to go in (it wasn’t entirely clear, part of the church is publicly accessible but there’s a charge for entering the altar area towards the back). There was a reasonably friendly looking lady coming towards us, so I stopped her and enquired. She seemed a little surprised that anyone could be in Marburg and not be able to find their way to the whopping great big castle which towers above it, but nevertheless she gave me a series of rights and lefts which would have doubtless been very useful if I was capable of appreciating them. As a parting gift, she offered the very sound advice that we should simply walk uphill

It was only afterwards when we had inspected the castle and were sitting in a little cafe drinking coffee, that I realised it was actually quite an astounding thing that I had just stopped somebody in a street in Germany and asked for directions. It may sound silly, but a while ago when Babel was working in Herzberg and I went to visit him there, we got lost looking for the train station. It was absolutely imperative that we should find it within the next 15 minutes, because if I’d missed that train I’d have missed a flight back to England; problematic, when my parents probably thought I was in Wantage or some such Babel suggested in a forceful manner that I might like to ask somebody for directions, but I couldn’t/wouldn’t do it, and in the end he had to do it himself, despite the fact that his German isn’t quite as good as mine. It does sound stupid, and I seem to remember Babel quite reasonably being annoyed, but I was just too scared to do it. I seem to have made a lot of progress over the last couple of years

Anyway, as I said we found the castle and spent as long as we could bear in the cold taking photos of it. The building now houses a museum or museums, but we weren’t able to go inside and inspect them because it was now so close to closing time. I think that on a sunny day there would be an amazing view of Marburg and the surrounding area from the castle hill. There was a lovely view the day we were there, but the sky was still thick with snow and so we could scarcely make out the outskirts of the town. I would definitely like to go back there sometime, perhaps in summer.

As night began to fall we went to drink coffee and then looked around the shops for a bit because the others were keen to buy German souvenirs. It was unfortunate that I had forgotten that Friday night was a meal to thank everybody who had helped in the trinkejo and gufujo. By the time Babel had text me to remind me it was too late to get back. In fact we only just about made it back for dinner at all, and there was so little food left I felt incredibly hungry until about 3am in the morning when Babel bought me a packet of crisps

Friday evening was the internacia vespero which, with a few notable exceptions, was crap. I feel bad for slating people when I am utterly devoid of talent myself, but I feel proud because at least I recognise the fact that I can’t sing, dance, or tell funny jokes and the fact that I speak Esperanto doesn’t give me a licence to nevertheless do such things badly to an international audience. I didn’t really enjoy the internacia vespero during the IJK, but in comparison that one was highly professional It would be mean of me not to admit that there were some highlights though, specifically some absolutely hilarious parodys of Esperanto accents

After the talent show was over, we headed to the trinkejo for one last time. I was lucky in that I wasn’t needed to help serve this time, and I think I had the most enjoyable evening of the whole week on Friday because I was able to talk to so many different people. Ah and that actually reminds me that I’ve forgotten to mention something which happened on Thursday, and which got 2009 off to an even more surreal start than the fact that my boyfriend mistook me for someone else I met someone who I have been alternatively hoping to and hoping not to meet for over seven years now. I actually don’t want to talk about it much here, or indeed probably at all, because it’s rather a complex business and also a private one. I had known that this person might be at the IS, but when they didn’t turn up for New Year’s Eve I assumed they weren’t coming. And actually I felt like I really didn’t want them to come. Not out of any malice, because they’re not a person towards whom I seriously bear any ill-will, despite various things which might have happened over the years, but just because it was so very strange and rather scary. That is to say, there was a time when meeting this person would have been very important indeed. But that time ceased a very long time ago, and I no longer felt like I *needed* to meet them. Our lives are in completely different directions now, and I for one have had to fight very hard to get mine in the direction where I can say, in the nicest possible way, that this person is an irrelevance to me and me to him.

Nevertheless. Nevertheless, we finally did meet, sort of accidentally as it were, and in the end I’m glad that it happened. In a way it sort of feels like closure now, to a story which had already dragged on for far too long. It wasn’t a terrible experience by any stretch of the imagination, it was pleasant and relatively untraumatic. I would happily bump into that person again at other events in the future, without so much as blinking an eyelid. So I guess on balance it was positive

Babel and I eventually went to bed some time around four, conscious of the fact that we needed to have vacated our rooms by nine. I was impressed that despite us both having had quite a bit to drink (I was certainly rather drunk!) we nevertheless managed to be out of bed and packing our stuff at eight without feeling noticeably worse for wear. Some people struggled to get up an awful lot more Having had breakfast, we went for a final stroll around Biedenkopf then said our goodbyes to various people before heading out to the station to catch the train to Marburg at 10.46. Due to a slight misunderstanding with someone else we initially started walking towards the wrong station, and then the train itself appeared to be inexplicably early so we were just in the middle of crossing a rather substantial bridge across the railway line when it pulled into the station. Eek I was really scared we were going to miss it, or that one of us was going to make it and the other not. I needn’t have worried though; Babel impressively managed to jump over a fence or some such, and we squeezed on with seconds to spare

That train journey was rather pleasant, although I had a hideously painful sore throat. The following train was less pleasant as it was excessively crowded and some idiot was trying to push through the carriages with a drinks trolley We had a couple of hours to spare in Frankfurt so headed back to the Birmingham pub for some more food (excellent schnitzel!!) before doing a spot of shopping. I know, I know; that sounds most uncharacteristic of us, but I appeared to have overestimated the amount of euros Babel could drink and so we had spare currency to burn

I would like to say the journey home was uneventful but firstly I would like to make the point that Frankfurt airport is just as much of a hellhole as it was last time I saw it. It’s ridiculously large and confusing and the security procedures are a joke. Why two security checks? Why is it suspicious that I’m carrying a purse full of small change? Why herd passengers into an enclosed area without a toilet or a functioning drinks machine while they wait for their flights?

Babel and I didn’t have seats next to each other, and I was feeling exceptionally tired, so when I boarded the aircraft I decided not to read a book but rather to have a bit of a nap. I expected just to doze lightly, you understand. Sure enough I drifted off, and awoke vaguely after an unspecified amount of time to find I had been handed a sandwich. This disturbed me intensely. Why hadn’t the plane taken off? I mean, it was an hour since our scheduled departure time and we were still on the ground, being served sandwiches and chocolate to keep up our morale. It was quite clear that we hadn’t taken off, incidentally, because I couldn’t have slept through takeoff and when I looked out of the window (I thought) I saw a light from Frankfurt airport.

I was so disturbed by the situation that I asked the man to my left why the plane had been delayed, concerned I had missed an important announcement about the engine whilst snoozing. He explained that it was something to do with waiting for a connecting flight. Okay, fair enough, but I was still rather put out and decided to get my phone out to text my mother so she wasn’t worried about where I was. I turned it on and quite blatently wrote a text message, was however surprised that I was failing to pick up the signal of any network at all. I was also put out when the man on my right told me I wasn’t permitted to have my phone out. I told him that only applied when we were in the air not on the runway, but since I had no signal I turned it off anyway to oblige him. He looked at me like I was a weirdo.

And then it clicked!

I’d slept through take-off

Sure enough, we were virtually about to land in Birmingham. Whoops!

After that everything went smoothly: car retrieved, a final meal in a Harvester and back home. In terms of summing up the week, I’m struggling to know what to say. I spent the majority of it being terribly, terribly scared. I spent significant parts of it feeling very inadequate, very sad, and very lonely. Despite that, however, I thoroughly enjoyed the vast majority of it. I didn’t enjoy it in the same way, and perhaps not as much as the IJK; it was amazingly exciting going to Hungary, the weather was sunny, it was almost magically perfect in places and I opted out of a lot of the Esperanto activities, instead having chance to spend a lot of very happy, couply time with Babel. For me then the IJK was one of the best holidays I’ve ever had, but because I was spending time with someone I love as opposed to because I was at an Esperanto congress. The IS was different because Babel had a lot of stuff to do, and some days/nights I didn’t spend very much time with him at all. In fact two people independently expressed surprise that he was my boyfriend because they hadn’t really noticed us being together. Partly for that reason, and partly because of the fact that to be honest there was sod all to do in Biedenkopf in mid-winter, I’m not going to look back at the IS and think “wow, that was one of the best weeks of my life”. It wasn’t, but I enjoyed it in a different way and think I gained some useful experiences from it. Because Babel was so busy, I was forced to be more independent and talk to new people without him having introduced them to me first, which was really a new departure for me. I wouldn’t want to have to do that on my holidays on a regular basis, but nevertheless it was good, really good, and I’m glad I went

Monday is a little hazy for a start. I *think* that this was the day I decided to attend the progresanta kurso which was being organised by Robert and taking place in the trinkejo. I didn’t attend all of the subsequent sessions but I was glad that I went to the initial one at least, because for the first time in the IS so far I began to regain a tiny bit of confidence. There wasn’t a specific structure to the lesson but we all went round and introduced ourselves, then discussed some grammatical queries. At the end we played a very silly game where each person had to say one sentence of a story in turn, kind of like Jackanory. The end result was utterly ridiculous but it was a good way of breaking the ice, and afterwards over dinner I was able to make conversation with a couple of people I’d never spoken to before. I would normally *never* independently choose to speak to a person I didn’t know, so I felt this was progress indeed

In the afternoon there didn’t seem to be much of interest going on, so I decided to go for a long walk. Well, I think Babel was on duty and I didn’t just want to sit in the room by myself. I’d made a promise to my family that I would bring them back some peppermint Ritter Sport so I needed to find a supermarket. I also wanted to send postcards to various people, and it became a bit of a mission to find some. I had already experienced difficulties buying postcards earlier in the year when I was in Szombathely, but that was more due to the language barrier in Hungary than anything else. In Germany I figured it ought to be a lot simpler, but I was wrong

My first stop was the tourist information office where I managed to pick up a town plan. I was quite prepared to pay for one, so it was a pleasant surprise when the lady informed me that it was free Encouraged by this success and feeling my German flooding back to me, I decided to ask her if she had any postcards. I must confess that I didn’t seriously expect the answer to this question to be no. I am quite sure that I have never been to a tourist information office anywhere in the world which didn’t sell postcards, and whilst I admittedly couldn’t see any on display, I figured they might be in a box behind the counter like in Szombathley.

Well, I figured wrong The nice lady regretfully informed me that she didn’t sell postcards, but there might be some in the bookshop. I’d already had my eye on the local bookshop, so this seemed like a good excuse to go in. When I did I found that there was indeed an ample display of postcards, but they were all the Wrong Sort. To an English person it might be hard to imagine what the Wrong Sort of postcard can be, but in Germany people don’t tend to go in for greetings cards in a big way, instead preferring to send birthday/good luck/get well soon postcards. There were postcards for every occasion in this bookshop, which seemed to double as a bit of a stationers too, but none with a picture of the town

The woman in the bookshop looked distinctly unfriendly so I didn’t fancy asking her for advice. Instead I decided to have a bit of a wander round the town on the lookout for a newsagent. I hadn’t seen evidence of a newsagent of any kind as of yet, but I was certain there had to be one, perhaps in the general vicinity of the station, and that was the only other sort of establishment I could think of which might sell postcards.

It took a long time, but eventually I found one. Not before I had inspected two supermarkets, however, and purchased a large bag of Paprika crisps, a packet of cupcakes, a copy of der Spiegel and six bars of Ritter Sport. The newsagent looked a bit dingy but came up trumps with the postcards, and now my only remaining challenge was to buy myself some stamps. The most logical place to do this appeared to be the post office, and armed with my new town-plan I headed towards it. Unfortunately, it appeared to have closed down two weeks prior to my arrival. Drat There was still a machine for buying stamps outside, but the only problem was that it didn’t distinguish between the prices of those needed for internal mail and the prices of those needed for airmail. In the end I wrestled with the machine six times and bought a selection of stamps twice the value of those I thought I needed. Success!

After so much exertion, I felt severely in need of a coffee and so set out in search of a bakery. I found a very pleasant one indeed; it was too full to drink in but I got a takeaway and sat on a bench outside, watching the world go by… Actually that makes it sounds a bit more romantic than it was; it was -5 degrees and there wasn’t really anyone going by at all, but it *was* good coffee.

Feeling fortified, I was ready to explore the furthermost reaches of the town. I’d already spied a very pretty little river, but I was intrigued by the hilly landscape and wanted to go further afield. Unfortunately it was nearly half four by this stage and whilst it wasn’t dark yet, there was every promise that it would be in the near future. Striking off into unknown woods therefore seemed a little foolhardy, so I contented myself with walking along the main road for a couple of miles as far as the neighbouring village of Ludwigshuette. There was even less going on in Ludwigshuette than in Biedenkopf, but it was a scenic stroll and the exercise helped cheer me up a bit.

If I remember correctly, Monday was the night of “Kiu volas iĝi milionulo”, a very professional Esperanto version of the famous “Who wants to be a millionaire” game. Rolf took the role of Chris Tarrant, even having the hair to match, and the questions were hilariously funny. Some of them were terribly difficult too, and I found the ones which involved proverbs particularly confusing. There were a few technical glitches en route, but if anything these just added to the overall enjoyment of the proceedings, and as far as evening entertainment goes, this was definitely my favourite

Once the quiz was over, Babel and I headed to the trinkejo. It was rather busy, there being karaoke ongoing, and for a while I stood by the door and watched. The trinkejo was in a happier state by Monday night, the shops now being open so that the organisers had been able to buy some red wine. Babel started serving behind the bar, and I ended up standing next to him so I could steal his crisps, and before I knew what was happening I had ended up serving people too, despite the fact that I had expressly said before the start of the week that the one thing I didn’t want to do was work in the trinkejo. I was paranoid that I was going to break something, but actually the beer was in bottles and so relatively easy to serve. The main problem was more giving change.

As I said to various people over the course of the next few evenings, you really wouldn’t know I had a degree in mathematics If my mental arithmetic in English is appalling, my mental arithmetic in Esperanto is worse because even if I’ve calculated the correct number in my mind I run the risk of translating it incorrectly, eg. 70 as 17 or vice versa. I might just about have been okay if I were handling pounds, but of course in this situation it was euros only and even at the best of times I have problems distinguishing the different euro coins, never mind in a situation of stress and after a couple of glasses of wine. I probably drank a little too much wine in an attempt to get over my nerves, but whilst I was horribly scared to the point of feeling sick the whole time, in a way it was a kind of positive experience because I felt like I was doing something vaguely useful

The karaoke was fun to watch, especially when Babel did his rendition of “Big Balls”, but nevertheless I was glad when someone came to relieve me of my duties at 4am. And incidentally, in case you know me and don’t believe this really happened, here is the proof

In any case, it’s a pretty little place, albeit rather sleepy. That first Sunday morning I hardly saw another living creature as I wandered up and down the backstreets. Admittedly Sundays are generally quite sleepy in Germany with all the shops being closed, but even so… Almost the first building which I came across when I left the youth hostel and crossed the train line was the catholic church, and there was a big sign outside proclaiming that Mass would take place at 11. Now normally I would have no interest in attending Mass, rather the reverse in fact, but in this instance it struck me as a good idea; it would keep me busy for an hour, and it would also be somewhere nice and warm to sit, because it was becoming bitterly cold outside.

That left me with an hour to explore, so I needed to walk at a fairly swift pace. I had my sights set on the little castle which towers high above Biedenkopf, situated on a steep hill. I had no idea how to get to it but began walking in the general direction, and soon I was confronted with a plethora of signs pointing uphill to the ‘Schloss’. It was by no means a gentle stroll to the castle actually…. or perhaps I’m just terribly unfit, because I must say that I found it quite exhausting The path was really quite steep, and in some places cobbled which made it especially difficult to walk on, particularly when it was quite an icy morning. Happily there was a helpful rail affixed to the side in most places, and the closer I got to the top, the more I have to confess that I was hanging onto this and drawing myself up panting

It was well worth it in the end The view from the top is quite spectacular, taking in the whole of Biedenkopf as well as much of the surrounding area. I was pleasantly surprised by how hilly the whole area was, and one of my regrets for the week is that I wasn’t brave enough/didn’t find the time to go off exploring in the countryside. No sooner had I reached the summit, however, I had to think about returning downwards because it was already twenty five to eleven and it was going to be a struggle to make it back to the vicinity of the youth hostel on time for Mass. Fortunately the way down was an awful lot quicker than the way up, and the rail once again really came into it’s own, providing me with something to hang onto as I scurried downhill as fast as my little legs would carry me.

Miraculously, I made it to the church by 10 to 11, but wasted a good few minutes outside trying to work out where the door was (no, really, it wasn’t obvious!). I eventually succeeded, acquired a missal for myself and chose an unobtrusive seat sufficiently close to the back. It was a fairly modern church but a pretty one nevertheless, one entire side wall being covered by interesting stained glass. I was expecting the service to be a rather sombre affair as the congregation looked distinctly elderly, but when the priest came onto the altar I was in for a shock. With no warning at all, he walked towards a microphone, picked up a guitar, and started to play and sing He was very good and definitely succeeded in livening up what could otherwise have been dull proceedings, but I must confess there were a few minutes when I wondered whether I was actually in a catholic church at all

Halfway through the service I noticed that there was a bunch of other Esperantists on the far side of the church. That was rather a fortunate occurrance, because when I exited the church I could no longer remember which direction the youth hostel was in We all walked back together, taking a slightly illegal route across a school playground, and were back just in time for dinner.

In the afternoon Babel still had work to do on his powerpoint presentation, so I decided to participate in the organised excursion to the town castle. Yes, I had admittedly already seen it once today, but I figured it would keep me out of mischief, and anyway I thought there might be more to the town than I had managed to discover on my morning sortie. It turned out that there actually wasn’t and I began to despair as to how on earth I was ever going to survive a week in this place, but nevertheless it was nice to have another walk in the fresh air and we were treated to a commentary about the architecture of the town which was very interesting

Fortunately the excursion didn’t take too long, and I was back just on time to sit in on Babel’s lecture about child labour. There was a good attendance, and the powerpoint presentation he had been busy finalising all day looked very professional Some of the statistics and viewpoints he presented were very interesting, and whilst other people got involved in the debate, I concentrated on trying to get some decent photos for La Brita Esperantisto

I can’t remember Sunday evening terribly well. I suspect that I may have sat in the trinkejo, which was fairly empty, for a bit and attempted to drink a bottle of beer. I still didn’t feel confident enough to be able to sit there and even watch other people having a conversation if I was stone cold sober, so I did my best to become inebriated, even stretching to a second bottle. It was a rather painful experience though, all the more painful when I realised I hadn’t even been managing to swallow “real” beer, only Radler – a mixture of beer and lemonade