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. (more…)

We had decided to leave at 09.30 to be on the safe side, knowing that we needed to catch a bus and a tram to get to the main coach station, but unfortunately when we stuck our heads outside the door we were greeted by a torrential downpour. We had no choice but to trudge through it to the bus stop, but as we stood there waiting it fortunately eased of slightly. The main problem was that the bus we were waiting for didn’t seem to arrive, and when we eventually figured out how the Saturday timetable worked, it emerged that there wasn’t going to be a bus until 10.25. I was worried that this wouldn’t give us enough time to catch our coach, so we reached the decision that we were going to walk into the town. Initially this went as well as walking a couple of kilometres pulling a suitcase can be expected to go, but no sooner had we arrived in the town centre when the storm broke again and we proceeded to get absolutely drenched.

And when I say drenched, I mean drenched! The rain was coming down in sheets and I was soon soaked to the underwear. We were all thoroughly miserable, but I couldn’t think of any solution to the problem other than us continuing to walk onwards for another 15 minutes, at which point we would hopefully find the coach. It was at this moment when Babel, who I assumed was not speaking to me because I had failed to organise this segment of the journey satisfactorily, piped up with the suggestion, “Why don’t we just take a taxi?!”. (more…)

Much to our relief, Sunday dawned an awful brighter than Saturday Breakfast was at the reasonably civilised hour of 8.30, and I have to say that the breakfasts in Liberec were on the whole really nice, much better than at the IJK in Szombathely last year. Every day we had two normal rolls, plus something else that was more sweet and cake-like, and then either ham or cheese or egg. Having consulted the programme the previous evening, we had noticed that there was an interesting excursion on Sunday morning called “Liberec from the air” and we decided to take part in it. Like so many Esperanto activities which sound like a good idea on paper, in reality it didn’t quite live up to expectations.

I hasten to add that this was not the fault of Liberec, but more the fault of the Esperantists we were with. We set off on a guided tour of the town centre, aiming for the Catholic church where we were meetin up with a group of people more committed than me who had got up early enough to go to Mass. But the people we were with walked sooooo slowly, it was unbelievable. And not only did they walk slowly, the guide stopped for a five minute break approximately every two minutes, talking at great and tedious length about things which weren’t interesting, cracking jokes which were painfully unfunny, and trying to pretend he spoke more languages than he evidently did Within only a few minutes, Babel and I were getting quite frustrated and from the start of the excursion we were at the front of the pack, eventually breaking off into a small group with a couple of others and reaching the town centre way ahead of everyone else. (more…)

Today is my third day back at work after one of the longest holidays I have ever been on. It’s not been a terribly good second day back at work, as I’ve been required to commute to London, and it feels very strange going back to accounting after over two weeks abroad!

Tim and I set off on our travels on Friday 17th July, and I finally returned home to Birmingham on Sunday afternoon, the 2nd August. The holiday got off to a less-than-smooth start for me, due to the fact that it was my sister’s graduation ceremony the day before we were due to leave. Now I don’t know what you’re like the day before you embark on a holiday, but I’m generally a bit frantic. I need to spend a couple of hours packing and repacking my case; desperately trying to fit everything in, making sure I haven’t forgotten anything, swapping things between my suitcase and my hand luggage… Then I like to spend an hour messing about with the tickets and making sure I haven’t accidentally mislaid any of them and that my complicated itinerary is imprinted on my brain. And then I like to wash my hair and have a last minute drive to answer all the email correspondence I’ve been putting off for weeks, but know I don’t want to come back home to.

Unfortunately none of this was possible this time around, which made me decidedly out of sorts. My sister graduated on the Thursday afternoon, and unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the actual ceremony because I was stuck at work desperately trying to finish my audit. I had, however, arranged to meet up with my family in the city centre afterwards and go for an evening meal. I envisaged meeting them at half six and being home again for eight, but just in case something went wrong, I decided to pack my case on Wednesday night instead.

It was just as well, because a complication with taking the departmental photograph meant that they didn’t arrive until quarter past eight. I was a litle fed up and stressed by this stage, having finished work at five. I was also a little bit wet, having had to walk from my office to Pizza Express in the pouring rain, on account of prematurely having packed my umbrella Nevertheless we had a very pleasant meal and it was all a lot of fun but it meant I didn’t get home until round about 11, having had no chance to sort out any of the things I wished to sort (more…)

I am currently in an internet cafe in Bialystok, Poland. Up until about an hour ago, I had not been having a very good day at all

Babel and I arrived here on Monday afternoon, following a long and unpleasant journey across most of Poland, utterly fed up and exhausted. We were fast asleep by 7pm on Monday, but yesterday felt better and decided to explore the town. With the help of some tourist brochures translated into Esperanto, we duly did so, a procedure which lasted approximately three hours. That is to say, within three hours we appeared to have seen every single sight which Bialystok possesses, and were thus rather at a loss for something else to do.

In the absence of any better ideas, we spent Tuesday afternoon getting drunk. Eight glasses of wine later it was time for bed, after a brief stop off at a nearby pizza place to grab an evening meal. We committed the grave mistake of sitting outside to eat with some friends… The result is that this morning I have woken up with in excess of twenty fly bites on my legs alone, with the upper half of my body being even worse off. I can’t count all the bites on my back because I can’t see them all, but I would hazard a guess that I must be the proud owner of about 50 bites in total. And yes, they itch like hell. All 50 of them, at the same time. It was pretty difficult to sleep last night (more…)

No time or expense has been spared in producing this exceptionally cool map which shows where I am going to over the next two weeks. Please don’t tell Babel it’s here – my attempts at graphic design are prone to upset him

There will be no posts on this blog for the next two or three weeks, as I am going on holiday

I shall be flying to Prague on Friday morning, from where I will travel to the town of Liberec to attend the IJK, the world Esperanto youth congress, which runs between Saturday 18th and Saturday 25th July. Babel and I are heading to Prague for a spot of sightseeing that weekend, before catching a bus to Warsaw on the Sunday night and from there heading on to Bialystok by train. Bialystok is the location for the UK, the World Esperanto Congress 2009, and we will be there until Saturday 1st August, at which point we have a rather complex journey home via Wroclaw. If you can’t figure out why this is complex, try looking at a map of Poland If all goes to plan, I will be home again on Sunday 2nd August… home for a very brief interval, I hasten to add, as I am going to Austria on August 8th

I’ve been planning this for so long that I’m starting to feel rather excited now, but this week I’ve also started feeling scared. Having organised it all myself, I’m worried that something will go terribly wrong and we’ll get stranded somewhere random, unable to speak a word of Polish…

Wish me luck!

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, or May 1998 if you want to be more precise, I took a flight with Ryanair from Birmingham to Dublin. It was, in fact, the first flight I had ever taken in my entire life and hence a rather exciting experience. A week later, I attempted to take my second ever flight from Dublin back to Birmingham, and it was here that the fun and games started.

My family and I arrived at Dublin airport in good time and searched for our flight on the departure boards. For some strange reason, it didn’t appear to be showing at the time at which we had expected it. Curious. Eventually, a bit unnerved, my mother went over the a customer information desk and enquired. Customer Services proceeded to deny point blank that our flight existed. My mother duly produced the tickets. Customer Services then clarified that our flight had indeed once existed, but had since been cancelled. These were the good old days when you had proper paper tickets and had to go to a travel agent to purchase them. The travel agent had not informed us that our flight had been cancelled, or perhaps more accurately, Ryanair had not informed the travel agent. The time/day of the flight had been randomly moved without us knowing, and thus we had missed it.

The prospect of being stranded in Dublin airport was not one that appealed, and after various arguments between my mother and Ryanair staff, we were booked onto a new flight. There followed a mad dash across the airport to try and make it, which culminated in us actually running out onto the runway, so lax was airport security in those days But ultimately we missed that flight too and had to sit around in the airport for many boring hours before Ryanair condescended to fly us home.

Over the past ten years, Ryanair has metamorphosed from a slightly dodgy airline which sold flights to Ireland slightly cheaper than Aer Lingus, to the incredibly dodgy European budget airline that it is today. A lot of things have changed, from the online check-in system to the staff’s desire to sell you scratch cards during the flight. It appears that some things, however, remain the same. (more…)

One of the very exciting things to happen during my blogging drought was the development of the plans Babel and I have for our summer holiday. I had originally managed to get the week from 18th to 25th July booked off work, and ever since January when we booked our flights from East Midlands to Prague, we have been intending to attend the Internacia Junulara Kongreso, a week-long event for young speakers of Esperanto which this year is being held in the Czech town of Liberec. Babel very uncharacteristically offered to arrange the flights, and got us a really good price with Ryanair. The only downside was that they don’t run a flight on the Saturday we wanted to fly back, so we booked a return ticket for the Sunday instead. I certainly didn’t regard this as being much of downside, because it gave us the opportunity to spend a weekend in Prague, a place I have wanted to go to for years (more…)

I normally find Easter a rather sombre time as year. As a small child I would spend the latter part of Lent sobbing from genuine distress at the fact that Jesus was about to be crucified. In our primary school assemblies we used to sing a hymn called “They hung him on a cross” and when it got to the penultimate verse which starts “He hung his head and died”, most of us would have tears rolling down our cheeks, despite the fact that we knew the final verse would start “He’s coming back again!”. I would also dread Good Friday weeks in advance – partly because my mother would take out the Bible (the only time in the year when she would do so, I hasten to add) and read the Passion aloud, and party because we had to eat fishfingers. I hate fishfingers and as a child I wanted to be a Protestant so that I wouldn’t have to eat them. (more…)