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

Uncharacteristically for me, I didn’t write any kind of diary or even take notes during the IS, and so for that reason I’m struggling to remember what happened on which day. I might have to abandon the chronological approach and go for just talking about what I can remember instead

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 (more…)

Babel had some last minute lecture preparation to do the next morning, so rather than sitting around and moping I decided to go out and explore the town. By 10am I had already finished breakfast and was strolling along a small road which I later ascertained to be the main street of the town. Having now spent a week there, I would have been more inclined to call Biedenkopf a village, but I have been reliably informed by two Germans that it has more than 10,000 inhabitants, thus fulfilling the legal requirements to be able to call itself a town

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. (more…)

On Saturday evening Babel and I finally arrived home after a week of Esperanto-craziness at the IS. It was an unusual week, albeit in an enjoyable sort of way, and I hardly know where to start with describing it. I actually suspect I won’t get very far with describing it at all, because I’m off to the land of no internet in Oswestry for the rest of the week, but if I shall begin at the beginning and see how far we get (more…)