Tre ofte kiam mi ĉeestas Esperanto-aranĝojn, oni demandas al mi, kial mi parolas Esperanton. Multaj homoj kiujn mi konas havas tre bonajn respondojn al tiu demando. Ili ege interesiĝas pri lingvistikaj aferoj, ili volas malmultekoste vojaĝi al diversaj landoj, ili kredas ke lingva egaleco tre gravas… Ĉiuj tre bonaj kialoj, sed por mi neniuj el tiuj taŭgas.

Se iuj el vi fariĝos miaj amikoj ĉe Facebook, vi rimarkos ke en la skatolo sub mia profilbildo, kie oni rajtas skribi kelkajn vortojn pri si mem, mi skribis „Mi neniam intencis paroli Esperanton“. Fakte mi memoras iun tagon.. verŝajne estis en du mil kvar… kiam mi sidis en aŭtobuso en Birmingham, kaj parolis al amiko mia per poŝtelefono. En la mezo de la konversacio mi iomete koleriĝis, kaj mi memoras tute bone ke mi subite ekkriis, tre laŭte, „Mi neniam lernos Esperanton!“. Kio, do, okazis inter tiam kaj nun, por ke mi ne nur eklernu la lingvon, sed ankaŭ fariĝu membro de la estraro de la landa asocio. Estas bona demando, kaj por respondi al ĝi, necesas pensi pri kelkaj jaroj en la pasinteco kaj klarigi, kiamaniere mi lernis pri Esperanto. (more…)

I have just returned from a really lovely weekend at the British Esperanto Congress in Salisbury. This was only the second BK which I have attended, and I was a little apprehensive, both about some of the things I had volunteered to help out with during the weekend, and the fact that it was our first camping tent in Babel’s new tent. My anxieties about whether or not camping in Britain in April would prove to be a good idea were not helped by the horrible rainy weather which preceded the weekend, but luckily I was so busy with work that I didn’t have too much free time to dwell on it.

By a stroke of bad luck, I was working in London on Friday but needed to come back to Birmingham to take some files back to the office. The result was that Babel and I entirely missed the Friday of the congress. He drove down from Leicester to collect me on Friday evening, but it was gone 9pm by the time we left my house, and we had agreed in advance that we weren’t going to go all the way, so I had prebooked a hotel for us. Not just any hotel. Oh no, there was no expense spared on this weekend, and so I had reserved a room at the Travelodge Newbury Chieveley (more…)

English version

Dum mi estis ĉe Esperanto-Domo en januaro, iu donacis al mi libron, kun la peto ke mi recenzu ĝin por brita Esperanto-ĵurnalo. Mi ne povis rifuzi sen esti malĝentila, kaj ĉiuokaze mi neniam rifuzus akcepti senpagan libron, sed mi sciis nenion pri la enhavo de tiu, nur ke temas pri feliĉo.

Pasis preskaŭ tri monatoj, kaj mi ankoraŭ ne legis la libron. Mi ricevis multajn librojn je kristnasko, kaj mi ankoraŭ havas monton de nelegitaj libroj en mia dormoĉambro! Tamen post du semajnoj mi iros al la brita kongreso de Esperanto, kie mi tre verŝajne renkontiĝos kun la viro kiu donis al mi la libron. Do, venis al mi la penso ĉi-posttagmeze ke mi almenaŭ malfermu ĝin antaŭ la kongreso! (more…)

On Sunday I did something I should have done a long time ago and tidied my bedroom. I’ve never had a messy bedroom, even as a small child, but this year it kinda started to get out of control, chiefly as a result of the wondrous number of books which Babel bought me for Christmas and my birthday. I had originally started piling these up on the desk in my room in a neat sort of heap, but the pile grew and grew and spread onto my chair and the surrounding floor space too at such an alarming rate that the whole lot was soon in serious danger of collapsing on top of me in the middle of the night, rather like a coal tip. It took a good few hours of dusting and rearranging, but finally I found a solution which involved disposing of some pointless shoeboxes and putting the majority of the clutter on my desk under one of my chairs. This might not sound like much of an improvement but my room looks substantially better for it and the advantage is that I can now keep my computer and our congratulations cards on my desk rather than on the floor. The wireless still isn’t working properly, but it’s still nice to have a computer (more…)

Friday dawned, and with it the final day of the IS The unfortunate thing about these Esperanto events appears to be that as soon as I begin to relax into them, they appear to be over! What I did on Friday morning eludes me, but I had a rather exciting afternoon in Marburg together with a Brazilian guy now working as a doctor in the USA, and a girl from Kazakhstan who is studying in Moscow. It was a strange combination, but they were both really lovely people and it was fun not to have to go on my own. I’ve wanted to visit Marburg for ages, by virtue of the fact that so many people have told me what a lovely town it is, so it would have seemed a crying shame to be staying so close to it in Biedenkopf and yet not get chance to see it. Babel, for reasons I’m not entirely clear on and thus couldn’t explain to the others on the umpteen occasions they expressed regret that he hadn’t been able to make it, had seemingly no interest in sightseeing, but I wasn’t really too fussed; sometimes I rather like having the independence of being on my own, and I was secure in the knowledge that my German should be good enough to cope with any situations I encountered. Ultimately, however, it was nice to have company Especially when it got dark and the area around the station looked a little bit dodgy! (more…)

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…)

I interrupt these memories of the IS to bring you my definitive list of Esperanto acronyms which I wrote when I got a little bored in Oswestry this evening, and now feel rather proud of (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…)