At the Urba Semajnfino, I met Nick Woods, who runs the Esperanto club at William & Mary (Williamsburg, VA, USA). Then I encouraged him to visit the Youth Esperanto Week (JES) in Gdansk, Poland and he took me up on the offer! But enough from me, learn more about the adventure from Nick himself!

Train caravan to JES

I’ve wanted to travel abroad using Esperanto for quite some time now, but there’s always been some obstacle, whether it’s the cost of an overseas flight or other plans getting in the way. So, when I found out I could go to the Junulara E-Semajno in Gdansk (Poland), I jumped on the chance. Instead of flying straight to Gdansk, I decided to fly first to Berlin, partly because it was much cheaper and partly because I wanted to take part in the train caravan heading to Gdansk. I ended up traveling with twenty to thirty other Esperantists, mostly from Germany. The atmosphere was festive, with some of the more musically inclined members taking out guitars and strumming some well-known Esperanto songs, and it was an awesome way to practice my Esperanto before arriving at JES. Eventually, though, the jetlag and the midnight departure time took their toll, and I fell asleep.

Upon arriving at the event, I made it a goal to talk to as many different people as possible. Fortunately, many people there, being Esperanto speakers, were very interested in how people live all over the world, so I was able to talk about food, school, music, politics, and other sorts of culture in the US, and in turn I heard about culture from Europe and other parts of the world. I also occasionally help put together the daily news for Muzaiko, so I helped the group sell T-shirts and CDs as a fundraiser. It surprised me to learn that my Esperanto was good enough to help an organization make money!

Nick Woods and La Perdita Generacio

For me, the best thing about the event was the live music. There were excellent performances from bands like Inicialoj DC and La Perdita Generacio, whose music I’ve been listening to and enjoying for years, as well as groups I’m less familiar with, such as the family folk band Asorti and the surf rock group Danĝera. Additionally, the pianist and singer-songwriter Gijom gave a memorable impromptu performance in the hallway in front of the cafeteria. Two of the members of La Perdita Generacio talked to me at length about what it’s like to be an Esperanto speaker in the US, and how much North America needs more Esperanto musicians! There was also quite a selection of Esperanto-language karaoke and a dance floor that was open all night long.

There was always something interesting going on during the event. Some of the lectures were very engaging, such as the very ad hoc lesson about the Polish language or the discussion group about lifehacking. Listeners were invited to the recording of one of the episodes of my favorite Esperanto podcast, Varsovia Vento (you can hear me during part B of the 77th episode). I got to get out and see a good part of the beautiful old part of the city during the Urba Ludo, which was a sort of scavenger hunt. I had some generally decent vegetarian food during mealtime, and Polish beer and some interesting junk food (I’m still not quite sure what it was made out of) were available for purchase.

During the culminating New Year’s party, I definitely felt that being with Esperantists was the best way to bring in 2012. And I strongly urge anyone to learn Esperanto and travel outside their home country, since learning and using this language really is an experience unlike any other.

Nick Woods is now planning to organize the next Urba Semajnfino to be held in Richmond, VA later this year.

Now it’s January 2012. Below I list my ten most popular posts of last year. I’m really excited about this, because it’s often hard to find time to read every post and we have new readers who don’t have time to dig through the archives for the gems. So, here we go…

1. Start Reading Esperanto Literature

Surprising to me, the most popular post of the year was not written by me, but rather by Amelie Ambrus. In this three part series, she expertly presents the landscape of Esperanto literature for your reading pleasure. Also see the other parts: Discover Esperanto Literature in English and Five Periods of Esperanto Literature.

2. Esperanto Documentary: The Universal Language

I’d say the greatest success of the Esperanto movement this year has to be The Universal Language, by award-winning documentary filmmaker, Sam Green. In this film, he presents the history of Esperanto in the context of other important historic events. It’s quite interesting to see Esperanto presented in film with a neutral point of view. Also see my review of this documentary, Review of The Universal Language documentary as well as its original inspiration, Interview about Utopia in Four Movements.

3. 2nd generation native Esperanto speaker

Many were fascinated with Rolf Fantom’s account of how he was raised as a second generation native Esperanto speaker. He accounts on how he was raised, as well as the difficulties and blessings of growing up this way. I’ve also recently met a third generation native speaker, but you’ll hear more about him later this year.

4. Facila Vento: Easy Reading in Esperanto

It surprised me that this was so popular, but I guess it shouldn’t. People starting to learn Esperanto need easy texts to read. Enjoy the many diverse articles and stories there!

5. Esperanto sex trafficking?

Somehow I think the title has something to do with this posts top placement. The film director of Cargo, a feature film raising awareness of sex trafficking, wanted a more international exposure of his message. This also had a lot to do with Xenia “Libera” Prilepskaja-Grubstein’s influence as a long-time Esperanto speaker to be sure this reached the audience it deserved.

6. Esperanto’s Big Premiere on the Big Screen

It seems that 2011 was a breakthrough year for Esperanto in the world of film. Looking over this list, I see that 4 of the top 10 highlights are in some way related to movies. The first Esperanto Film Festival taking place in Brazil was a historical event, giving our community a unique opportunity to showcase our progress in this field.

7. Join the Six Week Language Challenge

An interesting chance to challenge yourself while comparing your results with your friends. You can choose which languages you want to start and/or improve. Collect points on the leaderboard based on your activities and how long you do them. The next six week challenge will begin in February!

8. How Not to Organize IJK

While I was quite disappointed with the IJK in Kiev, others strongly disagreed with me. In fact, I considered JES to have been much better, but for example, Jessica Grasso actually preferred IJK! I guess that’s why we have so many different Esperanto events. In the future, I expect to see even more interesting Esperanto events.

9. Finding the Esperanto Wikipedia

I’m really glad this made the top ten. In this 4 part series, I tell the story of how I founded the Esperanto Wikipedia in December 2001 and helped it grow. For years, I’ve been meaning to retell this story and here I finally got around to it. The other three parts: Founding the Esperanto Wikipedia, Unicoding the Esperanto Wikipedia and Promoting the Esperanto Wikipedia. Out of everything from last year, I’m most proud of this series… a must-read! On a related note, you can also read about the first Esperanto Wikipedia conference.

10. Director interview: Atako de la Lunaj Zombioj

Finishing off our list is that quirky 50′s style black-and-white film Attack of the Moon Zombies, dubbed into Esperanto. Also see my interview with one of the translators.

Which was your favorite post of the year? Lately I’ve had so much material, I don’t know what to do with it all. Subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for email updates (scroll up to the upper left part of this page) to make sure you are always the first to know what’s happening in the Esperanto world and I look forward to sharing what’s in store for us in 2012. Thanks for reading!

If you haven’t yet seen it, check out my initial coverage of the Junulara Esperanto-Semajno (Esperanto Youth Week) in my post: JES, great Esperanto youth congress. That covered everything except New Years Eve: the most important day of a youth congress.

Bas singing the Kashubian alphabet

The day started with the usual walk up from breakfast to look at the program, but what, a band is playing in front of the program board? But, what a great concert it was. This band, Bas, specializes in playing music in the Kashubian language. In one song, they explained that they used songs to help their children learn their language, since at the time, everyone would be taught in German at school.

The most fascinating part about the band was their unusual instruments. The one I liked most was something that looked like a wooden man. On the top was a pair of cymbals, so that when you push it into the ground, it would make the cymbals clap. You could also strike at the bottom for a loud beat or at the cymbals at the top for a lighter beat. Another incredible instrument was something that looked like a barrel with hair sticking out. First you would put your hand in water, and then you pull on the hair making an interesting sound. They even gave the audience a chance to try this unusual instrument out for themselves!

Polish specialty: cut-off fingers

After this, I attended a discussion group on the Occupy movement and then went out with some friends for tea at a local cafe. That evening, was the dance and buffet. One nice tradition of these events, is that you have people celebrating from all over the world, so every time a participant has the New Year in their time zone, everyone yells Happy New Year again. Yes, that means our friend from New Zealand celebrated at noon, while the Californian had to wait til 9 in the morning!

We danced the night away and could take breaks to visit the buffet. There you could eat bigos, a traditional cabbage and meat stew, which I heard is always served for New Years in Poland. There were also the curious tranĉitaj fingroj [cut-off fingers], which I suspect were actually vienna sausages.

Frenchmen squeezed into train hallway

The next morning, we gathered up our group and were surprised to find the only lunch alternatives at the station were McDonald’s and KFC. Considering, we were 11 people including 5 vegans and 5 vegetarians, this was quite disheartening. So, french fries and onion rings it was and off to the train! On the track, we were surprised to discover that our reserved seats were only on the second part of the trip, so for four hours most of us took turns sitting on pull out chairs from the wall and standing in the crowded train hallway.

After a grueling Polish train ride, I’m now back home in Berlin with guests from England, Switzerland and the USA. So, last night we had the JES after-party at the private bar of a cultural center in Berlin. Around 30 people showed up and we had a blast with Muzaiko playing in the background. Judging by the amount of fun everyone had, I believe this after-party is on its way to becoming a tradition in Berlin, so come join us next year!

Photo of “cut-off fingers” courtesy of Jessica Grasso.