Kerstin: Meine erste Frage. Da geht es um den Sprachwettbewerb. Language Learning Competition. German Government Competition, der Sprachwettbewerb. Und du hast mit 17 beim Sprachwettbewerb gewonnen in Chinesisch. Wie kam das und wie war das, diese Erfahrung?
Judith: Also der volle Name ist Bundeswettbewerb Fremdsprachen und den gibt es zum einen fŸr Polyglots und zum anderen gibt es Spezialwettbewerbe fŸr Chinesisch und Japanisch. Ich habe leider die Anmeldefrist fŸr den Wettbewerb fŸr Polyglottes verpasst, weil mir keiner davon erzŠhlt hat. Das war wirklich... an meiner Schule gab es keine anderen Polyglots und keine Lehrer, die sich damit beschŠftigt haben, das war sehr schade. Aber ich habe es noch geschafft, mich fŸr den Sonderwettbewerb "Chinesisch" anzumelden. Und da ging es darum innerhalb von 6 Monaten ein bisschen Chinesisch zu lernen und dann musste man einen lŠngeren Aufsatz verfassen Ÿber ein Thema das China betrifft und danach natŸrlich weiterlernen und dann konnte man, wenn man ein PreistrŠger war, nach China gehen und dort 6 Wochen intensiv Chinesisch zu lernen. Und das habe ich gemacht. Ich war also eine der 3 PreistrŠgerinnen des Jahres und fŸr mich war das eigentlich keine besondere Frage, ob ich da mitmache oder nicht. Sobald ich das gelesen habe, wusste ich dass ich da mitmachen wŸrde. Ich habe mich schon immer fŸr China interessiert, die Zeichen fand ich als Kind schon sehr spannend und habe selbst irgendwie versucht eine eigene Schrift zu entwickeln, die so Šhnlich aussieht wie Chinesisch, so in der Art. Ich wusste, ich muss die Sprache irgendwann lernen.  Und dieser Wettbewerb, den gibt es nur fŸr SchŸler, also nicht fŸr Studis, sondern nur bis maximal 13. Klasse und ich war in der 13. Klasse, also wusste ich genau, dieses Jahr lerne ich jetzt Chinesisch. 
Kerstin: Also du warst vorher schon polyglot, du hast vorher schon mehrere Sprachen gelernt. In der Schule oder alleine?
Judith: In der Schule hauptsŠchlich. Ich komme aus einem einsprachigen Elternhaus. Also habe ich mit 10 Jahren erst meine erste Fremdsprache gelernt, das war English, danach Latein, danach habe ich Franzšsisch angefangen und nach 2 Jahren sofort wieder aufgegeben, weil das ...das lag mir nicht, obwohl ich jetzt mittlerweile einen Abschluss in Romanistik mit Schwerpunkt Franzšsisch habe, aber zu dem Zeitpunkt und in der Weise wie es unterrichtet wurde lag es mir nicht, dann habe ich Esperanto angefangen. Das war meine erste Sprache im Selbststudium, die hat mir sehr, sehr viel Motivation gegeben und Ÿberhaupt mich ermutigt auch Sprachen im Selbststudium zu lernen. Und schlie§lich noch Italienisch, das hatte ich auch als eine der Sprachen im Abi. Das hei§t, das waren so in etwa meine Sprachen zu dem Zeitpunkt. Ich hatte ein paar Wšrter Griechisch aufgeschnappt, ein paar Wšrter NiederlŠndisch hier und dort, aber eigentlich war es Deutsch, Englisch, Latein, Esperanto, Franzšsisch, Italienisch und dann Chinesisch.
Kerstin: We have a lot in common in terms of the background and what got us interested in languages. Like you I come from a monolingual household, I mean very strong dialect but ... we never thought that counted, we never thought of it as valued and I did all my languages in secondary school as well. That's amazing to hear. You spent a little bit of time in China. How was it different to learn in the country? Did you feel you had enough language to actually help you get on there? Did you have the opportunity to test yourself?
Judith You are making a very good point which is that you should have a basic knowledge of the language before you get to a country. At least that's my philosophy - because if you understand 4 or 5 words in a sentence then you have a pretty good chance of understanding the last one or trying to guess it, but if you understand like zero or 1 out of 5 then you cannot learn so much from context and you will depend on formal instruction, formal classes which you could also have in your native country. So, in my case actually, this was 2004 and before the Olympic Games, China was a quite a different place. It was not so open to foreigners, there were not many restaurants for example that had English speaking staff or English menus and also, I was in the university district, this summer course took place at the Beijing Language and Culture University which has summer courses. The campus itself was quite international, not so many English speakers, but a lot of people from Japan, from Korea, from other Asian countries. It was really, really awesome experience and we had like 4 hours of classes every day and after that it was mostly free and as soon as we left the campus, like to go to the surrounding area to buy stuff, to eat at a restaurant or the like we had to speak Chinese, there was no other way. Even going to Tiananmen Square or any of these tourist sites, it was mostly tourists from China, not so many Western tourists, so we just had to use Chinese to do anything. It was really a great help for my Chinese.
Kerstin I love the story. And there is something that struck me as you were describing it. Describing the experience which is that the way you talk about, you know, going out to China the way you talk about the language, there is very little to me, it sounds, like there is very little part of you that is motivated by this opportunity to prove yourself, right? You talk about learning a language a little bit before you go because that is a good way of learning a language. I often find it, when people they talk about immersion, that dreaded word, it's that they want to go to a country and part of it is "can I survive", "can I do this"? It doesn't sound like that is part of your motivation, the idea of do I prove myself. To what extent do you think there is that feeling?
Judith Not in the terms of going to an immersion in order to prove myself, No. For me it's really about learning the language. The learning is the goal. But I do like to challenge myself in other ways. I like to have a goal simply because I found that it allows me to study faster to spend more time in a day studying a language than if I had no particular goal. So, for example, just now in November I spent basically a month learning Croatian because I knew that early December I'd be able to meet up with a Croatian speaking member of this DIEM25 movement. So, the idea was when I meet him I want to be able to say a few things in Croatian to him and this motivated me to study more Croatian than I otherwise would have without having this clear deadline. I believe in this kind of motivation or generally I try to set short term goals just in order to get myself to study more often and maybe to study with a greater purpose. I must say I am easy to lose motivation, to get demotivated, to get lazy, to give up on a language if it's just studying a text book day in, day out. I have very low patience for this kind of thing. What I really aim for is to have some kind of practical use for the language within, let's say, three months, so I often have this kind of mini goal for the three-month period and this mini goal should be something that allows me to actually use the language in some way or other even if I continue to study a text book afterwards. Maybe the most amazing mission like that I did was Japanese. I learned to understand a specific Japanese anime series that I like within, actually just 1 month was enough because I really shut out every part of Japanese that did not have to do with this anime series, I shut out the writing system, I didn't try to speak it, I didn't try to read it, I didn't try to write it. I just tried to understand, not even to understand any Japanese , just the language used in this anime, I actually used Subs to SRS or flash cards based on that anime and study those and got a sense of how they speak. You know, if it comes down to that the language that is used in any particular book, in any particular tv series or so on is highly repetitive. So, if you spend a little time on that then you can easily understand the next few words that are coming up. That was actually the approach I took. The idea was that once I know enough Japanese to understand a new episode of this anime series then I have something that I can enjoy. In the evening I can relax, I can just watch an episode of this and keep my Japanese active this way. This ability to do something that is not studying, that is not sitting down with a text book and cramming vocabulary, this is what keeps me going to actually study the harder parts of Japanese because if you want to know Japanese on a very high level, obviously you have to put in the 1200 or 2000 hours that are generally calculated for that. It's not that you are actually speeding up the learning, you just speeding up the part where you can actually use the language for something that is important to you. And in the same way I often try to develop conversation ability relatively quickly because then I have some people I can talk to, I can just have some basic conversation, you know about language learning, about the polyglot events, common people we know and while I am having these conversations I keep studying the vocabulary and keep improving until I actually have a high level in a language. But I need this kind of first goal or first success, something I can do that is not the hard part of learning a language.
Kerstin I really want to summarize and highlight a few things you said before I switch to a little bit more German. Because this is such good advice if somebody is listening for the first time and wondering what to do. For me, even though like you I have been doing this for ages, you sort of know your thing after a while, but this so good to hear it expressed like that. I think it's extremely good. It's so true that we want to something that is not studying and that's almost, perhaps, we think of it as this polyglot modern approach to language learning, partly because it's a self-teacher's approach to language learning and you say you get easily demotivated and anybody would, you know, when you say you need 2000 hours to learn Japanese, my instant internal reaction is "Oh, no". Ich will nicht. 2000 hours of studying, like nobody wants to do that. Nobody on earth gets excited, I really think this, even if you are mad about learning and you love it in a way that you did that and the way I do, nobody gets excited hearing, "oh, you have to do 2000 hours of work for this thing to work" and that's not the point. So, I think, what you are saying, is so important and such good advice to just use it, doesn't matter if you are perfect, that's not the point at that stage. And also, to remember that doing something else is learning, all contact I think there is, all contact with your target language is learning. 
Judith Yes, definitely and I keep track of it. I don't even distinguish it, you know, I have spreadsheets where I have been logging my language studying activity for the past 8 years, so I always know how many I spent in a year learning a language and I make no difference. Like for Chinese I note down the hours that spent learning vocabulary but in the same column I also note down the hours I spent on tv, I don't make a distinction because I know that watching some tv series, if I focus on it, not if it's in the background, but if I focus on it then it is similarly valuable and in the end it will contribute to those 2000 hours that I need in order to have a really high level of Chinese. And if you want to dive a little bit deeper into my philosophy of getting good at just one particular thing in order to enjoy the language while you learn more: I actually give a talk about this at the Polyglot gathering a few years back, you can find it on Youtube, it's called "Matching methods and goals in language learning".
Kerstin I'm going to find that and put it in the show notes for our listeners, really interesting and I watched that one as well because I don't think I was there!
Was ich da total interessant fand ist erstmal die Sache mit einem Spreadsheet, mit einer Tabelle, und da wirklich einfach drauf zu achten, wieviel Zeit du verbringst, aber was ich da besonders interessant fand ist, dass du eine Lebensperspektive hast aufs Sprache lernen, weil viele Leute denken ja, ok, wie lange dauert das, kann ich in 6 Monaten Spanisch lernen. Oder jemand macht einen Neujahrsvorsatz, ich lerne dieses Jahr Franzšsisch. Aber es ist genauso wie du es sagst, so finde ich das auch, wie viele Stunden verbringe ich mit meiner Sprache aufs Jahr gesehen, nicht diese Woche oder so. Ich hasse diese Frage, wenn jemand sagt, wie viele Stunden studierst du, lernst du, studierst du in der Woche? HŠngt erstmal ja nichts von der Woche ab, und zweitens Mal ist es einfach nicht, ich finde dieses "auf das Jahr gesehen" einen total guten Ansatz, den wŸrde ich auch gerne Ÿbernehmen.
Judith Ja, ich versuche halt jedes Jahr ein bisschen mehr zu lernen als im vorigen Jahr. Insofern ist das auch fŸr mich ein Anreiz irgendwo und ich kann wirklich nicht gut TagebŸcher fŸhren, ich bin da irgendwie zu faul zu. Deshalb habe ich einfach eine Tabelle, wo ich mal eben schnell eine Stunde markiere, oder zwei Stunden markiere und deshalb mache ich das so.
Kerstin Gut, ich frage dich jetzt zu deinen Sprachen. You speak 14 languages, du sprichst 14 Sprachen. Oder hast mit 14 Sprachen schon mal geflirtet, geliebŠugelt, getanzt.
Judith Ja, geflirtet mit mehr, aber ich sage mal so, 9 Sprachen, die ich wirklich gut kann und 5, bei denen geht's noch.
Kerstin Ja, wer zŠhlt auch. Aber es ist eine intensive gro§e Anzahl, das muss auch gesagt werden. You describe it in your bio, "I have learned or started to learn", which I really like, that's something I can really identify with. So, do you have a favourite among your many languages?
Judith Oh, there are several favourites. One is certainly Esperanto because it allows me to express myself the best. I feel that, when I want to express ideas that are very deep in me then Esperanto usually has better words for it than other languages. Of course, in terms of learning, I really, really love Chinese. I love everything about the language, I love the characters especially, sometimes I write the characters as a kind of meditational practice, just write them and meditate around that. Ja, those would be my two favourites, if you ask me to name a third it'd probably be Swahili, because the grammar is just crazy interesting new.
Kerstin Lots of listeners who listen to this podcast are people who studied a language for quite a while. I get regular enquiries from people who are looking to step up to a higher level who want to go from intermediate to advanced, we say. In my mind it's like I want to go from beginner to not as much beginner to intermediate to a bit better intermediate. But this feeling, you know this probably very well, this feeling of "I'm getting better", that's what we are looking for. Do you have any advice for people who in this sort of big grey middle, who want to feel like they are getting better?
Judith Well, there is two questions really that you asked. One is about feeling that you are getting better and actually getting better. I actually believe that the language level adapts to whatever we are doing with the language. If you say, you want to be able to learn, you want to be able to read German literature and all you ever do is studying text books or read easy readers then it's not going to get to that level because you are not exposed to that kind of vocabulary that you need in order to read literature. I think the only way to get to this level is to actually be reading it. Conversely, if you say "O, it'd be really nice to have this level where I could read German literature but actually I am not interested in German literature and I won't be actually reading any of it, then it's very unlikely that you retain that level even if you achieve it because you just won't see the words in a while and you will forget them. I highly believe in actually looking at what you want to use the language for and then developing the language in that direction. And it will automatically happen, if you are really, really interested in a political issue, like I became interested in the Greek Spring, then suddenly you are going to have enough vocabulary in order to deal with it, in order to understand it. If your lifestyle is such that you don't really have a use for C2 level German then good luck, you are not going to achieve it or you are going to forget it again. Maybe you should set a different goal, something that actually relates to your life. But there was another question, the feeling that you are making progress and that is very difficult when you are at intermediate or advanced level, you just don't notice all the words that you are learning in a day because they don't come up as often. Let's say, you don't know the word "to study". You will notice it every single time you talk to a native speaker because you are looking for the word "to study" and you don't have it. But if you don't know the word for "climate change", maybe you'd need it once a month and then this month you didn't know it and learned it and then you don't notice that you actually learned this word until next month when you use it again. It's much harder to see the progress, so for this purpose I like actually to write down the word that I am studying or even put them into Anki just to see that my list is actually getting longer and these words that I didn't use to not know, I know them now.
Kerstin Word list and vocab lists and just keeping track of the vocab that we encounter, just even writing the words down. I always feel like, I often say to people you not going to learn backwards, when people are worried about getting better or something or doing something that isn't going to ... "is that really going to benefit me". I say, it's not going to damage you, it's not going to delete words from your head, so you might as well try it better than doing nothing or umming and aahing Something that you said before and I really liked, you say a lot of stuff I like, is, you talked about this.. you know you have to read German literature into order to develop literary German. There is something in there of the philosophy of start before you are ready. Anzufangen, bevor man bereit ist oder bevor man sich bereit fŸhlt und dann an der Aufgabe zu wachsen.
Judith Ich habe das bei meinem Chinesisch gemerkt. Ich war lange Zeit auf einem Plateau und konnte einfach nicht besser werden - oder so schien es mir. Dann habe ich Unterricht genommen an der UniversitŠt Dalarna in Schweden. Online-Unterricht, die machen alles online. Richard Simcott hatte mir das empfohlen und die haben Chinesisch-Kurse auf sehr hohem Niveau, also sogar moderne chinesische Literatur auf Chinesisch unterrichtet oder chinesische Linguistik und so. Da wurde ich plštzlich gefordert. Ich musste PowerpointprŠsentationen geben auf Chinesisch, das musste ich noch nie. Ich musste Debatten fŸhren auf Chinesisch und daran bin ich gewachsen. Daran hat sich mein Chinesisch verbessert.
Kerstin The challenge you are describing is exactly what we grow with. An den Aufgaben und den Herausforderungen wŠchst man dann. I have noticed this as a tutor, for many years I tutored German one-to-one, when I wanted students to grow, when I gave them harder challenges, the students would only grow if they actually did that and not every student took the challenge because they didn't feel ready, because they didn't have the capacity to get the head around, how to even start because they weren't comfortable with walking a path when you don't quite know what the path is. That is really something when I could tell the students that experienced a lot of growth were the once that just tried the task they don't know how to do. As a teacher its very tempting to take the student and walk them through every single step. When you do that then you essentially teach them almost nothing.
Judith I think there are some beginners that you have no idea of how to learn a language. So, you may have to give them some tips even how write a flash card or what are good opportunities to be studying your flash cards or this is text I completely don't understand and how would I go about it starting to understand a bit of it. Some people really have never tried it and have no idea how to go about it. I actually think Alex Rawlings  did a really good presentation about that "How to read text when you don't understand anything". He did a demonstration with Hungarian I think. You can find it on Youtube. Anyways, I think that you definitely shouldn't shy away from such tasks. But also as a language teacher: if you have a first-time language learner then there are some things that you can teach people... work with this kind of task.
Kerstin 100%. To put it into perspective, this is people who were already doing this thing and who were quite a few years in and who felt the plateau. You know people who felt frustrated because they felt like they weren't growing. I agree with you as a beginner if you are a tutor... Perhaps we have tutors listening, I don't know, like you work with a tutor, I think its good advice and good practice to just help people find a way of learning languages that works for them and show people ways of learning that are not text book bring, 2000 hours. Because we find ways of having fun here. Gut, das bringt mich auch zu meiner nŠchsten Frage oder meinem nŠchsten Thema: having fun and enjoying language learning und diese Liebe, dieser Spa§ an Sprachen, der ist ja auch am besten, wenn man es mit anderen Leuten zusammen teilt. Und da hast du ziemlich viel Erfahrung aus der Gemeinschaft von Esperanto-Lernenden oder Esperanto-Sprechern und dann spŠter auch mit dem Polyglots Gathering. Da wollte ich erstmal fragen, erzŠhl mal ganz kurze Version, wie hat das angefangen und wie war das erste Polyglottes Gathering. Because I wasn't there at the first Polyglots Gathering.
Judith Ja, also, ich habe schon sehr frŸh Esperanto gelernt, mit 14 Jahren und war dann online in der Community drin. Das ist wirklich so etwas wie ein Stamm, tribe, der auf der ganzen Welt verteilt ist, aber mit dem man sich sofort verbunden fŸhlt. Ich habe das auch schon mehrfach gemacht, ich bin irgendwohin gereist, sagen wir mal nach Kaunas nach Litauen, kannte dort niemanden, und habe sofort mit den lokalen Esperanto-Sprechern Kontakt aufgenommen, die haben mich aufgenommen, die haben mir gezeigt, was es in der Umgebung gibt, was es zu sehen gibt, die haben mir litauisches Essen gemacht und es ist wirklich so, dass es ein Stamm ist, eine Gruppe, eine Gemeinschaft, die man so einfach ansprechen kann, einfach weil man die gleiche Sprache gelernt hat. Das ist bei den anderen Sprachen nicht so. Ich kann nicht einfach so zu jemanden gehen, weil er Franzšsisch gelernt hat oder weil er Spanisch gelernt hat. Aber ich denke bei Polyglottes ist das genauso. Es ist mšglich, wenn ich jetzt nach London gehe, dann rufe eben Gareth an, und sage "Hey, Gareth, mšchtest du, dass wir uns treffen?" Ich sehe die Polyglottes auch so als eine Art tribe, virtuell-digital, der so Šhnlich funktioniert und genau aus dem gleichen Grund funktionieren die Treffen so gut. Das Polyglottes Gathering ist von der Idee her, kommt es von den Esperanto-Treffen, bei denen ich teilgenommen habe. Das ist so, das ist meistens eine Woche, die Gruppe mietet sich eine gesamte Jugendherberge und dann schlŠft man, isst man und hat VortrŠge und hat Konzerte und so. Alles im gleichen Haus. Und dadurch wŠchst man zusammen, man lebt zusammen. Es ist nicht so, dass man nur sich zu irgendwelchen VortrŠgen trifft, sondern wirklich im Aufzug oder beim Essen ist man nur von Esperanto umgeben. Und genau das wollten wir auch der Polyglottes-Gemeinschaft geben. Also, dass man nicht nur eine Fachtagung hat, wo es nur VortrŠge gibt, "Wie lernt man am besten Sprachen" oder was habe ich fŸr eine Methode gefunden oder was sind die neuesten Forschungsergebnisse zum Mongolisch oder so, nein, wir wollten der Polyglottes-Gemeinschaft auch dieses GemeinschaftsgefŸhl geben, was sich entwickelt, wenn man wirklich zusammenlebt, mehrere Tage zusammenlebt. Das war die Idee hinter dem Polyglots-Gathering. Konkret kam das, weil Richard Simcott und Alex Rawlings die Polyglottes-Konferenz organisiert haben in Budapest. Das war das erste Treffen von Polyglottes, vorher gab es nur Foren, sehr gro§e Foren, ich glaube 40.000 Leute das grš§te, bei denen sich die Leute auch kennen-und schŠtzen gelernt haben, [00:30:26] da kannte ich schon den Richard, ich kannte auch den Alex und auch einige andere. Aber das war eben das erste echte Treffern. Angedacht waren irgendwie 50, 60 Leute, gekommen sind 120 und noch mehr wollten kommen. Dann war klar, das war etwas, auf das die Leute gewartet hatten. Die Mšglichkeit sich zu treffen und gemeinsam Ÿber Polyglottes und Sprachenlernen und so zu reden. Mit anderen Leuten, die genauso verrŸckt sind wie du. Also, die nicht nur Spanisch lernen, weil Spanisch gerade in ist oder Chinesisch, weil sie sich einen Job erhoffen, sondern einfach aus Spa§ an der Freud. So ist das doch. Just for the heck of it. Just learn languages for the heck of it. That's what the Polyglots does. It's not that I have a real urgent need and use for Croatian, it's just that, you know, this opportunity to speak it and it's not a necessary opportunity, I do have other languages with this person, but it's a good excuse. I am meeting this person, it's a good excuse to learn a bit of Croatian.
Kerstin Definitely. It's a great answer when people ask me why are you learning Welsh? People always expect some kind of practical reason and I really haven't got one except "It's awesome!". 
Judith I like the German word "Ausrede". Ich brauche eine Ausrede, ich brauche keinen Grund, ich brauche eine Ausrede, um Kroatisch zu lernen.
Kerstin We don't need excuses really. Yeah, you are right. I am translating you wrong. To do you justice, you don't really need a reason, you need an excuse to learn a language. It's... people look for that. Really, sometimes, if you are driven by the love, if you are driven by Spa§ an der Freud', learning for the heck of it, you don't even need a reason, like you don't have a reason, so people looking for a reason. All you can give them is an excuse. 
Judith The reason comes afterwards. I have had so many experiences that I never thought I could have. I mean, even the languages where I was certain they'd be useless, like Esperanto, I thought it would be useless, but actually I had jobs come to me and projects and lot of free travel and awesome experiences. It was totally worth it. Or Chinese. I didn't learn it for any economic advantage, I still don't have a job involving Chinese, but I got some travel for free with the European Union, interesting meetings with like industry representatives in China. It's just.. when you know the language, opportunities come to you. If you are looking for a reason nowadays to learn a language, unless it's English, there's probably no reason. Unless your company is intending to send you to South America when they know you don't speak Spanish and then you have to learn Spanish in order to survive there. You know, this kind of real reason, urgent reason to learn a language doesn't come around very often. So, you really need an excuse and you need to be enjoying the language.
Kerstin Yes, the way I think about it is: if your reason is to challenge your mind and to grow as a person - that is a genuine reason. But you could do 17.000 different things. Like people meditate for that reason, people do gratitude journals for that reason, people do ultra-marathons for that reason. But if you want a mental ultra-marathon then you could learn a language.
Judith Definitely. It has been shown to slow dementia. Technically, learning a language is the most powerful medicine we know for dementia and Alzheimers.
Kerstin It is indeed and it's one of the only scientifically proven ones. When I hear from people who go gluten-free for purposes of delaying ageing, I often think that, you know, there is a maybe more difficult, less convenient, don't know, way of doing that, that just hasn't been getting the media attention. We got some work to do there.
Judith Originally there was the Polyglots conference in Budapest, organised by Richard Simcott and Alex Rawlings and that was really a conference style where there is talks and after the talks the people dissipate or go to different restaurants to have lunch. After this conference he said that next time he might be organising a conference in North America and then it would return to Europe a year later, so two years after the meeting. And everyone was like "what, we have to wait two years to meet again, that's not possible." So, at that point Chuck and I stepped up and said, "ok, we are going to organise another Polyglots gettogether, a conference if you will, here in Europe while Richard and Alex are doing North America. Now, that's not how it worked out because they did actually the next Polyglots conference in Serbia, but at that time we were already planning the Polyglots gathering. The first Polyglots gathering to take place in Berlin. That was the start of it and it was bigger and it was more days and it had this Esperanto-philosophy of living together, not just being there for the lectures.
Kerstin How come that it moved to Bratislava? How did that happen?
Judith After three years of organising the Polyglots gathering in Berlin, our little team needed a break. We basically spent half a year just organising it and not being able to earn any money during that time because the Polyglots gathering is non-profit. We decided to ask our good friend Lydia, who is also Polyglots, to organise the thing in Bratislava at the Economic University which is a very good partner for the students and she did a really, really good job together with another friend of ours, Peter Balasz who has a lot of experience of organising Esperanto events. He actually runs an Esperanto company, called E@I, Education at Internet. We know that they are very experienced in organising all kind of events and all kind of things. We felt confident that the Polyglots gathering would be in good hands. Now, this year they are going to organise it for the second time.
Kerstin Do you miss it in your life?
Judith No, I don't miss it because I do go to the Polyglots gathering. I enjoy it as much as ever. I am less involved in the organising. Barely involved, in fact. But I also don't absolutely need to do more organising at this point because I organised so much for DIEM 25.