Rdearman 2016-24 You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith Too.

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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Tue Jun 06, 2017 1:32 pm

Polyglot Gathering 2017 (Bratislava)

Here is the link to my review of last year in Berlin: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =70#p33981

I'll try to keep it shorter this time. I'm going to try to do it in chronological order, but I don't remember some of the days when we did stuff, it kind of runs together there is so much happening. I'm going to use peoples forum names to refer to them because I don't know if they want their real name out there unless told otherwise, also, if I didn't mention you it is probably because I only remember your real name and so see previous point.

29 May 17
I left for Bratislava earlier this time so I would have a couple of days to look around the city before the conference started. I'm glad I did because once the gathering started I didn't have time for anything else. I arrived at Bratislava airport (yeah I didn't go to Vienna like EVERYBODY else) and got an uber. Basically I used Uber or the shoe leather express (walking) the majority of the trip. Although we did get a free bus pass once we got our badges, I didn't have that option for the first couple of days. All alone on day one and it was a scorcher so I set off to the mall to purchase some shorts. It was a 25+ minute walk so I decided to walk there with my mate google giving me directions. I managed to get to the mall, but by that time my old bald head was red as a beet, so I decided to find a hat as well as shorts. First problem was the only thing which seemed to be sold in this mall was designer, and I didn't need a Prada hat or Versace shorts. I did finally manage to find some shorts on sale in a upmarket sports shop which only cost me 5 times what the Uber from the airport cost, or the same as 16.87 beers! I didn't manage to get a hat, so blew that off and walked back. I decided on the way back it would be better to spread the sunburn a little around my body, so I wrapped my head with my t-shirt on the way back. Much to the horror of the skinny beautiful people which Slovakia is full of.

Back at the hotel (after hiding my blinding white skin) I went down to dinner and had Bryndzové halušky, which is the Slovak national meal consisting of dumplings made of potato dough mixed with a special kind of soft and salty sheep curd. Fried bacon chopped in tiny pieces and I also ordered the additional red onions added. With a 1/2 litre of Zlatý bažant (beer) thrown in I finally felt like I was getting somewhere. I really recommend this potato dumpling stuff, it tastes amazing especially with a load of cheese on top.

I walked over to the University of Economics where the gathering would be held just to find out how to get there.
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30 May 17
Couple of people from the forum were coming to the hotel today, Brun_Ugle and Dave Prine, who were staying in my hotel. But they, like everyone else flew into Vienna, and wouldn't be there until the afternoon. So I decided to checkout the Old Town and called an Uber to get me to Michel's Gate (?spelling?) and got dropped off near the gate. I walked around looking for a hat! Yes, it was still hot, and my poor old bald head was cooked enough to put a fork in. For some reason I couldn't find a hat, even though I passed huge numbers of tourist shops.
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The old town is really fascinating an picturesque (I'll post some photos later) and full of tourists. Now the thing is these tourists have paid for guided tours, in their native languages. Luckily their native language wasn't mine! So a spent a lot of time following around the French guide and eavesdropping just for the French practice. Eventually he noticed and started giving me the evil eye (after all I was listening for free) and so I moved off, only to wander into a group of Italians. You see the pattern I'm sure. Although there weren't any tour guides holding pitchforks aloft and screaming "burn him!" it probably crossed their minds.

Got a text from Brun_Ugle who said they were on the way to the hotel, so I started to walk back over the UFO bridge toward the hotel.
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After meeting up at the hotel we decided to shoot back into town, walking again to the city centre. Dave has an unholy obsession with bookstores, and talking to random people so this journey took longer than you'd think, but we made it into the centre eventually. I also found a nice tourist hat to keep my head happy! A very garish white tourist hat with Slovakia in big bold letters. We wandered around looking at book shops, and drinking coffee (or beer) and then headed back to the hotel for some more really amazing food and Zlatý bažant.

31 May 17
Up early and out the door to find the Martinus bookshop before we had to get to registration. One the way we paused at Oxford Bookshop in the city centre and who should appear but Iverson. He was doing a museum tour of the town. We chatted for awhile and then tried to find the Martinus bookshop. Even google wouldn't help me find it, while Dave was off trying out his Slovakian on innocent bystanders, Brun_Ugle and I were almost run over by a mini-tour bus. Finally Dave constantly talking to random people paid off and we found a lady who knew where the book shop was, and was willing to walk over there with us. On the way over we discovered this lady knew Lydia and all about the polyglot gathering! Strange small world.

After a couple of hours in the bookstore, which had a coffee shop which is where I went, we were ready to explore again. We walked out and down the street and discovered a SciFi / Fantasy bookstore! Now this is where Brun_Ugle made a HUGE mistake. She said, "If they have star trek books in Slovakian then I'll learn it, because nobody ever has Star Trek books." She has purchased I believe 3 books now, and although it seems they are in Czech, we are still holding her too it. So Cavesa, it seems there is at least one other person who is going to learn your lovely little language.

Shooting back across town we had to take a taxi because we were running so late. But we managed to dash in on time and get registered and get all our stuff. We joined in (I say joined in, but it was mostly just watching or shouting out answers) some of the Polyglot games done by Miroslav (my roomy from last year) and Cesco Reale. Then it was time for dinner and the opening ceremony.

The opening ceremony had a lot of dignitaries form the government, city and university as speakers. All very good, although most things were in German or Slovakian, so I was out of luck there. Still it was fascinating and very grown up.

During this time I was starting to encounter a lot of you from the forum, and I hesitate to list all the people I met in case I forget someone! But you know who you are, and what we did. Let's just hope the police don't find out. Seriously though, I think there were at least 10 people from the forum there who introduced themselves and we hung out for varying amounts of time.

1 June 17

First day of the talks and mine was at 16:00. I've decided not to talk about all the talks I went to, but just the best one of the day. The only exception to this rule will be my own presentation; it was far from the best, but I suspect you'll want to know how it went. Basically it was summed up by Kerstin Cable, one of the other presenters, as: "Nerd, Nerd, Nerd, Anki". However, given my audience, I think Nerd, Nerd, Nerd, Anki was definitely the way to go. I had a queue of people at the end with questions and everyone seemed generally happy they came.

The best talk of the first day I thought was "Netflix and Chill" Aleksandra Stepien. She was advocating the use of Netflix and extensive watching and listening to learn a language and it was right up my street. The principles she explained and my talk pushed the same message, although she doesn't like the use of sub-titles just listening.

One other notable presentation I went to was the "Introduction to Slovak" given my a professor from the university. He was amazed that 50+ people showed up at the lecture hall, he was expecting 5-10. I had to laugh, because the clue is in the name "Polyglot Gathering". You have a collection of people who eat languages for breakfast, of course you're going to be swamped.

(Side note: The culinary festival was that night and I ate to much.)

2 June 17

Lots of very interesting talks and some which weren't really thought out well. For example there was one about getting the most out of your online language lessons, but it was mostly tips for beginners not a room full of people who probably have paid more for italki lessons than most people have paid for their car.

The most entertaining (and informative) presentation was given by our own Dave Prine (who's user name escapes me) about the K'iche' language. An endangered language in Guatamala? A very interesting language with a lot of aspects. Also I should point out that he didn't once call it "keychain" even though I'd been deliberately mispronouncing it.

I also attended another presentation on Ch'tis which is a French dialect from the north of France. I missed Tarvos' presentation but I really, really, really wanted to make sure I went to anything given in French or Italian. BTW if you ever find yourself wondering if Tarvos can really speak all those languages she listed on her profile... yep, she can.

Dinner that evening was some kind of boiled sweet pastry with poppyseed and cinnamon, which took everyone by surprise. It seems however sweet, meatless dinners in a tradition on Friday because Slovakia is a catholic country. After dinner was a really good Mentalist act with some brilliant tricks in 5 different languages. Seriously impressive.

3 June 17

This day has completely broken my thing about only talking about one presentation. Not that I was slavishly doing that anyway! Another forum speaker Tim Owen gave a great introduction on Esperanto! Now I've done Esperanto before and I've been put off it for a couple of reasons, but Tim gave a really engaging and interesting talk with tons of audience participation and good humour. He overcame numerous technical glitches with the display and sparked a bit more wanderlust in me, but I quickly squashed that rebellion.

Garth Popkins gave a great presentation on "Learning languages in 3 decades" and really managed to get across the idea that it is a marathon not a sprint, and that language learning is hard (something nobody seems to want you to know). If you've been to one of Garth's presentations before you'll know he is a very good speaker, funny, witty and profoundly instructive. I highly recommend going to watch him speak. I think he could make a presentation on washing dishes entertaining.

Tim Keeley, another person I alway recommend going to see, gave a presentation on "Making of a Hyperglot". Himself. For me this was interesting simply because he's had an interesting life and hasn't shied away from going out and doing things others might hesitate to do. As far as language tips go, one of the best ones was just go and listen to people, don't be afraid to talk to them. It obviously works for him.

Halfway through the day I had to go have a nap in the bean bag chairs in the GoFuYou room. I was knackered!

And then there was the introduction to Klingon. Kelvin Jackson and Phillip Newton. This was really good, even though the microphone whined and sometimes blasted you almost deaf. For me the interesting thing was Phillip who confessed he had no real interest in Star Trek, but rather was simply fascinated by the language. Here again I squashed the wanderlust bug firmly.

In the evening was the speakers dinner, which got all of the speakers together and we had champagne a chef from the Le Cordon Bleu who prepared individual meals. Not really, it was basically just that we got a sectioned off bit of the canteen to talk and mix with each other.

After the dinner was the International Culture Evening of which the less said the better. There were some notable bits of entertainment. Tarvos' poems, the guy who sang Abba, the lady who did Frozen in German and the dancing Bulgarians.

4 June 17

Best talk of this day was L'Esperanto presentation which was all in French. Except the slides, which for some reason were in English. The talk on the endangered language Nootka ran a close second.

This was the day of the closing ceremony and the attempt at the Slovakian record for most languages spoken under one roof. Which they won with 125 languages, the previous record was... 2.

Everyone left feeling a little sad I think.

5 June 17

Almost everyone had left, but some of us, about 20, got on a bus and went to visit two castles.

Bojnice
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and Trenčín
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It was a long hot day and poor old VonPeterhof got stuck sitting next to me for the journey. The tour guide lady droned on a bit when leaving Bratislava for the castles and I looked around the bus and it seemed the only people awake were me and the bus driver... and he was nodding.

Still the castles are amazing and well worth a visit if you're passing through. I took over 200 photos, but won't bore you with them.

After we returned I shot off back to the hotel for a quick dinner of Bryndzové halušky and Zlatý bažant before going to bed early. Had to get up at 3am to make my flight back to the UK.

Memorable Stuff

I didn't fit everything into the log, and I doubt you'd be interested in most, but there are some memorable things I wanted to mention.

--- I introduced myself to Steve Kaufman and unlike just about every other person at the gathering my questions to him were nothing to do with languages or LinQ but rather tons of questions about the mountain ranges of Canada because our Uber driver was immigrating to Canada to be a ski-instructor and we'd had a discussion about which mountain ranges were in Canada.
--- Myself and about 5 other forum members found an Irish Pub in Bratislava and ordered some Guinness. The server asked how much we wanted and I jokingly told him all of it. Two rounds later he told me they were all out of Guinness and we'd drank it all. I told him I was only joking! Luckily they had more than enough Zlatý bažant for all of us. (btw, don't play pub games with some of these guys... you've been warned!)
--- A meeting in the GuFuJo room between two Russians and a woman from Crimea reminded me why we don't talk about politics here.
--- Hiding my badge from the Finnish guy just in case he talked to me and found out I only knew the words for wonderwoman and 1.1
--- Zen Monkey, daegga, Brun Ugle, and some other girl having an actually conversation about doing an all forum four country bike tour. (I said I'd drive the support van)
--- Buying the same box set of DVD's as Brun Ugle so I can legally rip them into Anki for her (They are in Czech & French)
--- Walking down to a huge lake along a canal in the city centre and discussing water goats while walking through the tall grass on the shore.. (don't ask).
--- Discovering the day after walking along the shore of a lake through the long grass that they have lots of poisonous snakes in Slovakia.
--- Meeting all the people who aren't on the forum, but who keep returning to the gathering each year. BTW, Richard Simcott doesn't just have a good memory for vocabulary, but also faces and names.
--- Trying to fix a broken forum with only a smartphone.

Ahhh well, back to the real world now.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby neofight78 » Tue Jun 06, 2017 1:47 pm

Awesome post! :D
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby Carmody » Tue Jun 06, 2017 8:21 pm

Yes, totally Awesome and thank you for the sharing.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Thu Jun 08, 2017 9:49 pm

OK, back on track again with Italian. Watching TV series called Flaked, a series starring Will Arnett. I was doing a little research into creating a cheatsheet for Italian. Something like Iversen's green sheets, but I went off on a technical spiral looking into using LaTex to generate PDF's, then of course I wanted a Makefile so I didn't have to keep typing, then I was researching formatting... blah, blah, blah...

So rather than go down that rabbit hole, I stopped and went down a different rabbit hole about something else. In the end I never did get a cheatsheet.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby Brun Ugle » Fri Jun 09, 2017 1:22 pm

I knew if I waited long enough, someone would summarize the whole Gathering for me and I wouldn't have to. If anyone asks, I can just direct them to your post. Lazy Fist strikes again!!!

Did you rip Asterix to Anki yet? Remember, I need step-by-step screenshots so I can learn to do it myself. And then I can start learning Czech through French and French through Czech. It's surely more efficient learning two languages at once, right?
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby daveprine » Fri Jun 09, 2017 1:45 pm

rdearman wrote:Polyglot Gathering 2017 (Bratislava)


Great summary, RD! I laughed out loud at the water goat comment, and the rest was a wonderful reminder of all the amazing events, esp running out of Guinness! Be careful what you tell your bartender man there! (And thanks for the wonderful comments regarding my talk!)

Glad to see & meet everyone there who's on the forum! Looking forward to seeing you all again at the next Gathering!
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Sat Jun 10, 2017 8:20 pm

OK, I've been wasting time making hardback books out of the Basic Fantasy rules. I've bound the books, cut the boards, made the book cloth, now it should be just a case of assemble and glue up. :) If they look half decent I'll post a photo. I'm not sure about the homemade book cloth, probably should have bought some...

Still watching netflix in Italian until I fly to Italy week after next (Yes!)
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby Brun Ugle » Sun Jun 11, 2017 5:22 am

rdearman wrote:OK, I've been wasting time making hardback books out of the Basic Fantasy rules. I've bound the books, cut the boards, made the book cloth, now it should be just a case of assemble and glue up. :) If they look half decent I'll post a photo. I'm not sure about the homemade book cloth, probably should have bought some...

If this is what you call "lazy," I think you're doing it wrong.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby neofight78 » Sun Jun 11, 2017 6:05 am

What are you talking about, it's a wonderful bit of procrasination! :P
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Sun Jun 11, 2017 6:53 pm

neofight78 wrote:What are you talking about, it's a wonderful bit of procrasination! :P

Yep!

Well I got all the books made and they look ok, but now I want to transfer the cover art on to the fabric. I tried using acetone, but looks like I need some harsher chemicals to get the laser image on the fabric. So off to the DIY shop tomorrow to get some paint thinner with xylene and benzine. :shock:
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