I’m finally experiencing my definition of a true summer: +30 and sunshine all day long! I wish I’d known earlier that all I had to do was come to Germany. I wouldn’t mind at all having a summer house here. Perhaps if I married someone rich. A rich German to be more precise.

I’d love to stay the whole week, to see what the workshops are like, but unfortunately I didn’t expect to enjoy myself this much here. I like this a lot better than my usual visits to foreign countries, which almost always are package holidays.

It’s nice to combine business and pleasure, or rather, educating the mind as well as your soul. What I don’t like about package holidays is that the schedules for excursions are so rigid and you have to wake up very early. Here I am actually fully awake and appreciative of everything because I’m not sleep deprived.

It was a complete surprise to me to see so many BIG names on the programme. I had no idea ICEHL was one of the very few and precious conferences on English historical linguistics, or even historical linguistics in general! Someone said to me that it was very ballsy of me to come here and give my very first presentation in such a prominent conference, without having even started on my dissertation yet. It’s funny because I didn’t think of it like that at all. I was just trying my luck without knowing anything about this event beforehand. I’m glad I did.

What’s also funny is that this nice man came to talk to me the first day, probably because I looked a little lost, and we had a nice chat. His name sounded familiar. Yesterday he gave a plenary talk, and it turns out he’s the chief etymologist of the Oxford English Dictionary! The lecture was useful in the sense that suddenly I realized, seeing this actual person discussing his work, how there are real people behind dictionaries. In the end it’s their personal opinions and analyses that are often taken at face value.

I bought King Henry the IV Part 1 in English with a German translation. Only 5€ (it’s ancient), and I thought I could start learning German by reading one of my favourites. Just for the laugh, really.