This has been a wonderful journey. I have pushed myself to my limits in the past few months and I have acquired a lot in the meanwhile. I would say learning languages is fun, but right now I feel anything but fun.

I’m going to take my intermediate level Russian language exam this Saturday – barely two days to go and I have already accomplished my absolute top performance. I have put everything away for months, just focusing on learning and my not so distant goals, that I’ve reached that point where I can push myself no further. I cannot be sure whether my top performance meets the exam requirements or not – we’ll all know in a month’s time, I guess…

This journey was like a rough rollercoaster for me, as Russian is the most difficult language I’ve ever learnt. As a motivation I enrolled in a Spanish language course, just to make 2020 even more fun. I would like to master all these languages: English, German, Russian and Spanish. Right now, I have advanced language exams in English and German, but I do have to admit, my German is a bit rusty these days.

Language learning gives me the flow I have been dreaming about. Besides this only swimming can provide me with this amount of joy and satisfaction.

The harder it is the better it feels as I slowly improve my skills. I think that’s the very reason why I like Russian so much. It’s not only ‘not easy’ but a living hell to go through. A nightmare coming alive as you start to discover its grammatical structure and its ruthless spelling.

The past few years I have only focused on Russian as it was my dedicated pilgrimage. I didn’t want to underestimate its difficulty, so I put all my language goals aside, took a 4-year-long break from learning Spanish, Italian and German on a daily basis.

Now I’m back on track and hungry for more.

I start learning Spanish this January with no lower goals than mastering this language as well. I know it takes an awful lot of time to practice a language and enhance my vocabulary, but I’ll do everything in my power to fulfill these dreams as they mean so much to me. With each language I get to know different cultures, the world is expanding as I understand more and more. This is my ultimate motivation, the key to open the door.