The feel nice part less obvious in academia, and mostly means ensuring a relaxed atmophere. Of course, the fact that the teachers organise the school themselves also helps a lot. Furthermore, this year the lodging is entirely free for everyone too. On top of that, we offer grants helping people to travel to the school. So it is often easier for someone to fly to Eastern Europe rather than spend a huge budget on these other schools.
School is boring.
We want a place where research happens rather than 'being taught'. We try to do that by bringing together top notch researchers and making them interact in public in a calm and stimulating setting. It calls for explanations rather than resting content with descriptions. Since this aspect is underemphasised in the linguistics, we try to provide much space for it. The intro track is thus very accessible and presuppose almost no technical knowledge.