Thursday
I hadn’t actually expected to take a trip to America anytime soon, and even if I had, it certainly wouldn’t have been to Pittsburgh—a city tainted by a line from a Marx Brothers movie: “It’s like living in Pittsburgh—if you can call that living.” A mining town, shabby and gray like the Ruhr region, where I myself was born and raised. But life is unpredictable, and when Lord Landless was invited to the Confluence in Pittsburgh of all places—out of every convention in the world—no one can claim we weren’t dancing on the ceiling with joy.
Confluence isn’t just a filk convention—it’s a science fiction and fantasy convention for fans, filkers, and authors. Silva writes, I write, and it was clear to us that of all the cons in the world, this was the right one for us. We didn’t need much time to think about accepting the invitation.
At the end of July, we traveled there separately: Silva and Kjenjo flew from Hamburg, took the overland route from New York, and planned to tack on a few more weeks of vacation afterward. I flew directly from Düsseldorf to Pittsburgh and was able to spend a few days after the con with Tom and Sue Jeffers—Tom from Dandelion Wine, who had invited me to Filkcontinental 2007 in Toronto and certainly hadn’t expected me to jump at the chance so quickly. But even on the day of the flight, I wasn’t really in the mood for Filkcon—because since accepting the invitation in December, life had caught up with me in the most positive way, and instead of sitting unemployed with mountains of time in Münsterland, I’d suddenly completed my first six weeks of work as a librarian in Aachen, was in the middle of moving, had a dilapidated apartment to renovate, and so on and so forth… Peredar had to stay home, sanding floors and painting walls, and I, glad to have gotten two weeks of vacation at all, slipped away to Pittsburgh, with a guilty conscience and a really bad fear of flying. But there was no turning back.
Randy Hoffman, a member of the Concom and an enthusiastic filker himself, picked me up at the Pittsburgh airport on Thursday evening. He was holding a sign that read “Lord Landless,” but I would have recognized him anyway—Google Image Search had already served me well in advance. Because—and I’d rather not even think about it—at this con, I didn’t know anyone except Silva and Kjenjo, Tom and Sue. Four people out of two hundred-something attendees. It felt a little like my very first Filkcon… But Randy picked me up at the baggage claim, and suddenly I wasn’t unsure or anxious at all, just a little tired (it was eight o’clock in the evening Pittsburgh time, but for me it was definitely already four in the morning), and I had a great conversation with him about the history of mining, board games, librarianship, and children’s television. The whole time, I just got sleepier and sleepier, but Randy meant well—too well. He even treated me to a city tour, figuring I wouldn’t get to see any of Pittsburgh during the con, and I really had to revise my preconceptions about this city. Much like how the Ruhr region was transformed into a cultural hub after the end of the coal era, this once-shabby city has also been brought back to life in recent years. I was too tired to even realize that I’d buried my camera somewhere in my backpack and couldn’t get to it, but it was still very impressive—at first just suburb after suburb, lots of bridges, more suburbs, and nothing that looked anything like a big city—and then a tunnel, and behind it you’re suddenly downtown. Pittsburgh is the only city in the world that has a front door.
The city tour ended up taking a little longer, because Greg, the Concomm member I was supposed to stay with, wasn’t home—he couldn’t imagine that anyone would want to stay at his place since they don’t have air conditioning in the house (over the course of the following days, I explained to various Americans that I actually prefer a life without air conditioning not only for environmental reasons but also for the sake of comfort). But eventually, around seven or eight in the morning for me and a good twenty-four hours after getting up, that day came to an end for me, and I slept like a log.