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.… Weiterlesen