forgot to mention

On the way from Belgrade to Novi Sad, I saw a pony. On the way back to Belgrade, I saw not one, but two rainbows (the first I have seen since Amsterdam, which has dozens of rainbows monthly; never seen anything like it).

But I saw no unicorns, and did not bring any teddy bears along on the trip.

24 hours from now

24 hours from now I will be landing in Cairo, in sha’ Allah (God willing), which means that this trip is almost over.

The conference was nicely done. Thanks to Nathan Brown and others on that. Nathan teaches at UC-Davis and knows something about most every subject that exists.

Ksenija and Petar, incredibly gracious hosting by both of you, and I owe the two of you a nice time in Egypt whenever you can get there.

Zagreb-Istanbul-Cairo sounds sort of like a formidable 19th century anti-Russian alliance, but it’s actually my route for tomorrow. It may not be quite as wild as my Reykjavik-Glasgow-Amsterdam-Cairo route, or the Cedar Rapids-Minneapolis-Amsterdam-Budapest-Cairo thriller (the latter route surely never taken by no other human in history), but it will allow me to spend time in three exceptionally nice cities on the same day.

Looking forward to meeting Ian Bogost, finally, in Cairo this week. England coming up soon, then no more travels until September.

The train ride from Belgrade to Zagreb is verrrrrrrrry long, by the way. But I prefer a 7.5-hour train ride to waking up at 6 AM for the minibus.

Also, someone was thoughtful enough to give me two of those red raspberry tarts for the train ride (some people are just naturally kind and considerate in ever shocking ways). The Serbian tarts are even better than the ones that are easily found in Paris, and those are already good enough.