This is a one-bedroom apartment, so the lock isn’t there to protect me from children, room-mates, or an elderly relative wandering in to ask whether I’ve seen her glasses. The only person I could possibly lock out would be someone I was already sleeping with. There are very few scenarios that I can imagine where this will make sense, and all of them involve no longer sleeping together.

But that night as I headed to bed, some exhausted reptile curled around the controls of my brain saw the lock and told me to lock it.

A few hours later, I woke up with a start. Five knocks hammered against the bedroom door: loud, strident, deliberate.

Five is an upsetting number of knocks. Two is probably accidental. Three could be someone trying to appear polite. Five says, I know you’re in there.

The problem is that to knock on the bedroom door, you must already be in my apartment.

There are two ways in. The first and most civilized was through the building’s front door and up to the elevator to the sixth floor. This required a pass key and for my front door to be unlocked.

There’s a stairwell with a door that locks on my side of the landing. Had I locked it?

I was almost certain that I had. It would be deeply strange to instinctively lock the bedroom door while leaving the stairwell landing door and the apartment’s front door unlocked.

I understand that I am deeply strange. But even so.

Maybe, though, I had left my front door unlocked. I’m the only one on the sixth floor at night and theoretically only people with a pass could reach me. I began counting the people with access.

I knew there was one on the ground floor. The bored reception staff handed it to anyone who claimed to be delivering to me. But it was dark, it was 3:45 am, and there was no delivery person in the building.

The building administrator had told me that she had a key to my door, which seemed fair. She told me that if I locked myself out, I could call the police.

Did that mean the police had a key?

Were the police standing outside my bedroom?

Or perhaps it was the fire department. This had happened to me once in Tallinn when a very nice man in uniform knocked on the door to say that there was a fire in the basement and they were evacuating the building.

Was there a fire in the basement now?

Surely, if the building was on fire, they would knock again and ideally shout “fire” in some language that I understand. Didn’t they have axes for exactly this situation?

They surely wouldn’t knock five times politely and then wander off. “Yeah, boss, the entire place was going up in flames, but she locked her bedroom door so we left her to burn.”

(Why is there a bolt on my bedroom door, I wondered again.)

The other way into the apartment was via the roof where the gulls live. Some maniac could get on the roof, perhaps by helicopter, and then stroll across the wooden deck of my terrace. The terrace door can’t be opened from the outside, so he’d have to smash through a window.

Surely I would have heard that.

Lying there, in the dark, I did not think of the TV heist show trick of using a diamond-tipped blade and suction cups to cut a man-sized square out of the glass. This would allow the maniac to leap into my apartment, assuming he didn’t catch his foot on the lower ledge and tumble through the gap head-first and get himself killed.

This would make for a very difficult conversation with the building administrator. Maybe the gulls would eat him.

It was fortunate that none of this occurred to me that night. Instead, I concluded that as I had not heard smashing glass, no one had broken into my living room.

Besides, even if he had smashed his way in and I had somehow slept through it, he was unlikely to politely knock on my bedroom door to let me know he was waiting to rob and murder me.

The most likely explanation was that there was no knock. I had dreamed it. A very brief nightmare of five knocks on a locked inner door that shouldn’t have a lock.

I considered every possibility again. Every scenario except the dream required me to unlock the door and see who was there.

Obviously, I wasn’t going to do that.

I fell back asleep.

It was about six months later when I heard it again: a sharp rap-rap-rap-rap-rap. The bedroom door was unlocked, in fact, I had never locked it again. If the fire department were here, they could rescue me without needing the axe.

There was no evidence that fire department was here.

I tiptoed into the living room and looked around. It was dark and quiet. There were no helicopters depositing confused diamond thieves onto my roof.

My front door was locked. I did not unlock it.

Over the next couple of years, the knocking woke me at least twice more, five clear and deliberate knocks that I was increasingly sure I had not imagined it.

And then, to my genuine excitement, it happened while I was awake! I was up late, playing a video game, when I heard it: five clear and distinct knocks.

My bedroom door was open, ruling out the possibility that there was something on the inside, knocking to get out. I shivered.

But I am very brave, or at least I’m trying to learn how to be. So, I went to the front door and opened it very slowly.

Nothing.

The sensor-triggered landing light was off, which meant either that nobody had approached my door or that they were invisible.

I sat back down at my desk. The doors were behind me, but it seemed to me that the knocking had come from in front of me, the north side of the apartment facing the roof.

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that the knocking had come from above me.

Where the jackdaws live.

The rooftop has a remarkably clear ecosystem. My apartment is perched on the south side of the roof. The gulls control the north side. The hooded crows, including my friend Gary, hang out on the ledge along the east side and stare at me until I go out with food. My terrace is on the northwest side, though the gulls consider it disputed territory and have never shown much interest in my paperwork.

And above all of us, on the roof of my apartment, are the jackdaws.

I ran to Google. “Do jackdaws knock?”

Apparently, no.

“Not even a little?”

Google reconsidered. Apparently, they sometimes pick up large snails and fly them to a high, flat solid surface and smash them open.

Google’s AI summary was uncomfortably specific: They grip the snail in their beak and swing it downward repeatedly against the roof tile until the shell shatters. This requires a great deal of force, resulting in incredibly clear, heavy, deliberate thuds directly above your ceiling before the bird eats and flies away.

Had I even mentioned my ceiling?

Another option was a territorial dispute: A dominant jackdaw will sit on a prominent roof feature like a metal chimney cowl and violently hammer it with its beak.

However, angry jackdaws and rooftop escargot parties are daytime phenomena. Neither explained why I only ever heard knocking at night.

I still don’t know who is knocking; I only know that it lives above me, which is progress. The realistic possibilities at this stage are nocturnal jackdaws or the supernatural.

Neither possibility requires me to open the bedroom door at three in the morning, which is all I really needed to know.

Still, it bothers me.

Up until now, whenever I put out breakfast for Gary and his crow friends, I have left a little food on the ledge where the jackdaws sit in the sunshine, so that they get a treat too.

No more.

Those grey-eyed bastards are not getting another crumb from me until they admit what they have done.

This is the kind of logic that sounds deranged when you say it out loud, but jetlagged in a Prague hostel bed after a conference, it sounded like a divine revelation.

Rather than fly straight home, I booked a studio for a song in Dolní Žleb, a village clawed into the sandstone foothills of Bohemian Switzerland, where the Elbe (Czech: the Labe) meanders through the Czech Republic to Germany. The Wikipedia page for Dolní Žleb exists in four languages: Czech, German, French and Esperanto.

I had previously visited the German side of the national park, Saxon Switzerland, on a day trip from Dresden, where I hiked up a mountain in an orange nightgown to see the Bastei Bridge. I didn’t want to revisit the specifics of that hike, which frankly deserves its own Netflix special, but I saw enough to know that I wanted to see more, which is either testament to the beauty of Bohemian Switzerland or evidence that I should not be allowed to make my own decisions.

I arrived in Dolní Žleb in the rain with a few hundred koruna in my pocket, tucked next to my German passport, and a suitcase too heavy to roll along the broken pavement, obliging me to lug it about like a pack mule.

Even soaking wet, Dolní Žleb was beautiful.

I checked into my studio with a bag of groceries from Děčín and a bit of a sore throat, though at the time I was mostly preoccupied with all the strange beauty I was going to see.

My grandfather used to sing heartfelt German folk songs about how wunderschön Bohemia was. It took me rather longer than it should have to realize that this was… politically awkward. It’s true that Bohemia was populated by Germans in the Middle Ages, the Sudeten Germans, who, after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, found themselves incorporated into the newly formed Czechoslovakia. They are all gone now. Well, theoretically. With easy access by fast train from Dresden, the place is still crawling with Germans, mostly stumbling under oversized backpacks waving Euros around like mystical talismans.

Now including me. I had planned for five days using the village as a base. I would start by returning to the Bastei Bridge, this time taking the easy route. I would take the ferry across the Elbe and go hiking in the mountains. I would take the train back to Děčín, visit the Děčín castle, and then take the bus to Tisa Rocks where they shot the magical winter in Narnia. I would also hike up to the Tor, a strange sandstone arch, and have a hot meal at the restaurant perched at the top like an eagle’s nest, except with hot sausages and fried potatoes.

The owner of the apartment told me there was more to see, including a secret lake in the forest. “Don’t follow the trail on the river,” he said, somehow intuiting that that was exactly what I planned to do. “Head towards Germany through the hills.”

I thought maybe five days wasn’t going to be enough.

Instead, my body decided it had had enough of my bullshit and was shutting down. I spent the next three days in bed with the curtains closed, suffering from a virulent throat-and-nose infection. I was feeling very sad and sorry for myself, sneezing and trying not to swallow, ominously messaging friends to inform them that I was on the verge of death and had not left a will.

That’s when my friend Julie posted a Wikipedia link to something called a hunger stone. Of course I clicked. Because when your immune system has betrayed you and you’re lying in the dark questioning every decision that led you here, the only sensible thing to do is let the Internet tell you about a cursed rock.

A hunger stone, Wikipedia told me, is a type of hydrological landmark common in German settlements throughout Europe in the 15th through 19th centuries. I read this with curious detachment until my eye dropped to the second paragraph.

Hunger stone – Wikipedia

These stones were carved into stones in a river during droughts to mark the water level as a warning to future generations that they will have to endure famine-related hardships if the water sinks to this level again. One famous example in the Elbe river in Děčín, Czech Republic, has “Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine” (“If you see me, weep”) carved into it as a warning.

For hundreds of years, whenever the river ran low, people chiselled the year into the exposed stone, a blunt warning to the future: If the water gets this low again, you are in trouble. There are over ten hunger stones in the stretch between Děčín and the German border. The famous example that caught my eye in Wikipedia is a solid basalt boulder near the Tyršův Bridge in Děčín. I glanced at the river rushing past my window. I had no idea if the water level was high.

I was less than ten kilometres downriver from Děčín, three train stops away. Even at death’s door, I would probably survive a trip to look at something that tells me whether I should be weeping.

I was also at serious risk of running out of pain killers, which would absolutely involve weeping. I needed to go to Děčín.

I stumbled onto the train, taking care to only breathe on German tourists, as the Czechs had had enough hardship. Once in Děčín, I went straight to the closest pharmacy.

Inside, I opened my mouth to speak, hoping that the woman might speak English. An indistinct croak came out. I pointed to my throat and tried again. The pharmacist stopped me with a laugh and handed me a packet of cough drops and then, after a moment’s thought, a box of ibuprofen.

Maybe I would survive this after all.

There was a bustling bakery across the street from the train station that I’d been thinking longingly about from my sickbed. I bought three cheesy black-pepper bread balls, which seemed the ideal accompaniment to throat lozenges and ibuprofen.

I sat at a park bench to catch my breath and checked my phone. The black pepper burned my throat. I told myself that it was good for me.

According to the map, the hunger stone was just a fifteen-minute flat walk along the river. I could do this, as long as I didn’t eat any more of these godforsaken pepper balls.

“Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine”

The inscriptions on these Czech stones were in German, painstakingly carved by the Sudeten Germans. They were not, shall we say, enthusiastic about inhabiting the Czechoslovak state after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the 1930s, they strongly supported the Nazi party and its claim that the Sudetenland should be part of the German Reich. Hitler used them as an excuse to invade Czechoslovakia. Czechs were driven out of the area, if they were lucky, or shipped to concentration camps if they were not.

Not surprisingly, once the Nazis were defeated, the Sudeten Germans were removed from Czechoslovakia with breathtaking thoroughness. The settlements in these borderlands had 708 inhabitants in 1921, of which 639 were German. After the war, the houses were destroyed or abandoned, leaving only Dolní Žleb, technically a suburb of Děčín. I remember reading that after the purges only three Germans remained, married to Czechoslovaks, and that by the time someone thought to check, ten years later, even they had left. But I can’t find any reference to the three now and it’s possible that I dreamt it in my darkened room.

(If I did dream it, my subconscious has a lot to answer for.)

All that remains of the Sudeten Germans in the valley of the Elbe River is their carvings on the hunger stones.

The walk took twenty-five minutes, but the way was mostly flat and the sunshine felt good on my fevered forehead. I stayed at street level, scanning the uneven banks of the river. The stone was instantly recognizable after I passed the bridge. It posed prettily, looking exactly like its Wikipedia portrait, which is more than can be said for most things you see on the Internet.

I clambered down past a plaque to the actual stone and peered over the side where I could see some carvings.

Underwater, the words WENN DU. Above the surface, SIEHST DANN.

It felt strangely like the stone had been waiting for me. I shoved my slightly-used tissue into my pocket and dipped my fingers in the water, tracing the carving.

Were we in trouble?

The answer, hydrologically speaking, was complicated.

It turns out that local dams and digging have altered the river’s personality and the average water level in Děčín is about a metre and a half lower than it was in 1904. The result: the top of the boulder is visible for an annual average of 126 days. This means the stone is effectively shouting warnings at passers-by for a third of the year. The Děčín museum says that when construction of the water works is completed, the stone will disappear under the waves forever.

Actually, the museum says if, not when, noting that the plan for the water works go back to 1653. Apparently they have been trying to finish this project since the Great Plague and the stone is here for me today only because of bureaucratic delay. I wheezed at it with what I hope sounded like gratitude.

The chilling admonition to weep was cut by Franz Mayer, a Děčín boatman who kept a riverside pub.

In 1911, when drought stranded the river shipping that he depended on, Franz did what any entrepreneur would do with a catastrophe: he monetized it. He chiselled the warning over a 1904 marking, ran a tap nearby, and charged people admission to come and feel a frisson of doom while drinking beer. Postcards of the weeping stone were mailed from Tetschen all over the world. The best part: He didn’t even write the line himself. He likely lifted it from a hunger stone near Těchlovice that already grieved more elegantly: Whoever once saw me wept; whoever sees me now will weep.

So there I was, looking at a perfectly genuine four-hundred-year-old hydrological warning that had, in 1911, been briefly repurposed as a beer garden.

I pulled out my remaining bakery balls, crumbs and black pepper falling on the stone; it seemed only polite to share.

I clambered around the rock, peering over the edges. Laser scanning found marks going back to 1537; 19th century surveys claimed markings from 1417 and 1473 were still identifiable. I hoped to find the oldest date on the stone that was still legible, said to clearly read 1616.

It was hard to call any of it “legible”, if I’m honest. There seemed to be some disagreement as to which direction was up. The carvings were all along the sides and I was worried I might fall in, dragged by the river straight past my studio into Germany, washing up in the middle of Dresden where I would be asked to explain myself. I couldn’t make out anything older than 1911, which to be fair was pretty damn old for a piece of graffiti I could literally run my fingers over.

But mostly, standing on the riverbank with my throat burning, I was just trying to befriend a rock with breadcrumbs.

The rock was not impressed.

I was tired and sniffling again and the cough drops were no longer up to the task. Enough of the hunger stones. We had reached that awkward point in our relationship where it was simply better to part ways.

That didn’t mean I couldn’t internet-stalk them from my darkened room. There were more stones, the Internet said. At Dolní Žleb, within view of my bedroom window now that I’d finally opened the curtains, there is a cluster of stones around the old rafters’ mooring posts. The museum director in Děčín has a lovely explanation for them: when the river fell so low the rafts couldn’t move, the men couldn’t work, and bored men with chisels carve. These are working-class stones: a folk archive scratched by people during forced unemployment, recording the very thing that was unemploying them.

The words, when there were any, were generally in German. But one, from 1938, was written in Czech: Neplač holka, nenaříkej, když je sucho, pole stříkej. Don’t cry, girl, don’t wail; when it’s dry, sprinkle the fields.

This is clearly in response to the now-famous German inscription, but also another shrewd marketing ploy. František Sigmund, who had carved it, had inherited an irrigation pump company from his father which explains his reframing. (His firm, Sigma, is now the biggest producer of irrigation pumps in the Czech Republic, which just goes to show what good marketing can do for you.)

I don’t remember what made me reach for my wallet; some half-asleep urge to buy something stupid from Temu, probably. I do remember the cold realization that my wallet was missing. I searched the apartment, twice, allowing myself the hope that I’d suffered a moment of early-onset dementia and left it on some unexpected counter or nestled alongside the cheese in the refrigerator.

I had not. The wallet was gone.

I mentally considered the contents.

Six hundred koruna, enough for a generous meal in Děčín or an overpriced cocktail in Tallinn.

My debit card, easily blocked from the app.

And my Estonian ID card.

This was a problem.

The card was my remote access to Digital Estonia: my bank account, my doctor’s portal, my SuperAlko loyalty points. Replacing it meant filing a police report here and then again in Tallinn, trying to convince them that I was who I said I was, so that they would issue me a new card.

Exhausted at the very thought of sorting this mess out, I went to bed.

The next morning, I took the train back to Děčín. The last place I had seen my wallet was at the bakery; I probably had just left it on the counter there.

The bakery was closed. I pressed my nose to the window, hoping that perhaps some overenthusiastic baker would be standing in the open plan kitchen, preparing the dough for tomorrow’s bread. There was no one there.

I returned to the park bench where I’d been sitting the day before, juggling my pills and pastries. I checked the bench, under the bench, around the bench and then the bushes behind the bench, just in case someone had picked the wallet up and tossed it into the shrubbery after pocketing the cash.

At that moment, a man emerged from those bushes, buttoning his trousers. He looked at me with an expression of acute embarrassment, clearly under the impression that I had been peering into the bushes to see what he was doing.

I stepped back as he scuttled away.

There was no sign of my wallet. The only other place I could have dropped it was at the hunger stone, though it seemed unlikely. I never had it out and besides, even if I had dropped it there, it would have fallen into the river and bobbed away, racing against the train on its way to the North Sea.

And really, if it hadn’t tumbled into the water, someone would have spotted it, brightly coloured on the faded stone, and kept it.

It was a pointless mission. But returning to the stone felt marginally less soul destroying than marching into some florescent police station to tell them I needed a piece of paper to confirm that I was the sort of person who lost her wallet.

I started walking.

Past the bridge, I slid down the slippery grass to the river bank like a drunk falling off a barstool. And there, there on the wet sand was my wallet, looking for all the world like a discarded bit of wrapper, out of view from the riverbank path.

Above it, the clearest years I’d seen yet: 1893, 1800, 1790. And maybe, faintly, 1716?

I picked up my wallet, a bit damp from being out overnight, and ran my fingers over the faded numbers carved over three hundred years ago. George I had just become King of Britain. Bach was alive and not yet famous. Blackbeard was on the prowl.

Meanwhile someone with a chisel quietly noted that the river had dropped, that the crops were dying, that the year was unbearable.

I came to Dolní Žleb to write and hike. Instead, I fell ill, lost most of a week and a wallet, and then found a stone that had been recording the worst years since before Shakespeare was born. I’d say the trip was a failure, except that I came home with an unexpected piece of history and a new favorite rock.

An ancient witness that the world has always been ending, and somehow we’re still here.

References:

• Hunger stone, Wikipedia

• Hladový kámen, Děčín tourist board

• Dolní Žleb, German Wikipedia

• ‘If you see me, weep’: Hunger stones auguring drought in Europe, Al Jazeera, 2022

• Hungersteine in der Elbe, Lange et al., Sächsische Heimatblätter 4/2019

• ‘Hunger stones’ tell Elbe’s centuries-old tale of drought, Phys.org, 2018

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You probably saw this one already. I saved $200 on a flight by walking across the border into Juárez. What followed was a saga involving imaginary taxi drivers, an almost complete lack of airport signage, and a increasingly desperate hunt for the mythical “stamp of a plane.”

Nexus: Air France, Airbus – guilty of MANSLAUGHTER

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I appeared on the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT)’s new show Nexus to discuss the Paris Court of Appeal’s decision to convict Airbus and Air France of involuntary manslaughter for their roles in the crash of Air France flight 447.

You can watch it here (the actual panel discussion starts at 2:54):

I also unpacked what the verdict actually means (and what it doesn’t) on Fear of Landing:

The Pilots, the Probes, and the AF447 Verdict

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Sid is currently assembling the definitive forensic roster for his MH370 series, bringing in the heavy hitters to dismantle the persistent conspiracy theories. I spent an hour talking with him talking about actual radar data, debris analysis, and cockpit realities.

Watch/listen here:

Decentralized* Storage in a Plywood Box (ETHPrague 2026)

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I attended a conference focused on Decentralized Finance (DeFi) in Prague, where I slept in a plywood pod and had three straight days of cognitive overload. The conference itself was held in the opulent Municipal House where Czechoslovak independence was declared in 1918, now filled with hackers under a 5,000-pipe organ while speakers repeatedly pointed out that most DeFi is just trusting a handful of guys in a group chat.

This one is a paid subscriber exclusive, available under the fold as an EPUB booklet (easy to read on the phone!).

Legacy of Liberty 2026

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My first U.S. military base air show. It opened with F-16 Fighting Falcons creating sonic booms from 18,000 feet and ended with the Patriots Jet Team painting hearts in the sky in their L-39 Albatros jets. In between I became weirdly obsessed with the air boss and developed an unhealthy desire to fly in a B-25 Mitchell bomber called Devil Dog.

You can read all about it on Fear of Landing:

https://fearoflanding.com/airshows/legacy-of-liberty-2026

While I was there, the MC casually mentioned that the de Havilland Vampire was the first jet to land on a moving aircraft carrier deliberately. How do you land on an aircraft carrier by accident? This led to my researching and writing a surprisingly messy early history of carrier jet landings:

https://fearoflanding.com/history/vampire-first-jet-aircraft-carrier/

Navigating the Final Frontier: Age, Disability, and Irumodic Syndrome in Star Trek: Picard

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I have also been quietly dismantling ageist tropes in science fiction. I have finished and delivered my chapter for the Third Age of Trek, forthcoming with Edinburgh Press.

Star Trek: Picard presents a groundbreaking opportunity to explore aging through its elderly protagonist. The series initially confronts ageism and mortality through Picard’s feelings of obsolescence, compounded by a diagnosis of Irumodic Syndrome, a science-fictional proxy for dementia. However, rather than engaging with these later-life challenges, the series embraces magical cures and inspirational over-achievement narratives. Over three seasons, the show shifts from meaningful confrontation with age-related decline to narrative erasure, culminating in a third-season retcon that attributes Picard’s prognosis to alien tampering rather than a medical condition associated with aging. By abandoning established mentor relationships in favor of biological parenthood and “passing the torch” tropes, the series reinforces rather than challenges ageist stereotypes, presenting old age as something to heroically overcome. Ultimately, Star Trek: Picard represents a missed opportunity to confront science fiction’s persistent discomfort with ageing and disability as legitimate dimensions of human experience.

The textbook is coming out some time next year and I’ll be delighted to share it with you when I can!

Thank you to my subscribers for subsidizing my relentless pursuit of international legal verdicts, sonic booms, and the occasional mythical airport stamp.

Read more

I needed to get from my mother’s house in New Mexico to a wedding in Bogotá — a wedding I would not have missed for the world, and the keystone of a complex multi-city itinerary I was unreasonably proud of. I had managed to fold three trips into the price of one. I was a travel genius.

Then I discovered that flying from Juárez to Bogotá was half the price of flying from El Paso. Once upon a time, Juárez and El Paso were one city. Now they form a sprawling metropolis split across two countries, separated by a river and a customs line. I could get someone to drop me off in Texas and walk across the bridge and take a taxi to the airport. Saving two hundred dollars by crossing the border and changing planes in Monterrey seemed crazy …and absolutely worth it.

Various people expressed concern about this plan, including my mother’s friend M., who worried a lot about my mother during her life and had transferred that worry onto me now that she was gone. M. informed me in no uncertain terms that I was absolutely not going to Juárez alone.

M. had a nephew who was happy to drive me. “He’s big and bald, and has a lot of tattoos,” M. told me, “but he’s not like that.” I quickly did the math. A shuttle would cost me a ride into town and $150 to get to the airport, with a border crossing that could take hours. I could afford $100 to go with M’s nephew and still end up ahead.

He brought his nephew over to meet me; a friendly well-spoken man who was clearly up to the challenge of keeping me safe against the terrors of Juárez taxi drivers. He said he would drive me to the border, where we could leave the car and cross the bridge. His friend would meet us on the other side of the bridge and drive me the rest of the way to the airport.

“He’s a taxi driver,” the nephew told me. “He knows all the back roads and shortcuts, so you won’t get caught in traffic. He is very trustworthy.” M. and I agreed that this sounded like an excellent plan. I asked how much his friend would want. “$40,” said Nephew. Easily twice what I thought a taxi to Juárez would cost me but I didn’t want to quibble. I mentally took $20 off of Nephew’s fee.

There was only one hitch. M.’s nephew thought I might need a permit to enter Mexico.

“I don’t think I’ve ever needed a permit before,” I said, relying on the three border trips that I’d made over the previous decade.

“I don’t think they will let you fly without it,” he said.

Nephew was right: there is a requirement for a visitor permit for Mexico, the Forma Migratoria Múltiple, they just don’t bother with it if you are only visiting the border zone for a few hours. The internet assured me that I could get the form at the pedestrian bridge.

Nephew looked less convinced. He arrived ten minutes early, his pick-up truck suddenly in the drive, waiting for me to come out. A young girl sat in the back, playing on her phone; his daughter. They were going to have lunch in Juárez.

“Hello, daughter,” I said, hoping she might tell me her name. “I’m Sylvia.”

She looked up. “It’s very nice to meet you,” she said with enormous gravity before returning to her game.

We parked the truck in El Paso and entered the one-way system of the long white bridge: an enclosed ramp which allowed no view of the Rio Grande beneath us, busy with pedestrians ranging from women with shopping bags to small families to Nephew, Daughter and me.

Nephew was still concerned that I did not have a permit. As we reached the other side, I spotted an office perched on the edge of the bridge next to some sort of security check. A man in uniform sat at a desk inside. Nephew did not think that speaking to random men in uniform was a good idea. I ignored him, walked in, and, trying to differentiate myself from every other stupid tourist, started by addressing the man in Spanish. He did not answer, just looked at me as if to wonder what the hell I was doing in his office. I switched to English, explaining that I needed a visitor permit.

He blinked. “Can we speak Spanish,” he asked in Spanish. I started over, embarrassed. “I am from the US, I am going to Juárez Airport, I need a form.” Nephew reluctantly entered behind me.

“Not here,” the man said. “You need to be at the other bridge,” said the man. Nephew and I both flinched. Nephew asked the same question again, in the same language, and received the same answer. “Or,” said the man, “you could just get the tourist permit at the airport.”

“Oh, good,” I said. “I will do that!”

Nephew motioned me to come away from the man’s office. As I followed him, he explained to me that you cannot get the permit on this bridge, you need to be on the other bridge, but it was OK because I could get it at the airport.

I nodded in agreement, wondering if my Spanish was truly that awful.

We stepped off the bridge. We were in Mexico. “We will look for my friend,” said Nephew. He walked to the first taxi in the rank. “My friend is not here. We will just get a taxi.”

Three drivers watched us walking towards them. The closest one in front opened his trunk, smiling happily.

There is no friend, I realised. There was never a friend. The story of the friend was meant for M. not for me. Fundamentally, I was no worse off than my original plan.

The driver took my suitcase from me while I tried to catch up. Nephew had not negotiated a price. I was going to have to work out what to pay the driver.

But also, I hadn’t paid Nephew. I pulled him aside quickly and pushed eighty dollars into his hand. “For you and for lunch,” I said. His daughter climbed into the back of the taxi. Nephew shoved his hand into his pocket and motioned with his chin for me to sit in front.

Finally my brain caught up: they were coming with me to the airport.

We pulled into the streets of Ciudad Juárez. “How far to the airport,” asked Nephew, in Spanish.

“Not too far,” said the driver non-committally. A sign with a symbol of a plane pointed straight ahead. “Your first time in Juárez?” He turned right at the intersection.

“Oh no, no,” laughed Nephew. “I’ve been to Juárez plenty. I just never been to the airport.”

I stiffened. Really? Are you really telling a taxi driver with whom you did not negotiate a price that you don’t know the way? Really?!

There was no meter, nothing to track how many pesos were trickling past. I was no longer sure that Nephew was offering me any advantage other than that he was keeping me from looking like a Tourist Karen, who doesn’t know how things work, trusts no one, and insists on making everyone’s life miserable so that she can be sure she isn’t paying a single extra peso. I was grateful for this. I did not want to be a Tourist Karen.

I spent the rest of the trip trying to watch our route, searching for signs to the airport, resisting the urge to pull up my phone map, make it obvious that I was watching. Nephew chatted easily with the driver. Daughter played her phone game. I mentally ran through deep breathing exercises while tracking every turn. I felt very much like a Tourist Karen.

We arrived at the airport before I had a chance to hyperventilate properly. The driver may have taken back roads but I was pretty sure we hadn’t gone terribly out of our way.

Nephew got out of the taxi and put my luggage on the pavement. “Do you need us to come in with you?”

“No, I can deal with the airport. But I need to pay the taxi.”

“No, you’re good. We’ll take the taxi to lunch. You’re good.” He paused. “Do you want to come with us to lunch?”

“No, thank you.” I understood that he was happy that the money I gave him included the taxi fare, which hadn’t been my intent. But I was beyond trying to control the situation. He gave me a quick hug and I called goodbye to Daughter, who glanced at me in response. Nephew got into the front seat, chatting animatedly, and I watched as they drove away.

It was a week before it clicked that Nephew was not trying to overcharge me for his imaginary friend the taxi driver. He was quoting $40 for the entire trip.

I grabbed my suitcase and wheeled it into the airport. I was three hours early.

I wanted to change my seats; had been allocated a middle seat for both flights with no option to upgrade. But there was no sign of any airline staff anywhere. Instead I approached the desk marked as Migración.

I explained to the man in halting Spanish that I was transiting through Mexico and I didn’t know if I needed a tourist permit. I showed him my boarding pass and passport.

“I do not know either,” he said in English. “I will go and find out.”

He took my passport and disappeared into a back room. A few minutes later, he returned with a worried look. “You do need the permit. I’m sorry. It will cost 983 pesos.”

“Nine hundred and eighty three,” I repeated slowly, trying to parse the numbers into something I understood.

“About fifty dolares,” he said.

The money saved on this flight was slowly dwindling. I nodded my understanding and he pulled out a form.

“Explain to me please how you got here.”

“I walked across the bridge and took a taxi to the airport.”

His hand hovered over the form. “You entered the country by car.”

“Er, no, I entered on foot?”

He shook his head. “By car. How long will you be in Mexico?”

“My flight is in three hours and then I have a two-hour layover in Monterrey.” He looked perturbed. “I am going to Bogotá,” I explained.

“And when do you come back?”

“I’m not coming back.”

None of my answers were fitting the form he was trying to fill in.

“What you aren’t coming back?”

“I will continue from Bogotá to Prague, Praha. I will not be returning to Mexico.”

“Explain this to me again,” he said, this time in Spanish.

I explained in Spanish that I was only in Mexico to go to Bogotá and then I would go to… I did not know how to say Czech Republic. Czechia? Czech?

He waved me away. “Yes, yes, we will check.”

I bit my lip.

“How long will you be in Bogotá?” In English again, clearly my Spanish was suspect.

“Five days.”

He wrote something on the form and then stamped it with great gravitas. “I have given you transit entrance for ten days. That way if you don’t like it in Bogotá, you can come back here.”

It was probably not a good idea to laugh while attempting to negotiate immigration for a country that you are already standing in. I bit my lip hard and then said “Thank you, sir,” in my politest voice.

I paid my 983 pesos and he gave me a half-sheet of paper that looked about as official as a hall pass.

My name and details were scribbled at the top in blue ballpoint. At the bottom was a green stamp with a date and the silhouette of a car.

He wasn’t finished yet. “At Monterrey,” he told me, “If you leave, you must go to immigration to have them stamp the other side.”

“I will go to immigration,” I promised him.

In Spanish. “You can stay for ten days, if you wish to.”

I tucked the sheet into my passport and wandered back to check in. The woman shrugged when I asked about changing my seat. She was just there to take my suitcase, she told me, to make sure it would go straight to Bogotá.

I have survived Juárez without a scratch.

~o~

I arrive in Monterrey with two hours before my next flight, which seems like plenty. We disembark into bright sunshine, walking across the tarmac towards the terminal, where a ground crew member is positioned to make sure we go the right way. I ask her in English where I need to go for immigration. She responds in Spanish with a set of complicated instructions that I am not capable of following.

I head into the terminal; I’ve been to dozens of airports. I’m sure I’ll find it. I wander lost around the coffee shops for a moment before finding a woman standing at a desk marked as “Connection Assistance”.

I start in Spanish. She asks to see all of my documents and then holds up the half-sheet of paper. “You need a stamp,” she says.

“I understand,” I tell her. “But where?”

She switches to English, taps the sheet. “You have a stamp of a car.”

I agree.

“Now you need the stamp of a plane.”

“OK.”

She doesn’t volunteer any further information.

“And where do I get this stamp?”

“Door 23,” she says, like the airport is an advent calendar. And then reluctantly, as if I have used up too much of her time already. “It’s that way.”

I walk in that general direction and then, on a hunch, follow the directions to Gate 23, even though this doesn’t seem like a place that immigration would be.

A young man stands at the gate. He does not speak English. I explain to him that I need to get an immigration stamp.

He asks to see my documents and carefully goes through my passport and the sheet.

“You need the stamp of a plane,” he says.

“Yes,” I agree.

“At Terminal A.” This is the first helpful information I have received. “Take the bus to Terminal A, go to immigration, get your stamp.”

“Where do I get the bus?”

“Why, here of course.” Gate 23 leads to a bus instead of an aircraft. I get on it, hoping that it will take me to Terminal A.

There’s only one stop. I get off the bus and search for any sign of immigration. There are clear signs for departure gates and a closed security check area. I lose another ten minutes searching the area and then return to the bus area and approach the airport staff standing there. They do not speak English.

I ask them where Migración is. The older of the two women insists on seeing my boarding pass and passport. I have already shown my documents to more strangers than I did entering Russia.

“I need a stamp,” I say.

“You need to be in Terminal C,” she says. She points at the bus which is ready to go the opposite way

“I don’t think so,” I say. “Is this Terminal A?”

“Yes. And you need to be in Terminal C.” She shoos me onto the bus, which is ready to depart.

The bus takes me back to Gate 23. An hour has passed since I arrived confident that this would be easy.

A new young man is manning the gate. He wishes to see all of my documents. “You need to be in Terminal A,” he says.

My Spanish is not up to this. “I go to Terminal A, they say I must go to Terminal C. I am in Terminal C?”

“Yes,” he says, happy that I’ve asked an easy question.

“Terminal A say I must go here. I have no idea where I must go,” I say, crossing my arms.

He calls over an older woman. She looks at my documents and tells me I need to go to Terminal A. Speak to the airport staff when you get off the bus, she tells me snippily.

“I did! They tell me Terminal C!” I sound like I’m about to cry. I’m seriously considering it.

She gets on the phone. The young man attempts to soothe me, explaining in simple Spanish that she is calling Terminal A for me. Ten minutes later, she gets off the phone and says something to him in rapid Spanish and storms off.

“Take the bus to Terminal A,” he tells me. “Someone there will accompany you to immigration. There, you must get a stamp of a plane. Then come back here.”

I’m grateful for his patience. I’m grateful that I’m in a country where I can speak at least a little of the language.

“When is your departure?”

I show him my boarding pass. He bites his lip. “You will probably make it,” he says.

“I hope that this will be quick,” I say, watching for the bus.

“I hope so too,” he says, but he doesn’t sound convinced.

Back in Terminal A, a woman cuts me off, asks me where I am flying, informs me that I need to be in Terminal C.

“¡No!” I am turning into Tourist Karen and I don’t care. “Someone is meant to accompany me to Migración.” I square my shoulders. I am not getting on another goddamn bus.

Another woman walks over. “Are you the one looking for immigration?”

I slump in relief. “Yes.”

She takes me around a corner and the wrong way through a turned-off metal scanner and then points at a desolate corridor. “Keep going that way.”

I continue the wrong way through the empty security check and eventually end up in a crowd of people who have just arrived. I walk with them through customs, where I stop again to ask about Migración. “After the luggage area,” she says. “The office on your left as you exit. But you must get your suitcase first.”

“I do not have a suitcase,” I say, and walk away before she can ask any more questions. Apparently my job now is to pretend that I have just arrived on an international flight. As I walk out of the luggage area, I see a door marked Migración. I have found it.

The woman inside shushes me as she tries to make sense of my passport and transit document.

She taps the stamp of a car. “How did you enter Mexico?”

I tell her I crossed the bridge at El Paso, Texas and took a taxi to Juárez.

“And you live in Mexico.”

“No. I live in Estonia.”

She looks at me blankly for a moment. “And you are going home?”

“No,” I tell her. “I am going to Bogotá. I am booked on a flight to Bogotá.” I try to show her my boarding pass but she is not interested.

She reads the sheet again and then stares at my passport. Then, with a heavy sigh, she says “Bien“, fine and she stamps the other side of my sheet with a stamp of a plane.

I have done it.

“Now where do I go?”

She looks at me like I’m stupid. “To your flight.”

“I need to get back to Terminal C, how do I…” My Spanish is crumbling but she understands the question.

She points down the corridor, which I follow until it takes me to a security check with about seven hundred people waiting their turn, each one seemingly amazed to discover their bag needed to be unpacked.

I get through security and run to the bus and arrive at Terminal C, waving my sheet with the stamp of a plane at anyone who looks like they are paying attention. I arrive at the gate to find they have just started boarding.

I get into line and take a deep breath. I look at my hard-earned stamps. How on earth does anyone survive this transit, I think. And how does any of this prove that I have left?

An announcement in Spanish over the public address system. I cannot understand a word of it other than a mangled attempt to say my name. I leave the line to try to find airline staff. There are three standing at the gate across the way, looking worried. They look up as I approach.

“I just heard my name,” I say, before realising I have no idea how to say “announcement”. I repeat my name and point up at the ceiling, like I got a message from God.

The woman closest to me nods. “We need to see your passport.”

I hand over the passport and my permit, saying “I have a stamp of a car and a stamp of a plane.”

I feel about six.

All three breathe a deep sigh of relief. The woman snatches the sheet. “This is exactly what we need,” she says. “A stamp of a plane.”

I wonder how many other people with English-sounding names have showed up at the gate without their exit stamp. I still have no idea how anyone is supposed to navigate this system.

She hands me my passport back without the sheet. I frown. I have spent two hours trying to get my stamp of a plane to go with my stamp of a car and I don’t even get to keep it.

She’s still smiling but clearly unsure what my problem is. “I need this,” she says. “You can get on the plane now.”

I glance over at the gate. They are still boarding. The threesome are still smiling in relief that I did not cause a crisis.

“Can I have another seat?”

Her smile slips a bit.

“I have a middle seat. Can I have another seat?”

She’s shaking her head no but the man next to her taps something on the computer, and then nods. Row 29 is empty, he tells me, just go sit there. I can take whatever seat I want.

I scurry back to my gate and get on the plane and sit in the not-actually-assigned to me window seat.

Somewhere in Monterrey, a woman has a sheet of paper proving that I entered and then left the country. I have a window seat I wasn’t assigned, and a standing offer of ten more days if Bogotá disappoints.

I want to be clear that I had not planned this.

I’d read about it. Extreme travel. Get up early, travel to some place exotic, have an amazing meal and then back home again. A Gen-Z trend that started in the UK, where budget airlines had made it cheaper to fly to Milan for lunch than to take a train to Leeds. TikTok picked up on the trend and flung it towards the US. CNN calls them extreme day trips. VML introduces the term micro-adventure. Pop-Sugar doubles down with microcations.

Fodor’s settles the nomenclature debate with “late capitalism’s worst travel trend”.

I wasn’t tempted to try this for myself. The TikTok version appears to involve racing from landmark to landmark to see how many identifiable selfies you can take. At best, it’s an expensive overnight: depart at the crack of dawn to arrive in an exciting place in time for cocktails before an elegant meal with a beautiful view, followed by a quiet night in an expensive hotel and an exotic and delicious breakfast before heading back to the airport.

The truth is: I am not that kind of person. Not the kind of person who gets up early. Not the kind of person who can afford to throw money at a problem. Not the kind of person who is excited to spend just a few hours in a new place. I once spent four weeks on a tiny Icelandic island and still, was frustrated that I hadn’t seen every inch of it. Not the kind of high-end traveller who wines and dines. I mostly stay at hostels. My meal plans often involve three nights of instant noodles to justify an evening at a high-end restaurant. I never travel anywhere without three days of preparation, a laminated checklist, and at least one major panic that I have missed something important.

I read these accounts of extreme day trips with the sort of wide-eyed interest that I watch Formula 1: exciting to watch, not the way I would ever want to drive a car.

And yet, here I was.

The truth is: The only reason I was getting up at 5am to go to Istanbul was because Google Flights had opinions about my budget. The cheapest route from Tallinn to El Paso was flying Turkish Airlines with an overnight layover in Istanbul. Istanbul was willing to have me for eighteen hours, which was more than I had expected from a city that I had not told I was coming. Bonus: the airline would pay for an overnight at a four-star hotel if I agreed. This felt less like travel and more like being bribed by a country.

Of course, I said yes.

Now here I am, a middle-aged woman booked on a Turkish Airlines flight at an hour that should not technically exist, about to spend eighteen hours in Istanbul through no coherent act of planning.

Paldiski is -15°C/5°F at five am. I am wearing four layers of clothes and a heavy coat.

Only once I am safely smashed into my window seat, staring at the moving map on the headrest of the seat in front of me, sipping overboiled coffee, do I realise that technically, eighteen hours in Istanbul is exactly the kind of microcation that TikTok is all excited about. Up at five am, jump onto a plane, arrive in Istanbul to have a great dinner, sleep in a nice hotel, enjoy a Turkish breakfast and be back at the airport by lunchtime.

I could experience Istanbul as a quiet layover with a free hotel, which in itself is no small thing. Or I could treat it as an extreme adventure: one night in Istanbul. An amazing meal. A story to tell.

My tendency to say “Yes, OK, let’s do this” is either my best trait or my worst, depending on whether you are the one reading about this later or the one actually living through the repercussions.

A cabin crew member offers me an aluminium sealed tray as an early lunch. It’s one of my favourite meals: Turkish meatball with rice and eggplant.

It seems like a sign. Yes, OK, let’s do this.

Part Two: In Transit

Istanbul is 15°C/59°F at 3:45pm. I might die of heat exhaustion. I find the toilets and strip two layers of clothing off, shoving them into my bag and hoping that I don’t look like a drug smuggler. I get into the first line I see for immigration. A man looks me up and down dubiously. “Where are you going?”

“The Cettia Hotel Istanbul,” I say, hoping he’ll be impressed.

He’s not. “Are you a mariner?”

I chew my lip. Breaking into “yo no soy marinero, soy capitan!” from La Bamba seems inappropriate. I carefully shake my head no.

“This is the Seamen’s Gate,” he says. I take a moment to reparse this before reacting. He sighs and tells me to carry on to the next set of gates.

The line is a lot longer if you are not a mariner. Eventually, a dark-eyed woman who also looks like she has been up since 5am stamps my passport and welcomes me to Istanbul.

I’m in.

I don’t actually have a plan. I need to get to my hotel, the beautiful four-star Cettia Hotel Istanbul that Turkish Airlines booked for me. Google assures me that it is easy to get to: 40 minutes travel on Istanbul’s Metro to the Şişli district on Istanbul’s European side. I just need to find the metro station, about ten minutes walk from the airport, and then take the M11 to the M2, get off at Şişli and walk another ten minutes to my hotel. OK, that’s a plan.

A traveller’s website says that to use public transport, I need an Istanbulkart card. It’s easy to get the transport card, it promises, I just need to head underground to the bus station beneath the airport and purchase one from the kiosk there. Be careful of scammers who will try to sell you overpriced tickets. Only use the kiosk. “You can’t miss it,” writes the author.

I miss it. I roam around the bus station while buses breathe exhaust fumes at me, trying to find someone who might understand enough English to know what I am talking about. Finally, I approach a young man selling guided tours of Istanbul who bright smiles slips off of his face as he points vaguely further along. I keep walking to the end of the pavement, where all that is left is the exit where the buses belch their way up a ramp and into the outside world.

Here, on the edge of nowhere, is a yellow kiosk that apparently sells TourIstanbul cards. Except that when I attempt to use it, there is an error message in red letters in Turkish. I try again. I look around, in case some helpful person wants to translate, and then stop, remembering the warning about scammers. The comments were full of people complaining about the confusing kiosks and fast-talking Turkish men who offer to help and then charge extravagant amounts to their credit cards.

I don’t want to look like I need help.

I stomp back upstairs to the arrivals hall. I have been in Istanbul for almost an hour and I have not yet managed to leave the airport. This is crazy. There is no way in hell that there’s a transport station at the airport without any means of buying a ticket. I give up on bullshit Internet traveller advice and follow the signs to the Metro. Sure enough, there’s another yellow kiosk. I try to buy an Istanbulkart. I fail.

Everyone else is queued to use blue kiosks. I shift allegiances. The blue kiosks offer me a Türkiyekart for sixty Turkish lira and then top it up for travel. I have no idea what a Türkiyekart is or what sixty lira are worth in real money, let alone what is a reasonable amount to put on a transport card. A timer counts down, resets the transaction, asks me to start over. Blindly trusting my luck, I add a hundred lira to the amount and take my card. It works! I’m through the turnstile and walking through an interminable empty terminal. At the bottom, there are two sets of tracks. I check my phone, but this far underground, I have no connectivity. I see a sign for M2, which I’m supposed to take the M11 to get to. Nothing says M11. A train pulls in. A lot of people enter the train. There are two options now: get on the train or go back upstairs and work out where I am going.

I get on the train.

I’m still wearing at least 1.5 layers too many. Either I’m going to magically end up in the right place or I’m going to be lost, sweltering, in the Turkish metro system forever, begging for leftover kebab.

Part Three: In the Crosshairs

I am 80% sure that I’m heading into town, not away from it. I’m 20% into my extreme adventure and already 100% done with it. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel this crazy pressure to get the party started.

At the last stop, there are signs to the M2. I follow the little [2] signs until they take me above ground. I blink against the sunlight, my feet, encased in snow boots, already starting to ache. There is no trace of the M2. There is, in fact, nothing.

Google Maps insists that everything is fine. I follow it through the city streets, past traffic and jackhammers and a number of strikingly beautiful cats. In the distance, I spot another Metro station, inexplicably with the same name as the one I just left. I go down. There are signs for the M2 and, bafflingly, to the M11 going to the airport, as if the city itself is suggesting I reconsider my choices.

At the turnstile, I tap my transport card. Red light. Alarm. A sound designed to alert the entire station that I am not to be trusted. I step aside and watch the other commuters, who glide through using their phones like competent adults. I stand near an exit and attempt to download the Istanbul transport app. It is not available for my country. This seems rather unfair as I am, at this moment, in theirs.

I try the Türkiyekart again. The alarm, patient and certain, answers with a blare.

Near the exit is a yellow kiosk, promising that this time, honestly, I will enjoy the perfect Istanbulkart experience. I give it one last chance, quickly making progress, except that there’s this same five-second timer which resets the whole process if you don’t react quickly enough.

After two attempts, I manage to load 300 lira onto an Istanbulkart, which I hope will work better than a Türkiyekart.

Two guys approach the yellow kiosk, one of them saying, “Yes, but what do I need to do?” The other sounds impatient, “Just hold on, just hold on a second.” He comes up behind me and huffs a bit at me for being in the way. They seem stressed. The kiosk spits out my card and I turn to leave when the second guy sighs. “Ugh, you haven’t activated your card.”

I look at the card. He reaches past me to tap the screen. “See? You need to activate it before you can use it.” He pops through the Turkish menu and takes my Istanbulkart, holding it up to the machine to read. “There,” he says. “Now you just need to tap your card to activate it.” He points at the credit card still in my other hand.

“What?” I’m confused. The five-second timer ends. The machine resets. The guy groans in impatience.

“You missed it. Look. It’s easy.” He holds the Istanbulkart against the reader again and hops through the menus. “Now, use your credit card to activate.”

The five-second timer is counting down. He points to the contactless card reader. “Activate!”

I feel slow and old and stupid. And yet… I can’t see why I need to tap my credit card again.

I snatch my Istanbulkart out of his hand. “No.”

His face is bewildered. He’s just trying to help. “You need to activate!”

“You go. You guys go ahead,” I say, not liking the pressure of being rushed. I walk away before he can argue. I need a moment. I take a couple of deep breaths and get myself organised: credit card back in my wallet, wallet back in my pocket, Istanbulkart in my hand. I go to the turnstile and show it my new card. It glows green with a soft, approving click.

There was no activation.

The interaction replays in my head. I still don’t understand what the scam was. Load the card and swap it? The other guy, was he an accomplice? Or another tourist, like me, accepting the help of a stranger. I glance back at the machine. There’s no one there.

The train carries me two stops to what I hope is Şişli. The tinned voice says a string of syllables, starting with M. It sounds absolutely nothing like Şişli. I get off anyway, hot and sweaty and sick of everything. And somehow, yes, there’s a sign, Şişli—Mecidiyeköy, with arrows pointing at the six exits, numbered one through six. Or specifically, [1] through [6].

Only now do I realise that following the [2] earlier had nothing to do with finding the M2. It was simply a very efficient way of getting lost above ground and then re-entering the system from an entirely different entrance.

Still. I have arrived.

I come up to street level to see the Trump Towers, which isn’t quite the Turkish welcome I was hoping for. But Google Maps is back in charge: now all I have left is to cross a major intersection and walk ten minutes to my hotel. My feet are killing me. My shoulder aches under the weight of my overnight bag. I pass coffee shops and bakeries and small restaurants offering cheap plates of grilled meat with rice and probably eggplant. Old men sit alone at outside tables, eating with quiet focus.

Somewhere in the distance, a single voice rises and falls: melodic, haunting. A call to prayer from an unseen mosque. I could not be anywhere but Türkiye.

I inhale deeply and keep going.

Part Four: In Someone Else’s Life

The sliding glass doors of the Hotel Cettia whoosh open as if they’ve been waiting all day for someone like me, which is unfortunate, because I’m pretty sure that I am not the sort of person they were hoping for. Inside is an elegant bar, all glass and polish, as if fingerprints simply don’t occur here. A sign gestures discreetly towards reception.

It is 7pm. I have spent over three hours trying to navigate this city. If you only have one day in a city, perhaps you should not treat time as if it is abundant. Perhaps you should not spend three hours saving the cost of a taxi. An extreme traveller would already be deep into a plate of something grilled and marinated and possibly still sizzling. I, on the other hand, have arrived with the slightly haunted look of someone who has seen too many ticket machines.

In reception, an oversized cat sits on an oversized chair, staring at me. The kind of stare that says this place has rules and you’re already breaking them.

I remind myself that this is only a layover. I haven’t technically paid to be here, which feels like an important psychological loophole.

A beautiful red-haired woman looks up from behind the counter. Her clothes are perfect, kind of expensive that doesn’t wrinkle. She smiles like she’s been expecting me. Would I like a drink from the bar?

My entire body slumps in exhaustion. “Um, a glass of water?”

She gives me an odd look: anything I want, and I choose water? Should I quickly add “and a glass of prosecco, thank you”? Too late. She snaps a finger. A slightly disheveled young man dashes to the bar with my order. The cat looks away, bored.

I stand there, a sweating lump of travel chaos in my hoodie and snow boots. I cannot imagine a less first-class-service-deserving person. Maybe they are just worried that I might faint onto the pristine floor of reception.

If Red is judging me, she doesn’t let it show. “While we wait, would you like to give me your passport so I can check you in?” She taps lightly on her computer. “Oh, I see we’ve upgraded you to a suite!”

My water arrives with a heavy whiskey glass filled with water. I gulp it down. “A suite?”

“Yes, on the top floor. I am sure you will enjoy it.” She prints out a form and asks me to sign it. There’s nowhere for my signature. “Where?”

“Wherever you like,” she says, laughing. No need for pesky lines.

I do not need to leave the room for anything, she tells me. There is a full restaurant menu in the room, I can just call down to her and she will send up whatever I desire.

What do I desire? I ask for another glass of water. She snaps. The dishevelled young man jumps to attention. I also very much desire food but …do I really want to sit in a hotel room eating room service?

“I’m wondering about going out for dinner,” I say, nervously. “Maybe something …Turkish?” As if this were an odd request.

She leans forward conspiratorially. “Turkish? Oh, I know just the place! It’s nearby. Local. Good Turkish food. No tourists.”

It sounds perfect. My feet ache. “How far to walk?”

“Walk?” Red shakes her head. “There’s nothing walking distance except fast food.” She says fast food in the tone of voice usually reserved for dog shit. I think longingly of the smoky grill places I passed on the way here.

“Oh, no,” I say, in an anything but that voice.

“But it is nearby. Have you ever had raki?”

I shake my head, no.

“It’s our milk,” she says. “You must try it. This is the perfect place. It is not far, in a taxi.

I am absolutely through with public transport. Taxis are a thing. I’m allowed to use them. “OK. How do I get a taxi to the restaurant?”

She laughs gaily, as if I’m the wittiest person she’s ever met. “I do that.” And then, as if she’s only just realized that I wasn’t joking. “I will organize everything; you don’t need to worry. What time would you like to go to dinner?”

I don’t know what I was thinking, other than I wanted to fit into the role she was creating for me. I wanted to be the kind of person whom one is happy to upgrade to a suite. “I just need 15 minutes to get changed,” I say.

Her eyes briefly drop to my travel outfit. I can’t shake the feeling that she thinks I need a lot more than fifteen minutes. But the smile is still on her face as she nods and shoos me to the elevator. “You need to use your room card to get access to the top floor,” she tells me.

I enter the elevator and make room for a middle-class woman carrying half a dozen high-end shopping bags. She presses a button and I mentally thank Red as I tap my room card before selecting the 12th floor. Shopping woman glances at the lit button and then looks me up and down. I sniff audibly when she gets out on the third. I could get used to this.

My door opens to a narrow corridor and then a living room and then a bedroom bigger than some apartments that I’ve lived in. The curtains are drawn. There is a deep tub and a shower on opposite ends of the bathroom. I regret that I don’t have enough time for either and quickly splash myself with water and rearrange my layers to something suitable for the warm Turkish night. I get out my make-up but there’s no time. I grab my hoodie and dash downstairs just in time.

Red isn’t there. Instead, there’s a serious-looking man with a 5 o’clock shadow who stares confusedly when I try to explain that a beautiful red-haired woman promised me dinner. What restaurant was I going to? I have no idea. Eventually he gives up with a heavy sigh and disappears into the back. The dishevelled young man comes out. He shows me a taxi app on his phone, saying “Taxi.”

I’m not sure what’s happening. Again. “Do you know where I’m going?”

“You are going,” he says, nodding, happy to confirm.

Mr 5 o’clock shadow returns and corrects him in Turkish.

The young man blushes and says “Oh. Yes, of course I know.” He dashes away before I can ask any more questions.

Mr 5 o’clock rolls his eyes and calls out something in Turkish. A moment later, Red appears, her face quickly rearranging into a smile when she sees me. She pulls out her phone, showing me photographs: nicely laid tables, a plate of shrimp, a waiter smiling with a bottle of wine. “This is your restaurant.”

I keep scrolling until I finally find one with a lit sign with an abstract symbol and, underneath, Barboon.

Her job done, she turns to return to the back.

“Wait, but how do I get back? After dinner.”

She glances back at me like she can’t believe I’m a functioning adult. “The restaurant will call a taxi for you, of course.”

As she disappears, the cat wanders in, looks at me sitting in her chair and leaves again. Dishevelled returns to tell me that my taxi will be outside in a minute. Yes, the taxi knows where I am going.

Is this really how other people do this? And how much is it going to cost?

He turns his phone towards me again, which seems to show an estimate of 400 liras. “A little more, a little less,” he tells me and then glances at the app again. “Now go! Your taxi is here!”

Part Five: In Too Deep to Object

I dash outside and climb into the back seat of a random taxi, hoping that it is mine. A grumpy man asks me where I am going.

“I have no idea.” I’ve already forgotten the name of the restaurant again. What am I doing? And how much is 400 liras?

The driver huffs and pulls out. We drive along a busy road, a blur of traffic and well-lit restaurants full of shiny happy people. He speeds up around a clover-leaf junction that deposits us onto a freeway going the opposite way. I consider that Red’s idea of “nearby” may not match mine.

The driver is racing in the slow lane, tapping at a console on his dash showing a menu scantily-clad pop stars. He chooses one, goes back, chooses the next. Finally, he selects one, an exotic-looking woman with permed hair playing a synth. She’s playing ABBA: Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight). He turns up the volume, nodding his head to the disco and weaving through the traffic. We leave the freeway, drive uphill to crest the top with a beautiful view over city lights and water.

I have no idea where I am. He is singing along to the chorus. We barrel down again, around a series of hairpin curves. Suddenly the taxi stops in the middle of a narrow road. He turns off the music. I look around, lost. We are blocking traffic. He growls something at me, pointing at the meter. I spot the familiar white lit sign of Barboon; we have arrived. I’m struggling to see my money in the dark, backlit by a taxi behind us who honks more-or-less politely. I hand over some money, rounding up from the amount on the meter. The sour look on his face tells me that I should have tipped. I still have a fifty-lira note still in my hand, but I can’t work out if that’s insulting or over-generous. I remember the blaring ABBA. The honking from behind is becoming rather more urgent. I shove the 50 liras in my pocket and get out, barely making it out of the street before he peels away at breakneck speed.

A portly gentleman smiles at me fondly, as if his favourite niece has just arrived. “I have a reservation, I think,” I tell him.

He laughs and waves me in, points up the stairs. At the top is a very fancy restaurant, all floor-to-ceiling windows and quiet confidence. Three waiters stand ready, dressed as they might at any moment be asked to attend a black-tie gala. The white-clothed tables are spaced generously, each with a small golden lamp in the center.

A ship drifts past the windows. The city lights sparkle obligingly in the background.

I am the only guest.

They escort me to a window seat, smiling broadly. The waves of the Bosphorus reflect the street lighting, but my attention is taken by the white sign on this side of the restaurant. Barboon. Now that I’m sitting, I see that the abstract sketch on the sign is actually a wide-mouthed fish. Barboon, it seems, is Turkish for “Red Mullet”. I’m at a seafood restaurant.

I usually think to mention that I’m allergic to seafood before agreeing to dinner plans. Somehow everything happened so fast that I never had time to think. Thankfully, it’s a mild allergy, as far as allergies go; I will not collapse in anaphylactic shock or die twitching on the floor. I’ll just violently throw up everywhere.

An elegant man stands by the kitchen, arms crossed, watching me. A much younger one comes over, stammering slightly. Is there someone else?

No.

Really? He makes a nervous motion towards the other setting. Someone else?

Still no.

He motions clearing away the other setting, his face still a question mark.

I nod, yes.

He frowns worriedly at me and starts clearing the place setting as if he’s waiting for me to stop him.

There’s something disarming about being at a fancy restaurant where the waiter is more nervous of screwing up than you are. I search through the menu for non-seafood options. The jittery waiter places three small dishes in front of me: four olives, two small pieces of bread, half a lemon. Would I like. A drink? He has clearly just rehearsed this phrase. I glance over the drinks menu, searching for cheap wine by the glass. Then I see the page of raki.

“Can I one of these?”

The man looks nervous, as if I might have asked a trick question. I explain that I’ve never had it before. He clearly has no idea what I’m saying. He agrees that yes, I can have something from the page. He takes it from me and disappears. I expected a bit more negotiation, maybe a recommendation. A moment later, he returns with a silver tray and places the contents on my table. A jug of water. A small bucket of ice cubes. A tall glass half full of a clear spirit.

He glances back at the arm-crossed man watching from the kitchen, then looks at me hopefully, as if I might say something. I smile brightly, my default language for “I have no idea what you want from me.”

He shows me the glass. I nod. He shows me the ice cubes. Do I want ice?

I shrug in response. I don’t know. Do I?

He makes a face at me and drops a single ice cube in before topping it up with water. The drink turns milky white; Red’s description finally makes sense.

I take a sip. It tastes like anise and bad decisions. I smile at him. He breathes a sigh of relief and takes the water and the ice away again.

The menu is an amazing array of fish and shellfish dishes that I probably shouldn’t be in the same room as. It does not take long to decide on the only items that are safe for me to eat. I wave over the young waiter and point at a shepherd’s salad, which seems unlikely to have seafood in it, and a plain grilled steak. He gives me an odd look, which I cannot blame him for, and dashes off again.

Finally, I have time to look out the window. The restaurant is perched on the edge of the Bosphorus waterfront, that narrow, impossible strip of water that splits Istanbul into two continents. Across is water is Asia, not abstractly but right there, rising in layers of light from the opposite shore: apartment buildings and office blocks and dark minarets of a mosque between the buildings.

My food arrives: a plate of salad large enough to be a main course. And I suspect it is meant to, as it is quickly followed by another plate with more salad, rice and what was once a steak chopped up into small pieces. I worry that I’ve accidentally ordered the children’s meal. The beef is perfect: tender and juicy with just a touch of salt and pepper. I clear my plate. Immediately the waiter is at my shoulder to whisk it away.

I still have most of a glass of raki. He’s immediately back with the menu: would I like some dessert?

Sadly, I tell him that I simply cannot manage another bite.

He looks at me in concern. “No, thank you,” I tell him and raise my glass of raki. This is my dessert. He backs away.

Ferries cut across the strait on their fixed routes, Europe to Asia and back again. Dinner cruise boats drift past more slowly, glowing with warm strings of bulbs. Every so often, a cargo ship slides through, vast and deliberate. I watch the water, the flicker of lights breaking apart and reforming on the surface.

The waiter hovers nearby, still hoping that I will order something sticky and sweet and put him out of his misery. I do not oblige. The elegant man by the kitchen waves him over. He brings me two small plates: thick slices of banana, wedges of tart green apple. Do they think I’m too broke to afford dessert? I eat it all, guiltily.

This is a dream. I am sitting at a window seat in a top class restaurant —now full of guests— looking over the Bosphorus while waiters smile at me every few minutes in case they can offer my heart’s desire. This is not an Istanbul I would ever find on my own but it’s also perfect. My dreamy happy state, underscored by my apparently endless glass of raki, lasts until the bill arrives.

The raki represents roughly a third of the bill. This seems outrageously until I consider that it lasted the better part of ninety minutes. I pay, leaving a cash tip for my nervous young waiter. He informs me that my taxi is waiting.

Suddenly there are three of them, ushering me out like a minor dignitary, please come again soon. Possibly I have over-tipped. I climb into the taxi, my face blushing slightly from the raki. The taxi driver has never heard of my hotel, insists that I look up the address and tell him where to go. Then, grudgingly, he flings us into the hairpin curves to climb back up and over the hill and onto the freeway to get me home.

This time I am ready with the money. I tip. Generously, I think. He stares at me in a way that suggests I am wrong.

At reception, Mr 5 o’clock greets me like an old friend, asks if I enjoyed dinner. I assure him that it was perfect and step into the elevator, scrambling for my room card so that it will take me to the top floor.

My suite looks even more stunning in the dark. I leave the lights off. The window alongside the bath looks over the twinkling night lights of Istanbul. I had not planned on a bath. But then, I hadn’t planned any of this.

The layers of city grime dissolve into the water.

Maybe there’s something to this whole extreme travel thing.

This has been a magical evening. I have no regrets.

Part Six: The Morning After

The view from my room, excuse me, my suite, is even more impressive in the morning light, which feels excessive, as I had already decided it was perfect the night before.

Istanbul sprawls away in all directions, Turkish flags waving in a gentle breeze, the Bosphorus glittering in the distance.

I sit on the velour sofa for an hour, just looking out at the city. The sky shifts as Istanbul wakes up, sharper, less forgiving. It’s time to get moving. I tear myself away, drawn by the promise of a buffet breakfast, and head for my private elevator.

A woman comes up to the 12th floor with it, looking annoyed, like this is somehow my fault. I enter, trying to project “of course I have a suite on the top floor” energy. She stares at the wall. I stare at the door. The elevator stops again on the 10th floor. And then the 9th. And then the 8th. We make eye contact, breaking all elevator protocol. It stops again on the 7th We share a grin and rolling of the eyes. A tired-looking businessman gets in, turns his back to us. We try to go back to staring at nothing but when the elevator stops again on the 6th floor, we both burst out laughing. Finally, we arrive at the bottom. I share a smile of relief with the woman.

The cat sits by the stairwell, watching us judgmentally. The woman and I walk together to the breakfast room, where we immediately pretend that we have never interacted in any way.

The breakfast is, of course, perfect. Bowls of fruit and salads and cheeses. A cutting board with three types of bread. Small barrels of olives, green and black. There’s no coffee, instead a vast container of tea so strong it feels confrontational, accompanied by hot water so that you may negotiate it to something drinkable.

Sadly, with a feeling of watching a carriage turn into a pumpkin, I realise it is time to return to the airport for the rest of my flight.

I put on another 1.5 layers of clothing: protection against the chill of a long-haul cabin. I bid farewell to the cat, who remains unmoved. And I walk back out into the city streets, this time knowing exactly which way to go to get the Metro back to the airport.

I still think this is a ridiculous way to see a city.

Unfortunately, it worked.

Pull the weeds out of the desert soil. Twist the wild mustard gently to yank out the long tap roots.

Do not make eye contact with the dying roses. They hold nothing but hatred for you, the interloper who is withholding the water.

Stare instead at the small roadrunner darting across the dirt road leading to her adobe house, disappearing into the pecan trees.

Your mother insisted on growing roses in the desert. They were beautiful. Your mother was not made for small challenges. She had no interest in a cactus garden.

Less a woman (a mother, a wife, a teacher) and more a force of nature, someone around whom things (people, places, roses) rearranged themselves.

Everyone is trying to work out how to be in her absence.

A friend of your mother’s takes you shopping. Fill your basket with half a dozen varieties of cheese. Tell yourself that you are self-medicating.

Wrench the wild mustard out of the cracked ground in the blazing sun, as if this were a battle you might win.

Consider the name. Try a young leaf. It tastes of dust and desert and mustard.

You don’t know why this surprises you.

A friend of your mother’s brings a dozen freshly-laid eggs, overflow from an unknown hen house.

This is what you need, milk, butter, eggs, cheese. The garage is a makeshift pantry of shelf-stable food. The mice have moved in, devouring her oats. Cans with faded stamps declaring best before 2018. Bulging condiments. A wide array of spices, all faded to the same beige color and flavor.

But many other items are fine: flour, salt, vinegar.

Use the vinegar to clean the limescale from her wine glasses, remnants of the well water.

A friend of your mother’s invites you to an evening out of the haunted house, to get loaded in her honor. Another offers an afternoon on her deck with a shared bottle of champagne.

Your mother had very good friends.

She would have brought nibbles.

Keep at the wild mustard growing across the grass, the gravel, the roadside canal. Ask the internet, who quickly identifies the yellow flowers and dandelion-like leaves. You are eradicating London Rocket, named after the Great Fire of London, when the weed sprung up in the burned soil which had once been city. It sprouts after winter rains, thrives in disturbed soils. Almost as if it knows your mother has left.

Catalog the things she left behind. The creaking adobe house. The brightly coloured plates. The roses.

The internet assures you that London Rocket is edible, can be used in place of any bitter greens. Try another leaf. Spit it out. The internet is maybe wrong.

Be brave. Set aside the youngest weeds, with leaves almost tender. Wash them repeatedly in well water, in hopes of removing the taste of the desert, before chopping them fine to mix in with an egg.

In the back yard are five compost pits, shallow graves in the crab grass. There will be no one here to turn them over, to feed the roses. Put the egg shells in the compost bucket anyway.

Find her favourite ceramic pot, Le Creuset in bright orange. Light her aging gas stove, almost as old as you are, installed when the house was built. Bring butter and milk to a boil before dumping in the flour, mixing hard until you have the paste at the heart of choux pastry.

Add the egg and chopped mustard leaves, stirring hard with a wooden spoon. Curse yourself by the second egg, having somehow forgotten how hard it is to stir the dough by hand. Create a coherent mass. Be grateful that at least something feels coherent. Stir in your cheeses. Consider that this is surely an upper-body workout and add more cheese.

Your mother has seventeen boxes of ziplock bags. She used to bring extra to you when she came to visit, because you never seemed like you had enough, because they aren’t real ziplock. You wonder what post-war trauma has left her with a horror of running out of ziplock bags.

Snip the corner to pipe the dough. Watch the plastic split the wrong way, the dough spilling through. These bags have gussetted seams, an accordion fold at the base.

Give up.

Spoon the dough out of the bag into messy lumps on parchment.

Your mother loved making gougères. This seems altogether too posh a name for what you are making, like your mother, too European, too refined. You want something savoury and hearty. It is OK to call them cheese puffs.

The green-speckled mounds of dough look deeply unconvinced about their prospects. Transfer all your hopes to them, that they might grow up to be something real. Unlike the roses, whose tears you imagine you hear every time you look out at her front garden, if they had water left to cry.

In the oven, the dough rises into domes, as if you had carefully rounded them in the first place. They rise to twice their size, flecked with gold. Turn the trays, turn down the heat.

They come out perfectly: crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. There is no bitterness from the green leaves, just a breath of the scent of mustard as the cheese puffs dissolve in your mouth. In this, at least, you have done well.

The weeds are still growing. The roses are still dying. But for a moment, standing in her kitchen, you can almost imagine her with you.

I tried to write two different essays. One, about the United States, was too political, too crass. The other, about my mother’s death, was too difficult, too raw. I’m officially giving up and sharing a sort of collage with you instead while I try to find the right words, the words that will do what I tell them to do.

Spring in Buenos Aires smelled of grilled meat and dust and something floral. I kept thinking I’d get used to it. I never did.

Tilcara. The air was thin, the sun was sharp, and everything took longer than I thought it would.

I went to Recoleta after I found out my mother had died. I didn’t know where else to go.

Five aircraft in two days. I wrote about each one here.

Things my mother left behind.

The sky went on forever and the days stretched thin.

Winter in Paldiski. Cold, quiet, familiar. I am home.

DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network) is indeed a hot topic because it offers tangible innovation: building physical infrastructure using blockchain technology with tokens that have actual, practical use. DePIN offers the chance to shift ownership of physical infrastructure from centralized players to community driven networks. Now the hunt is on for real-world problems that DePIN can solve.

Early that morning, a small bug triggered by a change in data permissions crashed the Cloudflare routing machines. Half the online world seemed to disappear. People stared at their phones as they arrived at the venue.

DePIN Day Buenos Aires was hosted at Artlab by Fluence, a decentralized serverless computing platform, and Filecoin, a decentralized storage network built on blockchain technology. The venue calls itself a creative laboratory and cultural center which translates to a dark room with blue LEDs crisscrossing the ceiling and techno thumping in the background. The vibe is nightclub rave meets airport lounge.

I stumble in from the blinding sunshine to find half a dozen black tables scattered across the floor, each one covered in plushies and stickers with catchy slogans like ‘Take back the FOCing cloud.’ It’s no secret that Filecoin are going to announce their cloud service today. An open bar offers coffee, water, and a variety of juices for those of us foolish enough to arrive on time, which by Buenos Aires standards means we are criminally early.

Tom Trowbridge, co-founder of Fluence and our MC of the day, sits across from me, frantically finishing up his slides. Outside, Cloudflare is just as frantically trying to revive a collapsing internet after an outage of over five hours.

Me, I’m just trying to work out what I signed up for.

At home, I have an ADSB receiver set up, tracking the aircraft that fly overhead. My data feeds into various aviation sites that rely on this volunteer network to display real-time air traffic worldwide. So it’s immediately clear to me how DePIN works because at its heart, it’s exactly this, except that instead of just tracking out of love and feeding my data to the people who make the money, there are incentives for contributors like me. Instead of the centralized sites gaining all the benefit, we all share in the results that we are helping to create.

I am accidentally the perfect audience for this technology.

Trowbridge opens up the event with his trademark energy and humor, introducing the first speaker of the day: Danny O’Brien of the Filecoin Foundation. [Video]

O’Brien’s take is that DePIN is “what the Web was meant to be”. He reminds us that right now half the Web is currently inaccessible as a result of a centralized outage, as if we could possibly forget.

Then he says, “I, like everyone else, am sitting there with five to ten AI agents on my screen”. Five to ten agents? I don’t even have five to ten tabs open. Does everyone else have a robot army? What do they do? I start counting on my fingers. I could have an agent to scroll Twitter for me. One to remind me where I’m supposed to be next. Maybe one to message my mother once a day confirming that I am eating well but not too well and of course I wish she were here with me.

I’m out of ideas. I tune back in to hear him saying that we have to dismantle the idea that as content providers, we have to take on the burden of distribution.

Now this is something I can get behind. I love writing. I hate distribution: trying to get the world to actually notice that I’ve written something.

The whole point, he tells us, is that the internet is the distribution of knowledge. We can steer the AI agents to an ecosystem that is built for them.

I consider this for a moment and then decide: Yes. Yes, I’m happy to give this article to my robot army. ChatGPT is usually more appreciative of my writing than Reddit anyway.

The first panel of the day is DePIN as the Physical Layer of the AI Infrastructure with Juliana Mei (NodeOps), Stefaan Vervaet (@akave), Tom David (iExec) and Matej Janez (Oasis Protocol). [Video]

Vervaet gives a fantastic explanation of why decentralized storage matters: geopolitical compliance. There’s a whole conflict, he explains, between the US’s Patriot Act vs Europe’s GDPR. If the entity is in the US but datacenter is in Europe, can the US insist on access?

As a reaction, many companies are looking for “sovereign cloud” options to derisk their situations.

Matej doubles down on the trust issue. The centralized entities aren’t supposed to access our data, but we know that they can. We need to feel confident that our encryption is secure and our private files are protected from everyone, that no one has access but us.

They discuss direct sales of data, AI agents who can make micropayments, private payments for data without having to aggregate providers and direct payments on social media. AI agents will be the consumers of digital data. More than that, DePIN plus AI could become a type of distributed intelligence: A living creature. They agree that this is the best potential for AGI. They seem to think this is a good thing.

What all of them seem to assume is that AI agents are going to become the primary customers of infrastructure, not humans.

I make a quick note to write more nice things about AI agents before they take over the world. I promise not to make mine read Twitter. I know what happened to Tay.ai.

Doug Petkanics of Livepeer is up next with a decade of DePIN innovation. He explains that originally, DePIN got lumped in with DeFi, even though these networks should be measured by who actually uses them, not by financial transactions. The operators aren’t degen yield chasers. Reframing DePIN allowed the industry to focus on its real challenges, like how to govern public goods sustainably.

Crypto, he said, gives the supply side superpowers with incentives, smart contracts, global coordination and digital payments. The open marketplace allows for real competition and real price discovery. There are no shortcuts here: DePIN networks have to deliver real value outside of Web3. Fees are tied to actual usage, not speculation.

Maximiliano Ejberowicz from Silencio takes to the stage to tell us about an unexpected market opportunity. Initially, they were focused on noise pollution, the largest environmental danger after air pollution. They gamified a user-friendly mobile app: measure noise and get rewarded.

The result was a global noise map, which meant you could quickly look up an address, for example if you were buying a home or looking for a quiet hotel room, and get the noise levels on the place and the surroundings. They ended up with 1.4 million users and 13 million hours of noise level data: the largest noise level collection in the world.

That’s where the market opportunity appears. Modern AI is starving for fuel and internet data is already scraped clean. If AI is ever going to “hear” the world, it needs messy, real sound. Silencio already has it.

And they have the infrastructure to get more. There are 7,000 languages and 40,000 dialects, he tells us, but only 1.4% are represented in current datasets. This is not a dataset problem that a single company can solve by hiring more people.

AI hears only a fraction of the world. Silencio has started incentivising users to record their voices and get rewarded in order to unlock the rest. His point: The solution can only exist if millions of people are willing to contribute data because they’re compensated directly and transparently.

Next, Evgeny Ponomarev of Fluence comes onstage to show us a demo. He explains that Fluence added GPUs to their decentralized cloud offering a month ago. I pause, my pen in the air. I thought Fluence were offering services for cloud providers, not a cloud provider themselves.

He tries to show the demo. The demo refuses.

He tells us that Fluence is a decentralized compute platform with locations in Europe, the US, Asia, and India. Compared to AWS and Hetzner, we’re cheaper, he says, staring into the spotlight uncomfortably as he waits for a technical solution.

The demo still doesn’t work.

He takes the chance to explain their aggregated DePIN offerings for GPUs. GPU supply is fragmented across different providers, regions and hardware types, so Fluence aggregates all those options the same way that flight comparison sites aggregate airlines and routes.

The metaphor is excellent. The demo declines to choose this moment to shine.

He is coming to accept that the demo will never work. He turns his laptop around and shows the screen to the audience. “It works here,” he says, in case we think he brought a broken demo with him. It does work on his tiny laptop screen. It does not work on the screen behind him. He pastes on a happy face and tells us to go to the website, try it ourselves, pay in stablecoins, request GPU access (but not CPU yet, for reasons). Check out the console, he says. It’s all there.

We applaud his brave face and move on as quickly as possible.

It’s time for the big Filecoin announcement. Filecoin is building a decentralized, verifiable, Onchain Cloud. The stage becomes a blur of speakers and slides, each one highlighting a different angle. Filecoin’s goal: to become the foundational data layer for AI agents and DePIN applications.

My rapid-fire bullet points from the firehose of information:

• Onchain Cloud: The name of the whole decentralized stack: storage, compute, naming and persistence.

• Verifiable storage: The backbone. Trustless with no ambiguity. Content-addressed data, global redundancy.

• ENS integration: ENS can now address Filecoin/IPFS content.

• Beam: Consumer-facing storage + agents paying storage providers directly (live now on testnet with a special offer of $0.014/GB).

• The Demo: Two women on stage pose for a selfie; it goes straight to IPFS/Filecoin; the audience claps obediently.

• AI framing: Agents are coming, they need trustworthy data.

• Metamask are bullish: Agent reputation, agent trust, building for future applications. What applications? Who knows. “It’s like asking in 1994 what TikTok is.”

• Sovereign cloud: A global economy is leading to the need to protect ourselves from competing and contradictory regulations.

• Cloudflare outage: Honestly, if we’d drunk a shot every time this was mentioned, they would have had to carry me out of there.

And then Marta Belcher of the Filecoin Foundation wrapped it all up by reminding everyone (again) that Filecoin is the world’s largest decentralized onchain network… and this is just the beginning.

My take-away was that this wasn’t a launch so much as a claim: a declaration that storage, compute, and naming should exist independently of whoever happens to be running the cloud this decade. Whether anyone actually wants that yet was left unresolved.

It’s lunch time. I get a small bowl of rice with a hunk of meat. A Colombian woman tells me how much she loves California and that the rest of the world is going to hell. I’m not sure I’m capable of taking in any new information.

The next talk pulls me back in, with a completely charming success story. Stefaan Vervaet comes back on stage to show us Skymapper, a global network of telescopes. [Video]

Skymapper stores its data on the Akave Cloud, which is built on the Avalanche L1 blockchain. The immutability is key here because it provides proof that the data hasn’t been tampered with. There are even checks to ensure that a given telescope legitimate by confirming constellations it should be able to see (“show us Mars in the next five minutes”).

The sister app Skyviewer offers live-stream video from individual telescopes. Stefaan walks us through the interface: the system connects, auto-aligns, you pick an object in the database and the telescope obediently swivels to it and then zooms in. The woman in front of me tries to load the app on her phone but quits when it asks her to buy a telescope.

Manolis Nikiforakis follows with WeatherXM, a decentralized network of small, modular weather stations as low as $320, whose owners earn money from the data. [Video]

WeatherXM currently has the data from over 9000 weather stations, many in what were previously weather-station blackspots. They sell the analytics to enterprises while sharing profits with the station owners. With an initial investment of thirteen million US dollars, they now have 9.5k users, making for an average cost of $1.3k per deployed station. For comparison, NOAA spends around $120,000 to deploy a new weather station.

Taken together, Skymapper and WeatherXM stood out because nothing needed defending: simple hardware, obvious data value, and a reward structure that didn’t require a whitepaper to explain.

At that point, my notes say something about beaver art, which I can only assume means I was dangerously close to losing my mind.

The next panel pushed me to pay attention. ‘How VCs See the Future of DePIN’ with Tom Trowbridge, Regan Bozman of Lattice, Vinayak Kurup of Escape Velocity and Chad Fowler of Blue Yard Capital was a fun and friendly discussion of how they look for successful investments. [Video]

I’ve never heard of any of them, but then no one has ever considered investing in me. They talk about DePIN companies needing to have actual utility. Only in this industry would that need stating so directly.

They love projects that have identified a gap in the market and people who are actually wanting the service provided. “I have to separate my nerd brain from my investor brain,” says Fowler, on the subject of very cool but not necessarily lucrative ideas. They talk about active vs passive dePIN, data automatically collected (like the weather stations) as opposed to data that needs to be submitted (recordings for Silencio) and liquid tokens (“we can invest by buying and holding” says one. “we don’t do that” says another.)

They all agree that the tokenomics are important. One refers to the Cloudflare outage so I get another drink. Proof of stake networks are technically DePIN, says another, and I think my brain just broke.

Next on the stage is David Vorick of Glow. [Video]

Glow is a DePIN project aimed at building new solar farms by giving people incentives to fund renewable energy directly.

The VCs had already spoken glowingly (haha) about Glow so I know this is one of the projects everyone is quietly rooting for. And it’s true, Vorick’s story of how they started thinking about the problem is truly inspirational. Bitcoin uses more energy than the entire country of Argentina. Fundamentally, an anonymous guy wrote some code and sixteen years later, it’s using an entire country of electricity. Can we build something that big?

The answer turned out to be yes. Instead of relying on governments or giant utilities, Glow uses a blockchain model to reward the creation of clean energy as physical infrastructure. They are already successful in India and are ready to expand further. The pitch is simple enough that even my conference-addled brain can hang onto it: build solar, earn rewards, help push the world a little closer to running on clean energy.

Sadly, at this point in the late afternoon, my notes collapse entirely into a single line that just says William Kempster ar.io. There is nothing else. The video evidence is that Kempster spoke and my brain simply checked out.

I apparently did not regain consciousness for the panel on ‘The New Compute Stack: Decentralized, Verifiable and Scalable,’ featuring speakers from Fluence, Akash Network, Consensys and Zeeve. My notes for this panel are, once again, non-existent. I’m pretty sure the panel happened. I was definitely in the room. Apparently I was no longer capable of retaining information. I share this in the interest of journalistic integrity.

Thankfully, there is a video of the panel if you want to see what I missed.

The final talk of the day was a fireside chat between Tom Trowbridge of Fluence and Juan Benet of Filecoin. [Video]

Everyone seemed to breathe a happy sigh of relief, including the speakers. They were relaxed, almost suspiciously calm for two men who had just pulled off an all-day launch that had exhausted even the hoodied young men hovering by the sad remains of the snack table.

According to my half-legible hieroglyphs written by a woman holding on by a thread, they never once mentioned the Cloudflare outage. Which meant I had officially run out of excuses to keep taking shots every time someone invoked the day’s outage.

The sun was going down.

My notes were a crime scene.

I staggered out into the fading Buenos Aires evening with the quiet serenity of someone who had survived DePIN Day through sheer spite and caffeine.

Until the next morning.

It seemed to me that a decentralized on-chain cloud was genuinely exciting. So why was no one talking about it on stage at Devconnect? I got part of the answer from Hanniabu. I had told him to meet me in the yellow pavilion. He replied with a series of increasingly pointed questions, none of which I could answer, because I genuinely thought I was in the yellow pavilion. I sent him a photo of my view. He used it to determine that I was not, in fact, anywhere near the yellow pavilion. A few minutes later, he appeared in person, having reverse-engineered my location from the photograph alone. “Aren’t Filecoin their own chain?” he asked.

Correct! But somehow this was never mentioned during the event. Filecoin is a purpose-built standalone L1 chain. They are EVM-compatible, in that they introduced the Filecoin Ethereum Virtual Machine (FEVM) as a runtime environment on top of the Filecoin Virtual Machine. However, they are not an Ethereum chain, by design. Not an ERC-20. Not really Ethereum-conference-compatible.

But then at the Ethereum Privacy Stack, I saw a few mentions of Filecoin, a lot of mentions of Protocol Labs. And still not a single reference to the decentralized cloud aiming to take on AWS headfirst. I went to Mykola Siusko to ask about this. “Do we not like them?” I asked.

“Sure we do!” There were lots of things to like. Protocol Labs are committed to privacy and were an event sponsor. But, he said with a world-weary shrug, not everyone could get a moment on the stage. They had only seven hours.

He hadn’t been following their news, he admitted. “We like them,” he told me, “but that doesn’t mean we have to sleep with them.”

Then he pointed. “Kurt Opsahl is right there. Talk to him. He’s a good guy.”

Now on the spot, I duly hovered next to Kurt Opsahl while someone told him his entire life story. Opsahl had given a fantastic talk at the cypherpunk day, declaring that code is protected by freedom of expression just as a book might. When the person talking to him took a deep breath, I introduced myself and asked about Filecoin’s commitment to privacy as a part of the cloud services. Was it baked in?

Opsahl was happy to talk to me but noticeably indirect. We have providers, he told me. We want people to create encrypted storage. We want to give people choices. His colleague, Clara, jumped in to say she’d been asked exactly this earlier and had come up with an analogy. Think of a house full of robots doing all the cleaning, she told us.

I thought about my robo-cleaner named Heinz, short for Heinzelmännchen. Heinz was probably quietly pining away in the dust waiting for my return.

Right now, Clara said, if you want to upload their data, you’d have to upload it to big tech and no one wants all of their house videos there.

I flinched at the thought of uploading vacuuming videos. I think my apartment would be a lot cleaner if I had an army of robots who looked after me. They probably wouldn’t care for me the way that Heinz did. But more importantly, I couldn’t think of a reason why I would want him to upload his videos to the Internet.

“The point is,” she said, and it was a good point, despite my distracted state, “that we want people to have a choice.” Not just ‘big tech’ vs ‘filecoin’. Because their service is modular, she explained, I have every opportunity to work out exactly what combination is important to me.

But I was still stuck on the idea of Heinz sharing videos of the dust under my coffee table. Of my bra, twisted, draped over the back of the sofa. I wondered if, in the future, there would be livestreams of people’s homes being cleaned. Apartments, terraced housing, cottages, penthouses, everywhere from Mumbai to Paris to Buenos Aires, robots videoing the rooms as they clean them.

My eyes widened. I would totally watch that, I thought. And it would make a perfect DePIN project. Every robo-cleaner uploads their stream and we all get a share of the profits. Huge once Netflix buys in.

Clara smiled at my interest. “You can make your own decisions about privacy, convenience, and other aspects,” she said.

I thanked them both for their time and escaped before my treacherous brain could ask them if I could monetize my cleaning videos on their platform.

I think it is safe to say that DePIN day has changed my entire outlook on life, and possibly my income stream. I’ll talk to Heinz about it.

But then I can’t book the flight: the airline tells me both that they are happy with all cards from all over the world and also that my payment card is not valid. I try three cards. None of them are valid. I can’t get past the customer services bot that tells me that I need to check if I entered my card details correctly.

There’s a third-party aggregator that looks like it scraped the flight off of Google but actually allows me to pay for the flight. Just one catch: no luggage. Not even a carry on bag, personal item only, must be tiny. They suggest that I buy extras directly from the airline that cannot manage a card transaction.

Fine. I don’t need luggage.

I strip my belongings down to the essentials. There’s a storage company that operates on some sort of decentralized custody for personal belongings. You book online, get the address of a location somewhere in your chosen neighbourhood, and give them all of your earthly possessions.

My assigned drop point is a phone shop in San Telmo, crammed with AI-art cases and knockoff chargers. I give them my number and hand them my suitcase. All I can do is trust that the shop is still here when I return.

I take the bus to the airport wearing three layers of clothing, a spare set of underwear shoved into my handbag. This was how I discovered that there are multiple number 8 buses but only one of them goes to the airport. Also, that Google Maps lies and tells you to get off three stops before the actual airport bus stop and then teleport into the terminal.

I have two phones, a Kindle, a tablet, a one-pound back-up battery and and new keyboard and a tangle of cables tucked into my hoodie pockets, looking like one of those street vendors who open up their coat and show you a wide range of goods.

At the airport, I unpack everything to pass through security. I need three trays. After I pack myself back up, a man with a wand points out that I have a cable trailing behind me.

At the gate, the Argentines start forming a queue an hour before boarding, pure social contract magic. I do try to fit in with local customs but in this instance, I stay seated like a savage until I see our plane pull up to the gate and dump its last cargo of tourists and gauchos.

Ground crew come over and split our queue into two, based on group. Group 1 is to the left, all others to the right. I smugly move to the left, eager to get on board. They split the right-hand queue again, group 3 and greater moving further right. After half an hour, the aircraft has had a cursory clean and they are ready to start boarding. This is when I realised that they are boarding right to left and Group 1 is last. I feel sad, having believed I was special, to be one of the last people on the plane, finally boarding then minutes after our expected departure.

I squish into the middle seat and try to keep my hoodie spilling over the sides, redistributing items until I finally get the seatbelt over my middle. I do not exhale for the entire two hour flight.

Jujuy airport is not in San Salvador; however, the bus to Tilcara, my chosen destination, is. I find a friendly man who tells me to purchase a shuttle ticket to the bus station. Proud that I’ve not had to take a taxi, the general recommendation for tourists, I proudly wait outside in the rain, all three layers getting damper and damper, until the shuttle bus is full and we are ready to go.

The bus station is impossibly clean and bright. A woman at an information booth appears improbably happy to see me, checks the time and tells me which bus company has a bus leaving next which will stop at Ticara. The woman at the bus company is less happy to see me but, after determining that I am somewhat stupid, writes helpful notes on the ticket: bus will arrive in 40 minutes, somewhere between bay 08 and 13, it will say Humahuaca on the front and Evelia on the side.

I wedge myself into my bus seat, attempting to take off my hoodie in a way that does not tip all of my electronics on the floor. And then we drive. The windows fog up and all I can see outside is black rain. I am desperate not to fall asleep and end up in some abandoned village full of abandoned corn husks and dessicated llamas.

It’s past eleven when the bus pulls into Tilcara. A cracked parking lot. A couple of guys loitering with intent. I check my phone: a 25-minute walk to the hostel, which I had glibly told the hostel would be easy as I have no bags.

Damp, tired, and carrying an army of electronic devices, I have regrets.

The air is thin and every road heads uphill. I can’t find any street signs. The paved road quickly deteriorates into a dirt track. Shop shutters rattle closed as I walk past. When I manage to make eye contact with anyone, I get a dead stare. Every time I check my phone map, it tells me that I’ve gone the wrong way. Again.

I should have stayed in Buenos Aires, I think. I loved every millimeter of Buenos Aires. People mostly smiled at me, said hello. There were coffee shops and restaurants and street lights. Here, there’s just dirt and altitude.

Defiantly, I mutter buenas noches under my breath at the next person coming towards me. She nods, replies. Shit. Am I supposed to be greeting people?

Two turns from my hostel, the road dips downhill. Somewhere along the way, I climbed up a hill I didn’t need to. I curse the Andean gods and keep walking.

Finally, I find the right corner shortly before midnight and punch in the night code. It’s not really a hostel; there are multiple double rooms, en suite, and mine is as good as any good hotel. I message the hostel contact to say that I’ve arrived. She sends me a stack of emojis and asks if I need a phone number to order some takeaway? No, I do not wish to tackle any more complicated things today. I sleep like the dead.

And then, morning. It’s like someone rewired Tilcara overnight. It’s beautiful. Still dusty and crumbling, yes, but also golden in the morning light with misty black and red mountains creating a backdrop that looks straight off of a motivational poster. I discover that street signs do exist, just not where you’d expect, hand painted onto walls and fences at random heights as you walk down the road.

Tilcara is unexpectedly full of restaurants, each with chalk boards scrawled with lists of amazing-sounding meals in pastel colours. I start reading them, searching in advance for my evening meal, and then pause, not quite emotionally ready to consider Llama al Malbec for dinner.

Maybe tomorrow.

I buy a bottle of water and then explore the stalls at Plaza Alvarez Prado, the main square of Tilcara. It spans a city block, with vendors set up along all four sides, sitting bored, staring in the distance. There is no one shopping; everyone looks local except for me and a backpacking couple. I walk along the stalls, making a point of showing extreme interest. I can’t really carry any souvenirs home with me, but truthfully, I could use something to carry my water in, as my trusted hoodie is still drying out in my hostel room. I pick up a brightly coloured shoulder bag, trying not to feel like every-other-tourist-to-the-Andes-ever.

The locals have stern faces carved from stone until I remember to whisper buen día in their general direction, at which point they smile and greet me. I try it louder. Everyone seems happy to see me. Some even ask que tál?, how are you?, and actually expect an answer.

I respond with a slump and a wheeze, universal code for every road in this town is uphill and I am dying. I am met with laughter, sympathy and one invitation to a cold beer (I should have said yes).

On the edge of town is an old iron bridge, Puente de Tilcara. It has 434 reviews and a star rating of 4.6. I have become obsessed with the people who review functional places as if the rating matters, as if some bridge-busybody might read the Google reviews and exclaim, “Why have we not got five stars?! We need to improve our bridginess!”

I check the four-star ratings to find out what was found wanting. One person left four thumbs up and a smiley. Another posted 15 photographs of the bridge writing:

I arrived in Tilcara with low expectations, but I remembered “When the earthquake passes,” and headed here.

It’s great to have seen it.

The bridge clearly deserves five stars. I am struggling to think of something to say about it that would justify my rating. I cross the bridge, deep in thought, and then write.

Five stars for being a perfectly functional bridge. Thank you very much to the man in the grey Fiat who waited for me to get clear before driving across.

Reservation recommended: No.

On the other side, I see a sign pointing to a trail. Google tells me that this is a hill, called Cerro de la Cruz, and although the peak of the hill is 2,600 meters above sea level, about 8,500 feet, I am already at 8,000 feet ish and it s an easy 20-minute climb.

No, I don’t know why I keep believing Google either.

An hour later, I’m at the top, glowing with perspiration and trying not to think about whether I’ll be able to walk tomorrow.

But it’s worth it. Looking down from the wooden painted cross, I have a view of Tilcara, in a valley built on a slope, shadowed by impossibly tall mountains. Behind me the landscape goes on for ever, and in the distance, impossibly, rain clouds below me. All around me loom even more majestic brown and red mountains, and I finally understand why they called this one that I am on a hill.

I swear loudly. I am in a committed relationship with Paldiski, already half in love with Buenos Aires, and now I’m crushing on some Andean city that I’d never even heard of before last week. Maybe it’s a phase I’m going through, maybe I’m just falling in love with everywhere.

I stay on the top of Cerro de la Cruz for an hour, watching the clouds drift past and the mist pile up around the mountain peaks and the cars driving to and from Tilcara.

By the time I make it back down to Tilcara, my town has transformed again. It is now full of people, tourists wandering up and down the streets, looking into the gift shops and peering at menus. The plaza is now a bustling center of tourist trade. Where have they all come from? They do not look to me like the type of people who would spend an hour and a half on a bus wearing three layers of clothes.

Around the corner, I see my answer. A gleaming white two-level air-conditioned luxury coach. There are, I discover, day trips to Tilcara from Salta and San Salvador, where people travel in comfort to be dropped on various Andean cities to purchase multi-coloured bags and llama braised in malbec. Their experience is not my experience, of course. They have never walked up through Tilcara at midnight in the rain, wondering what the fuck they were doing there.

Once again feeling smug about my travel prowess, I head back to my hostel and begin to write.

I arrived early for my appointment. The clinic receptionist asked me full volume what I was getting treated for before sending me upstairs to talk to the nurse.

Already off-kilter, the nurse then waved away my insistence that I didn’t speak Estonian, pointing out that I’d just said that in Estonian. This is one sentence that I’ve learned to say extremely well, which is possibly not working in my favor. In halting words, I explained that I was going to Argentina and then sat back, my vocabulary expended.

She pulled up a browser with the website for the US Government Center for Disease Control already loaded. Slowly she read their page on travelling to Argentina in English and helpfully translated the key points into Estonian for me.

Did I know about typhoid? A little, I said.

She gave me a list of instructions: don’t drink the water, don’t open my mouth while in the shower, use disinfectant on my hands after washing, use bottled water for brushing my teeth. Don’t eat… She paused, grumbling briefly at the CDC website, which apparently did not give enough food advice on their typhoid page, and said something that I didn’t understand. She rephrased again and then sighed at my lack of fluency; she didn’t know the words in English. “Don’t eat salads,” she settled on.

I grinned. “Eat steak?”

“Yes! Eat steak.” She was not smiling.

Now that that was covered, she shifted back to Estonian to offer me vaccinations against yellow fever and hepatitis A. There was also a lot of rabies in Argentina, she told me, and then I got lost again. She shifted to English. If I got bitten by a dog or a monkey, I must go straight to the hospital.

I nodded to let her know that I was taking her advice seriously, while wondering how likely it was that I would be bitten by a monkey attending an Ethereum conference in Buenos Aires and also how it was that the nurse knew the English word for “monkey” but not the word for “uncooked food.”

Then she quizzed me on my intentions. What was I doing there? Was the conference for work or pleasure? Would I be with other people?

Buenos Aires has a population of 16 million, so I was unlikely to be alone. Or was this a euphemistic phrase and she was working up to a talk on sexually transmitted diseases of Latin America? I told her I didn’t understand the question.

“Are you travelling alone?”

“Yes.”

“Will you be in the countryside?”

I shrugged. I was hoping to head out of town for a few days, if possible. I struggled with the phrasing but it turned out her English included the word “hiking”. She asked me another question where I understood only two words in the scramble: pleasure and risk.

Please god don’t let this be about sexually transmitted diseases. I apologized in English for not understanding.

“Do you like risk?”

I clamped my mouth shut, trying to keep the words Do you know who I am? from leaving my mouth. It seemed like a bad idea to admit to a history of risk-taking behavior in the Center for Infectious Diseases.

“No?”

“Good!” She thought for a moment and nodded. “I think we should give you the rabies shot.”

Over the next few minutes, I made sense of her logic. If I were alone and hiking, I was at higher risk of being bitten by something (a monkey?) and I would need urgent treatment. But equally, it would be harder for me to get treated immediately, as there was no one who could take me to the hospital. She didn’t want me to die of rabies, so she would give me two rabies shots here and then if I did get bitten in Argentina, it was less urgent, I just needed to tell them that I’d already had two of the four shots. With that, she began preparing a syringe. Apparently, the time for discussion was over.

So, that’s my update. I’m vaccinated, almost packed, and still trying to work out what the hell I’m doing.

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

On the morning of my departure, I planned to follow the trail south for lunch before getting a taxi to the airport. But the airport was north; I’d be walking in the wrong direction. What if, instead, I followed the trail north and collected a few more kilometres of the hiking route. A sign enthusiastically proclaimed that it was just twenty kilometres to Šventoji, where I could experience a bridge, a stone age sculpture park and a mysterious eddy that was once believed to mark the end of the world.

It was six hours before my flight. I knew that I would not make it 20 kilometres walking through the forest dragging my luggage behind me, but I could walk until I got tired, taxi to Šventoji for lunch, and then taxi back to the airport for at most 20€ in taxi fares and the chance to explore the end of the world.

I followed the trail for about three kilometres before getting sick of dragging my suitcase through the pine needles while the gathering clouds threatened to become a storm. I sheltered under a chestnut tree and called a taxi.

He arrived eventually, a good-looking and outgoing Lithuanian man, to find me looking miserable under the chestnut tree. I’d barely got in before he launched into a tirade about construction not shown on the GPS, which had meant he’d had to drive all the way around, which is why it took so long. He pointed at the GPS, showing me the construction that wasn’t there, and explained that we would have to go all the way around again to get to where I was going, even though it didn’t say that on the GPS. Where was I going? Šventoji?

He paused for breath and I managed to get a yes out.

“Why?”

“To look around,” I said. I hadn’t expected to have to explain.

“Look around Šventoji? There’s nothing there.”

“There is!” My mind went blank. “There’s… there’s a bridge.”

“There is no bridge,” he told me. Baltic men have an uncanny ability to vocalise gloom. “It is destroyed.”

“The sign said…”

“There is no bridge. A long time ago, yes. Maybe 50 years ago or maybe 100? Someone put stones out, like so.” He looked back at me and patted the air with both hands to show two parallel lines of stones. I nodded quickly, my eyes on the fast-moving road.

He put his hands back on the wheel. “Then they lay wood across the stones. That was the bridge.” His tone made it clear that he did not think this was very much of a bridge. “And now, the wood is gone. So there is no bridge. Just the stones.”

“But…”

He cut me off with a gesture. “And you can’t go on the stones. They are…” We struggled together for a moment to find the word he needed: slippery. “Yes, slippery. I went walking on them once and I fell and broke my w–”

“Your wrist, my god!” I said, having gotten too used to filling in the blanks for him.

“My watch,” he said, a bit embarrassed. “I broke my watch. Anyway, there is nothing there. You should go somewhere else. Go to Klaipeda.”

I blinked at this unexpected demand. “I can’t; I’m flying home today,” I said, by which I meant I am going to Šventoji but somehow what he heard was this is negotiable.

“What time is your flight?”

“15:30.” I immediately cursed myself for answering.

“That’s not enough time to go to Klaipeda.”

I agreed that this was true.

“What about Habėha?” I had no idea what he’d just said, to be honest. It didn’t sound very Lithuanian.

“Where?”

“Habėha! It’s a little village. Very interesting.”

“Um,” I said.

“It’s closer to the airport too, just five minutes by car.” He paused, not wanting to mislead me. “Well, maybe ten.”

“Um,” I said again.

“You can look around there! At least there is something to see! There are houses and a forest trail and horse riding, but no horse riding today, it is too wet.”

It was time to admit defeat. “And restaurants?”

“Yes! Restaurants, very good lunch, traditional Lithuanian food. My wife and I, we go there. Much better than Šventoji.” He looked out at the drizzle. “And you can sit in the restaurant and not in the rain.” Another glance back to see if I was paying attention. “A very good restaurant.”

It was very tempting to exclaim But the bridge! one more time, but I restrained myself. “OK.”

“OK?” He looked amazed. “You will go to Habėha?”

“Yes. Let’s go there .”

He paused at a junction. “We must go right here to go to Habėha. Are you sure?”

Now I had to convince him? “Yes. Let’s go there.” I still hadn’t understood the name, couldn’t find it on a map, but what the hell.

“There’s nothing in Šventoji,” he said again as he turned right. “This is better.”

He seemed to want to justify this all the way there. He pointed at a spa hotel and told me that it was a spa hotel. He pointed at a restaurant, paused, admitted that it wasn’t very good. He pointed towards a cluster of trees. “Over there are three flat lakes.” I didn’t know lakes came in any other configuration. “My wife likes it there.”

We pulled into a massive, empty parking lot. Three cars, possibly abandoned, were huddled in one corner. A big brown sign said HBH in a fancy font. A statue on a hill seemed to depict a horse with no head. A restaurant faced the parking lot. The entrance was piled high with stacked chairs.

This was HBH Palanga, which at least cleared up what he’d been saying this whole time. It was blatantly some sort of entertainment complex and equally blatantly deserted.

“It’s out of season,” he said, apologetically. “Everything is out of season, not just here.” As if I would hold HBH personally accountable for not having tourists in October.

The drizzly rain continued. But it would equally be raining in Šventoji and I equally did not hold HBH responsible for this.

I could just get lunch and head for the airport early. I looked at the restaurant with the piled up furniture. He followed my gaze.

“The main restaurant is definitely open.” He gave me detailed instructions: go straight until the crossroad then turn (he paused and pointed left) and keep going until I saw the trailer and the goat (I wondered how he knew “trailer” and “goat” but not “left”) and then it would be a little further and I would see the restaurant which was definitely open. It would be obvious, he promised. Yes, because it would be the only thing open, I didn’t say.

“Great!” I opened the car door.

“Really?”

“Really.” At the very least, I wanted a better look at that horse statue. I got out of the car and walked to the back to get my suitcase. He joined me there, suddenly full of remorse, and offered to take me somewhere else. “But not Šventoji…”

“… there is nothing there,” I finished the sentence for him. “This is fine! I will explore!”

He pulled out my suitcase. “Maybe… maybe for the airport you should call for a taxi early. It is out of season, maybe not so many taxis.”

I thanked him for saving me from Šventoji, leaving a generous tip on the app even though I hadn’t asked to be saved, and slipped into the complex before he could change his mind again. The place looked like a funfair after the apocalypse: tarped rides, claw machines blinking like hungover slot junkies, tinny carnival songs from every direction competing for dominance. The billboard-sized map of the complex offered no helpful You Are Here. There was no here, only the echo of where fun had once existed. I turned in a circle, trying to get my bearings. The taxi was still in the parking lot. My only Lithuanian friend got out, looking suspiciously like he was going to come after me and abduct me to some other place. I waved like a lunatic and bolted the other way.

There was nothing to see. This was not a village. I continued off the edge of the complex and onto a working farm, which looked both very muddy and like I might be chased off by an angry Lithuanian farmer with a shotgun.

I returned to the parking lot. My taxi driver was gone.

The headless horse statue was, in fact, a horse that had lost its head in what seemed like a rather violent fashion. Steps led to its saddle. I briefly considered swinging myself onto its back, but I was afraid of witnesses.

Besides, the drizzle was turning into an angry rain. I walked back into the complex and followed the directions. The trailer was a small rusty wagon on the edge of a courtyard. The goat, climbing a haystack piled high with pumpkins, had been freshly painted in bright orange. A very large building, the only one with lights on, was clearly the restaurant.

Inside was a massive dining hall with low lights and benches for seating. A family at in the far corner, as if to ensure no one would sit near them. I chose the smallest table I could find, which would seat six at a pinch. Mariachi music filled the restaurant, sounding oddly familiar despite being in Lithuanian. They say that Lithuanian is the language closest we can get to hearing Indo-European as it was spoken five thousand years ago. I tried to channel that energy, envisioning a mariachi message from my ancestors. Suddenly, the melody clicked into place. It was the 1981 hit from Men at Work, Down Under. (Sometimes people question whether everything I describe is true. I am not making this up.)

A friendly but harried young woman with minimal English appeared, looking like she couldn’t believe this lunch time rush and was I ready to order yet? Under pressure, I quickly pointed at coffee, a half-liter of beer and the first thing I managed to focus on in their hundred-page menu: pork belly steak with sauerkraut and potato wedges. I regretted my choice immediately when I saw Zeppelins on the following page, large potato dumplings filled with meat, and then Yesterday’s Zeppelins, the same dumplings, cut in half and fried.

Alas, I was not successful in calling over the waitress and explaining that I wanted to change my order. Faced with the very real possibility of receiving both pork belly steak and yesterday’s Zeppelins, I gave up and signaled that everything was fine. She hurried over with my coffee, clearly in hopes that I would suddenly remember how to speak Lithuanian.

I pulled up the HBH Palanga website to find out more. This was their About Us page.

HBH leisure and entertainment complex near Palanga can offer You a rich and tasty food, a small and comfortable hotel, what is more, one can enjoy various entertainment means.

…

All this and even more You can find at HBH leisure and entertainment complex. Perhaps, there are a few, who have not visited us yet. If You are one of them, be sure to stop by. Here one always feels well.

I don’t usually pick on language issues but the phrasing sounded oddly inviting and yet inhuman, like a trap set to lure humans to the complex to eat our brains.

The waitress cleared the table without any apparent interest in my brains and handed me the novel-of-a-menu, opened to the dessert page. It was a list of three.

I considered whether I could ask for yesterday’s zeppelins and then wrap them up to take with me, although they did not look very transportable. The young woman presumed I was struggling to decide among the many options and said “chocolate lava cake” in perfect English.

“Yes?”

“Yes. Chocolate lava cake. With ice cream.”

Today was apparently my day to be dictated to by Lithuanians. “OK.”

It was the right choice.

The rain had stopped and my time was up. I wandered back to the parking lot and ordered a taxi. Three minutes later, a man appeared with a smashed face and one eye swollen shut. His t-shirt said “I have a friend who smokes weed.” He looked like he needed friends who shared. He bundled me and my bag into the car and off we went.

“Airport,” he confirmed. “Are you going to England?”

It seemed a reasonable guess as I was speaking English. “No, Tallinn.”

“My wife is going to England,” he told me.

I wasn’t quite sure why he was telling me this and struggled to find an appropriately Baltic response: interested without straying into personal matters. “Is it a direct flight?”

He shrugged.

A brief pause. “I was in Tallinn,” he told me.

“Yes?” I was confused by his insistence that we have a conversation.

“Yes. I went to hospital.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes. One nine nine three.”

“Right.”

Another pause. Apparently still not feeling he’d contributed enough to the conversational attempts, he tried again. “I had Estonian friends.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. I was in the Russian army. It was one nine eight four.” He looked thoughtful. “Or one nine eight six.”

“Right.” It didn’t seem sufficient. “A different time,” I said.

“Yes. A long time ago.”

“Yes,” I said, wondering how much further it was to the airport.

He turned and pulled up in front of the terminal. I breathed a sigh of relief. It had taken six and a half minutes.

“You will have a good trip,” he told me.

“OK,” I said, willing to accept one last instruction from a Lithuanian stranger. But the truth was, I already had.

To be honest, I was also not enchanted with Valkarion as I watched him grow into a long-legged fledgling with no sense of adventure whatsoever. The previous broods had quickly explored the roof and were unceasingly curious about my apartment perched on the end of it, with furniture on the terrace and intriguing movement and sounds coming from within. But Valkarion did not. Valkarion loved the nest, which, to be fair, was the most successful attempt that the Gull Pair had built over the three springs that I had been here. By summer, the nest had sprouted with weeds and Valkarion loved nothing more than to sit in the nest among the greenery.

As a result, the Gull Pair were most unbothered by my existence and even tolerated me sitting out on my terrace on sunny days. The crows also noted the relaxed attitude and quickly returned to the ledge to beg for treats.

Valkarion, I’m pretty sure, did not even know that I existed. I didn’t even have to construct the baby stair-gate. Now, I’m not saying I longed for the madness of Huey, Duey and Louie trying to sneak over to spy on me every time their parents looked away, but it seemed like Valkarion could show just a little interest.

I did not realise that Valkarion was not the main character of this saga, not until I returned after a fortnight away for a work trip.

I had half hoped that I would return to discover that Valkarion had a party on my terrace in memory of their three siblings last summer, but no. The terrace was clean. Valkarion still sat quietly on the nest, which by now had sprouted weedy yellow flowers.

But as I was checking in on the gulls, something small and chirpy attracted my interest. I paused to see a much smaller bird shrieking at me incessantly, a white wagtail.

The wagtail flew from rail to table, clearly focused on me and my unreasonable intrusion into its personal space. I retreated inside, but that did nothing to alleviate its anger. After over an hour of being greeted with outrage instead of a warm welcome home, I retreated to the bedroom. The wagtail, happy that I was out of sight, was finally quiet.

It was with shock and horror that the wagtail greeted me on Monday morning. Why on earth had I returned to the living room?! This time, two of them flew around my terrace and balcony, protesting loudly against my presence in a frankly ill-thought-out attempt to keep me from noticing their nest. I had no idea where they were nesting, would not even have realized there was a nest if they hadn’t continued their display. They were clearly delusional.

After two days of being shouted at for the egregious crime of sitting in my own apartment, I was ready to go out and find the damned nest so that I could evict the pair of them from my terrace.

Gary showed up on Wednesday, looking like he’d been on a week-long bender. I went to feed him, but the gulls were beginning to pay attention again, alerted by the wagtails that there was something interesting going on. A gull swooped at my head, cheered on by the pair of wagtails. Gary gave me a cold look as he flapped away.

I was not sure what wrong turn I took in life, that all of the local wildlife was plotting my demise.

The wagtails scolded me for every second I spent in my living room from 9am until 11pm when the late summer sunsets finally sent them to an exhausted sleep.

Valkarion was uninterested as ever, remaining in their flowered nest. But the Gull Pair were definitely wondering what the hell all the racket was about.

I began searching real estate listings.

By Friday, I was blaring loud music in an attempt to work on an article and drown out the scolding.

Just as I started making progress, all hell broke loose. Gary, two gulls and both wagtails converged on my terrace in a flurry of feathers and bad vibes. I went out and shouted at them to shut up until everyone scattered.

Somewhere below me, I heard a window slide shut. They probably couldn’t hear the wagtails, but they certainly could hear me screaming at them. If the building manager, who knows I live alone, came up to find out what is going on, I had no idea how I would explain. Before I finished the thought, the wagtails returned and resumed their scolding. Maybe if I just pointed at them, the building manager would understand.

It was a quiet Sunday morning in Paldiski, the church bells ringing in the distance. I sipped my coffee and scrolled on my phone, no deadline for a change. Valkarion sat quietly in their nest of flowers. I sat down at my desk and looked up to see a gull standing inside my planter.

The planter is a territorial line. The fledglings had crossed it and even sat at the edge of it, but never the adults. And never inside it.

The silence suddenly took on new meaning. The wagtails. I ran out, not stopping to put on shoes. Tiny bones crunched under my bare feet. The gull barely glanced at me before flying away, lazily. Sated. Two bloodstained feathers were stuck to the wooden deck.

The gull had eaten the wagtail nest and possibly the wagtails.

I sat on my terrace chair, no longer driven away by the constant scolding. What was most frustrating was that the wagtails had only nested there because the gulls were uncharacteristically quiet. Who the hell builds a small nest next to a gull family? But the truth is that they had been completely safe there, hidden in the planter, until I returned home. The constant fluttering and scolding did not protect their nest; it just made the gulls wonder who else might be living on their roof.

And now my terrace was both a crime scene and a buffet aftermath.

Gary, not surprisingly, opted to keep his distance.

That evening, I looked up to see one lonely wagtail, sitting on the railing directly across from my sofa, silently staring at me. “It’s not my fault,” I said. My words sounded hollow, even to me. I moved to the kitchen, unable to stand the accusing look in its eyes, returning to the sofa only once the sun began to set.

The wagtail was still there. It gave me one last baleful look and flew away. I never saw it again.

First up, I signed up for a dating app! And hated everything about it. Everyone seemed so earnest, looking for companionship and an end to world hunger. I edited my most desired trait to “sarcasm” in pure self-defense. I got zero matches, mostly because I refused to come out of incognito mode so no one actually saw me. I think “Sylvia is not ready for dating yet” is the big take-away here.

Second, I’ve been selected to take part in the Devconnect ARG Scholars Program, joining a global cohort of 95 scholars across different disciplines. We will be meeting virtually every week to discuss and learn before finally meeting in person in Buenos Aires in November. This is an incredible opportunity for me and I’m thrilled.

That’s where the next experiment begins: I’ve worked out that accommodation in Argentina runs about €200 a week. My goal now is to see how many articles I can sell about the experience, where each article is worth one week in Argentina. If I can sell four pieces, then I’ll make my own writing retreat, a residency without a residence.

I hope you are excited too, because if this works out, I’ll be writing all about it for you while on the road.

First: thank you to everyone already supporting this Substack. You’re funding more than a newsletter — you’re fueling international reporting, indie fiction, and questionable bird alliances.

In fact, we’re almost at my goal already! My beloved subscribers currently fund me for €194 which is just six euros short.

If you have been considering signing up at $5/month, this is a fantastic time! Just two of you could bump October’s subscriptions to a week of Argentinian updates.

But that’s not all! In No One Stopped Me, I told you how I wrote fiction as part of a 48-hour software sprint in Belgrade.

I’m thrilled to say that Nature Magazine has purchased one of those stories: The girl who used to be my sister . I can’t wait to share the story once it comes out!

Another bit of exciting news: I’ve contributed a chapter to an upcoming academic book on the Third Age of Star Trek. The book has been picked up by Edinburgh University Press and will be out in late 2026 or early 2027. I wrote about representations of old age in Star Trek: Picard, focusing on the Irumodic Syndrome plotline.

Finally, the long awaited roof-top update. Actually, that’s still to come but just to confirm that the gulls are fine, Valkarion grew from a fluffy little ball to a fully fledged Herring Gull. Most of the gulls have left, in search of better weather. The corvids have taken over the roof again and Gary and Astra come most days to stare at me until I relent and go outside with kibble.

When I took the photograph below, I was outside but sadly without kibble. Gary is staring at my desk, willing me to get back to work so he can stare at me instead. Astra is on the left, looking at me and wondering why I don’t just leave the bag of kibble outside?

You have no idea that you are constantly under surveillance until you make friends with corvids who call out to the neighborhood the moment you leave the house.

We had some excitement over the weekend. Lunch was interrupted with a very bold seagull who showed up on Crow Ledge and clumsily helped himself to the seeds. He was not the least bit threatening but the crows made way for him anyway, as he was easily twice their size. When I went out, he flew away but lazily, not the least bit threatened.

There’s only one gull who understood that the ledge was a feeding spot: Louie, the smallest gull from last year who was left behind when the gull family migrated for the winter. This one is an adult which… I guess Louie would be grown up now. And it seems like he wants to come home for the winter. I’m not sure how I could possibly tell him no.

This feels like a metaphor, but I’m not sure for what.

More soon, Argentina is looming, deadlines are circling, and the sky is full of winged spies.

And truly: thank you to all of you who’ve been supporting this newsletter, quietly making it possible for me to keep chasing stories (and occasionally chasing off gulls). You’re part of this adventure too.

-Sylvia

I expected a spectacle. Here’s the blurb for this production of Romula ja Julia that hooked me:

The performance features “excavators, a front-end loader, a concrete mixer, a fire truck, city buses and other large machinery,” with “the role of Julia played by a red Ford Ranger 4×4 pickup truck making its stage debut.

I did not mean to care about two shiny trucks. And yet, here we are.

The show ended shortly after the last bus from to Keila, let alone a bus that would get me home. Local accommodation was 150€/night. But Rummu Quarry has a small caravan and campsite. I arrived early with my trusty blue tent, which which has been gathering dust in the closet for the past three years.

The drowned quarry glowed turquoise in the shadow of a birch‑capped ash hill. I swam around the ruined buildings and sat on the quarry beach. Finally, only slightly sunburned in the Estonian evening sun, I crawled into my tent to twist myself into something-approaching-formal-wear ready for the show.

“It’s basically a big experiment about what it means to do Shakespeare today and whether we can find new ways to do it,” the co-director said to ERR news, which described it as a demolition derby version of Romeo and Juliet.

In case we still didn’t get it, a tractor was parked in the sand behind the food truck offering spritzes with your choice of Aperol, Campari, or unnamed gin.

The gin was surprisingly good, all things considered. Stagehands formed an oddly polite blockade, guarding access to the dirt trail that wrapped around the ash hill.

When they finally waved us through, the crowd shuffled past an impressive amount of heavy machinery to tiered scaffolding that trembled alarmingly as we climbed up to our seats. The “stage” stretched before us: a barren patch of Estonian dirt. This was either the most honest production ever or the most pretentious, depending on whether you’ve had enough gin.

The production started with a construction sign informing us that this was the prologue with an excavator (Mercutio) and a hydraulic hammer (Tybalt) squaring off in the middle of the construction site. After much hostile posturing, the hydraulic hammer drew a line in the sand, daring the excavator to cross it. The excavator definitely had a look of “lol OK” as it picked up a large shovelful of sand and rolled forward just close enough that it could drop the dirt on the other side of the line. The tension peaked. A car parked up high wobbled and then fell, sliding down a steep cliff and crashing into a heap. A piece of machinery was brutally slain. The driver got out, abandoning it on the spot. We watched the man in a high-vis vest walk slowly up the hill and out of sight.

Never have I felt the animosity between the Capulets and the Montagues quite so intensely. Sorry, the Carburetti and the Motoretti, for those were the two houses of this engine-obsessed edition. I found myself leaning in so as not to miss a thing.

The production expects you to know at least the basics of the story, although there were plenty of young children in the audience who knew nothing of the plot and were just there to watch the trucks in the dirt. They were not disappointed.

This was more than just noise and diesel fumes; this was storytelling. It was impossible not to fall in love with the star-crossed lovers at the ball. Juliet, fetching in candy-apple red, rolled in like she owned the quarry. Romeo, a rough-and-ready rally truck with flames on the side, drove around the heavy machinery to meet her. The adrenaline of success had Romeo driving donuts in the dirt with his music blasting from the cab. Juliet appeared at the top of a tall cliff, flashing her lights to get Romeo’s attention. She parked there, looking down at us, as operatic music played through large loudspeakers. This was the balcony scene.

Of course, the hydraulic hammer had been spoiling for a fight all evening. The duel scene was frankly terrifying. The excavator and a hydraulic hammer came to blows, metal upon metal, while a hot-rod truck drove in frantic circles around them. Fireworks burst in the background. Picture a crime scene where the murder weapon is the size of a house and still running. And then the deaths. We all went silent as two large men climbed out of their vehicles, abandoning them to walk up the hill in the setting sunlight. A compact loader drove onto the scene, picking up dirt and tossing it onto the metal treads of the two incapacitated giants.

Romeo and Juliet rolled in and parked facing the compact loader, which bobbed up and down in front of them. I blinked as it finally sank in that it was the priest. This was the wedding and we were all witnesses.

The two truck drivers climbed out and tied tin cans to their rear bumpers, painted pink with red hearts. They drove around the stage in wide, lazy circles, tin cans trailing behind them. We applauded happily as they retreated to the far right of the stage, a relatively secluded corner next to some large machinery.

A cement mixer pulled out in front of them, obscuring the newlyweds from our view. The cement mixer started turning its turny thingie (technical term) which had been spray-painted with cotton-candy pink hearts for the occasion.

The cement mixer just stood there, turning, as the audience began laughing.

Then, in case we still didn’t get it, a large blue piece of machinery extended a telescopic boom up into the air, straight up and up and up, ten stories high and still growing. The adults screamed with laughter while their children (just there to see a motor rally!) looked around very confused.

The cement mixer withdrew as a fire engine came screaming in, lights flashing, blasting Romeo with water. The lovers were ripped apart as Romeo gunned it and fish-tailed away. He peeled across the stage, chased by the fire engine until he disappeared up the hill, banished. I noticed that the blue boom was still extended (poor Romeo).

I promise you, it was the most romantic and explicit sex scene between two trucks that I could ever have imagined. This is not a sentence I ever expected to say.

A tiny remote control truck zipped across the stage, weaving and dodging under heavy machinery and around the angry fire engine. I’m not sure how it avoided getting crushed but I do know that it failed to get its message to Romeo.

By now, the sun was setting. Headlamps became stage lights. The quarry shifted from gold to grey-blue as the story darkened.

Juliet pulled up in front of the audience. The driver got out and poured fluid into her radiator. He left the hood up as he returned to the driver’s side and disappeared from our sight. Then the truck’s alarm kicked off, honking and lights flashing, as the Carburetti gathered and surrounded the stricken 4×4.

Romeo the rally truck returned, circling poor Juliet and then slowly parked next to her. The driver popped the hood and got out, pouring the fatal poison into the engine. But instead of going back to the open driver’s side door, he walked away from the truck, across the stage. Sudden movement drew our attention back to the two broken-down vehicles: Juliet’s driver stared at the rally truck, then at its driver walking away in the fading dusky light. He ran across the stage, sprinting after him. And then they both trudged up the hill together, the trucks abandoned with their hoods up.

IT WAS DEVASTATING.

I was not expecting to have my heart broken.

The audience, some 750 people herded onto temporary bleachers, gave a standing ovation while a crowd of construction workers took to the center of the dirt lot and bowed as fireworks went off into the darkness. I wanted to throw flowers. I wanted to run down and hug them for having put on such an amazing and unbelievable performance.

The following morning, having survived a thunderstorm in a tent that turned out not to be waterproof, I climbed up the ridge of the ash hill to look down at the stage. It looked like a pit-crew apocalypse as they dismantled the set. Juliet was there, her truck bed filled with pieces of bleachers. Romeo, surprising no one, was nowhere to be seen.

I couldn’t get over the idea that someone had this idea and just somehow…made it happen. Someone kept saying yes to this ridiculous idea of Verona in sand and steel, a show that could only happen here, only now, only like this.

If they ever stage the production again, I will be there, evangelizing to strangers, dragging everyone I know to the quarry until they, too, are crying over a candy-apple red 4×4 with tin cans tied to its bumper. This wasn’t a demolition derby, it wasn’t “just” theater; it was the kind of experience that makes me believe in art again. Raw, joyful, impossible visions, bulldozed into existence.

I've done work like this before. Usually it's done in a studio. I sit in a chair with an interesting backdrop behind me and answer questions about the events leading up to the disappearance and explain some of the aviation aspects - for example, how to navigate using dead reckoning. In this case, the production people told me they would be interviewing me at a flight training school. They were going to use the simulator there to recreate the flight route and weather conditions of Flight 19. I could then answer questions that came up as a part of the simulation.

"Cool idea, I said. "Will I get to get into the simulator?"

"Sure", said the director.

Maybe if I was lucky, I thought, they'd put me in the right (co-pilot) seat and interview me there. That would be pretty neat, I thought. I would like that.

They didn't seem to be aware that I had any pilot experience and, in retrospect, I think they were disappointed to discover that I had. You know how they do TV shows with a young and bouncy celebrity who giggles a lot while she tries to do something she clearly can’t and then talks about how it felt with wide eyes? That was, it seems, what they were hoping for.

How they ended up deciding I was the right person for this is still a mystery.

I wrote about Flight 19 in Without a Trace and having spoken to their researcher, I felt pretty confident that I could answer any questions they threw at me about what happened that day. Most of my preparation involved trying to find an outfit that was camera safe (no white, no black, no patterns, etc.) and that made me look professional and yet easy to approach while also being comfortable enough to wear all day.

The morning of the filming, I oversleep, with just enough time to tug on the green outfit with the gold scarf, throwing two extra outfits and a full set of make-up into my bag before rushing out for my Uber. I do my make-up in the back seat and hope that I might get a moment to touch up while they film the simulation.

There's no traffic and I arrive ten minutes early to find the building dark and the parking lot deserted. The director replies to my message telling me that I was early and he was about to stop for coffee. Did I want one?

It's half an hour before sunrise and just above freezing. I resist the urge to reply with selfies of myself shivering in the dark and ask for a cappuccino. He sends a thumbs up in response.

A van pulls up twenty minutes later and I gratefully accept the offer to climb on board and thaw before even asking if the three men inside are the people I am there to meet.

The director hands me a coffee and explains that while we are waiting for the flight centre staff to arrive, he wants to film me walking through the parking lot to the front door of the building. The sound engineer remains in the van while the director and the camera man attempt to steer me through what seems like a relatively simple shot.

I walk towards them.

"Don't look at us. Look straight ahead."

"You are straight ahead."

"Look past us. Don't turn in so abruptly. Look at the doorway before you turn, maybe with a flash of recognition as you see the sign. Do it again."

I'm an aviation geek, not an actress, I mutter under my breath as I approach the locked door of the building over and over again.

Finally, the training centre supervisor appears and the door opens for real. It was now that I discover that they want me in the left seat of the simulator, so that I can fly an Airbus A320 recreation of Flight 19's route in 1945. The A320 is playing the part of the Grumman TBM Avenger: a torpedo bomber with a single engine and a three-bladed propeller that is about 1/10th of the size and one millionth of the technology of the Airbus.

The director keeps calling it the experiment and I have no idea what he is talking about. But hell, it's a chance to fly an A320, I'm not going to say no.

There's four seats in the cockpit. I take the left seat and try to work out where the controls are. The training centre supervisor sits behind me and attempts to quickly fill me in on the controls. The camera man sets up in the first-officer's seat and the director behind him, except he's almost in my lap, reaching past me to set up a GoPro to catch my facial expressions.

"Not on the windscreen," shouts the supervisor. "It's not fastened to anything." They finally compromise on a spot on the dash. I'm still trying to work out where the lever for the flaps is.

The dials and switches light up and the black windscreen in front of me turns into blue sky and a cityscape. We're sitting on a runway.

"Fort Lauderdale," says the supervisor. "Steer with your rudders. Use full power and rotate at 140 knots."

It's happened so fast, I don't know what to say, so I comply, pushing the thrust levers forward and veering back and forth on the runway while the director fires questions at me. We lift off but I have no idea how much pressure to use on the side-stick; I am pitching the airliner up and down like a dolphin wildly as I try to answer. The camera man looks slightly green but valiantly keeps filming, asking me to look towards him because my hair is covering my face. The supervisor points out that I still need to retract the gears; we are flying with our wheels down and flaps still set for take off.

"Look at me," says the director. "Talk about how easy it is to fly."

I'm too busy to tell him to fuck off.

The lever for the flaps doesn't move and the supervisor shows me to pull the knob towards me before pushing it, a safety mechanism to ensure that it doesn't get knocked out of position. I reduce the power back and check again. Finally the aircraft is configured. We're climbing safely away from Fort Lauderdale. My dolphin-like oscillations have reduced to minor adjustments using the artificial horizon. I've not quite got it yet but I'm approaching something close to stable. I take a deep breath.

The director repeats his question.

"I'm hand-flying here." My voice is even and calm. "This is not easy."

"But you have GPS," he says. "Surely the plane just flies itself."

There's so much wrong with this statement that I don't know where to start.

The supervisor reloads the scenario and I take off again. "Look," I tell the director. "I can fly wings level OR I can keep my altitude OR I can talk. I can't do all three." Actually, I don't appear to be able to do any of the three. My climb remains erratic and I am already 40° off my heading of due east.

On the third attempt, I manage to make it to our cruising altitude while explaining what I am doing and where we are flying. It's not good enough. The director tells me that I sound too professional and am using too much jargon. "Don't explain things. Talk about what you are feeling. And look over here, so we can see your face."

"STALL STALL STALL" says the Airbus.

"Let's move on," says the director. "Where's the compass?"

The five torpedo bombers that made up Flight 19 were on a standard navigational exercise, a large triangle flying east from Fort Lauderdale for about 100 nautical miles before turning north to overfly Grand Bahama island and then south-west back to Fort Lauderdale. One aircraft would take the lead and navigate them to a set point and then turn while the instructor flew behind them and graded them on their performance.

On that day, the instructor believed that the lead aircraft had got it wrong and so he took the lead to try to get them back on track. As the weather worsened, he admitted that he wasn't sure where they were and told another instructor that he believed both of his compasses were malfunctioning.

It doesn't actually matter in my case; I was off course within seconds of us taking off from Fort Lauderdale. My oscillations have reduced to that of a sleepy caterpillar. There's no chance of my following the navigational exercise of Flight 19 even without having to deal with a bubble-faced aviation compass with the needle bouncing in time to my over-corrections.

I'm pretty sure that he's about to ask for the compass to be turned off, which is only mildly worse than saying it's easy to fly with GPS. Truth is, I'm not using either for navigation anyway, I'm just trying to keep flying.

The director pokes the supervisor. "Hey. Where's the compass?"

The supervisor leans forward to pulls down a small hatch where the compass would normally be. "There isn't one," he says. "Because we don't move. But this is where it would be."

I instinctively glance at my heading; I'm already off course again. We're somewhere over the Atlantic. Dark waves stretch out to the horizon. I have no idea where the Bahamas are.

"Couldn't you get one?" The director smiles hopefully. "We need it for the experiment."

The supervisor looks at him. "No. And if we could, it wouldn't work anyway." He says the next sentence very slowly. "Because we are not actually moving."

"OK, OK," says the director, although I'm pretty sure he still has no idea how a compass works. "Turn off the GPS."

I roll my eyes. The camera man chooses that moment to zoom in on my face.

We're already hopelessly lost. But the trainer understands better than I do how to deliver and he kills my display completely, taking every bit of data away from me other than what I can see outside the window. The aircraft pitches violently as the clouds gather.

I don't have a hope.

I turn to the camera and say "OK, now we are crashing but not because of the scenario but because I've lost control of the plane."

"Don't look at the camera," says the camera man.

"Tell us how it feels," says the director.

Behind the camera man is the heads-up display for the co-pilot, still working. I use the airspeed and artificial horizon from that display to get back into some semblance of flying while trying to describe how I feel without using any swear words.

The director waves his hand to show where I should be looking. I tell his hand that that I have 150 hours flight time and the men doing the navigational exercise only had 60 so yes, they probably flew better than me but they weren't that experienced and flying under these conditions would have been very difficult.

I've lost the plot, of course. This is nothing like what they experienced. They never lost the primary displays, they knew their pitch and their speed and their compass heading. And they wouldn't have known how to fly the Airbus A320 any more than I do. If I had half a second to think it through, I might have said that. Instead I'm wondering if I can ask him to wipe that line about my flight hours because I'm doing so badly, I don't really want anyone watching this to know that I have any pilot experience.

The supervisor speaks up, whether for my benefit or the director's, I don't know. "You've only flown 150 hours and in small planes and you are managing this complex aircraft? Respect!"

I'm not sure "managing" is the right word. We have not yet crashed, mainly because he resets the scenario every time it starts to look dire.

The director and the camera man take a quick break and try to secretly whisper to the supervisor (who is right behind me) that they want him to adjust the parameters so that I am surprised by running out of fuel. I pretend not to hear. The supervisor reloads the scenario and the Airbus politely lets me know that I'm low of fuel with a line of orange text on my flight display.

"Is that it?" The director frowns. "There's no big flashing red light or anything?"

I've already descended to avoid the storm clouds that they have created for me so as the fuel runs out, I drift towards the waves, which look surprisingly calm for a winter storm in the Atlantic. The screen goes black.

"That's it?" The director looks heartbroken. He'd hoped for a flaming crash into the sea or at least a broken windscreen or something. I almost feel sorry for him until he decides that what he needs is a better reaction from me.

"Do it again! I want to see your panic, Sylvia. I want you to make me feel your terror."

The trainer reloads us into mid-air and we try again. And again. I start to try for a successful ditching at sea before I notice that the "crash" actually happens 50 feet above the waves, before I've actually touched down.

The camera man motions at me to pull my hair out of my face. "Can't you push some buttons or something?" I turn off the master caution light. He seems happy with this.

"But how do you feel?" asks the director. "Isn't it horrible to know you are going to crash?"

It isn't but I try a small "eep" the next time the screen goes black.

"That'll do," he says. "Let's do the entire flight from the start."

The supervisor resets me to on the runway at Fort Lauderdale and then gets distracted by something on his phone. The camera man wants to focus on my hands so I show him what I'm going to do after we are safely climbing away from the runway: "I'll lift this lever to raise the wheels, then I'll raise this one to retract the flaps and then I'll pull the power back." And then I'll turn on auto-throttle and autopilot as I've worked out how to do that now... but I don't tell him that. He nods, ready.

I apply full power; we need 140 knots to lift off. As we start rumbling down the runway, I'm proud of myself for keeping the plane right in the middle of the runway without veering or over-correcting.

Apparently, this isn't exciting to anyone else. "Go on, raise the wheels," the camera man tells me, his camera pointed at the centre console where the controls are.

"I can't! We're still on the ground." We are still accelerating: 80 knots, 90...

He refocuses the camera and points at the lever. "Yes but can you do that now? Just lift it."

100 knots. No way will this aircraft take off. "I can't, we aren't going fast enough."

He sighs. I'm being difficult again.

"Sylvia, it's just a computer," says the director. "Just pull it up."

I reach for the lever.

The supervisor suddenly looks up from his phone and lurches forward to pull my hand away. "What are you doing? We're still on the ground!" He shakes his head. "It won't let you raise the gear."

"Thank god for that." But I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm the one who wanted to raise the wheels while we were still on them.

I do it again, the camera man clearly miffed at the 15 seconds it takes me to get to 140 knots and off the ground. To make things worse, this time I extend the flaps fully instead of retracting them, causing the trainer to leap forward from the back seat and retract them for me. I'm tired and I'm grumpy and I'm starting to make stupid mistakes.

“We’re almost done,” promises the camera man. "Pull your hair out of your face."

The director asks me how I feel while the camera zooms on my face. I’m still clearly not emotional enough and his questions get more and more leading. “Can you understand how the instructor for Flight 19 must have felt? What do you think it must have been like for all those pilots in those final moments? What do you think now of your theory that the instructor was wrong when he thought he was over the Florida Keys?"

It's not really my theory and I fail to see how deliberately crashing an A320 is supposed to shed light on the mystery.

“It’s an experiment,” says the director. “Did you feel frightened even though it was only a simulation?”

Eventually he accepts that I'm not going to burst into tears on camera and announces that we are finished.

As I come down the stairs from the simulator, I see that the sound engineer is setting up someone new; an older man. He has that uncomfortable look of someone who is in their best clothes, a black and white patterned shirt and black pleated trousers held up with belt drawn to the tightest hole.

The sound engineer wires him up while the director tries to convince the flight centre supervisor that the NO PHOTOGRAPHY signs in the room full of simulators don't apply to him and he wants to show off all the equipment the flight centre has; an argument which he loses.

Everyone seems to be grumbling and annoyed. The supervisor offers to make me a coffee and I accept gratefully, glad that I'm not being treated as part of the problem. As he hands it to me, the director calls my name. "We need you! Come on. We're running late."

The new arrival, it turns out, is the only flight instructor they could find on short notice who is willing to appear on film. His job, they tell him, is to brief me on how to fly the Airbus A320. No one tells him that I've already flown it.

He looks incredulous. "A briefing takes about two hours."

The director takes a deep breath, struggling to understand why everyone is making this so difficult. "Well, just do a super fast briefing, just the basics."

A shocked look from the instructor. "That would be unprofessional!"

The director does not appear to be happy with the instructor showing him how he is feeling. “That’s how we do it on television,” he explains patiently. “Things that take hours in real life happen in about 10 seconds.”

They eventually agree to film a montage of him talking to me and pointing at things with a comment that I was getting a full briefing.

This means that my inability to fly the A320 will be preceded with the statement that a very experienced flight instructor spent two hours explaining what I needed to do. Great. I swallow my pride and get back into the simulator, this time with the camera man behind us and instructor in the right seat, poking at an iPad which he will use to control the simulator.

He starts by showing me the primary instruments. "You know these," he says. "I know it looks overwhelming but the principals of flight are the same as in a single engine plane."

The camera man interrupts him. "You need to look at her. Can you two lean towards each other? All I'm getting is the back of your heads."

The instructor rolls his eyes and we lean towards each other. He nods seriously and I nod back and that's the briefing done.

He reaches over to put the iPad into its holder and the director breaks in. "Can you just keep holding it? It's a good visual."

"That's unsafe," says the instructor.

"And make it brighter. Put the route onto it or something."

The instructor taps at the iPad, setting me up at Fort Lauderdale again and then steps through what I need to do to prepare for departure.

"Don't help her," says the director. "Just let her get on with it."

The instructor blinks slowly and leans back, clearly wishing he were anywhere but here.

Power on, 140 knots, rotate.

I reach over to retract the gear and the instructor slaps my hand away. "My job," he says.

I start to explain that I was flying alone, before, and that this should tie in with the other footage and besides, I've never flown with another crew member before. I manage to get about two words out before the Airbus interrupts me.

"STALL STALL STALL"

I've put us into a steep climb and our speed has decayed to almost nothing. I pitch the nose down and increase the power to recover but I've overdone it. The instructor points out the over-speed warning, ignoring the director who is telling him that he's not supposed to be helping me.

The instructor started the flight with just 100 kilos of fuel so I barely have time to get the plane back under some semblance of control when I run out. "We're out of fuel," I say with a gasp.

"The weather isn't bad enough," complains the director.

"We're beneath the cloud," I explain. "Last time I flew straight through it."

"Can you add some lightning?"

"You want special effects?" The instructor taps at the iPad.

The camera man chimes in. "This is taking too long," he says. "Can't you crash it faster?"

"Yes, I can," I snap. I pitch down, hard, directly at the ocean. The flight instructor lurches for the controls as we race towards the waves but it's too late. The screen goes black.

The camera man leans forward, pushing the camera into my face. "We're dead," I tell him. This was more Germanwings 9525 than Flight 19 but at least it's the right plane for it.

"You are looking the camera."

"OK, that's good enough," says the director. "We need to get going, or else we won't have enough light at the museum.

I've been here over four hours and apparently we aren't done yet.

The flight centre supervisor comes back into the cockpit and motions the instructor to stay put. He grins at me. "Do you want to land it properly?"

Would I? "Oh yes, please!"

The director ignores him. “Everyone out, let's go!”

“I’m setting it up so she can land this time," says the supervisor.

"No, we need her. We're late."

The flight centre supervisor crosses his arms across his chest. “You can’t put her through all that and not allow her to land it even once,” he says, his voice a challenge.

The director glares at him and then takes a deep breath and agrees. “We need some time to get packed up anyway.” He leaves the simulator.

The supervisor kneels between me and the instructor, grinning. "Check this out." He takes the iPad. "We can set this up with historical data. When did this flight happen?”

"5th of December, 1945."

He keys it in. The landscape out the window shifts as the tall buildings disappear, replaced with fields and a stumpy looking white tower just three stories high. The runway is narrower and much shorter. This time my gasp is real.

We are in Fort Lauderdale in 1945.

"What time? I think I can recreate the real weather conditions and everything!"

I can’t believe they didn’t tell the director that this was possible. He would have loved this. But I don’t have time for guilt; the two men are already setting the plane up for me at 2,000 feet on final approach to the airfield.

I'm tired and it's all a bit much and I can't see the runway. I'm also grinning like a loon.

"You are descending too fast," say both of the men in the same breath and I realise we are only a few hundred feet above the ramshackle houses and the airfield is still over a kilometre away.

"I can see the runway," I say with relief.

The supervisor laughs. "You can see it because you are way too low."

Oh, right. I'm trying to fly the A320 like it was a Cessna 172 instead of using the navigational help of the glass cockpit. The director would be proud. Speaking of which, I think I can hear him pacing.

The instructor increases the thrust and takes over our power setting, getting us over the threshold. There's no time for a second chance. I use my last bit of mental energy to flare gently and then touch down onto the runway. It's almost a perfect landing.

I apply the brakes and lean back.

"Well done, Captain. Did you enjoy that?"

"Yes." I'm laughing with relief. "Thank you, that was fantastic." I turn to the instructor as I clamber out. "And thank you for saving our lives. Repeatedly."

Three minutes later, I'm bundled into the van and we're on the road again.

"You're doing great," says the director before disappearing into a dozen phone calls.

There's a new message on my phone as well. "How did the interview go?"

"I have successfully crashed an Airbus," I tap back. "Seven times. Six of them on purpose."

"What's that got to do with Flight 19?"

Not a lot. But I like to think that those boys learning to fly at Fort Lauderdale would have been impressed.

---

PS: I did not break the no-photography rule. All Airbus simulator images are taken from the flight centre's marketing material.

PPS: If for some reason you would like to see the German-dubbed television show about the Bermuda Triangle featuring someone called Sylvia Riley attempting to recreate a historic flight in a simulator, you can watch it online here. Just …don’t tell anyone I sent you.

I was there to take part in a 48-hour software sprint. I am not a software developer. I learned to program in LISP at university, which has given me a life-long horror of unclosed parentheticals but not much in the way of practical relevance. I was not going to develop the latest greatest app.

For reasons that I don’t think I can adequately explain, I thought it was a great idea to attend and write fiction instead of code. Short stories, written during the event, inspired by being trapped in a convention hall for 48 hours.

I spent most of the two days and nights surrounded by unnervingly clever young men and women working in intense little teams, competing for 60,000 euros in prizes and the right to feel superior forever. I just wanted to finish something that I could share, out of a vague sense of professional pride and the sharp reality that I’d paid 100 euros for a wristband and a place at the table, which would only be refunded if I submitted a valid project. Valid was doing a lot of heavy lifting, here.

I lived on whatever they put out on the conference buffet table. I left the venue around midnight and got up again at 4am: a triumph of insomnia over common sense.

I wrote directly into a GitHub repository. I needed to prove that the stories had happened here. This is what passes for a paper trail in 2020’s performance art.

I challenged myself to include event sponsors in the stories.

I wrote one story tucked inside a code template—like an awkward guest at a party who pretends to be furniture. It was meant to look like an app, something useful. It wasn’t. It was a heartbroken letter to an ex, passive-aggressively formatted as software. I called it Breakup as a Service. It was terrible. No one asked me to do this. No one stopped me.

Another was an intentionally ridiculous letter written by a software sprint participant who’s absolutely certain that moving chairs and offering “positive energy” makes them integral to a team that hasn’t noticed them.

To: The Belgrade Judging Committee
Subject: Prize Distribution Appeal
I am submitting this formal appeal to be retroactively included as a member of Team Rebase And Chill. While I was not listed as an official team member, I am assuming that the omission was administrative, not intentional.

It was very meta. Once we submitted our projects, we had to give a five-minute pitch to demo our apps to the judges. My demo, I decided, would be to read this story aloud. I have done a lot of readings. I was pretty sure this would take about four minutes, leaving me one minute to introduce myself and explain what I was doing and why. If I spoke quickly, I might even be able to get ten seconds on the importance of fiction in tech.

But first, I had to submit something. Other contestants were unveiling apps with sleek GUIs and cinematic demo reels. I created a pretty PDF of five stories that I declared to be completed — another word doing some very heavy lifting, here — and a page of completely pointless project metrics.

• Stories started: 9

• Stories finished: 5

• Words written: ~9,000

• Useful words written: 2,607

• Existential crises: 2.5

• Coffee: insufficient

• Steps (mostly pacing around the Convention Center): 23,248

• Meaningful glances from judges: 3 (estimated, unreliable)

• Internal monologues spiraled through: 7

• GitHub commits: 71

• GitHub commit messages including profanity: 3

On the last night, I learned that the demo video was not a suggestion but a requirement. I retreated to my accommodation sleep-deprived and muttering. After a few hours of fitful rest, I filmed myself leafing through the PDF while sounding like I was slowly disintegrating.

I submitted it with fifteen minutes to spare.

Then came the panic. I was supposed to pitch this whole thing, like a real product. I needed an introductory statement. I needed to rehearse reading the story. I probably should have PowerPoint slides but there was definitely no time for that. Somehow, I had to explain my art to a crowd who were expecting to check if my code would compile.

The easy first step was to practice my story so that I would know how long it took to read. Before I began, I glanced at the official Discord channel. My heart sank. The judging would start an hour after submission deadline, it said. I’d already blown half of that spiraling. They linked a pitch spreadsheet with all the teams. I was 7th. I grabbed my stuff and ran to the convention center, arriving at five past.

The spreadsheet showed team number three as “in the room”, which I took to mean pitching, giving me twenty glorious minutes to grab a pastry and cobble together an intro. But then the status line vanished. I abandoned the coffee queue and marched up to the desk in front of the conference hall to ask how I’d know when it was me.

They scanned the spreadsheet and told me I should just go in and wait my turn. Right. No pastry, no coffee, no prep. But at least I’d get to hear other people’s pitches and work out what I was supposedly meant to be doing.

I walked in to find clusters of people all over the room. Some were sitting at small tables facing the wall. A small crowd huddled near the stage; I assumed the currently pitching team. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and whispered the format: I had five minutes to speak. She’d wave when my time was up so that we could have three minutes for the Q&A. I nodded and asked in a whisper where I should sit. She pointed to a table where two men were engrossed in their laptops. There wasn’t much room but I sat down across from them, pulling out my notebook. I settled in. I smiled politely at the two men across from me. One, a friendly looking man with a thick beard, smiled back. The other never looked up. I leafed through my scribbled pages and began rooting around in my pockets for my pen.

About ninety seconds passed before the friendly one with the beard looked at me and spoke at full volume, as if we weren’t in a room full of people nervously pitching their projects.

“So,” he said.

Rude, I thought.

A brief pause and he continued. “Do you want to start?”

I blinked and then froze in horror. “Is this my pitch session?”

Both stared at me and nodded. Yes. Yes, it was.

I opened my mouth and closed it again, hoping the floor might swallow me whole. I mumbled something incoherent about fiction before closing my mouth again firmly. FriendlyBeardGuy asked me if I had a Github repo. I did! I spelled out the repository name and they each pulled it up on their laptops and began rummaging through my files. My moment of relief melted away: This was exactly the wrong place to start.

I tried to explain that the repo was full of stories. They looked up from their laptops and then down again.

Mr Serious broke the silence. “So you have no code?”

A tiny shake of my head.

“Is there an app?”

Another tiny shake.

He glanced at his screen, as if retracing the steps that had led him here. He looked like a man who’d arrived at the wrong meeting, the wrong building, possibly the wrong profession, but was too polite to say “What the hell is this?”

I stared at the floor as I explained that I was going to read them a story.

Heavy silence, as if I were a cat offering them a dead bird.

I fumbled for my phone to find the file, which I had not yet actually ever read aloud. I tripped over the title like it was a loose paving stone. Both men stared at my Github repo as if a user manual might appear. I took a deep breath and read the next line, where the story was addressed to the judging committee. FriendlyBeardGuy looked up, puzzled. Was I talking to him?

At least he was listening. I kept going, half hoping the floor would reconsider.

As I got to the bit about the participant wiping the whiteboard that no one had used, Mr Serious glitched, his face shifting into something that might have been a smile. That tiny spark was all I needed. I kept reading, my confidence growing. The woman from the start walked over, hovering behind the men. She held out a flat hand, lifting it up and down. I stopped, stared at her in confusion. She made a wavey motion.

Oh shit. I was reading competently, finally, which meant that I was using a public reading voice for a room full of people. My outdoor voice, my mother would call it, while other people were in there doing their own pitches, probably wondering what the hell was wrong with me. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be so loud.”

“No, no,” she said, looking almost as confused as my judges. “Just your five minutes are up.”

That’s it? I looked at her and then at the men. This was the signal for the three-minute Q&A, a nightmare from which I might never recover. Maybe one of the questions would be “How does the story end?”

FriendlyBeardGuy smiled at me the way you smile at someone having a psychotic episode and said, “Don’t worry” in a soothing voice. I took this to mean I should keep reading. Somehow, I made it to the end of the story. “Thank you,” I said in a gravelly voice.

Both of them stared at the middle distance without a word. I could only have made this worse by offering to tell the whole story in interpretive dance. The floor beneath me remained disappointingly solid.

Mr Serious lifted his laptop and turned it towards me, showing me my repo. “I found code,” he said.

Breakup as a Service glowed on the screen. I gritted my teeth and attempted to speak through them. “It’s a story about a guy who is trying to use code templates to write software but he’s lying to himself and really just writing to his ex-girlfriend.”

This did not help to clear things up.

He scrolled through the file. “So, this won’t run?”

“No.” Right now, this was the only thing that I was confident on. “It’s pure vibe coding. I wrote it with AI. I showed it to a dev friend to check the syntax but he refused.”

FriendlyBeardGuy nodded in sympathy with my unknown friend.

”There’s a PDF,” I said. “Of all the stories. That’s probably easier to read than the Github repo.” They both nodded pleasantly. They were never going to read the PDF.

”That was a very enjoyable story to hear,” said FriendlyBeardGuy. We were finished.

I stumbled out and started laughing. Someone turned to stare but after the last ten minutes, it barely even registered.

It was over.

At least for me. Mr Serious was probably still staring at my code, hoping it would eventually explain itself.

In that regard, he and I had a lot in common.

This looked like more of the same. The map route had me turning off of the main street onto a dirt road with patches of asphalt still visible under the scrub. From here, the directions said to turn right onto an even smaller and more overgrown trail that ended up going directly up a hill. Probably the remains of Peter the Great’s fortifications in the area but impossible to get up, even with the trace of a single limestone step placed halfway up the slope. There was some sort of broken piece of wall and really, not much else.

As I had walked this far, I decided to keep going along the wider path; I could see that the grass was trampled down so it seemed worth finding out where it ended up. I found myself on a small street — I didn’t realise, but it was the same street I had started on, reducing in size and important as it turned the bend out of my sight. I was now in the village of Miiduranna, which appeared to be exactly like Viimsi.

More interesting was a sudden slab of concrete at the side of the road. I appeared to have found something.

The rough ground seemed to have concrete spouting all over it, cracked and spray-painted and tilting, looking like the post-apocalyptic scene of a great earthquake or maybe a bomb.

There was a sign in the distance in the middle of the grass, which turned out to be an explanation of the scene I had stumbled upon.

This was the location of one of the four-meter high star-shaped soil forts of Peter the Great, one of three built in 1726-1727 in the local area. Then in 1915, Battery No. 13 was built on the location as a part of a Russian marine fort and outfitted with four 130m cannons set on concrete bases. In 1918, the site fell to the Germans, who took the cannons and ignored the rest. This was the year that Estonia originally declared independence.

In 1922, it was renamed to Battery No. 7 and 120 mm cannons were put into place. In 1927-28, the Estonians planted spruce and willow trees to conceal the battery, which had a permanent guard of four recruits and one overtime recruit.

In 1941, the battery came under assault and was ruined. This led to the remains that I had found, a victim of both blasts and time.

I originally wrote this in 2019 and today I found my notes planning another trip to explore, including the start of an essay about the Viimsi frog who wants to be a dragon. I post it now as a public commitment: I will go back. And I will tell you all about the frog.

My first summer in this apartment, I spent three months trying to convince the gull pair that this was not a good roof for raising a family. I was not successful. That winter, once the gulls had departed, I started feeding the local crows, hoping that they would defend the roof from the gulls. Instead, they disappeared once the gull pair arrived and then sheepishly returned in the autumn to see if I was still there.

Now the gulls are back again. The gull pair returned in March, poking through the snowy roof looking for the remains of last year’s nest. April was spent in vigorous courtship displays. Now, in May, they are nesting and extremely adamant that no, I can not peer into the nest to find out how many eggs there are.

Let’s introduce this year’s dramatis personae.

The Herring Gull Pair

A bonded couple with rather lacklustre nest-building skills, known for loud arguments and Olympic-level passive-aggressive strutting.

Formally monogamous. Now possibly in a throuple arrangement with a third, previously unintroduced gull.

Currently referred to as NestGull and GuardGull based on function, although they trade roles frequently and without warning.

The Unknown Third Gull

First spotted while the Gull Pair enthusiastically performed mating rituals in full view of my picture window. The third gull hovered nearby like a welcome voyeur.

I had not thought the Gull Pair could do much to surprise me but a threesome was definitely not on my bingo card.

Now frequently spotted loitering near the nest. Behavior suggests either polyamory or an extraordinarily bold squatter.

Gary the Hooded Crow

Thuggish, brooding crow who quickly figured out that if he stared at me through the office window long enough, I’d break down and come out with snacks.

Mated with Pippin, who understandably has better things to do during nesting season. I assume he’s taking the extra food to her and the crow kids, but for all I know, he’s selling it to the jackdaws for extra beer money.

Has recently decided, inexplicably, to hold his ground against the gulls, who are bigger, stronger and faster than he is. When this goes badly, he caws loudly at me to come outside and intervene.

NotGary the Hooded Crow

Looks like Gary. Is not Gary. Is absolutely not friends with Gary.

Indentifiable because he actually hops around the terrace trying to find ways to interact with me, unlike Gary, who sits stoicly on the rail and stares until I crack.

Usually keeps to the far side of the terrace to avoid Gary, who attacks on sight.

Astra (they/them)

Gary’s friend. Bravest of the hooded crows but will not make eye contact.

Not pictured because they haven’t been seen since the gulls took over the roof. Possibly nesting. Possibly just has better judgement than Gary.

The Jackdaw Chorus

A chorus of sleek, smaller corvids observing everything like judgemental extras in a Greek tragedy.

Often seen clustering near the gull’s nest, trying to get a peek. The gulls are oddly unbothered by this. Their fury is reserved for the crows, who mostly remain on my side of the roof hoping for snacks.

I suspect this will end in tears. Possibly mine.

Last summer, I wanted to send updates almost every day but quickly decided that that would be overwhelming. (For you, I mean. For the mailing list. I was already overwhelmed.) By the time I got to writing about the escapades of Huey, Dewey and Louis, I had thousands of words of notes and hundreds of photographs and it took me over six weeks to get through it all and create a coherent narrative. I’m not saying I have regrets but I’d rather not lose two months to writing non-publishable war reports about gull front lines. So the new plan is to send frequent updates, in addition to my monthly essay, as a much less formal and hopefully mostly silly thing.

I’m expecting the first egg to hatch any day now, if the jackdaws don’t get there first. More updates to come.

Spoiler: If you think I picked A, you must be new around here.

It seemed straightforward enough: from Dresden, there is a train to Kurort Rathen, then a ferry across the Elbe and suddenly you are in Saxon Switzerland. Which is not in Switzerland. But never mind that.

Dresden was in the grip of a heatwave. I might have welcomed the heat, a blazing 37.4°C or 99°F, on the Costa del Sol, wearing nothing more than a bikini and a bottle of Cruzcampo. Not in head-to-toe black wool, carefully chosen for conference chic and an average August of 20°C.

This wasn’t summer weather. This was betrayal.

My beautiful “I am a serious academic” outfits felt like they were trying to strangle me in a sauna.

That’s why instead of being a city tourist, I ended up in Primark searching for something that I wouldn’t melt in. I had packed a cute pair of orange ballet flats to contrast with all that black. With them in mind, I picked up a lightweight tangerine orange summer dress. It was satiny and strappy and very very orange, but with a light blouse to tie over it, I thought it would be perfect for the heat. Sweating profusely, I counted down the minutes until I could change into my new summer outfit …until the cashier lifted the dress up and said “Oooh, I love this nightgown” as she folded it into my bag.

“Yes, me too,” I mumbled, as if of course it’s a nightgown, what else could it be?

Once back in my room, I pretended that the cashier never existed and I put on the nightgown and the blouse and my cute orange shoes and made my way to the train station, wanting nothing more than to get out of the heat of the city. I was pretty sure no one could tell it was a nightgown with the blouse over it, but I put on a pair of dark sunglasses, just in case it would give me a bit of a “drugged out sleepwalking cult icon” vibe.

My plan, which was about as well formed as my shopping expedition, was to head to Kurort Rathen for an hour and see if it was worth returning at the end of the conference, spending my only free day exploring Saxon Switzerland. There were two versions of the train ticket to Kurort Rathen with no clear information as to the difference. I purchased the cheaper one and promised myself: if the train conductor decides that my ticket is wrong, I will decide that I no longer speak German and we will see who gives up first for the sake of two euros and fifteen cents.

We arrived at Kurort Rathen without any conductor incidents and half the train disembarked. I followed the crowd out of the station and around a windy small street. A restaurant chalk board promised cold cucumber soup which sounded absolutely perfect but I also had no idea where I was going, so I kept following the other tourists, intent on working out a plan for the end of the week.

I didn’t know it was going to be my last chance at appropriate summer food.

It was already 3pm. If I waited just a little longer to eat, I could have a late lunch and skip dinner and quietly collapse in my hotel room into a molten heap of sweat and nightgown.

By the time we reached the banks of the Elbe, we were a few dozen people strong and a paddle steamer was crossing the river, coming for us. A sign proclaimed that the ferry was cash only.

I dug around the bottom of my handbag fishing out coins, eventually finding just enough coppers to pay for the 1.50€ ticket but not for the three-euro round trip, not unless he had change for a twenty, which, this was Germany, of course he wouldn’t, he would shake his head in disappointment and tell me that I should have come better prepared and yes, it is possible that I project my grandmother onto every German stranger that I have to interact with.

I left dealing with the sad ferryman as a problem for future-Sylvia and handed over the one-way fare. He gave me an odd look, as I didn’t seem like the sort to be staying over but he let me board the paddle steamer and five minutes later, we were on the other side.

We were greeted by a cluster of restaurants offering river views and traditional Saxon dishes. Their menus all show exactly the same food: Schnitzel and pork knuckle and grilled sausages and fried grease with a side of fried potatoes. All much too heavy and much too hot for the sudden summer apocalypse.

I thought longingly of the cold cucumber soup that I had missed and carried on walking until I found the start of the Bastei Bridge Trail. There it was, a stairway up into the forest.

Technically, I had fulfilled my quest. I had seen enough to know that I’d quite like to get up early and spend a day here; in cooler weather, wearing something more functional than a tangerine orange nightgown and ballet flats.

I had a few options now: continue to explore the town, choose a restaurant and treat myself to a meal of hot fried grease with a side of fried potatoes, walk along the river bank in hopes of a cool breeze, or just get the next steamer back, holding steady against the disappointment of the ferryman, and head back to Dresden.

Besides, it seemed silly to have come all this way and just… turn back. The trail was right here, or at least the stairway to it was and I was pretty sure I could see a friendly paved path in the distance which looked manageable despite my inappropriate footwear.

Shouldn’t I at least look?

I climbed the steps and started on the path, which had deceitfully shifted from “friendly and flat” to “spiteful and steep”. The pines did not offer cooling shade, as I’d hoped, but simply cut off the remnants of the mild breeze in an attempt to suffocate us in pure heat.

As the sinister pines gave way to sandstone rock, I untied my blouse and then took it off completely, tying it around my waist, revealing the satin spaghetti strings of my hiking outfit.

Everyone else was locked in their own battle, no one cared what I was wearing.

I don’t really know why I kept going in my ballet flats and flimsy nightgown, other than that every time I paused for breath, I thought, well, it’s silly to turn back now, isn’t it? After all this way, when there’s sure to be a rest spot soon. Besides, there were tiny humans trekking up the trail with their gore-tex-clad parents and if they could do it, then so could I.

Luckily, Saxon Switzerland chose that moment to reward me with a viewpoint. Far below me the ferry, my beloved ferry, crossed the River Elbe full of people returning to the flatter shore. I checked my phone and was reassured to see that the paddle steamer ran until late into the night. It would be waiting for me, assuming I made it down before midnight and somehow managed to get the correct change.

I wasn’t sure anymore which seemed more unlikely.

I sat down on a friendly tree root shaped a bit like a bench and watched the parents cajole their toddlers to keep going, just a bit more. And then I kept climbing.

The air felt like soup, sticky and suffocating, like someone had intentionally increased the resistance. My legs twinged, promising hell to pay tomorrow. My blouse was gone, lost, somewhere on the winding path below. And yet, somehow, I kept walking.

I had hit some sort of point of no return. If I stopped now, I wouldn’t come back to this treacherous path. No. It was now or never if I wanted to see the bridge at the top. I didn’t know why I wanted to see the bridge; I had not done any research and was only vaguely aware that it existed. But if everyone else wanted to see it, well then, so did I. I echoed the cajoling parents passing me, promising myself that I could have an ice cream back at the dock if I just made it to the top without whining.

Sweat trickled down my torso, leaving salt stains on my new nightgown. I kept going.

Concrete stairs carved through moss-covered sandstone. I pulled myself up holding the metal railings. This, I decided, was my last and final stand. I would stop at the top of these stairs, rest, and then make my slow way back down to the riverside.

As if the trail had heard my ultimatum, the stairs emptied me onto a ledge of high ground. Now, finally, I understood why everyone had made the climb.

An arched bridge of sandstone bricks stretched between jagged towers of rock, crossing an impossibly deep gorge. I stumbled dizzily over the narrow walkway. On the far side, the ruins of a stone castle clung to the sandstone.

This bridge shouldn’t have existed, not even once, but a sign told me that it was originally a flimsy wooden thing which deliberately collapsed multiple times under the feet of attackers. In 1851, it was replaced with this sandstone version, which must have been some relief to the parents whose sulky children were now gleefully running back and forth across it.

If civilization were ending and the world was overrun by zombies, this, exactly this place right here, was where I would run to, I decided.

I took a selfie of myself, complete with tangerine orange nightgown and sunburnt nose. I continued across the bridge and beyond, lured on by blessed flatness and a hint of a breeze. Miraculously, there on the other side was a restaurant. Large signs advertised sausages, which no longer sounded the least bit heavy or greasy, and cold, crisp beer. I stood in line for fifteen minutes, handed over my twenty euros in exchange for half a liter of beer mixed with lemonade and collapsed into a plastic chair in the shade of a chestnut tree.

Now all I had to do was count out my change and make it to the ferry before midnight.

The long line of people buying beer was almost gone by the time I gathered the strength to leave my shade-covered table, steeling myself up for the long way back. Exiting the back way, I stopped again to stare. I was on a road. A small truck drove up with a delivery for the restaurant. A truck!

Taking a few steadying breaths, in case I was hallucinating, I walked onto the pavement to look for a sign to see where the road led to. There was something much more miraculous in the distance: a bus stop.

Twenty minutes later, a bus pulled up and fifty people looking alert and enthusiastic and not the least bit sweaty filed off of the bus and headed towards the bridge. They were not quite off the bus before I was stepping on. I did not know where the bus was going but I was taking no chances that it might go without me.

The bus driver looked my nightgown up and down before accepting my exact change for the bus fare. I smiled my best drugged-out cult-icon smile and collapsed into a seat.

As we swung around the bend, the Elbe came back into view, dark and wide beneath the deepening sky. I pressed my forehead to the bus window, the glass cool against my sunburnt skin, and watched the rock formations receding behind me like something conquered. The bus crossed the river at a bridge, no need for a ferry at all.

I still had to work out where the bus was going. Still had to find a train to Dresden, walk to my hotel in these ridiculous shoes, pretend that the nightgown wasn’t still happening in public.

But for now, I had my seat. I had air conditioning. And I had, inexplicably, been to the top.