Transfer

The Airbus made a safe descent through the dark rain clouds and at 8.27 p.m. we finally rolled out on runway 05L/23R at Manchester International Airport. The flight had taken me away from a Denmark which, for some metaphysical reason, felt surprisingly empty today.

Barring something unforeseen I now have nine days on the British Isles which I will split evenly between work and leisure. Tomorrow I am going down to Cambridge to meet my old-time friend Lars who now works as a computer specialist at a bioinformatics company. It will be great to meet him again and enjoy that special kind of nerd-humour:

"98.5% of DNA is considered to be junk DNA with no known purpose. Maybe it is XML tags?"

Next Monday the conference starts at Mansfield college and I am now frenetically reading through all the papers. Besides presenting I will chair one session and be discussant on another so I can count on an intensive week in Oxford.

After all my travels it does take a certain effort to restart the professional part of one’s mind. Contractual justice has felt very distant over the last weeks. On the other hand, I have read a lot about world affairs and especially Balkan contemporary history. And I guess I will take some of that with me into my teaching this coming fall.