It is a measure of quite how busy I have been that when I was asked last night what I had been doing I couldn’t remember half of it.

The big disappointment yesterday was discovering that there are no copies of Girl at the End of the World here. However, that’s because Adele sold out of stock at Nine Worlds, so I can’t complain.

Checking my schedule I see that I attended a couple of panels on translation. They were both well attended, and the second one the majority of the audience were non-native-English-speakers, which says a lot for the international nature of the membership, though not much for the interest of English-speakers in translations. My Israeli friend, Gili, was very eloquent on both and I tweeted some of her best comments. I’ll try to write more about this issue in a day or two.

I also attended the Kaleidoscope launch and got to hang out with Alisa and Tansy. I’m reading the book at the moment. It has some great stories in it. I want to see Sofia Samatar’s Walkdog on award ballots next year.

John Clute’s Guest of Honor speech was brilliant as expected, though I really need a transcript so I can look up all of the words he used. Again I need to write more about his comments on reviewing, and in particular spoiler warnings (which he detests).

I had my photo taken for an article in an Israeli newspaper. Thanks Noa & Rani!

Also I met a bunch of Chinese writers, and introduced an Arabic writer to some UK editors.

I’m really liking what Eemeli & co. have constructed in the “fan village”. It has the feel of an arts festival in a town on a summer evening. It is in a huge hall, so you can see there are loads of people, but there is always enough room to move around. And because the parties are there it is buzzing all through the night. The nearest thing I can think of to it in past Worldcons is the pool deck in Anaheim. If you imagine that with the pool filled in and all of the hotel rooms just tents that will give you some idea of what it is like.

I was also delighted to discover last night that the volunteers group is being run by Croatians. This really is a European Worldcon.

Today I must try to see the exhibits and Art Show.