In TNET, we had a small conversation about omens and quests, but I think the answer is much simpler than that.

See, I got some cookies in the mail (more about that sometime next week). Because I was expecting a long day of travel, I packed some as snacks for the trip. My original first connection was to a large hub airport that is reasonably close to the cookies’ region of origin. Obviously, this was not acceptable to the cookies (they are not meant to go home!), so they sent out waves of distress into the spacetime ether, and destiny listened – not only was that first flight delayed for more than 2 hrs (in the end!), but I couldn’t even be placed on the same route without missing one or some other of my later connections. However, instead of the double-plus-best-good option of visiting two completely new airports this trip, I got one very nice one at Zagreb. Add to that an earlier (than original) arrival at my final destination, and this is a win no matter how I look at it. It is now snowing outside my hotel window, and I have a happy ending, and one full productive work day behind me.

(And the cookies ended up saving both my life and the lives of my passengers between Vienna and Zagreb, but that is a much more mundane story and requires no fantastic elements. Thank you, cookies.)

Let us retrace my steps, then (though the Skopje photo is from last trip, as by the time I got in I couldn’t be bothered):

This is Peteris Vasks writing about everything that is the opposite of anything related to heights, it is here for the the quietness and stillness. The moment the choir happens is the one where time stops for me.

Oh, speaking of stopped time, my favourite part through my terrible ordeal with delays and undelays was watching luggage trains make pretty tracks in the snow: