In February 2020 I calculated that during my lifetime I have flown 400,000 km — most on academic trips to my fieldwork site in Austria, the rest family visits to U.K. and Australia and holiday trips. Horrified, I decided to stop. This was quite easy — I am over 80 and no longer survive long journeys well — but I was planning one or two more trips to Austria and Slovenia to visit old friends. I wrote to them all, sadness in my heart, and told them “I have been Grunberg’ed”.

I was (so they told me) conceived on a train and have ever since been in love with travel, but one has to stop sometime.