Saturday, June 18, 2011

Can YOU cure my wander lust?

I have been on the road 50% of the time in June and I am EXHAUSTED. Here is the deep dark secret about those of us who travel for work a lot-- it really isn't a glamorous thing. It's a lot of mediocre room service in a suburban hotel room just far enough a way from the interesting sounding city you flew into to make it difficult to actually see anything.

In short-- its frustrating to go a lot of places, but never see anything.

So ironically, as tired as I am of airports (I literally just had to look at the information kiosk to remember that I'm in Detroit), all the travel gets my wander lust up. I've lived in the same state my whole life, and while I highly doubt I will relocate any time soon, I do like to dream and virtually shop for a new place to live.

My weird, virtual city hopping led me to take a quiz online the other night about what city is most suited to me... the very humorous answer-- Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And actually, on looking into it, the city has a lot of things I love, but 1/8 of the population of Baltimore-- and even Baltimore feels a little small to me.

So I am open to suggestions for my virtual relocation-- tell me about where you live, and maybe I can imaginarily move there soon! Here's what I am looking for:

  1. Size! I need to be in close proximity (an hour or less) to a city of at least half a million.
  2. Diversity! I like being in an area where lots of cultures and types of people interact. I couldn't thrive in an environment where everyone is the same religion, for example.
  3. History! I LOVE Baltimore because so much has happened there. I like historic buildings, and fun cultural anecdotes
  4. Food! Yes, sir. I need to be somewhere with really good regional cuisine, but also LOTS of options for other types of food.
So where should I pretend to move??

3 comments:

  1. Go to Prague. For serious. I know you're likely VERY tired of hearing about Prague by now, but if you want a culture that has gobs and gobs of history (and because it was never bombed during the war, gobs and gobs of buildings that were never destroyed), appreciates the arts, loves their beer and are crazy for sports, (huh, when I write that out in that way, I suddenly know exactly why I was so suited to my life there) Prague is it. 1.5 million people, but it doesn't feel that big, a public transport system that goes EVERYWHERE and is the very model of German efficiency (except for the 17 tram going south which seems to operate whenever it damn well pleases), and good, if heavy, food. It's not as cheap as it used to be -- even since I was living there and that wasn't *that* long ago -- but I used to walk home by myself late at night and never once felt like I was in danger. You meet people from everywhere, you can learn a new language...

    I'm telling you, there is nothing -- except the dearth of nice toilet paper -- that I didn't love about Prague. Even the weather is pretty stellar.

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  2. Why Athens, Greece, of course! Ahem ... you didn't say you had any qualms about the state of the economy or unreliability of the government, so um ... come live here and get poor! ;o)

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  3. Philadelphia! My son lives there and loves it and we love visiting him. It is a real center of restaurants/wonderful food, as well as music, art, and history...and the Phillies baseball team. There is a river, universities, museums, and it's only an hour and a half train ride to NYC. I vote you go to Philly, then I can visit you there!

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