Yeah, that does play a role…no kids to tie me down.
But I think the major reason is that I always wanted to travel…as a kid stuck in a small town in Illinois, I can remember my mantra as I mowed the yard, “I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here.” Mind you, I was probably all of 10 years old at the time and knew I hated small towns.
So, the day after college graduation I started travelling - alone at first and learned the basic skills of survival in big cities and in foreign countries. This gave me the guts later in life to choose to uproot and move half way around the world on a whim. Every place I ever moved to was new - I didn’t know anybody who lived there, didn’t have a job lined up and just got up and went. Friends always thought I was insane, but like I always said, “if I don’t like it, I can always move back.” I never did move back. However, I was clever enough never to burn any bridges and, if necessary, would move back to any city I have ever lived in with no regrets.
So, yeah…I know you were joking - and although being Gay helps free up a lot of obligations, I think there is a part of me that simply loves the challenge of plopping myself into a new environment and honing my survival skills.
Places I’ve been in the U.S. that I’d love to live- Washington D.C. (inside the beltway) and New Orleans, both obviously only if I had the money to “do it up right” (which would be the money to rent a spacious apartment in a brownstone in D.C. and the money to pay the air conditioning bill in N.O.). I’d keep a summer home in Asheville, NC and make villegiatura when the city got too hot (private jet of course).
I’ve never been to NYC but would love to experience it for a year at least just to get the whole “Capitol of the World” vibe that Vonnegut describes.
Outside the U.S.- pretty much everywhere with the possible exception of places where they behead gays and adulterers and or circumcize women, but mostly-
Dublin and other points in Ireland: most of my ancestry is from there and I love the folklore.
London, Edinburgh, Canterbury, the Lake country, and pretty much anywhere else in England & Scotland (and for that matter the village in Wales I’m too lazy to look up where they filmed The Prisoner).
Prague, Rome and Berlin would be next choices for Europe. For non European locations my choices would be Istanbul, Hong Kong and New Delhi. For Latin countries, Buenos Aires and a beach in Costa Rica would be my top pics.
This was going to be my post. Actually, we may try Hong Kong someday if we get chased out of Beirut.
But in fact, we already are living somewhere fun and exciting–my wife and I have made a conscious decision to remain here rather than moving back to the States precisely because we love the life we have here. So we are fortunate in that respect.
It sounds lovely. We go to Cape Cod every summer (my parents have a house there)–and every year, I say, let’s go to Maine for a few days…Now I will have a destination!
I would like to move back to England but have to stay in Australia for the sake of relatives who depend on me. Its much, much too hot in Australia for me.
Also I would like to live in the US, maybe somewhere like Boston.
Several years back, we went to L.A. and San Diego on a vacation. After 4 days in L.A., we’d had enough of the gangsign sprayed everywhere and the beggars. We drove down the coast to San Diego, and after 3 days, we wanted to stay forever.
If I had a job and a house there (and unfortunately both of those thins are, and will remain, in Springfield, Illinois), then it’d be Daytona Beach, FL.
I live in L.A. and we don’t have winter, but I’m so sick of the sprawly-car dependent-spreadoutness of it all…I fantasize about relocating back East, to NYC or Boston, and not having to commute by car.
Seriously, at least in the Republic no one here is likely to have very strong feelings about what your religion is or isn’t let alone anyone wanting to blow you up. And even in Northern Ireland the vast majority just go about their business.
For myself:
Rome if I could speak Italian and have a good income so as not to feel terribly badly dressed all the time. Specifically, I want to live in the suburb of Garbatella.
I have seriously considered Glasgow as I think its people are fantastic. If only the weather wasn’t even worse than here in Ireland.
Amsterdam is cool, though getting a place to live is extremely hard. So I might try Maastricht in the south of Holland or culturally lively Nijmegen. (I’m actually quite serious about those last two in the future. I’ll go and say hi to Maastricht the Doper if I ever do.)
I would choose either Monterey or San Francisco. I love the Pacific ocean, and the weather is beautiful. People are a good deal more laid back than on the east coast. The only two things that are stopping me are the expense and the fact that Boston has actually grown on me in the past few years.
My mum bought a house out in the middle of Majorca many moons ago, we go there every summer. I’d like to make enough money to retire soon and go live there permanently (I’m 26 so ‘soon’ is in geological time). However I’d like to spend every January and February in a place I’m glad to see no one else has mentioned yet. Juan Carlos I, the Spanish antarctic research station on Livingston Island in the antarctic peninsula. Doesn’t it look so cozy ?
(Click on ‘Plano de instalaciones de la BAE’, then look at pictures 3 and 4.)
Of course this relies on them shutting down scientific operations and then selling it to me… but when I rule the world this won’t be a problem.
Want to move with me to Equatorial Guniea? They have some islands that have been deserted since Spanish colonialization, with absolutely nothing on the islands except for some ruins of past cities. That is where I want to go more than anything, and luckily they all speak Spanish there. I don’t, but it is good that they do.
I want to live somewhere where the weather makes sense dammit! It is December 29th, and it was 78 degrees today. Texas has the most awful weather…today it was almost 80, next week the temperature could fall to a high of 40 and that wouldn’t be unexpected at all. I would love to live in Las Vegas or New York or Boston…some huge city with a halfway predictable weather pattern.
You can say hi to me as well, I partly moved there (my cats and most of my free time, among others ), moving over the other parts of me probably somewhere this summer.
Pookah, you’d be welcome. I didn’t organize all those Maastricht-Doperfests because I hate showing people around town, you know.
Yes, I know you’re originally from Limburg yourself, but I’ve managed to surprise even a few people born in Maastricht by showing them around parts ot the town they didn’t know. Yup: I definitely need a bragging smiley.
), moving over the other parts of me probably somewhere this summer.