One of the problems with the way I’m living it that I often don’t have any idea where to go. I can go anywhere. Sometimes it’s easy — someone will invite me to stay with them,¹ or there’ll be a convention scheduled that I want to attend — and I’ll weave my plans around that. But I’m finding that generally accounts for only about a third of my time.

So most of my time is wide open. It’s not like there’s a shortage of places in the world I want to see. I’m faced with the “Paradox of Choice,” where the sheer number of choices available reaches a point where it becomes nearly impossible to make an informed decision.

So, I bought a book. 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, specifically.

Now, to be clear, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die is a deeply silly book. Possibly even a dangerous one. There’s a lot of pretty cogent criticisms about it online. It leans towards a very odd sort of leisure traveler: well-off (there’s a number of $350/night hotel rooms listed, as well as a fair number of cruises), indiscriminate in their enthusiasms (a half-dozen golfing spots show up, alongside an equal number of skiing spots, hiking locations,² antique fairs, cruises, high- and low-end restaurants, opera festivals, small villages on islands in the Pacific Ocean, nature reserves in Africa, and snorkeling off the coast of South America), and likely retired (I can’t see how to fit a pricy two-week cruise to Antarctica in around everything else listed, otherwise).

Worse, it can reduce travel to a meaningless checklist, rather than a means for expanding your understanding of yourself and the world. I’ve already talked about the pressure to try and see everything when I’m visiting someplace new, or someplace I’m unlikely to return to. It’s tempting to view that list of 1,000 items as a set of achievements, like I’d complete the last one and a small box would pop up announcing I’d unlocked “Teleportation Mode.” Realistically, there’s no way I’m going to visit every place that’s on this list.³ And some of the most fascinating places I’ve seen, like Chernobyl, aren’t even on the list.⁴

But I bought it, and now I’m traveling to Vilnius, so I guess it’s doing something. I’m hoping I can use it to help expand my idea of what the horizon looks like. It’s easy and tempting⁵ to just bounce between London and Berlin, with occasional side trips to Madrid and Copenhagen for larps. But I needed to spend three weeks somewhere and I looked around and noticed Vilnius on the list and it’s close to Lviv which is also on the list and someplace I wanted to see⁶ and flights were pretty cheap so here I am.

I spent the last week in Germany, visiting friends and recovering from Berechtigter Zweifel. I spent a couple days in Berlin, then the weekend staying at a friend’s in North Rhine-Westphalia. It was interesting to spend time around there. I lived in Paderborn for nine months nearly 20 years ago, and it definitely had the same vibe.⁷

My friend lives in a rural area,⁸ which might have meant peace and quiet, if she didn’t own four dogs and about a dozen chickens. I also ended up visiting the same weekend she was hosting a friend and her friend’s daughter, so the weekend was unexpectedly filled with group meals and outings to a zoo and a butterfly house.

It was a nice slice of domesticity, although I think I’ve been spending so much time alone that being in a house with a bunch of other people, all on top of one another, was a bit of a shock. Especially since I was dependent on the other people there to provide food and transportation. It’s almost funny; I spent the first sixteen years of my life in a rather small house⁹ and even more dependent on the people there to provide for me. And maybe I’ve spent too long making my own way, but I seem to have completely lost the knack.

I’m writing this the day after Notre Dame burned. The news was worse in the evening; by the morning the fire was out, the walls and the towers appeared solid and safe, and most of the relics were evacuated.¹⁰ It has certainly underscored a certain urgency to travel. My feed is filled with people talking about their visits, or bemoaning the fact they hadn’t visited. The world is filled with treasures. Why wouldn’t you see them?

Somehow, though, I find myself somewhat less horrified over the whole thing than most people. I suppose there’s a few reasons for that. Mainly it’s because, even if it had been entirely destroyed, there’s no way it would have been lost. We know what every inch of it looks like. There are millions of photographs from every conceivable angle, it’s been measured and documented and described. Yes, we lost the spire and the forest of original wood that made up the roof. But what’s really valuable about Notre Dame isn’t the specific stone or wood or iron which makes up the building. It’s the thoughts and the ideas and the concepts embodied by it. It will be rebuilt.

I visited the Temple of Artemis last year, or at least I visited the site of the Temple of Artemis. We’ve almost lost that entirely; there’s a few contemporaneous drawings which give us a sense of it, and archeologists can reconstruct some idea of how it must have been put together from the ruins. But that’s it. We have no real idea how it was decorated, or what the interior looked like, or what it felt like sailing through the Mediterranean and seeing it on the horizon.

The Colossus of Rhodes is worse. We have zero idea what it looked like. It only stood for about 50 years; the ruins remained scattered around Rhodes for about 800 years before it was all finally melted down for scrap. We know it didn’t actually straddle the harbor, but we don’t even really know what side of the harbor it stood on. Even that is better than The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, since we don’t even know where Babylon was.

I mentioned I’d realistically never visit every place in 1,000 Places to Visit Before You Die. It may now be impossible. Four of the listings are in Syria. All have been damaged by the civil war, with some (like the Krak des Chevaliers) suffering partial damage, and some (like the Temple of Bel in Palmyra) deliberately targeted by ISIL and virtually obliterated. Much of what’s damaged will undergo restoration; eventually you’ll be able to tour the sites and see what remains. But it won’t be the same, not in the way Notre Dame will be.

The most serious existential threat to our cultural treasures isn’t militants, of course. It’s climate change. Venice is sinking every year. The beaches of Hawaii are eroding. Osaka is already getting flooded out. Notre Dame is a tragedy, but that’s what keeps me up at night. The cathedral will be fine. If the temperature rises 3º Celsius, though, will Paris?

Next: Vilnius (VNO) to Lviv (LWO)
Prev: Madrid (MAD) to Berlin (TXL)

Footnotes

¹ And, hey, I’m always looking for friends I can crash with, if you’d like to see me. I’d like to see you.

² The Appalachian Trail is listed. Like, the book honestly implies you need to take six months off and walk 2,000 miles as one of the thousand things you have to do before you die. Really? Really?

³ I simply don’t golf, for one. Although, if I had managed to visit 95% of these places, I’ll admit I’d probably figure out how to handle a nine iron.

⁴ To be fair, I’m not entirely sure the whole tourism industry had ramped up around Chernobyl when this book was published.

⁵ And rather expensive

⁶ And conveniently out of Schengen

⁷ I even got to pass through Bielefeld on the train to her place, and it’s just amazing what they’ve done. It really feels like a real city.

⁸ Although, again, European rural doesn’t really map to United States rural. Even where I was you’re only a 15 minute drive to a city of nearly 180,000 people.

⁹ Especially by suburban Ohio standards.

¹⁰ If they were even inside at all. Many of them were already removed as part of the restoration work.