Question: Where do all the scientists travel and hang out?

Andrew McDowall answered on 23 Apr 2024:

In general, all the same places that everyone else does!

More specifically, in my own case, travelling for work I go where I’m sent, mostly to my companies other facilities. Business travel isn’t particularly glamorous, another depatrute lounge, another anonymous hotel, another familiar plant. For conferences the furthest I went was Bratislava, a small but fine city with good memories of wonderful meals at Cafe Mayer even 25 years later. Can’t remember the first thing about the conference.

For travelling for pleasure I’m drawn to places with history, good stories and natural or man-made beauty. I try never to go to the same place twice, partly because the world is so large and filled with such wonders that if you saw one a day you’d never see them all; and partly because the memories are always first-sight. Seen the first time I see them not as they are but as I would have them, filled with new delight and wonder. Seen a second time I see them at their worst. Seen a third time I see them as they are, or closer to it.

Hanging out, these are places I must return to time and agian. I choose the places convenient to
me that, flawed as they are, tend more towards beauty than the alterative.

“Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.”
-Keats, “Endymion”