craven.fr (.ox.ac.uk)

When you go to campgrounds in the US, you will see some Winnebagos with maps of the United States on the side, with the states coloured in where they have stayed. These hardcore campers working their way across the lower 48 states have always impressed me, both by their dedication to the RV lifestyle, and for having such a developed, deliberate way to organise their travels. Likewise, some people have a particular type of souvenir that they collect; these collections are then a convenient way for them to look back on their travels.

I have never really had a goal or theme like that with which to organise my travels: I've always gone to the place that was the most interesting and most feasible at any given time, although I have tried to make small detours when possible to add more countries to the "count" of places I've been. Lately though, I came up with a travel theme which I found quite gripping in its own right, and which can also give me an orientation to travelling in general.

This new theme is to visit and attend a performance at the world's greatest opera houses. This is something I want to do anyway, simply as an opera fan. How can you be an opera buff and not dream of attending a performance at La Scala in Milan, or seeing the Ring cycle at the Bayreuth Festival? The world is replete with destination opera companies like the Met in New York, the Bastille in Paris, Covent Garden in London; as well as destination opera houses like the Garnier, Opéra-Comique, or Versailles in Paris, the Bolshoi in Moscow, and the iconic modern opera houses of Sydney and Copenhagen. Since London, Brussels, and Paris are all only about an hour away from Lille anyway, I can even make some progress on this without connecting it to a huge trip. While I don't know when I'll ever get to Australia, at least this is the kind of plan that I will be just as easy to pursue when I'm 60 years old as it is when I'm 30. Indeed, since a lot of these opera houses don't put on performances during the summer, many will probably be more feasible in retirement than during my working years. (Not to mention the great difficulty of even getting tickets for La Scala and Vienna, or the more than nine-year waiting list for Bayreuth!)

Don't get me wrong, this does not mean I am going to force every family vacation to fit into an opera pilgrimage. But it does give me a new orientation and motivation for my future travels, and since we went to the Kirov on our honeymoon (pictured at right), I can 'retcon' that trip into this new framework as well.

And, I think I'll enjoy doing this a lot more than I would enjoy checking off Delaware on my Winnebago :-)