What cities do you want to visit?
I’m not really someone who carries a list of destinations in my head. Places don’t usually attract to me on their own. They arrive through people—through stories, relationships, and small associations that linger.
Montreal comes to mind first, though I’ve never been there. My wife travelled there by rail many years ago to visit a friend while I was caught up in research and deadlines. She loved it. Not in a postcard way, but in the way that comes from being welcomed into someone else’s life. Harvesting maple water with friends was one of the highlights. I think I’d like to see Montreal through that lens—not as a city to visit, but as a story I’ve already been told.
Leeds is different. My grandmother was born there, before moving to Australia as a young girl. I’d love to walk the streets she once knew, not to uncover anything dramatic, but simply to stand where her life began before it unfolded elsewhere. Some cities matter because they hold the first chapter of a family story.
We have a friend who travels to Riga every year. There must be a reason she keeps returning. Places that invite return rather than conquest interest me. I’m curious about what draws her back, and what kind of attentiveness a city requires to become familiar in that way.
And then there’s Tromsø. After travelling to Antarctica earlier this year on a Norwegian expedition, I find myself drawn north rather than south. Tromsø—gateway to the Arctic, a place of research, resilience, Sami culture, long nights and endless days—feels like a continuation of that encounter with the edges of the world. Not for adventure alone, but for the questions such places ask of us.
I suppose the cities I want to visit are less about ticking places off a list, and more about following threads—of relationship, memory, curiosity, and wonder—taking the opportunity to experience them for myself.
The Afterword 
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