Top 5 Travel Destination Wishlist

Greenland
Eastern Provinces of Canada
Kamchatka

You freak me out. :eek:

When I read the first post this afternoon, I thought exactly of these three.

Greenland fascinates me since I read about the Viking settlers (who literally got extinct around 1400) in Jared Diamond´s "Collapse". Great book.

I had Russia´s far east in my mind for a longer time, but since I speak no shred of Russian I never went. Going to countries where you can understand the locals at least a bit is just so much more fun. English and Spanish cover a lot of countries (almost 4 entire continents) and I haven´t yet run out of them.

And then I´m curious about Canada since I was in Patagonia - i liked it a lot and figure Canada must be pretty similar.

I´d like to add to our common list:

North Korea. I guess a few days would be enough. It must be the weirdest country on Earth. I know two who went there.

Iraq. The cradle of civilisation. I guess that´ll have to stay on my wishlist for another decade or two.

Woo-hoo. I just notice I mentioned two axis-of-evil-countries but not the USA. Please don´t take offense! ;)

Klaus, have you tried the Faroe Islands?

Ah, Faroe. My land of heroes.

I´m a German living in Austria. They have an official national holiday here on October 26. The unofficial national holiday, and pretty much the "real one" is on June 21 though. That´s when they celebrate their 3:2 victory over Germany in the world cup of 1978 in Cordoba, Argentina. This year is the 30th anniversary. They will start to celebrate a bit earlier this year, because Austria will play against Germany in the EURO 2008 on June 16. They will make damn sure that all Germans in Austria remember that dark day and hope they can humiliate us into another defeat.

All this is why the German community in Austria has put their own "national holiday" on September 12 - to celebrate our friends from Faroe who beat Austria in the EURO 1992 qualifiers 1:0 on September 12, 1990 in Landskrona, Sweden. We celebrate Torkil Nielsen who scored for Faroe. Austria missed the tournament and the coach was fired the next day. By the way, they were stupid enough to hire him again - Josef Hickersberger will lead Austria´s team until June 17, 2008 - after decisive defeats against Poland, Croatia and an especially humiliating 0:13 against Germany, who will win this tournament without doubt. ;)

Greenland
Eastern Provinces of Canada
Kamchatka

Great ideas... I'm interested in seeing Labrador and Hudson Bay. It always seemed close to where I am from (Massachusetts), but it's probably farther away than it looks on a map.

The flight to Japan from Washington DC went north over Hudson Bay to the Queen Elizabeth Islands, across the north coast of Alaska, and Siberia before going south to Japan. I was kicking myself for not being able to get a window seat. :(

when i finish up here in banff

The Canadian Rockies is another place I want to see. Maybe it should be a "top 10" or "top 20" list instead of "top 5"

North Korea.
Iraq.

Those would be interesting trips...

i dont know about iraq, but apparenly iran is absolutely amazing - the people are so eager to meet westeners and teach them about the 'real' iran.

Yes I heard that too from someone who has spent a few weeks there in the 90ies. Many Iranis are quite embarrased of the religious fundamentalists governing them.
Iraq must have been even better. A pretty secular society with a large, well educated middle class and lots of women having good jobs - very untypical for an Arab country. No longer, unfortunately.