This summer, the Catalan skyrunner Kilian Jornet completed one of his greatest challenges: he connected the 82 4,000-meter peaks of the Alps in just 19 days. I wonder if anyone asked him if on his way from Mont Blanc to Gran Paradiso he made this or that detour, or if he visited this or that typical spot.
When I go to a conference or on a short, intensive research trip, I always get asked these kinds of questions. Academic tourism has done a great disservice to our profession. It is probably all well deserved: scholars have been very persistent about it. I remember my frustration when I served on committees that allocated department travel funds and found, year after year, applications to travel to cool and trendy places to present the same old (tweaked) paper… This has probably made me overconscious. And so when I go somewhere for work, I basically spend all my time working.