I've moved around a lot. Here is a list of some of the places I have lived in, for a year or more, in approximately chronological order. These maps were created using Open Street Map data using the excellent pretty maps package.
Where I was born
A small hospital town where my parents worked.
The Wilderness Years: Part 1
The first of a series of small villages that I have no memory of, only a photograph or two with faded inscriptions on the back. I know I lived somewhere here, but I couldn't tell you where. Or when.
The Wilderness Years: Part 2
Sometimes these maps look like they're empty because these places are so isolated that there aren't any maps of them. They are in a curious way representative of the blankness in my mind. I know I lived there, this is a fact; but there is no memory to recall, only a blank space where there should be things.
The Mountains
And sometimes they look like they're empty because there was nothing. Just our house in the middle of the mountains, with a steep road to get to it, and endless wilderness beyond.
The Science Institute
Yet another campus institution in the middle of a dense city. I could only hear birds and the desultory strolling of students from my house, while outside the walls traffic roared and heat radiated from the granite pavements.
The Hospital
After a while in the wilderness it was decided that I needed an education so we moved to the City where we lived on a hospital campus.
Göttingen
I lived for a year in student housing in Göttingen, where everything was strange and alien. The University buildings and area is clearly visible with open green spaces and straight lines.
College
Where I lived for three years for College. A beautiful building, and yet another walled and fortified oasis of calm keeping the city at bay.
The Hall of Graduate Studies
One of the things I liked about my student housing at Yale was the fact that it looked old. It wasn't actually, but I'm glad they made the effort.
Göttingen: Part 2
After the first year I moved out of student housing into an apartment. You can see the dense core of the old city here.
The first real apartment
After my first year I moved out of student housing, into an apartment that I shared with three other people. It was big, it was filled with people, and I lived there for three years.
My favorite apartment
People tend to move around when you're a student. We moved to another apartment, owned by a chiropractor, that was lovely and beautiful and filled with light. It was also infested with mice.
The attic
I was on year 6 of my PhD. I'm going to be done in a few months, I thought foolishly. So I didn't think too hard about this place, where I eventually spent an entire year.
The brown box
Finding an apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts was incredibly difficult. It took weeks before we came to terms with the fact that we weren't the right sort of people. This was the only place we could find, and we couldn't complain about the smell of dog in the kitchen, or the rats in the walls.
Cambridge
We moved to Cambridge thinking that it would be great to live in the city and do fun things in the city. Shortly after that the world ended and we spent several years waiting out the pandemic.
Where I live now
This is where I live now. As you can see from the map, it's in the burbs, but that's as close to the city we can get without selling a kidney.