No, on all three. You haven't really visited Stockholm if you just go to a convention in Stockholm. You've visited a convention in Stockholm, not the city. You haven't really visited California, you've visited San Diego. Or your family.
I'll elaborate a bit on why I think like this, because I realize it sounds a bit too philosophical.
"Places" in mental geography are constructs of our minds to make us orient in the world. Some "places" are defined fairly easily because they are easily perceived. The city is such a place. It is a landscape, a cityscape, and while the exact borders of the city might be fuzzy, we all know the city, just as we know a mountain valley or a great plain, or our home or the street we live on. But a state is something fuzzy with exact borders, an administrative construct not primarily made by mental geography.
It is much easier to have seen a city than a state, because we can define a city ourselves much easier. Usually, the state is something someone else defined for us, but then it really is no place you yourself know by experience. Just a vision, a dream, an idea, an order from the Man...
You've visited California when you have defined from perosnal experience California for yourself, "your California". Not by plotting your coordinates on a map grid and seeing what administrative district your location was in.
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Date: 2005-10-16 05:41 pm (UTC)I'll elaborate a bit on why I think like this, because I realize it sounds a bit too philosophical.
"Places" in mental geography are constructs of our minds to make us orient in the world. Some "places" are defined fairly easily because they are easily perceived. The city is such a place. It is a landscape, a cityscape, and while the exact borders of the city might be fuzzy, we all know the city, just as we know a mountain valley or a great plain, or our home or the street we live on. But a state is something fuzzy with exact borders, an administrative construct not primarily made by mental geography.
It is much easier to have seen a city than a state, because we can define a city ourselves much easier. Usually, the state is something someone else defined for us, but then it really is no place you yourself know by experience. Just a vision, a dream, an idea, an order from the Man...
You've visited California when you have defined from perosnal experience California for yourself, "your California". Not by plotting your coordinates on a map grid and seeing what administrative district your location was in.