We travelled in November to Korea and Japan with our friends Paul and Cathy... which means we can add 2 countries to our list of visited countries. We often talk about tracking which countries we've visited. My list of countries is, by order of Cecilia's list:
Canada, Mexico, USA, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, East Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Morocco, Japan, South Korea.
A total of 21 countries. Clearly some more work in Asia, South America and Africa is in order.
And as always, the issue of "what is a country" comes up.. Some of the neat boundary conditions:
- Overnight stays only?
- Have to remember the visit? excludes visits when young and/or inebriated?
- If the place visited is part of a country that splits? Is Prague visited when part of czeckoslovakia and also when part of czech replublic count as 1 or 2 countries?
- part of a country that merges? Does East Berlin visited on October 2 and 3rd 1990 count as 2 countries or one?
- How about protectorates? Guam, etc.?
- The one country/two country debates like Taiwan compared to China. Does visits to Taiwan and mainland China count as 2 or 1?
My rough criteria: If a country changes is "state", that is splits/joins with other areas, each visit counts. For example, in 1990 I visited Prague - when in czechoslovakia - and East Germany when it was a separate country. I also visited Prague in 1999 as part of Czech replublic (what a party when the Czechs beat Russia for Olympic Gold in hockey) and I visited Germany in 1994. I count these as 4 countries as it seems to me that these are quite distinctly different political entities. I don't count Scotland/Wales/Ireland as separate entities.
There's some organizations that face this problem already, notably the UN and the Olympics. I think I roughly use the UN criteria. I don't use the Olympic criteria in at least one regard because I don't count Scotland/...
Comments (9)
Hi Dave! I keep my list on Virtual Tourist - see http://www.virtualtourist.com/m/m/f464/ - you might want to as well :-)
Best wishes,
Simon
Posted by Simon Phipps | December 30, 2003 5:02 PM
Posted on December 30, 2003 17:02
so am I the only one in the world who couldn't immediately find the extended text of all these entries? clicking on the damned date is NOT intuitive.
Posted by Nic Cotton | December 30, 2003 10:10 PM
Posted on December 30, 2003 22:10
Thanks for the feedback Nic! I'll update the blog to make it clearer.
Posted by Dave O | December 31, 2003 3:27 AM
Posted on December 31, 2003 03:27
this site is cool if you're collecting countries:
http://douweosinga.com/projects/visitedcountries
Posted by paul downey | January 21, 2004 9:24 AM
Posted on January 21, 2004 09:24
My only current rule is "overnight stays only" - this means that the trip to Switzerland I did by coach counts as one country rather than including France, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium in the list. We did at least stop in Luxembourg but it really can't count :-)
Posted by Jane | February 27, 2004 5:25 AM
Posted on February 27, 2004 05:25
The most marvelous country I've ever visited is Monaco....
You what I'm talking about :)
Everything is just so clean, nice and sweat that you really don't care about the money you have to spend.... And in Monaco, you have to have a lot of them....
But it worth.
Posted by AVS | April 1, 2004 5:47 AM
Posted on April 1, 2004 05:47
i've only been to poland, germany, france, us and canada so far, but would love to do more travelling... i'll be back when i've had the chance to (hope this site will still be up)
Posted by phoenix | May 6, 2004 10:58 AM
Posted on May 6, 2004 10:58
I recommend you to visit Vienna next time! mario
Posted by mario | May 12, 2004 2:38 PM
Posted on May 12, 2004 14:38
I suggest the above mentioned hotel directory. See you Billy
Posted by billy | May 19, 2004 8:26 AM
Posted on May 19, 2004 08:26