I’ve decided that one of my goals in life is to make sure that my age never exceeds the number of countries I have visited. I need to get my butt to South America and Africa if I want to make it to 40. By the way, I am not counting airports (RKV, RAR, SLC). (Using IATA airport codes makes me seem smarter than I really am!)
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7 replies on “23 Countries Old”
So you’ve got like a month until that question mark becomes a country or a fail.
I guess I worded that wrong. I’m giving myself the whole year to even that out. Probably by going to Vietnam or Laos over winter break.
The more I look at that list, the more incredible it seems. I was even with you up to 4 (I consider Canada an inevitability for someone who grows up in Alaska and doesn’t live there their entire life) and I’m still sitting at 5. Would the quickest way to catch up be to just fly to one of the Balkans and rent a car? Probably safer than tracing the Ivory Coast of Africa. Any way, impressive.
Wow, how pretentious of you.
Pretentious, maybe. But is there anything wrong with it? In my opinion, the main flaw in making a list like this is that it obfuscates actual experience and actual places visited. Sure, by visiting Vladivostok for a week, I’ve technically been to Russia. But Vladivostok is an anomalous Russian city, being only 150 years old and centered in East Asia, ten times closer to Seoul, Tokyo and Pyongyang than Moscow or St. Petersburg. So can I really say that I have been to Russia? For the purposes of this gimmicky post, yeah. But really, no. If one is going to keep track of one’s travels, a more equitable system would be to somehow divide the world into autonomous regions or cities or cultural and linguistic areas. But that would get complicated. This is a good enough method because it at least keeps my eye on the next place I want to go.
Hey, you can join me at the finish line in Qurazazate, Morocco in April 2009 or 2010.
Happy Birthday!
mom
Next stop: Cuba.