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Where I’ve Been

Below is an interactive map showing every country I’ve visited (in orange) since leaving my home town in 2009. Click on any of them that’s a darker shade to view the posts I’ve written. Not that many at the moment, so stay tuned!

The blue-coloured countries are the ones highest on my to-do list. Unfortunately, two of them should have been orange by now if 2020 hadn’t been full of surprises. Funnily enough, one of my grandmothers always hated leap years, we never quite knew why but the whole family, and most likely the world, is in agreement with her now – bring on 2021, 2022, …!

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Number of countries:  40 out of 198*

Number of continents: 5 out of 7

*Some of your fellow travellers asked me how they might be able to create such map for themselves, so I told them I’ve been using a free mobile app called ‘been’ to track my country count on the go before. Their breakdown varies a bit from the one I’ve chosen for this blog but it should still give you a good idea how much ground you’ve covered so far.

Why 198 countries some of you may ask potentially working towards a different number? While we can all agree on the number of continents in the world, there are various lists of countries floating about offering conflicting information on what does and doesn’t count as one.

Having done a lot of reading during lockdown, I came across a book by Gunnar Garfors, ‘198: How I Ran Out of Countries’, telling his story about visiting all countries of the world before turning 40, something so ludicrous that one of his friends bet him a beer for each country on the list being sure he would not be able to do it. That was in 2008, Gunnar completed his mission in 2013, and 197 beers** and a bottle of rum later, he did it again in 2018, for good measure I assume.

**The original country count from 2008 did not include South Sudan which gained independence in 2011.

Some might consider it slightly torturous to read such material during a lockdown situation but it turned out to be rather inspiring and finally allowed me to establish a definite count of the places I’ve been to and still need to visit. Clearly, I’m far behind Gunnar who already scored 85 countries before even starting, so achieving such goal before turning 40 might be a bit of a push, especially with current pandemic and budget limitations in mind but hey, a girl can still dream, so here a list of countries I’ve visited so far:

Africa:

Antarctica:***

  • None

***Looking at the breakdown of continents, have you ever wondered why Antarctica is listed as one but the Arctic is not? I have, so I had a little google and interestingly enough, the attribute defining a continent is the term ‘landmass’ and as we all know (I didn’t), the Arctic or North Pole is a sea surrounded by land unlike the Antarctic, the South Pole, which is a landmass surrounded by sea. Every day’s a school day, ey?!

Asia:

  • Azerbaijan
  • Cambodia
  • China
  • Indonesia
  • Laos
  • Malaysia
  • Philippines (Mount Pinatubo)
  • Singapore
  • Taiwan
  • Thailand
  • Vietnam

Europe:

  • Austria
  • Bosnia & Herzegovina
  • Croatia
  • Cyprus
  • Denmark
  • France
  • Germany
  • Greece
  • Hungary
  • Ireland
  • Italy (Crotone)
  • Luxembourg
  • Montenegro
  • Netherlands
  • Norway (Tromsø)
  • Portugal
  • Spain
  • Switzerland
  • United Kingdom (Lake District, Shetland, Isle of Skye, North Downs Way, Vobster Quay, Giant’s Causeway, Bristol, Rosemarkie)

North America:

Oceania:

South America:

  • None