How many countries/cities have you travelled?

This is a room for the discussion of travel plans or experiences and the culture of places you have visited or plan to visit.
Fangio
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Re: How many countries/cities have you travelled?

Postby Fangio » Thu Apr 28, 2016 12:10 pm

Marais wrote:
Fangio wrote:
Marais wrote:Personally i'm not interested in visiting places outside of Europe.

Pretty sad, but well... To each his own... I just hope it's not only the cost of it, since there are lots of places actually cheaper than travelling within Europe (taking into account the cost of accommodation, food, local transports, etc.).

Sad? There are a thousand lifetimes to discover within my own continent which are part of my own heritage. If being apart from the crowd in this modern globalised world where someone who knows nothing about their own culture feels drawn to an alien one makes me 'sad', then i'll take it as a compliment. ;)

I get your point, but you can have both. With my girlfriend, we sometimes have wonderful weekends out just two train hours away from Paris, and France (and Europe in general) certainly have the most density of great places to discover anywhere in the world. Still, there is a lot in common within European cultures, while you can have real cultural "shocks" in Asia, Africa, South America, etc. But then again, to each his own and your choice is perfectly respectable, I'm not criticizing it, I just can't really understand it.

@Mooby: Yes, you're right, it's Lithuania, stupid me! :oops:
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alexkelbo
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Re: How many countries/cities have you travelled?

Postby alexkelbo » Thu Apr 28, 2016 1:33 pm

Stelle wrote:Africa
Kenya
Tanzania
Malawi
Zimbabwe
Zambia
South Africa
Nice. ;)
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Luso
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Re: How many countries/cities have you travelled?

Postby Luso » Thu Apr 28, 2016 3:14 pm

Europe: Portugal, Spain, France, UK (and Gibraltar), Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Italy, San Marino, Greece. Malta.

Africa: Morocco, Egypt.

America: USA (Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and D.C.).

Asia: India, Nepal, China, Russia, Mongolia, Jordan.

Geographical details: I was in Tibet and Siberia; drove from Kathmandu to Lhasa; went from Moscow to Beijing by train; boarded a car in Lisbon one morning and dined in the Rif mountains of Morocco the evening of the same day.
Last edited by Luso on Sat Feb 09, 2019 6:54 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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micoyeung
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Re: How many countries/cities have you travelled?

Postby micoyeung » Thu Apr 28, 2016 3:18 pm

Iversen wrote:Answer to micoyeung:

I like to prepare my travels - not necessarily so that all details are settled beforehand, but I want to have a plan A and a plan B and a plan C ... and that has become much easier with the advent of the internet. I have just been spending a couple of hours researching the zoos and aquaria of the areas I'm going to visit in Germany next month, and in the old days that would have meant buying guidebooks and asking for directions in tourist information offices. OK, both are still relevant, but now I can check buslines and opening hours online and print out maps for places in the suburbs which aren't shown on the maps in a standard guidebook. I can even check train times between for instance Oberhausen Sealife Aquarium and the zoo of Gelsenkirchen so that I minimize the time I waste waiting. And I relish in having that amount of information at my disposal !

So it was a shock when I arrived in Haiti earlier this month and discovered that there aren't any street signs and the taptaps haven't got signs telling where the are going, and that Google maps didn't even have the street in the suburb Delmas where my Guesthouse was located registered - and not even the name of the somewhat larger street that street lead out to was registrered in Google maps. Luckily MapQuest had a good map with more street names - but you don't find those street names in the streets when you finally get there.

Actually I think there is some resemblance between the way I learn languages and the way I prepare my voyages (even in case of a group tour, as in Haiti/Dom.Rep.): I don't mind improvisations, but always based on the best possible level of information. And personal encounters during these travels are OK, but they are not my main reason for travelling - just as speaking isn't my main reason for learning languages.


I appreciate your courage,passion and flexibility so much, as well as that you do have a terrific logic on planning things.
when I decide to go somewhere for some reasons, I would make a simple plan,too.
I just don't want to get in trouble and can do nothing to help.
I've gained a lot from reading your reply.
thanks.
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Re: How many countries/cities have you travelled?

Postby chokofingrz » Thu Apr 28, 2016 3:54 pm

I don't consider myself well-travelled, but:

Europe: England, Scotland, Wales, Spain*, Portugal, Italy, France*, Belgium*, Netherlands, Luxembourg*, Germany*, Austria*, Switzerland, Denmark, Bulgaria, Cyprus
Asia: Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam
Americas: USA
Africa: Tunisia

*spoke some foreign there

Wishlist: Japan, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Croatia, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Russia, Turkey, Greece, Morocco, Latin America
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Montmorency
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Re: How many countries/cities have you travelled?

Postby Montmorency » Thu Apr 28, 2016 5:42 pm

alexraasch wrote:Let's see:

Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Switzerland, Luxemburg, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, United States, Canada. Oh and also because I went before the reunification I'm couting West Germany, too. :mrgreen:


That's a good point: I visited Berlin soon after the "Mauerfall", but before Reunification. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to visit East Berlin on that occasion, although it would have been possible. If I had, I would have been able to list both "East Germany" and "West Germany".
(My wife did manage to make it "through the wall" though, while I was stuck in meetings in the west...).
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Iversen
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Re: How many countries/cities have you travelled?

Postby Iversen » Fri Apr 29, 2016 11:40 am

I am a member of a travellers' club, and there we have some criteria which I also follow in my own registrations:

1) In doubtful cases we generally follow the membership list of the UN - though we have kept Taiwan on the list from the days where it represented the whole of China (now only the People's Republic is represented). All in all we have 196 items on our country list.

2) We follow the map as it is now - so I have only one Germany on my list even though I visited both BRD and DDR in the days of yore, and I have listed Uzbekistan even though it was a Sovjet republic when I visited it.

3) You must spend at least 24 hours in a place without interruption - which means that you have passed through customs and pass control in airports. But for boat trips we accept that you spend 24 hours within the national territory as long as you do set foot on land, and we also grudgingly accept people who somehow got inside a country between the offical border control points.

Example: I have never spent 24 hours in a row within the border of the Vatican so the Vatican is not on my list. And Fiji and Pakistan aren't there either since I only sat a couple of hours in the transfer hall of an airport in those two countries.

There are other lists out there which includes far more places. For instance some lists splits the United Kingdom into a number of countries, but nah... we don't.
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alexkelbo
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Re: How many countries/cities have you travelled?

Postby alexkelbo » Fri Apr 29, 2016 11:48 am

Iversen wrote:2) We follow the map as it is now - so I have only one Germany on my list even though I visited both BRD and DDR in the days of yore, and I have listed Uzbekistan even though it was a Sovjet republic when I visited it.

How do you deal with the reverse case, e.g., if Scotland or Cataluna became independent? If I have visited Castilla and Cataluna, do I add one more country to my list?
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tiia
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Re: How many countries/cities have you travelled?

Postby tiia » Fri Apr 29, 2016 2:15 pm

Europe: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany ( ;) ), Greece, Hungary, Italy (Southern Tirol...), Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, UK

Outside Europe: Australia, Canada, India, Japan, US

I only counted those countries where I've stayed overnight. But all of them fulfill the 24h-rule easily: I've always stayed at least once for two nights or more.


added in 2016/2017: Poland, Hungary
added in 2022: Denmark and finally more parts of Spain
added in 2023: Latvia and Lithuania
Last edited by tiia on Sat Aug 26, 2023 7:01 am, edited 6 times in total.
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Iversen
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Re: How many countries/cities have you travelled?

Postby Iversen » Fri Apr 29, 2016 6:06 pm

According to the 'situation now' criterion you would have to add Scotland resp. Catalunya if they became independent even though they weren't independent when you visited them. In my club we introduced that interpretation in order to get simplify our lists - otherwise we would have to keep track of when each former colony became independent and in some cases also of changing borders, changing status in the UN and other complications. And it would be complicated to deal with situations where you had visited a country that later was split up, like the former Yugoslavia - should Jugoslavia 'disappear' when you had revisited all the places as independent countries which you originally visited as parts of Yugoslavia or should it remain on the list forever?

We just got tired of that and asked our applicants instead to look at the map as it was at the time of their application and then mark those countries that covered all their travels. It is may not be a theoretically perfect solution, but it has functioned well for more than 10 years now. If Scotland or Catalunya do become independent we have a second list of 'territories' which are marked when people visit them, and both places are on that list. If some totally unexpected place becomes independent - like for instance Gurnsey or Man - then I suppose the powers that be in our club would ask members to indicate whether they have been there.

And the only 'country' I still haven't revisited since it became independent is Uzbekistan, which I visited in the late eighties under Gorbatjov.

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