Tuesday, March 28, 2023

World Travel: Been There, Done That

Tom Kando 

On March 26, there was an article in the Sacramento Bee about a local teacher who has been in every single country in the world. His name is Brian Asher and he teaches at Rio Americano high school, from where my children and grandchildren are all graduates. (Sadie being the last one; she will graduate this coming June). 

This piqued my interest not only because of our affiliation with this fine high school, but also because I, too, have been an avid traveler. 

There are 193 countries in the world, if you count all the members of the United Nations. If you add the two “countries” that are only “observers” but not full members (Palestine and the Vatican), you get a total 195. 

Be that as it may, Asher has been in every single country, including North Korea and Palestine. He started traveling internationally when he was twenty, and he is now thirty-seven. So that’s more than eleven countries each year.  Asher’s feat gave me the idea to catalogue my own travel record. Granted, it pales in comparison with Asher’s. But I am not competing. I just wanted to make my list and see what it looks like. I hope that you’ll agree that my list is (also) pretty impressive: 

Europe: 1. Hungary, 2. Austria, 3. Switzerland, 4. France, 5. Belgium, 6. Netherlands, 7. Germany, 8. East Germany, 9. UK, 10. Ireland, 11. Denmark,12. Sweden,13. Norway, 14. Iceland, 15. Finland, 16. Spain,17. Italy, 18. Greece, 19. Czechia, 20. Slovakia, 21. Poland, 22. Croatia, 23. Russia, 24. Belarus. 
Africa: 25. Morocco 
Oceania: 26. Australia 
Americas: 27. US, 28. Mexico, 29. Canada, 30. Jamaica 
Asia: 31.  Japan 32. South Korea 
Micro-countries: 33.Liechtenstein, 34.Luxembourg, 35. Monaco, 36. San Marino, 37. Vatican 

So I have been in thirty-seven countries of the world, on five continents. I have lived in four of these: seven years in Hungary, eight years in France, ten years in the Netherlands and the remaining fifty-six years in the US. 

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