Tom Kando 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.