Every country counts! Or.. does it?

I heard of this Danish travellers club where you can become a member when the amount of countries you’ve travelled to equals your age (23 in my case of course 😛 😛 ) And every new member is introduced with name, age and amount of countries travelled to.

This made me think about this ´country counting´ concept. There is a bunch of -´The first (fill in nationality) to have travelled to every country in this world within (fill in timeline) without (fill in exception) or with (fill in something else)´- travellers out there. And absolutely! Sure, I am also the one that is drooling in front of the Lonely Planet travel section in every book store I put foot it, and me too wonder about those mysterious sounding countries like ´Namibia´, and ´Myanmar´, and even more… I also have a scratch map in my room and a ´countries been´ app on my phone, where I feel totally excited when I can scratch/tick off a new country (in case you are curious: I am at 57 right now. But who´s counting right? 😉).

But I also think about how I lived in Colombia for almost six years. Do you know how many countries I could have ´counted´ during those years? And instead I stayed all of them (mostly, still managed to visit 12 new countries during those 6 years though ;)) in one country!!

So, as I always do with my posts, I am not picking a ´side´ in this ever ongoing debate among travellers. I will raise some questions, give my opinion on both sides and then.. it’s up to you. I would love to hear some of your ideas!

So my main doubt for myself when I count the countries I have travelled to is: When am I allowed to ´count´ them? What does ´visiting a country´ mean? Me for example, the only part I´ve seen of the whole entire Canada is Montreal, I was there for 10 days for a conference and some time before and after. Does that count? Did I see ´Canada´ now? I’m fairly sure I didn’t! But I saw Montreal! (and loved it by the way), and I managed to hang out with locals.

In Burkina Faso I definitely managed to get in touch with the locals 😉

I spent 7 days in Prague, does that mean I can ´count the Czech Republic´? I kind of feel like not. Or when I cycled through Morocco for 7 days? Then I kind of feel like ´yes´. So for me, is it about the length? The different pieces of a country I have seen? How much time I have spent with locals?

So now I have made some rules for myself.

I need to have been there minimum 5 days for it to count.
I need to have mingled with locals, somehow.
I need to have stepped out of the obvious tourist area.
If it’s a big country and I’ve only seen a small part of it (like the Canada example), then I am only allowed to scratch that part of the country that I’ve actually seen
I will never become one of those to judge: either side 😉

The excitement of landing in a new country is almost as high as seeing my own Spanish home area from above 🙂 Counting countries would only be half the fun without a steady base to come home to

But my main conclusion of all is in the end.. do I get excited by the idea of visiting a new country and scratching a new piece of my map?! YES! Would I not go to a country because I have been there before. Absolutely NOT!

And you?!