I’ll admit it, I like setting some odd personal goals and can get pretty competitive. Combined with my love of travel, this has turned me into an avid country collector. I am always trying to add visits to new countries to my list. It is not as simple as checking off boxes, though. Each country collector must set their own baseline for what defines a visit and what qualifies as a country. I discuss my qualifications for counting a “visit” in a separate post. In this post I’ll discuss why deciding what should count as a country may be more complicated than it first appears.
Continue reading “How Many Countries are in the World?”What Counts as a “Visit” When Counting Countries?
It is natural for avid travelers to begin counting countries at some point in their journey. For me, the urge to start keeping count happened in my early 20’s while I was living in Japan and realized that I was closing in on my 25th UN member state. Suddenly I had a goal: visit 30 countries by 30. I really enjoy setting and surpassing goals, and I managed hit that one by my mid-twenties. So, I upped the ante to 50 countries by 30. I beat that, too. But the higher my count climbed and the more I came into contact with fellow country counters, the more I began to struggle with the fact that there really is no universally accepted definition for what qualifies as a visit.
Continue reading “What Counts as a “Visit” When Counting Countries?”