Here’s something we argue about. What constitutes ‘visiting’ a country? Do you have to leave the airport? Stay overnight? Or what. I think we’d all agree that just flying over a country doesn’t count, you at least have to LAND. But what if you’re only in the airport?

I am firmly on the side of “Landing at the airport counts, because you are on the ground in that country.”

Others apparently disagree. (But why? Wouldn’t you want to increase your own country count as high as possible?)

So in a fruitless attempt to settle this argument, we’ve had these two framed posters hanging in our house for years. One for me, one for Cathy. “The 100 Most Interesting Cities in the World”, each says.

They’re scratch-off things, organized roughly by continent. Once you’ve visited a city, you scratch off the gold krogt and it reveals a colour image of that city underneath, with — oddly — a drawing of a taxi from that city.

Here’s a before-and-after example. One of us has been to Prague, one (me) hasn’t.

international disputes

But that wasn’t the main problem. We’d get into arguments, because one of us (guess who) had a more liberal definition of ‘visiting’ a city or country, and would attach notes to some of the squares. Like for instance

what if you don’t leave the airport?

I had a connecting flight through Beijing once. I was in the airport — and, thus, China — for 4 hours.

I visited Taipei for an entire 45 minutes (and then got right back on the same plane, back to Vancouver. Crazy mileage run. It got me Air Canada Super Elite status for 5 years. It was worth it.)

These should count, shouldn’t they?

How about that time I had a connecting flight through Hong Kong? Even if you want to argue that merely connecting in an airport doesn’t count, well, I had a shower in the arrivals lounge after a long flight from Vancouver and surely if you take off all your clothes in a country, that should count.

what does the Travellers Century Club say?

There’s an international organization, the Travellers Century Club, that attempts to keep track of people that have visited 100 or more countries.

They have some weird rules of what constitutes a country. They count 330 countries. The United Nations has 193 member states. Where do the other 137 come from?

According to their rules,

Any geographic area with a sovereign government or separately administered as a colony, protectorate, trusteeship territory, territory or mandate shall be considered as a separate country or territory

(There’s more, but that’s the first one.)

By these rules, the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island counts as a country, since it’s a distinct geographic area with its own provincial government, but Vancouver Island does NOT, even though it’s larger, because it doesn’t have its own government. And Newfoundland and Labrador doesn’t count either, because (I assume) the Labrador part is connected to the rest of mainland Canada.

It’s a pretty convoluted rule (one of many) but I guess people wanted to somehow count visiting Hawaii and Alaska as different from visiting the United States.

And of course this makes your number bigger.

Here’s their full list of 330 countries and territories.

Note that North America, by their strange rules, includes

• Alaska
• Canada
• Mexico
• Prince Edward Island
• St. Pierre & Miquelon
• United States (Contiguous)

OK, whatever.

You can download it as an Excel spreadsheet if you want to keep track yourself, and it will not surprise you that Cathy and I have done this, and at the moment, I am leading by a score of 63 to 57.

(you are no doubt curious what the delta is. Most places we’ve both been to; Cathy’s been to St. Pierre & Miquelon, Haiti, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin (the French part), Czechia and Hungary and I haven’t; conversely, I have been to … well you know what, I won’t bore you with the details other than to reiterate that I took off all my clothing in Hong Kong once so THAT COUNTS.)

Anyway. We’re getting rid of the posters

Now, it turns out we’re getting rid of these posters, because we had them framed and I think the guy sprayed some sort of lacquer or something on the poster and the scratch-off krogt is almost impossible to scratch off without knifing right through the poster itself.

wait, krogt?

yes.

krogt, n. (Chemical symbol kr)
The metallic silver coating found on fast-food game cards.

source: https://web.mit.edu/games/lib/sniglet.txt

so what are you replacing the posters with?

We found this nice corkboard map that you can stick pins in.

We came up with a colour scheme. Purple for places we’ve both been, blue if it was just me, red for Cathy, black, white, orange, green for places our kids have claimed, gold for future trips. It’s not exhaustive, but it looks kind of nice.

Surely that settles it, right?

ok NOW what’s the problem

Child had friends over, and helpfully messages me later. The following conversation took place over a period of several days.

child: Here’s a fun task for you: can you find the spelling mistake on the cork board map at Capilano

several hours of staring later

me: “Sacremento”
child: 😱 I guess there are multiple . It was a country name we had spotted

another hour later

me: “Cendral African Republic”
child: OK maybe there are a lot

one day later me: ‘Guatemeala’!
child: That’s the one!
me: Phew, I can stop looking, for now.

I better get down there and check it out.

I’ll keep you posted.