About a year ago, a friend of mine told me about a challenge to travel 30 countries before turning 30 years old. The latter happens 30 days from today so I’m quite happy to announce that I’ve made my goal a few weeks back. So, where have I been?
- Austria
- Belgium
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Egypt
- France
- Germany1
- Greece
- Hungary
- That other state in the Middle East
- Italy
- Jordan
- Kingdom of Saudi Arabia2
- Latvia
- Lebanon
- Morocco
- Malaysia
- The Netherlands
- Norway
- Oman
- Persia3
- Russia
- Slovakia
- Spain
- Sri Lanka
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- UAE
- UK
- USA
To complete the alphabet, I’m missing:
- Q: Qatar4
- T: most likely Turkey5, maybe Thailand
- V: I’ve been to Vatican City, which doesn’t count for the same reasons as Turkey. So it’ll be either Vietnam or Venezuela
- W: Turns out, there’s no sovereign state starting with W, so I’ll have to wait until either Wales or Wallis and Futuna declare independence6.
- X: …
- Y: Yemen7
- Z: Wikipedia claims it’s easier to get to Zambia than to Zimbabwe, so I guess that settles the question.
- Yes, I was born here, but it still counts. I’ve seen more places in Germany than anywhere else. And since I was born in the GDR, it should actually count twice :) ↩
- Ok, maybe I cheated with the name because I needed a country with K ↩
- I needed a P as well ↩
- Should’ve thought of that before, I guess ↩
- Already spent a few hours in Istanbul, but because I didn’t stay overnight, it doesn’t count ↩
- So there is a potential upside to this whole Brexit referendum ↩
- I’ll put that one on hold for some time ↩