Counting the countries...

A popular dinner party topic revolves around how many countries you're visited. Who has visited the most often takes priority over what the countries were like or whether you had a nice trip. the conversation then seems to diverge into the most far flung country you have visited and whether transiting through a country "counts". Ultimately, the question becomes what "counts" as a country. Does visiting England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales count as 1 country or 4? What about Gibraltar? There are usual some stock standard answers, which I'll go through now...


One method of counting countries is to use the International Standards Organisation (ISO) list of countries. You can find a list here. Under this definition, Wales is out, but Gibraltar is in. At this point, some people get cross and say they're counting Wales anyway. The counter argument is to then start counting New South Wales as a country along with all the US states.

Another tricky question is countries that are countries no more. Hong Kong is now part of China, as is Macau. Do they really count? Going the other way, is Yugoslavia. If you visited in the 1980's, it's just 1 country. It's now loads of separate countries!

There's also some debate about what you need to do in a country to be able to count it? Some people argue that unless you catch public transport in a country, you haven't really been there. Others object to counting stop overs where you don't leave the airport as not allowed.

If you want to be supremely politically correct, then you should never count Taiwan. After all, we all know it's a province of China, so not a real country. Unless you're Taiwanese of course, in which case you will probably have a vastly different opinion.

A slight variation to counting countries is to count the number of cities you've visited that have a population greater than a million. There's a handy list on the internet here.

So what is it that makes us all tally up the number of countries we've visited? Is it shear boastfulness? More often than not, I think it starts up a good conversation. Normally the people who have this sort of conversation are losers, *cough* or people who have traveled a lot. Generally, it's a good chance to have a good travel discussion. Finding someone who's been to more places than you, however, is always deflating, so maybe it's best not to ask!