One of the questions I am often asked is “how many different countries have you been to?” In fact, one of my students this week asked just this question.

Of course, I have been to the United States of America since I was born here.

The first country that I visited was France. I was working for a French company and visited the factory in Lyon to take a training course. This was the beginning of my world travels and most of the trips outside the USA have been training related.

See my post: Postcards from Lyon

You may find it interesting that I have not made it back to France in all of my travels.

The second trip out of the country was to Canada, and I of course have been back many times. In fact, Canada is one of my favorite places to visit. Especially Toronto.

The third country was India. See my post First Trip to India. I have great memories of this trip. Perhaps though I should not say that the third country was India as I passed through Tokyo and Singapore to reach India. Of course I have visited and stayed in these countries since that time.

In the course of my travels I have racked up more than one million flown miles on United Airlines.

This translates into visiting a lot of countries around the world. I will now list the countries by continent.

North America

• United States of America
• Canada
• Mexico

Europe

• France
• England
• Germany
• Netherlands
• Italy
• Scotland*

Asia

• India
• Japan
• Singapore
• China
• South Korea
• Taiwan*
• Thailand
• Malaysia
• Turkey
• Israel
• Palestine*

Australia

South America

• Brazil
• Argentina
• Falkland Islands/Malvinas
• Chile
• Uruguay

Africa

• South Africa

Antarctica

If your count Antarctica as a country I have been to 27 different countries.

*Of course, listing Scotland, Taiwan and Palestine as separate countries would not be accepted by all, but I am listing them anyway 🙂

I have also been very close to some other countries.

We were in line for the border crossing to Switzerland near Como, Italy when my host’s daughter remembered that she didn’t have her ID with her. We were so close. Of course we were well within sight of Italy as we visited Lake Como. Someday I want to visit Switzerland and see where some of my Amish ancestors lived. See: Amish Origins

I have also been very close to the borders of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

I was just across a very narrow portion of the Jordan River from Jordan. I have been within sight of Lebanon several times and have been close to the Syrian border both in the Golan Heights and Turkey

The picture above was used in my posts Looking into Syria II and North of Galilee III.

I really need to visit more countries. Perhaps a bit of island hopping in the Caribbean. You can rack up a lot of countries very quickly.

How many countries have you been to?

Steven