Traveling at home

  1. Offline blogging
  2. Traveling at home
  3. Taking the plunge: Quitting to pursue a life of travel

Most people behave differently when they are out traveling and when they are home. There is probably good explanations why this happens.

When you are out traveling you are much more likely to talk to a stranger, take the road less traveled, join the party or in general just do something out of the ordinary.  As soon as you are home again you like routines. You have responsibilities, you have a job and you have mortgages to pay. You have your own friends – you don’t need to go out and make new ones. You go to the same clubs and you eat the same places.

This, of course, is very much a personal thing and some people are better than others at engaging in unusual events. Some might say I just described the difference between an introvert and an extrovert but that’s definitely not the full story. I consider myself fairly extrovert but I don’t nearly act the way at home as I do abroad.  Which leads me to my point: I will try to “travel” more while at home.

Some specific ways I’m trying to do this:

  • Go to public events, preferably free and out of my comfort zone. Things I wouldn’t normally consider interesting. Two days ago I went to a service in a nearby church. Not special? They invited my favorite danish rappers (Pede B) to go there and perform. Very special situation – mix of normal church goers and hip hoppers in the crowd and he didn’t hold back on the swearing in Gods house.
  • Join private parties/events – don’t stay home because you’re shy. I realize this can be hard for many but it’s totally worth it. I promise.

Let me get in a bit on a recent example of traveling at home. A colleague from work, Ritika, asked me, while the entire company were out on a team dinner, if I wanted to come visit her and her husband at home at some point. I sat next to her and we talked about the differences between Danish and Indian culture. Being me and being on my above described quest, I immediately said yes while one of my colleagues looked at me in disbelief. In Denmark it is not something you just do. The border between work and private is very strong – two separate compartments. Furthermore, I didn’t actually know her that well all things considered. But this was a great chance to experience Indian culture AND get to know my colleague.

I won’t go into details of the evening but I felt very welcome – I had a beer with her husband and between him having to do work because of an emergency and her getting food ready they took turns keeping me entertained.

We talked about Holi and Diwali which are two Indian festivals and we talked about things high and low about India and Denmark and the differences (there are many!) between the two countries. It was an appartment 500metres away from my home but it still felt like traveling – traveling at home.

Oh yeah – and the food was delicious!

Snacks!
We had a wide variety of (vegetarian) snacks before dinner. All very delicious

 

India in Copenhagen
Ritika and Prashant in their home in Denmark

 

Offline blogging

  1. Offline blogging
  2. Traveling at home
  3. Taking the plunge: Quitting to pursue a life of travel

So, I’ve decided that laggy internet shouldn’t be the reason I don’t get my posts written. This is why I’m trying “offline blogging”, ie. writing to a 3rd party desktop tool and then syncing up with it as soon as internet is available. This post serves as a test post.

I’m using Microsoft writer and at the writing of this post, I have all internet disabled.

There is also a picture of a SpaceX launch

16698990475_16524a93de_o

 

Edit: I have to be online when I press “publish”, It seems I can’t just “publish whenever internet is available” or something like that

/Andreas

The day I decided to count the number of countries I’ve visited

Note: The list on this page is static. Click Here for the updated list

 

One day I was listening to a podcast over at the Daily Travel Podcast (Daily Travel Podcast) where they were talking about Chris Guillebeau’s quest to visit every country. I found it interesting and therefore decided to compile my own list. At the time of writing this post it was no longer 193 countries but 195 total countries in the world.

Object holding the good spirits. Old buddhism books are kept here as they cant just be burned/discarded
Shrine in the fields of Mongolia holding the good spirits. Old buddhism books are kept here as they cant just be burned/discarded. This is definitely one of the places I would love to visit again

Without further ado here goes. Countries I have visited are in broad. By visit I don’t mean layovers/flyovers.

Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Andorra (Visited)
Angola
Antigua & Deps
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria (Visited)
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus (Visited)
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada (Visited)
Cape Verde
Central African Rep
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Comoros
Congo
Congo {Democratic Rep}
Costa Rica
Croatia (Visited)
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic (Visited)
Denmark (Visited)
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Fiji
Finland
France (Visited)
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Germany (Visited)
Ghana
Greece
Grenada
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary (Visited)
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland {Republic} (Visited)
Israel
Italy (Visited)
Ivory Coast
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Korea North
Korea South
Kosovo
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg (Visited)
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia (Visited)
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Marshall Islands
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico
Micronesia
Moldova (Visited)
Monaco
Mongolia (Visited)
Montenegro
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar, {Burma}
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Netherlands (Visited)
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Norway (Visited)
Oman
Pakistan
Palau
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland (Visited)
Portugal
Qatar
Romania (Visited)
Russian Federation (Visited)
Rwanda
St Kitts & Nevis
St Lucia
Saint Vincent & the Grenadines
Samoa
San Marino
Sao Tome & Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore (Visited)
Slovakia (Visited)
Slovenia (Visited)
Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
South Sudan
Spain (Visited)
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Suriname
Swaziland
Sweden (Visited)
Switzerland (Visited)
Syria
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand (Visited)
Togo
Tonga
Trinidad & Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine (Visited)
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom (Visited)
United States (Visited)
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Vatican City (Visited)
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

List of countries

Looking over the list I see that I time of publishing this post, I have only visited 32 countries, which in reality is not as many as I expected. Some of them are big (USA, Russia for example) though and there are a bunch of interesting countries in there (Moldova, Mongolia etc.)

But then again I only just visited South East Asia a month ago which except for Russia and Mongolia was my first time in Asia and only my third continent.

Hopefully before New years I’ll be able to cross off a fourth continent by visiting Morocco.

Stay happy 🙂

/Andreas

PS: The list of countries comes from this guy who conveniently put all the countries in textform

List of world countries