What is a Country?

You'd think this would be easy wouldn't you?

But there are new ones popping up all the time - all the "new" countries from the former Soviet Union. Old ones disappearing - I never made it to East Germany, and collecting a country beginning with a "Y" is now rather tricky! (but not impossible!)

There are countries that some other countries don't recognise - let's not even start on that subject.

Countries that have a number of other countries inside them! Wales? Scotland? Jersey? Isle of Man? Isle of Wight!

The truly weird ones - The United Nations is a country. If you walk into the UN building in Geneva, you've left Switzerland.

Countries with no borders? look at a map of Saudi Arabia and Yemen - okay, there is a border at the coast - but head into the desert - and it gets a bit hazy!

A country could be defined (at least in my world) by one of the following

issues its own stamps/currency

has its own Parliament

is recognised by the UN

has its own border crossing

issues its own passports

if enough people want to belong to that country?

How many countries are there? Depends on what you count as a country! - there are at least 190 out there to visit!

Countries come in all shapes and sizes, from the biggest - Russia 17million sq. Km to the smallest Vatican City 0.5 sq. Km! Just get out there and visit a few!

There is no country that begins with the letter "X", this makes my goal of visiting a country of each letter of the (English) alphabet a bit tricky - BUT the Chinese name for Tibet is 'Xizang Zizhiqu'. Now I'm not condoning China's annexing of Tibet, but it does give me a very good reason to visit Tibet.