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[fajrdrako]

The countries of Europe I have been to. I ticked off the squares, looked at the map, and noticed a funny Switzerland-shaped hole in the middle of things. Funny, thought I, I've been to Switzerland. I loved it. Hastily went back and added a tick where I'd missed it.

The places I most want to visit, that I've never been to? Greece. Cyprus. And places that aren't countries, but are parts of countries: Crete. Sicily. Sardinia. Iceland. Finland. The Isle of Man. The Shetland Isles. Denmark. Finland. Bornholm. Jersey. Guernsey. Northern Ireland. Heck, I want to go everywhere in Europe! And can you tell I have a love of islands?

And don't I wish I had a time machine, too.




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Now, this map is misleading because it makes it look as if I have been, say, to all of Germany, while I've only been to Stuttgart (not counting overnight in Frankfurt).

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

You've been to Pakistan? That's pretty cool - it's on my list of "places I really want to visit" because of Mohenjo-Daro.

Am I right in guessing that you haven't been to Alaska, it's just that if you've been to any part of the U.S., the map fills in the whole thing?

[wijsgeer.livejournal.com]

You've been to Pakistan? That's pretty cool - it's on my list of "places I really want to visit" because of Mohenjo-Daro.

my father spend much of his time in Pakistan for bussines reasons. So one year he brought his family along, I was 11 and my sister 9. It was my first and most shocking confrontation with a real different society. The difference between people were so much bigger than in the Netherlands, the difference between rich and poor (we spend time with middle and upper class), the difference between man and woman (the women we saw lived in a kind of purdah, the 14 year old daughter of my father's bussines friend only had as entertainment the weddings of her girlfriends. Also, it was a way more violent society, along the road you saw soldiers with their machine guns and people we visited lived in compounds defended by heavily armed security.
This is not to say the people we met were not extremely friendly and hospitable, they did their best to make us at home as possible. But at times they must have found us strange indeed.
I don't think it is an easy country to travel trough alone as a woman, it is violent and rather, well I won't say misyogynist, but it has a very different idea about what a woman can and may do.
After our trip I did a presentation about Pakistan in my elementary school. Afterwards I heard that one of my classmates had asked her parents to go to Pakistan for the holidays.

About the US, yes, 1 state counts like the whole. I've visited several states on the east coast, I know for certain I visited New York city, Washington DC, the state of Maine, Maryland, maybe 1 more. An other fun trip where the differences between the Netherlands and the US seemed more prominent than the similarities.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Pakistan ... was my first and most shocking confrontation with a real different society.

Yes. I think it would be amazing. If/when I go to Pakistan, I wouldn't want to go alone - and of course my main interest is in seeing what remains of a culture 2500 years old. (Not much.) I'm sure I would be horrified by the sequested lives of the women - I've read about it, and find it difficult to imagine. Also the level of violence, so many people owning guns.

There are many superficial resemblances between Canada and the U.S. but it's always the differences I notice when I go there. The level of crime and fear is one of the differences.