Countries that don’t count
Totting up on my fingers I reckon by my birthday in December, if all goes well, I will have been in 16 countries in a year, only 10 of them new.
Part of the deal about having a relaxing summer holiday with my bloke was that I don’t turn it into 80 days around the World. We had already agreed it would a train trip - very much needed after my horrendous carbon footprint. I suppose I should try to work out at some point too.
Those who follow me on twitter may have seen me raving about the awesome cycling page on the German tourist board site which gives a blow by blow prose account of your journey teamed with an altitude profile http://tinyurl.com/lz4bet . We had agreed this would be a bit of a cycling holiday - see v. green - and as I am not a friend of gradients I thought cycling by a lake would be least strenuous.
This is how we discovered Bodensee/Lake K(C)onstance/ the Schwabian Sea. It borders Austria, Switzerland and Germany. How neat is that for the traveller looking to rack up countries on a budget?
There’s no formal borders there anymore so you can take the train around the lake or indeed cycle through the countries with great ease. And what with a stopover in Paris on the way there we’ll be in 6 countries over 2 or 3 days.
All of these countries I have already ticked off but I have been deploying some pester power in the hope of stopping off in nearby Liechtenstein for country number 28 - wish me luck.
View 30 countries by age 30 in a larger map
