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100 and Done! (Countries that is...)

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We are back! This last trip brought the total countries visited to 100! It is a crazy milestone. It is difficult, time-consuming and can be (IS) expensive. After I got back from Antarctica in 2007, I started thinking about it. After 2010 I was thinking about it more (as I moved from NY to Georgia) and in 2014 it had become a real goal. Between Angie and I we have been to 109 Countries. We are tied at 100 countries each. We have 9 countries different in our lists. For example, I have been to San Marino. She has not. She has been to Israel. I have not, yet. There has been some fun competition in this area. That's why we had to establish rules. 1.) Must be listed (as a country) with the US State Department 2.) Being in an airport doesn't count. You have to get through immigration somehow and not in a DMZ or a no-mans-land 3.) A passport stamp is not required. I have been to Canada, Paraguay, and Uruguay without getting my passport stamped. There are friendly borders in many places...
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We are back from a complex trip in Western and Eastern Europe. In ten days it included the following countries: Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Finland, and The Netherlands. Angie was in Moscow and we met in Poland. On the weekend, we drove across the Lithuania/Russia border. We weren't sure about the realities of crossing the border and we had several different contingency plans. We ended up executing a form of our plan C. We had to spend extra time getting processed since the guards had likely never seen a US passport and Visa. Actually it took two tries. We were refused exit at a backwoods Poland-Russia border. Needless to say it was quite interesting. All the guards at all sites were pleasant and helpful. Only one guard of the 6 sites spoke any English. It was all a trip through part of the Prussian empire in my thinking. Looking at the very nice architecture from the Prussians in disrepair was very evident. We saw a number of structures that were destroyed in WWII, never t...
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