What letter in the world?
I have a serious addiction to Sporcle and in particular their geography games. Because of them, I've learned all of the countries of the world, alphabetically. Yeah, that's right, I'm cool. Anyway, this learning exercise made me think of an intriguing question. If you could pick a letter of the alphabet and visit all of its countries, what letter would you choose?
Now, the kicker here is that you have to visit each country. So, picking "A" gets you a ticket to Afghanistan as well as Australia. The letter "S" gives you the most travel, but some of that travel is to places like Sudan, Sierra Leone and Saudi Arabia.
Here's a cheatsheet of all of the countries and there's a poll below. I'm interested what your criteria is. Do you go for volume, do you limit your exposure to "bad" countries or do you just choose the countries you'd most want to go to and damn the rest?
For me, it comes down to N or T. N has Nicaragua, New Zealand, Nepal and Namibia, Norway and the Netherlands, but a big downer in North Korea. T, meanwhile has such intriguing countries as Tanzania, Thailand and Turkey, but you'd also completely miss out on Europe. It's a tough choice, but I think I'd go with the variety of N over the big destinations of T.
Now it's your turn!
Posted by kris at September 27, 2010 02:52 PM
The trackback entry for this page is : http://www.inthehat.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1923
| Trackback Entries |
Comments
| # September 27th, 2010 3:16 PM kris |
| I also considered U and M:
-United Kingdom, UAE, Uruguay -Maldives, Morocco, Mongolia |
| # September 27th, 2010 4:27 PM james |
| I think A has a lot to offer - Australia, Austria, Antigua, Argentina, Andorra, Algeria. Of course, you'd have to suffer through Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. But A seems to have a good variety of locales - South America, Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean. You'd probably get to throw Antarctica in there too, if not because of the A, but because Australia and Argentina both lay claims there. |
| # September 27th, 2010 5:25 PM kris |
| I see someone picked "I" - that was a good one too for contrast of good and bad. The good is really good: Ireland, Iceland, Italy, India, Indonesia & Israel. But then you get Iran & Iraq. Ugh. |
| # September 27th, 2010 5:45 PM themandownthehall |
| "A" would be cool. No doubt. "I" would be good if not for those last 2. I want to return home alive and not stoned or hung or anything for not being a radical. If we could slide the UK to the B's for Brittan I might take the B's. Brazil has the Olympiad coming up and I would love to see that and Brittan. |
| # September 27th, 2010 5:47 PM themandownthehall |
| Of course maybe I'll take "S" for school. Britain. Ugh.. |
| # September 27th, 2010 6:01 PM kris |
| Why not just pick "U" and go to the Olympics in 2012 in London? Plus, you get the UAE so you could go to Dubai. My mental rule for this was that your accommodations in each place would be above average - not like 5-star, but nice - like 4 star. And really, 4-star in Dubai would be spectacular. |
| # September 28th, 2010 8:39 PM themandownthehall |
| U could be fun too. I've heard good and bad on UAE but they have some really cool things like that indoor ski slope |
| # September 29th, 2010 9:40 AM kris |
| I'd just figure you'd go in late March when the weather here is crappy and the Dubai World Cup festival is happening there.
Actually - I'm starting to think U wouldn't be that bad, Uzbekistan has Samarkand and Bukhara, you go go to Uruguay for South American summer, you get England & Scotland. There's all of America and I'm sure there's probably something fun to do in the Ukraine. Uganda might be the only downer. |
| # September 29th, 2010 1:05 PM BVBigBro |
| I thought U was the obvious choice. |