HOW DOES ONE BECOME INTERESTED IN
GEOGRAPHY?
I was a pre-schooler, when my grandfather,
olav ha shalom, came into the room with a bagful of sweets and said: these are
yours, if you can recite for me all the countries a train will pass through
from Cairo to Cape Town!
I don't remember whether I was able to
answer the question or how the sweets tasted, but definitely that was the
beginning of the interest in world maps, atlases and globes and an imagination
to travel. The world map had predominantly two colours then, Red and Blue. It
was interesting to follow the changes in the names of the countries; Dahomey
became Benin, for example. It also kindled an interest in world politics since
the independence struggles were led by men of great stature…and there were
visible items of those distant lands one could hold in your hands: stamps. Rio
Muni, Marruecos, Ifni, Travancore and many other states long dead but you could
hold their stamps in mint conditions. Some countries had stamps only with one
face on them, such as Shah of Iran or Sultan of Brunei, and occasionally a
country would issue many stamps each one for its states: like Malaysia. One set
of stamps good to collect was the British Colonial Stamps (in which my father
excelled) so you could have the same stamps with different names on it: St
Helena, Ascension Island, Tristan da Cunha, Gibraltar, North Borneo etc.
The interest in Geography continues to this
day and as a child I was able to recite at an enormous speed all the countries
of the world in alphabetical order.
So it was good to see the list of the
Smallest countries of the world! I have been fortunate enough to travel widely,
having covered 82 of the 196 independent countries but at least that many more
in territories and provinces (nearly all the states in USA, all states in
Australia, both N and S of Aotearoa, 16 out of the 33 states in Mexico. I am
not well travelled in India or China, most populous of the countries, even
though I have been to a fair bit of Japan). I have visited some islands hard to
reach: Tokelau, Rapa Nui, Torres Straits.
So, which are the smallest countries in the
world? Being interested in Small is Beautiful, it was gratifying to me that I
have been to 4 of the 10, 4 are microstates in Europe, so only two are missing
to be visited: Seychelles and St Kitts and Nevis.
Smallest countries in the world:
Maldives
Seychelles
St Kitts and Nevis
Marshall Islands
Liechtenstein
San Marino
Tuvalu
Nauru
Monaco
Vatican
You may then wonder, which are the Biggest
countries on earth. Thus making it easy to visit them?
I have been to nine out of 10, with the
exception of Algeria.
Russia
Canada
USA
China
Brasil
Australia
India
Argentina
Kazakhstan
Algeria.
Bon Voyage and Happy Travels..
