| Country | Year of 1st visit | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| America | 1989 | Which states have I been to? |
| Canada | 1997 | I really only visited Quebec City and I was an undiscerning child, so whatever I remember is not necessarily a comment on the place in general. The most important memory was I went to a highly-exotic two-floor Burger King. I stayed in the notable (perhaps unsightly) Hôtel Le Concorde. |
| Caribbean island | 2006 | There was some Caribbean island I've been too on a trip when I was younger, but I have no recollection of what it was. |
| China | 2012 | Too much to say in this cell. Scroll below for more. |
| Mexico | 2023 | Went to present at Monerotopia. Took the last day off to take the train and bus around the city to see the major sites. See below for more. |
| Greece | 2023 | Stayed in Athens for a week and also visited Aegina. |
| Albania | 2023 | Only stayed here a night or so. No generalization to make. |
| Montenegro | 2023 | A wonderful and "underrated" country to be sure. More picturesque geography than Italy across the sea and quite inexpensive as well. I never even went to Kotor, often the main attraction. |
| Serbia/Kosovo | 2023 | I was only in the Albanian-run portions of Kosovo (although did visit some Serbian enclaves like Gračanica for the monastery there). |
| North Macedonia | 2023 | In Skopje for several days. |
| Turkey | 2023 | In Constantinople for several days. |
| Sweden | 2023 | Stayed in Stockholm, been to many rural places as well, but not too north. |
| United Kingdom | 2024 | Never actually travelled to the UK purposefully, but missed a flight at Gatwick and had to stay around London for a few to fly our of Stansted. Stayed here. Enjoyed the little of the land I experienced though and plan to be back. |
Extra Details
China
If you're confused why Donald Trump is always taking about "Making America Great Again" because you assume America is at least the most grandiose country in the world, that's because you've never been to a place like China.
It's hard to explain, but even minor Chinese cities are so large, and their architecture so imposing that they truly do go on unto the horizon. If you ride a rural train, you will fly by many "villages" decked with skyscrapers. The engineering and production that has gone into creating modern China is so far beyond anything an American has ever seen. If you go on a drive in town, you will see tens of thousands of cars, all brand-new and nearly all piloted by expertly assertive drivers. The urban portions of the country share that feeling of Japan of almost a cyberpunk life, although China too has preserved oasises of its ancient history.
China will eventually get repetitive for tourist-types. Even random vendors are all basically selling the same things made in the same factories. The food, on American standards, is certainly bland: they have the same tastes as in America, but everything is toned down. In their defense, Americans are internationally the weird ones for having X-treme tastes for everything.
China is simultaneously clean and filthy. Most of what you see in a city is certainly not messy and is well put together, but you'll quickly realize that the Chinese do not quite have the same standards as we of cleanliness! Soap exists in China, but most "cleaning" happens without it: rinse a dish and put it away.
One of the funniest little things that people don't know before going to China is that a lot of rural people, even when visiting the city, will have children without diapers. They will walk without pants and simply relieve themselves anywhere they can like dogs, and sometimes the parents might clean it up.
Mexico
Mexico City was wonderful, and I saw a lot of it. Even the "bad" parts of town were commendable. In one day, I actually literally witnessed multiple bloody assaults (possibly a murder), but the city was actually still quite nice. I'm not even joking. I know this sounds like Lord Miles, but it was nice.
I'm not going to say you'll see violent crime if you go as a tourist, but I basically spent a lot of the time on my own walking around town and I was asking for it.
Anyway, I was going to present at Monerotopia 2023 in a place in the city called the Huerto Roma Verde, which is some kind of sustainable eco-garden located in the Colonia Roma, one of the more upscale and "hipster-ish" parts of the town. That, and the fact that the place was right next to a police station was actually not enough to prevent two men nearby from getting into a big bloody brawl the first morning before the conference.
American States
Key:
- These states I've lived in.
- These states I've gone to for a visit or for an event.
- These states I've slept a night in on my way travelling elsewhere.
- These states I've only travelled through, although I may have done something else there.
Notes
- I included Michigan, although I've never been outside of the Detroit airport. This was on my way to China.
- I lived in Arizona for years, but it wasn't until many years after moving that I ever went to California. I only went to California when Justin Murphy invited me to this event.
- The only states I've considered moving to that I haven't lived in are Tennessee and West Virginia. Several years ago, I actually did a trip to Tennessee (and did a livestream) when I was looking for property around Sewannee.
- There might be some I've missed. I might've slept in Mississippi as a child, or I might have been to some of the states on the west bank of the Mississippi river, but I can't be sure.
- West Virginia is probably the nicest state I've visited. I want people to hate this place though, so the prices stay low and the degenerates stay out. If you hear rumors about this place being poor or drug-ridden or racist, please circulate them to keep this place pure.
- I've never been to the Pacific Northwest, but I always wanted to. The issue about planning a trip out there is that it's so spread out that a decent journey there would be a lot of driving with little between unless I had intimiate knowledge of the region.