What is a Country?

• 2019: 195 independend countries (193 United Nations-members and 2 visiting countries: Vatican, Palestine) (even this number has changed significantly in the last decades). 
• I have added East Frisia (my homeland, not independend - and it should not be - but in my brain unique and has a special place in my travel documentation). 
• Probably some more areas will be added in the future (e.g., Greenland, recently autonomous region of Denmark, and/or Antarctica as a whole continent under UN special condition). Probably I will add also the three big oceans and four middle seas (so called the Seven Seas), but life is probably too short. I will see.
• If a country has splitted, which I have already visited before (like the Soviet Union in the 90s), a visit of every new state is necessary, if I have not been in the territory of the new country before. If I have been already in the territory before segregation, no need to go again (like Sudan and South Sudan in 2005 or Jugoslavia and five successor states, were I have been in all territories before splitting).
  
• If countries have merged (like East and West-Germany), one the final state is valid (only one Germany). 
  

What are the standards to have visited a country?

• Legal or illegal entry (foot-print approach), documented by a picture. This picture I use for the book "World of Food and Farming", together with a personal story, why, where and how I made the picture and why it is important for the book. 
  
• A day is documented when it was touched, only half a day is enough to have a full day documented: lunch-to-lunch visits are only 24 hours but two days documented (this is only for the concept, I have not visited any country just for half a day). 
  
• The visit of a country is not done only by stop-over, e.g. in transit on airports or flying-over (that would also not give a story for the world of food and farming). 
• I do not follow communities any more, who document world travellers, because the standards are often abstruse ((like the bias and balanced definition of regions of Most Travelled People) or not in my priorities (Food and Farming). I believe, travelling must have a deeper sense of life instead of just to satisfy vanities. Holidays I do in Germany, preferentially at home on my balcony.