Annoying travel personalities No.2: The Country Counter

More shameless insults hurled at travel personalities.
Given my lowly place in the nether regions of the travel blogging world I haven’t got much to lose by slagging off some of the popular heroes of the travel world, as well as some of the targets more worthy of derision. But lets start with the type of country counter most of us will probably agree are totally tedious aresewipes.
Thankfully this breed is relatively rare but if you’ve spent a bit of time traveling you’ll almost certainly have encountered one of these dorks, the person who seems to think that having gone to X numer of countries is somehow more significant than someone who has gone to X minus another number countries.

The worst genre of this species and the type we can only hope fails to replicate their DNA in any shape or form, except possibly in a vat to be experimented upon, is the one who adds several shovel loads of arrogance to his significant number of countries. Although I’ll get onto the female of the species later, I have deliberately used the male pronoun in this case because I find it hard to believe that any woman could exist with such a flaccid dick for cerebral matter. Please spare me any evidence to the contrary as I couldn’t bear to have such a fissure rent in the fabric of my vision of half the world’s population.
The other sub type are the ones that are just too fucking boring to be arrogant, who, when recounting the insight gained from their entire afternoon spent in Equatorial Guinea, may as well be enlightening you on the style of font on Czech vehicle number plates, with reference to relevant government ordnances on the matter, naturally. The only redeeming feature of this particular excuse for humanity is that they are too dull to make a point of the fact that their number X is bigger than yours and they will probably be too busy thinking about tram timetables in Vladivostok to hear anyway, if you happened to inform them that your number was in fact bigger.
Whilst I am sure we can all agree that such individuals would serve humanity better by being nailed to Vladivostok tram lines in winter to inhibit speeds on the icy tracks, there is another more insidious form of country counter who are not only deemed acceptable but actually feted for their achievements. The species is well known for infesting Twitter feeds with announcements about this week’s BIG NUMBER and what country names will be crossed off the BIG LIST by the end of the weekend.
A most tragic example was the recent announcement that, and I am sorry to have to say this, a woman got round all 196 countries on the BIG LIST in just over eighteen months, that works out on average at under three days per country. That’s not eighteen months of culture, inspiration and vibrant exchange, that’s eighteen months of buttock callouses sitting on buses, trains and planes. Obviously no slovenly trams or bicycles when going at that pace. If you learn anything it’s, “where’s the bus station”, in 47 languages.
In the world of travel blogging it’s usually the women who teach the list obsessed men that there is far more to be gained from rummaging around under the surface of the culture than being able to stick another flag on your backpack. There seems to be some primal, male, human urge to accumulate more impressive lists than your fellows. No doubt, in a some cave at the dawn of human existence, Ug 1 chastised Ug 2 for only having two rocks instead of his far more impressive three, to which Ug 2 probably hit Ug one over the head with his slightly less impressive rock collection and would then go on to boast to Ug 3 about his fine collection of five rocks, if only he could have counted that far.
So, for God’s sake people, stop going on about the number of rocks in your collection, just treasure how nice and shiny the ones you’ve got are and celebrate the happiness they’ve brought you on those long, cold, winter nights, leaving Ug 1 to wander alone and unloved in the wilderness.