I was born in 1969 in Germany son of a Danish mother and American father. Starting at age four I moved to father’s hometown back in Oregon, USA. Pretty normal all American childhood of baseball, mom and apple pie. Although at first with a mother who would speak Danish to me and embarrass me in front of my classmates. Later on I would develop no shame at all about foreign languages in fact they would be a key part of my experience in visiting all 193 countries before age 50. Trips to Europe as a child led me to study abroad in Germany for one year in college (1988-1989), which included many a night falling asleep to the swaying motion and clicketyclack sound of trains rolling down the track as I crisscrossed the continent, including seven countries behind the Iron Curtain. And in 1991 since graduating in International Relations, I have spent last 30 years abroad, with exception of two years in US for MBA, across China (eight years), Brazil (six years), Italy (four years) as well as Germany, Portugal, France, Argentina, and now the United Kingdom. My priority has been moving to new countries learning to speak the local language fluently while working in jobs mostly in Marketing/Business Development across a variety of sectors; General Motors in Argentina and Portugal, Pharmaceutical Brand manager for Prozac for Brazil, Tour Operator for Libya based out of Milano, Online gaming in the mini-Silicon Valley of Beijing etc.

Over the years mostly between jobs I would take long journeys exclusively by land and sea, traveling slow and low; Hong Kong-Lisbon, Bali-Tokyo via SE Asia, Beijing-Bangalore via the Karakorum Highway, 20,000 kilometers by bus around South America etc. There was something for me so satisfying to move slowly hugging the contours of the land towards some far off goal a la Marco Polo.

My eight years in China (2007-2015) led me to systematically visit all the Chinese provinces and then all countries in East Asia, SE Asia, South Asia, Central Asia... And then in 2013 on a fateful trip to Turkmenistan where I took the unusual step of joining a group tour, organized by Koryo Tours (of North Korean tourism fame), I finally met a number of people that were better traveled than I was. I was absolutely inspired and picked up the traveling pace.

Last few years as I finished up the 193 led me through some dicey travel territory especially as I usually traveled independently by local transport with no local fixers. Traveling across the bumpy West Africa roads by bush taxis and on backs of motorcycles, entering Afghanistan by myself ever so discretely for a few days and taking a deep breath only when I crossed back into Uzbekhistan. Travels in South Sudan, Mali, DRC and Central African Republic where the ratio of UN peacekeepers to travelers seems sometimes to be maybe one hundred…or maybe one thousand to one.

When one travels to out of the way places one is often rewarded by meeting especially interesting fellow travelers. Down to my last countries (thirteen of them which were in the South Pacific) I found myself at Nauru airport lounge in January, 2018 and had a very fortuitous meeting with Kolja Spori who graciously invited me join the 2018 Baghdad edition of the ETIC (Extreme Traveler International Congress) where I met Charles Veley and other top travelers. This event was without a doubt one of the highlights of my travel life. To be able to have traveled so much in life is to have been blessed. To finally meet a whole tribe of other extreme travelers was one more blessing. A special feeling of connection and yet more inspiration. A motley crew of colorful characters, each with our own individual quirks, unified by a lifelong obsession to travel, to see with our own eyes and draw our own conclusions about the world.