GOLDEN GLOBE
REJECTED (?) SUBMITTED JUNE 2005

Less than ten blocks from the United Nations, in the basement banquet room of a midtown Indian restaurant, another internationally minded group recently convened for a meeting. The occasion was a gathering of the New York chapter of the Travelers' Century Club, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based organization for travel enthusiasts, and a group that, like the U.N., is not always free from dissent.

Membership in the TCC is open to anyone who has traveled to at least 100 countries (hence "Century") and willing to pay the $100 initiation fee and $40 annual dues (far more reasonable than the $439.6 million the U.S. was just assessed in dues by the U.N.). The group tends to draw travel junkies, mostly white retirees, who collect countries the way others amass Hummel figurines or baseball cards.

And there are no small number of countries to collect. Whereas the U.N comprises 191 sovereign member states, the TCC recognizes 315 entities, bestowing "country" status on any territory "removed from parent either geographically, politically, or ethnologically or different." Thus those who see traveling as a compulsive endeavor - and there are myriad of them in the TCC - can use Alaska, Hawaii, and the continental U.S. as three separate "countries" in their quest to tally 100.

The program at the most recent luncheon included a lecture by Alfred Lees (122 countries) on Antarctic circumnavigation (Antarctica can count as seven countries, divided into French, Chilean, and Norwegian territories, among others), but before it began, the forty-three peripatetic New Yorkers mingled and sampled the buffet of tandoori chicken, saag paneer, and an eggplant dish from Goa served especially for the club. "They usually try to find a restaurant that has a thematic connection to the topic," noted member Alan Chesler (115 countries), a retired attorney from West Caldwell, N.J. "But I guess Antarctica is a little tough."

As was the crowd, at times. Lees, a retired magazine editor from Manhattan, sported a red turtleneck and gray tweed blazer that belied the oppressive summer heat. As he narrated his slide show of stark landscapes and penguin rookeries, a couple of guests nodded off while one audience member could be heard to sniff: "He didn't have one photograph of pink or blue icebergs."

Though the group is primarily a collegial collective of globetrotters who enjoy swapping stories about spotting gorillas in Uganda or surviving typhoons in the Korean Strait, occasionally, a competitive spirit can boil up over certain flash points.

One such divider is "airport stops," a policy that allows members to register a country in which they've never left the cozy confines of, say, Terminal D. The observance dates back to the TCC's earliest days 51 years ago, when an airport stop was the only plausible way for non-diplomats to bag an Albania.

"I've been to 102 countries - no airport stops," said Ken Rogoff defiantly. The strapping 54-year-old "quinta-lingual international tour guide" from Manhattan, who claims to have witnessed multiple disappearances of Argentineans while sitting in Buenos Aires cafes during that country's Dirty War, said that airport stops could never enlighten a visitor as to what makes a particular country pulse. "I am a seasoned traveler. When I arrive in a Third World country, I try to ingratiate myself to the local people."

The issue particularly rankles Hubert Weissinger (270 countries), a cabinet-maker originally from Austria who now lives in Ridgewood, Queens. "My philosophy," said the dissident 38-year-old (whose business card announces him as "mr. world traveler"), "is that you only count the country if you go through legal immigration."

Weissinger claims to have visited every U.N. member state, including the difficult-to-attain North Korea and Saudi Arabia, all without the benefit of airport stops. He feels strongly enough about this stand that, though he was attending his second TCC luncheon, the Austrian has steadfastly refused to become a TCC member, pronouncing, "I don't like the politics."

"This is a social group," countered Lynn Margaret Simmons, the TCC's New York Area Coordinator. "Having visited the countries is, for the most part, taken on the honor system."

That is, to reach 100 countries. Anything over the century mark requires proof, in the form of passport stamps, ticket stubs, or receipts. By the time of the TCC New York chapter's next meeting in November, retired Levittown kindergarten teacher Laurie Campbell (232 countries) will have ample evidence of her 2005 journeys, which this summer and fall will take her to France; Churchill, Manitoba; the Mediterranean by cruise, including a stop in Libya; West Africa, with stops in Mali and Burkina Faso; and then the South Pacific to visit the Marquesas.

Rogoff might not be able to attend the next meeting, as he plans to be in El Salvador and Nicaragua, "which will complete my contiguous Americas." And though contiguous U.S. states do not count as countries, Rogoff is shy only four more of those to complete his own personal youth-set goal: learning five languages and visiting 100 countries and all 50 states. "I need only the Dakotas, Kansas, and Oklahoma," he said. "Then I can get run over by a bus."

–LANCE GOULD