One Conversation at a Time

The Youngest Person to Visit Every Country in Europe

In Georgia, he found himself an honorary member of the KGB. In Kazakhstan, he rewired a car to race a train. In Uzbekistan, he traded coal to cross the border. In Tajikistan, he was tailed by security services on bikes. In Kyrgyzstan, he was jailed for having been to Tajikistan. On a train along the Afghan border, he saw the Taliban with their flag driving along in a pickup truck.

“That was Central Asia. I did that when I was seventeen,” recalled Samuel Reason, a first-year Theology student, with breezy nonchalance. 

Reason recently won the TEDxStA student speaker competition for his talk about being the youngest person to visit every country in Europe. He completed the feat at the age of sixteen years and 356 days — two years and 63 days younger than the previous record-holder. His TEDx talk — ‘European? Becoming the Youngest Person to Visit Every Country in Europe’ — focuses on how hard it is to define Europe. In the lead up to the 2025 TEDxStA Conference, I met with Reason to hear more about his travels. 

Recently, Reason and a friend visited Sivas, an unassuming Turkish city. True to form, this was to be no ordinary holiday. At breakfast, distant gunfire signalled the start of a Victory Day celebration, with parades to follow.

“There was a “crazy ‘let’s parade all our guns in front of you’ military march in the afternoon,” Reason recounted.

That evening, as another parade began, Reason got involved. “We started walking with the mass of people, until we realised that we were slowly progressing through, [...] Before we knew it we were within the first few rows of this military parade, with thousands of soldiers and civilians behind us.” 

Without realising, he got separated from his group. “Suddenly I’m on stage trying to sing the Turkish national anthem.” Then, he saw what seemed to be the “main guy” of the parade step out of a Mercedes. That man turned out to be the Provincial Governor — and he came up to Reason. To the Governor’s “Who are you? What are you doing?” Reason had to refrain from replying the same. To Reason’s surprise, the man took interest in these young English tourists, and before they knew it he and his friend were sitting opposite the Governor at an unofficial official dinner.

“We talked about Brexit for a while, and then he asked me point blank what Germans thought about Turks,” he recalled. “Do I need to pander to his ego or do I tell him the truth?” Reason chose the latter. “He was so grateful for my honesty. After that, we talked for hours, and then he took us to his palace, where we stayed for the night. It was totally surreal.” 

The next morning at 3:30am, an entourage of motorcades, full of armed guards, arrived to take Reason and his friend from the palace to the bus station for the next leg of their trip. “Within twelve hours, we’d gone from running out of things to do, to being hosted by some governor in his palace. It was just absurd,” Reason laughed.  

“There are infinite stories like this one,” he said, so many he could write a book — and that he has. From a cabin in narco-held territory in Colombia, Reason began putting his stories to paper, grappling with the central notion of what it really means to be ‘European’. 

“[In the book] I talk about why these people believe what they do in their specific environment. All those conversations, be they talking to farmers or talking to local politicians, all drew back to the central point of ‘what is something that makes me, me?’ Reason doesn’t claim to have the answer. He’s simply “trying to illustrate that such a question exists.”

Yet whilst his talk emphasises divides, his book also highlights similarity.  “In many ways, the university lecturer is just like the Moldovan farmer. Their world revolves around them. We all have our bubbles, and in that way, we are all very similar,” he added. How do you get out of your bubble? 

First and foremost, talk to that person sitting next to you on the plane — seriously. For Reason, a conversation with his neighbour on a £14 WizzAir flight from Nice to Budapest turned into a two-day tour of the Riviera. “He [passenger] turned out to be a Hungarian tech mogul,” Reason said, “who was on the cheapest WizzAir flight because it was the most direct one.” I went around the whole French Riviera with this guy, just because I had a decent conversation with him, and he respected that.”

Although most strangers you speak to probably won’t be Hungarian tech tycoons, according to Reason, there’s often as much benefit talking to a Moldovan goat herder. “I've had some fantastic chats with more ordinary people, and they've been just as meaningful — if not more —as some of the stuff I've talked with professors about,” he said. 

“You’ve got something to learn from the fire safety systems engineer that works in the most radioactive place on earth outside Chernobyl in Kazakhstan, who you talk to through broken Google Translate messages, as you do from the governor of a Turkish province,” he explained. 

And the best place to strike up a conversation with a stranger? “Airport queues,” according to Reason.“[In a queue] you all have a shared goal, which is moving forwards. The second you start to talk about that, you've got something in common. If you've got something in common, you can talk about anything,” he explained. “Then before you know it you’re talking about this woman's second family in Djibouti.”

Whilst he joked, he also recognised that there are some unshakeable social barriers that render adventures like his an impossibility for many. “It’s fair to say my sister wouldn’t be able to do half the things that I've done,” he admitted. “Being tall, being white, being male, there's some stuff that I've been able to do that most couldn’t,” he acknowledged.

That being said, Reason wants to encourage people to step outside their comfort zone. “Discomfort is one thing, but you don’t know what you’re missing out on until you stop quantifying this by discomfort. Sitting in bed for ten minutes with the apprehension of getting up is always worse than just getting up,” he said.

As for the future, Reason feels no desire to continue pursuing travel records and ticking countries off the list. He’s “not too worried about the statistics now,” finding that it gets to the point where “you’re whizzing through countries just for the sake of it.” “Sleeping on the floor of Dublin airport doesn’t equate to visiting Ireland.”

For now, Reason wants to inspire others to talk to strangers. “The best way to get to know anyone is just to have a chat,” he said, and by chatting to people he has experienced more in the last few years than most will in their lifetime. So today, why not talk to the Pret barista, the postman, or even the person who handed you this paper. You never know, they might just be the Governor of a Turkish Province or a Hungarian tech tycoon!

Photos: Copyright Samuel Reason