# How old were you when you first left the country? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 19, 2020, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119 "2020-04-19T12:45:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/61 "2020-04-20T03:48:13Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > I almost feel guilty for voting with the majority. I live in Michigan, and Ontario, Canada, is hardly “foreign,” despite it being a different country. If you’re a Michigander and want culture shock, go visit southern California. That’s interesting; to me, a Canadian, you are WAY more like SoCal than you are like us. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/62 "2020-04-20T04:03:03Z")
My family spent a year in Auburn, Alabama when I was 3. Dad took a sabbatical to earn a master’s degree in education. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/63 "2020-04-20T04:25:41Z")
My family went to Expo 67 in Montreal the summer before I turned 12. Four years later we sailed on the QE2 to the UK. (I had my 16th birthday on the ship.) We spent three weeks in England and Wales. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/64 "2020-04-20T05:07:13Z")
I see the largest cohort here report 3-10. I should not be surprised with Dopers. I’m told (but don’t remember) a drive from our San Bernardino area home to Mexicali when I was 3. Somewhere there’s an embarrassing photo of me on a bored (or sedated) burro. My first deliberate crossing was at 17, before draft age. I hitched a ride with a Russian guy from Buffalo to Toronto, thumbed out to Quebec, couldn’t afford Expo 67, then hitched to Winnipeg where I was deported back stateside. It’s all been uphill from there. ---
**Author:** ![UncaStuart](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/uncastuart/32/404_2.png) [@UncaStuart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncaStuart)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/65 "2020-04-20T05:50:54Z")
At 15-1/2, I went on a road trip with the family from the San Francisco Bay Area to Victoria BC, in 1962. First time out the country in the other direction was at 20, when three classmates and I drove from Santa Barbara to Mexico City and back. First time to another hemisphere was in 1969, at 22, when I flew to Britain to spend the summer in Cambridge. ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/66 "2020-04-20T07:05:08Z")
I was about 2; my mother took me and my older sister to visit friends in Finland while my dad stayed behind to teach summer school. I have very few memories - getting off the plane in either Iceland or Finland. Helsinki smelling like buses - this one is so strong that if I smell the diesel fumes even today I flash back to being on a sidewalk in Helsinki. I was staring at the sidewalk. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/67 "2020-04-20T07:54:42Z")
When I was about 1, we moved to the UK for the first time. We went by boat - it was towards the end of the passenger liner era (when we came back four years later, it was in a plane). Taking a multi-week sea voyage with a toddler sounds initially like it might be a vision of hell, but according to my mother it was supremely easy because they had childcare on board - she just had to drop me off every morning, and the rest of the day was her own. I don’t recall any of this, of course. But my earliest memories are of the UK. I remember the trip back - I was airsick and threw up all over Tullamarine Airport. Pretty sure my parents remember that bit too… ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/68 "2020-04-20T09:18:00Z")
I’m British: my first time abroad was just before I turned 15 – a ten days’ school trip to the Netherlands. First visit abroad would likely have happened eight years before that; my father and an uncle, with said uncle’s two children, about my age: took a summer holiday by car and cross-Channel ferry, to the South of France (the two guys’ wives stayed home) – I would have been of the France-visiting party, except that I got, at that age, acutely (and every time without fail) car-sick. My elders apologised to me, but ruled – entirely sensibly – that my taking part in the venture, would not work. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/69 "2020-04-20T10:29:54Z")
Probably around 4 – I don’t really remember the year, but I think my brother was still in diapers and my sister hadn’t been born yet. I’ve never had very good memory, so just – looking out from the hotel room across the beach – watching the pinata put up by the hotel for the beach kids, the guy roasting fresh fish over a fire on the beach, the separate drinking water – little stuff like that. My parents remember that border control wanted to search the car — until they came to the dirty diapers (that was before disposables) That was the year they opened the road to Puerta Vallarta, and by the next year it was too expensive for my folks to return. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/70 "2020-04-20T10:42:43Z")
All foreign travel was by land until 26, including driving to El Salvador. First overseas destination was a fllght to Cyprus and Syria, in 1964. Actually, I can’t honestly remember whether El Salvador or Cyprus came first. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/71 "2020-04-20T11:39:42Z")
I was 37, just this last October. My mother, landlord, and landlady went to The Bahamas on a Carnival cruise. It took place during Games 1-3 of the World Series, won by my Washington Nationals. Great times! ---
**Author:** ![TheCuse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thecuse/32/2854_2.png) [@TheCuse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheCuse)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/72 "2020-04-20T12:49:11Z")
Twenty-two years old. I was in the US Air Force and given orders to Woomera, South Australia. Spend two-and-a-half years there. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/73 "2020-04-20T19:10:30Z")
I answered wrong. I thought i was 12, but I was 8. I was confusing two family trips. We drove to Canada when I was a kid. We saw Niagara falls, Quebec City, Montreal, and some sights near them. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/74 "2020-04-20T20:21:58Z")
Here’s an interesting wrinkle I thought of: how old were you the first time you went to a foreign country on your own - or with peers and not guardians? For me it would be that bridge I could walk over to Canada, so maybe 12 or 13. ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/75 "2020-04-20T20:30:26Z")
In spite of growing up in south eastern Michigan, we never made the day trip over to Canada when I was a kid. My grandparents retired to Tucson, and when I was a teenager my family drove from Michigan to Arizona to visit. One day we did a trip to Nogales, Mexico, for souvenier shopping. So that was my first trip out of the US. When I was in college, a group of us drove from Michigan to New York through Canada. So that was my first trip “on my own” out of the US. About 20 years ago my job sent me to Brussels and Munich, and I have been an international traveler ever since. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/76 "2020-04-20T20:30:40Z")
I went to Canada on a family vacation when I was around 7. Even though it was “only” Canada, we did visit the French speaking part, so it still felt pretty foreign to me. And although you didn’t ask, the first time I traveled to a different continent was when I was 26, to Germany. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/77 "2020-04-20T20:37:52Z")
I was 28, when I went on a Caribbean cruise with my wife. (Bahamas, Jamaica, Cayman Islands, Mexico.) ---
**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/78 "2020-04-20T20:54:13Z")
I would have been about 13 years old. The family had driven all over Scotland, England and Wales for years, staying in (dead cheap) youth hostels. My father was a teacher so we could go away for two weeks at Easter and a month or more in the summer. The decision to be super brave and take a ferry to France was probably based on the fact that I was doing French at school and was therefore designated translator (!). We took three days to drive from Cumbria to Dover in order to catch the ferry. I have a very strong memory of the first lunch in France - I was bundled into a shop and came back with a loaf of bread and some [La Vache Qui Rit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laughing_Cow) processed cheese spread. My French was good enough that I knew it meant The Cow Who Laughs. Bear in mind that finding a French person who spoke _any_ English - even the _gardien_ at many of the camp sites we stayed at - was in those days a near impossibility. Lunches got better as I got the hang of it, but a note in passing - for months before the holiday an extra tin would would be added to each shopping trip, to build a stockpile of “safe” tinned food to take to France. And yes, we took water purification tablets. It was the early 1970’s. j ---
**Author:** ![Tabco](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tabco/32/7644_2.png) [@Tabco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tabco)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/79 "2020-04-20T20:56:15Z")
My grandpa retired in Rosarito, Mexico. When I was a kid I used to visit him and my last visit was when I was 9. I enjoyed the visits and I somehow managed to get along with the kids there despite the language barrier. I still have a photo taken of me and them that I value somewhat. ---
**Author:** ![ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chockfullofheadygoodness/32/511_2.png) [@ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2020, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119/80 "2020-04-20T20:57:27Z")
12 - Boy Scout Camporee in Ensenada in Baja California. The scout district rented some buses to get us down there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-first-left-the-country/852119.md?page=5)