@MarkMayo yes, mohammed is a fixed "element", both sunni and shia believe in him as the prophet..

then, the following leaders is where both sunni and shia divide..

but I personally stopped following a sect long ago.. but i am from sunni backgrounds. This war is been going for 1400 years.. it's just too stupid.

1400 year old war.. seriously!

good thing is, new generations think of it as a stupid thing.

prior to 2003, 50% of marriages in Iraq where mixed marriages, where one of party of the marriage is sunni while the other is shia..

then booom, this thing now is big no in Iraq, to the point that some people who were married for years had to divorce or else someone willbe killed..

while in oman, saudi or uae for example, we live side by side with no problems.

so, political parties usually use the sunni-shia card once they have that chance.. pro-iran in iraq used to against sunnis, then isis came along and used it agiainst shia.. etc. etc.

pure bullshit..

it started as a political problem, 1400 years ago, then in time, both started to have different religion opinions, to the point each sect has it's own type of mosques!

and, it seems that it will always be political.. general public couldn't care less, until someone makes it sound like it's against the "country".. another bullshit..

it's becoming boring, most people do not fall for this anymore, and the recent iraq protests prove this.. the crowed are made from sunnies and shias, who live in different areas, that are either all sunnis or shias, once they decided to flip the table on the political parties, the genral public forgot about the sunni shia thing, while most of the protestors are born at the time where sunni and shia weren't friends in iraq..

that's a good sign, i hope this weird stuff end soon

apparently the war in afghanistan is the longest the US has been involved in a war

that's less than 2 decades!

1400 years is just .... wow

@Willeke Thanks for the invite. Travel is my passion.

Hi, Welcome @TeresaDietrich

You will fit in well here, then.

we have a few people who are hardly ever home, we have people who move 'home' rather often (@MarkMayo is one of them) and we have people like me who work to earn to travel.

88 countries and all 7 continents, working on 100 aka century club

I work to afford my travel habit like you I think.

I am no further than 27 countries and only Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

We have a meta question where we try to get all countries in the world ticked (by one of us having been there.)

These times I travel 4 to 6 times per year but mostly within Europe and more often long weekends and short holidays.

@TeresaDietrich, is it still work time where you are? I am in the Netherlands and it is after dinner here.

@TeresaDietrich, before I became active on Stack Exchange, (mostly but not only travel) I was rather active on Yahoo!Answers. One of the things we noticed there was that the people who were in positions to make the policies had never used the site and did not have any feeling with it.

They tried to re-shape the site using commercial ideas and every next change the site got farther away from the users and more and more users stayed away. These days the site is all but dead.

I would hate for Stack Exchange to go that same way. Maybe is getting users to apply for jobs will be enough, or at least get people working to use the site.

Got to go. Bye.

@Willeke indeed, lived in 4 countries and 5 cities since joining the site ;) Now Chch NZ will likely be home for a while tho, looking at houses.

@TeresaDietrich oh I'm jealous, I'm on 80 and 6

@TeresaDietrich do have a look at that question Willeke linked above - we only have a few countries left to get ;)

@DaniilManokhin cold? ;)

@DaniilManokhin 500 points for you here if you write a canonical answer with pictures: travel.stackexchange.com/questions/153660/…

@DaniilManokhin had a look, but it's a new IP to our system, sorry. fortunately you caiught and rejected it

@Haha I meant Antarctica would be cold ;) But glad you're feeling better. Sucks to be travelling when you feel sick, especially with pressure changes on sinus

@TeresaDietrich Welcome to the travel chat, thanks for stepping in.

Looks like the "rarest" country I've been is Isle of Man, then Belarus. I'm surprised more of us have been to Belarus than to Isle of Man. I wonder how many of those were just transits on the train to Russia. I've only been on transit, but will visit Belarus properly this summer.

I intend to visit Saint Pierre et Miquelon.

still upset I missed Belarus

while I lived in the UK

and Isle of Man. that should have been an easy weekend

@Willeke Normally I live in NYC but am working out of Palm Springs California, so just now wrapping up my day. Looking forward to making use of the company remote culture to work from wherever going forward.

@MarkMayo You aren't far behind but assuming Antartica is your remaining, and its a big trip and costs $$. I really enjoyed it but not sure what would make me repeat it. I told my SO we needed to go before it go Pluto'ed.