- Michael M.: Too much going on. Life in flux, etc..
- Sunshine: Wow, I was soooo happy to see a new post in my rss reader. I was hopping this is already the comeback! :(...
- gandalf: Did you only get caffeine through Dr.p or did you drink coffee as well? I’m interested, since...
- neeka: nine kilos… wow… :) happy holidays to you, michael, and to all your loved ones! veronica
- m: It was a bargain. No strings attached.
Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Maribor, Slovenia.
Portoroz, Slovenia.
• AlienMelon
• Burger.si
• Heck
• Izklop
• si.blogs
• Sloblogi
• Blogorola
• Natalija Verboten
The ultimate geographical challenge: 210 Slovenian municipalities in 10 minutes.
I often get chided here by people who love pointing out how poor Americans are at geography. The conversations usually go something like this:
Slovene: “So you came here from America, huh? Did you ever see that one video online where they ask that American guy where America is and he’s all like “Dur dur dur, I don’t know.” Ha, ha! Americans are so stupid!”
Me: “Great, thanks.”
So, over the weekend, I put together the ultimate test of Slovenian geography skillz. Nevermind 192 countries in 10 minutes, here’s:
Frankly, I’d be impressed with anyone who gets even half of them in that time. And I’d be extremely impressed with anyone who gets all the ones that start with “Sveti.” It’s incredibly difficult.
Post your results in the comments, and good luck!
Comments
Comments for this post are closed.
With all due respect, but naming municipalities of a tiny country like Slovenia is not even close to naming world states. Any I admit, I’m 100% sure I can’t name even a quarter of our municipalities.
So good luck to those who’ll try. 
This was funny - not!
I didn’t made not even 25% and I ‘forgot’ such heavyweights like LaÅ¡ko!!! I think I have to hand out my slovenian passport.
On the other hand: 210 obÄ?inas * avg. 10 characters = 2100 characters / 10 min = 210 characters per minute. Hmm… anyone?
Robert: It’s pretty much impossible. But I don’t think raising the time limit would help much. I spent most of the last five minutes saying: “Wait, what’s the name of that one town.. Ah, man.. that one. With the spa.. The one.. Shit!”
I would had no problem writing 210 characters per minute, the problem is the lack of knowlage:)
I’ve had that same geography conversation about 50,000 times.
Capt’n! I canna get ‘er to start!!!
Too much Star Trek… But seriously… I cannot open the page, but I’m dying to see what university taught me 
Michael (of course I am not going to tell you how I did
)but: while Murska Sobota was accepted as answer, it does not occur in the list (between Mozirje and Muta). Muta? I do know someone from Muta… Hm…
i didnt even try the muncipalities, but i managed to get 84 countries correct..
I can’t open the page either.
If somebody else has problems you can try this quiz meanwhile (you have to click the correct position on the map):
olympiad.fe.uni-lj.si/SloMesta/TestSloSl.html
got 60 out of 210… just a little bit over 25%
and yes, laško escaped my memory also. but I have correctly entered Sveti Jurij v Slovenskih goricah which is also an achievement.
66. 6,6 per minute. Or 9,09 s for 1 municipality.
cija and davor, you guys seriously rock.
When doing this, I was surprised that Portorož doesn’t have its own obÄ?ina while so many tiny villages do.
The page does seem to be slow loading. Just give it time and eventually it should come up.
Found 71 (34 %), including Sveti Andraž v Slovenskih goricah and Odranci.
Found 84. But I’m really good in geography. Problem with Ig is, that behind name are two !!. Author-please delete them from database.
Miha: I had problems with Ig. For some reason it was too short to be recognized, so I had to add the two exclamation points. I suppose it’s fixable but I didn’t have the energy to do so.
A mere 58… Univeristy taught me absolutely shit (I studied local self-gorvenment!!!)
But in my defence - I still haven’t had my second coffee…:0
Found 86. Not so bad, i suppose
jerneja: The best so far, it seems.
peng: I’ve heard that ritualistic suicide can cleanse away any and all shame.
@Michael M: Yes, but I can’t image the University of Ljubljana perfomirng a hara-kiri
@ Jerneja: Way to go Nejch!!! Carica!
No good without a Slovene keyboard, as it thinks I can’t spell. Not that I would have been able to do so many, but it just points out there is plenty of slovenia still to see.
Only found 41… But it’s a great fun. Thanks!
I got 57, which is not too bad for an American living in Ljubljana who rarely gets out of the city! I would have gotten at least one other (Velike LaÅ¡Ä?e) if I had watched my Å¡’s and Ä?’s. I was surprised the Lesce is not its own obÄ?ina. I mean, it’s the home of Gorenjka chocolate!
The real question for you Michael is: How many counties are in Louisiana? Or if you preffer - in New York?
Jernej: I could get at least two or three Louisiana parishes. Even more if I was allowed to use Wikipedia.
Well that went… bad.But lets face it we all suck at something.
What really disturbed me was this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOzMefUlE58
And this doesn’t include only geography..
I know this is happening all over the world and human ignorance is endless, but this is just sad..
btw: It’s Novo mesto, not Novo Mesto
68, some of them i didn’t even know they have the status of a municipality, most of them thou, never heard of, because they are so small, no inhabitants and are new.
Got 48, even a bit more than I expected. The problem were not false guesses but getting some candidates into my head: white patches on the mental map of Slovenia…oooh…oooh…which town is there again. Got 114 countries tho, less than expected. Noticed I had a white patch over the whole Indochinese peninsula, damn.
Yeah, getting stuck is a killer. I lost a ton of time trying to remember “KoÄ?evje.” Instead of just moving on, I stubbornly tried everything I could to jog my memory, but it didn’t work.
One thing’s for sure: This quiz would’ve been a helluva lot easier in 1990.
Lenart. I got stuck at Lenart. A town I passed through x times when hitchhiking from Ljubljana to M. Sobota. Heck, I even used to know where to drink a nice coffee in Lenart. Is it a municipality at all? I just thought it must be…
It is, indeed.
I didn’t even try, since I’ve never even set foot in Slovenia!
Now, my passport alleges I’m an American, but not have I only managed to correctly identify all the oceans and continents correctly, but also all the US states and 36 of 39 European countires on tests on this site: www.lizardpoint.com/fun/geoquiz/index.html
Does this mean I’m not really am American??? Clearly my geography is far too good!
Craig: Wrong. What you’re supposed to say is: “I’m an American and on the geography quiz it asked me to find Italy but I couldn’t find my mouse. Then again, even if I did find my mouse, I probably would have selected Antarctica. In conclusion: Dur, dur, dur.”
That way, the next time I’m out someone could tell me about you. “Hey, do ever read Carniola? The other day this one guy wrote…”
Michael: I thought that was my job!
Illium:
I just watched that youtube video.
Let me disabuse you of the sadness that this has brought to your life.
I think the immigration authorities should ask the following question of foreign news crews upon entry into America: “Do you plan on spending a week asking Americans simple questions, getting a collection of responses, and then make a 5-10 minute reel of the most ignorant responses?”
Let me tell you an example of how this is done.
About ten years ago, I was in DC walking around when confronted by a news crew from Iceland. They were interviewing Americans on the street about the 10 year anniversary of the Reykjavik Summit. The old guy put a microphone up to my mouth and asked me if I knew anything about it. In my teens, I was an international politics nerd, so I had a whole lot to say on the matter. But, within seconds, the cameraman pointed the camera to the ground. Even the cameraman knew what was going on! The interviewer rudely dismissed me and moved on. I noticed that he was carrying a world map, which surely meant that he was also asking Americans to locate Iceland on the map.
Anyway, over the course of the day, I’m sure he got answers about the Reykjavik Summit similar to the following:
1. Didn’t some guys die trying to climb it?
2. I think President Nixon made a big mistake.
3. Is that in Germany?
etc. etc.
I will note that, if you want to abbreviate your stay in America and get those silly answers as quickly as possible, you head south. That’s why these guys on youtube headed south. That’s why the folks in a Canadian reel that I saw headed south. That’s why Borat headed south.
Next time I’m in Slovenia, I’m absolutely going to get a camera and stand on Copova with a microphone and ask questions like:
1. What do you think about President Bush’s opposition to the upcoming construction of the first mosque in America?
2. What do you think about the current forced removal of black families from Chicago?
3. What do you think about the decision of U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to investigate the American military for shooting a missile into the Pentagon? and
4. What do you think about Florida’s annual “Running of the Muslim”?
etc. etc.
How long do you think it would take me to get some very hilarious answers?
This sort of thing has some very real consequences. I went to law school with a lot of international students. The Western Europeans, the Japanese, the Canadians, etc. had a normal healthy attitude upon starting the program, but the Eastern European students quite often had a seriously arrogant attitude. I think that’s because not a lot of people in their home countries had gone through similar programs in America, and they were never able to throw off the “Americans are the stupidest people in the world” attitude. In other words, they were coming in blind, save for the assumption that it is the simply the case that Americans are stupid. That is, the assumption that Michael has to deal with all the time, and the assumption that I confront, even among the “intelligentsia,” whenever I visit Slovenia.
Anyway, I can tell you that it ended up being quite fun to observe.
In the end, from a realpolitik or tribalist perspective, I don’t think it’s such a bad thing for Americans that Europeans, etc. entertain this assumption. I also think it’s a disservice to convince people that maintaining a certain level of ignorance is OK because they will always be smarter than Americans.
I’m not a huge fan of Christopher Hitchens, but here’s an interesting article:
www.slate.com/id/2153578/
There’s a parallel here - doesn’t this youtube video show a politeness among Americans that is almost painful? When I’m out there on Copova (and I SWEAR I’m going to do it), while certain of the Slovenes (the ones that I’ll keep for the real) are giving me their extremely ignorant responses, I’m fairly certain that I’ll be confronted with extremely impolite attitudes.
Not everyone will be extremely impolite - in fact, a small minority will be. But the reel will only include that small minority, because that’s the point.
Patrick: I would love to see that video. A Europe-wide one would be even better. But if you do make one on Copova please don’t forget to send it to me.
Michael, well, why don’t you join me? As an added touch, we could dress up like these guys:
tinyurl.com/26qspd
Jernej, with all due respect and friendliness, I chuckled when you challenged Michael to state the number of counties in Louisiana. Not that you should have any reason to know this, but there are exactly none.
Unless it was a trick question, for which I would tip my hat to you.
Hey Mike,
Why didn’t Zales and Sentjanz count? Some of my ancestral cousins came from both places…
C
Michael: you missed one -
Cleveland
Patrick: the Eastern European students quite often had a seriously arrogant attitude
I have had the same experience in Germany…