Where in the world?!

One of the games I've recently played was called 'Globetrotter XL' which involved looking at the given place and clicking the right place on a map. It was difficult enough to get the mouse in the right place (touch pad + shaky hands. Not a good combo) but it was actually quite fun. And, if you don't want to play it yourself, I'll give you a quick essence of it

Now seems like a good time to mention that I cheated. Kind of. I was sat there with an A4 sized world map, and a second A4 sized map of Europe. In a way this added another layer of difficulty to the game, because as well as squinting at the screen to find the right blob of country, I also had to squint at the map and try to read the size 6 print for the place names. Also, flicking between the two maps using one hand was pretty difficult. You know, if you're as uncoordinated as me.

The map wasn't entirely helpful though, because it only had a few place names and the game was coming up with random towns and cities and stuff that neither I, nor the map had any idea about (actually, to be fair, I knew where most of the UK and Australian cities where. Even if it did decide that Tasmania was a separate country to the rest of Australia!). So a lot of the time it was just click somewhere in the middle of the country. This sometimes worked, like with the Mauritius, which was literally a dot on screen, and it sometimes didn't. America, I could guess which coast it was on, but Russia... Russia is huge. Russia is ridiculously large compared to the rest of the countries. So, sticking the pin in the middle of Russia still meant that you were out by hundreds of kilometres. So my number one tip for this game would be to learn Russian geography. Seriously.

Problem number 2 of the map is that, when trying to find stuff, the timer runs down. Even once you've selected an answer, there's a timer. This meant a couple of times, I looked up from the map after finding a place I missed, went to hit the next button and accidentally placed the next pin. One time, I put Darwin, Australia, in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. I was not impressed then...

A lot of the time though, I forgot the map and panicked. I can do most of the European countries, North America and some of the bigger countries on other continents. But a lot of the time, the countries were only random names I had heard at the Olympic opening ceremony or a T.V. quiz show (though I knew where Madagascar was from playing Pandemic. Anyone else who's played that game will understand why...). So I ended up guessing where places were based on whether the name sounded like it belonged in Africa, Asia or South America. I got countries in completely the wrong places, and I'm sure if I knew anyone from French Guiana, that they might be quite upset that I knew so little about their country that I stuck it in the middle of Africa (Apparently, it's above Brazil).
But hey, I've learnt where it goes now, right?

Actually, this game was quite fun and I did learn a few things from it. It's just a shame that my upcoming exams are in Maths not Geography...
Anyone know any obscure-ish countries? I was pretty chuffed with myself for know Liechtenstein, if I'm honest ;)