Hey geograpeeps! I know you're waiting for the Cape Verde episode, but before you do, we have to do Geography More.
Which is basically, the information that we cover for the stuff that didn't in the previous videos.
And today's episode we are gonna do Andorra, Angola, and Antigua & Barbuda.
Antigua. I have to remember to keep saying "TI-ga", not "ti-GUA."
Okay, so one thing I kinda wanted to talk about in the Andorra video but didn't really have a lot of time was
it's a really - yes, it's a small country and it's very strange, however,
they all kinda have to function in a very tight, compact way.
So first of all, Andorra does not have any military, so pretty much the defense of Andorra lies on France and Spain.
However, by Andorra law, all men ages 21 to 60 are actually called to defend in case any attack happens or occurs.
Furthermore, all male heads of households are required to have a gun.
Another things that really kinda seems to be confusing is the relationship that Andorra has with the rest of the EU.
Andorra is not part of the EU, which is strange, because their benecifiary countries, France and Spain are parts of the EU and furthermore,
their heads of states are EU citizens.
Furthermore, Andorra actually uses the euro as its currency, however that's not very suprising
considering the fact that they don't have a national bank.
So, by default, their currency always kinda relied on Spain and France to begin with, historically.
And also, they're not even part of the Schengen area, however it's kinda hard to get to Andorra anyway to begin with, so that doesn't really matter much.
Finally, one of the most fascinating aspects that I really wanted to expound more upon in the video but didn't really have the time
was the national language, the Catalan language.
And no, Catalan is not a dialect of Spanish.
Although there are some similar traits.
Catalan is spoken by about 9 million people across the world, mostly heavily concentrated in Catalonia
Valencia, the Balearic Islands, and even a little bit of Sardinia.
And it's kind of funny because Andorra is the only country in the world that actually has the Catalan language as its national language.
So those were just a things, I'm pretty sure there's alot more interesting things that I could have mentioned in Andorra, like that
cool-looking glass spa building
But you look that up.
Alright, let's move on.
Okay, so one thing that I really wanted to talk more about in the Angola video was the fact that Angola was start of the
Страны социадической ориентации - the countries of socialist orientation.
Which was basically all the countries that were heavily influenced by socialist, Marxist ideologies that came from the USSR.
See, unlike other European countries like France or Spain,
Russia never had an overseas empire. Never really colonized or conquered anything that was outside the immediate reach of their country.
The closest they got was after World War II when they started to really coerce and intice the
the countries in Africa and some in Asia and even some in south and central America
to consider their political ideologies.
Now Angola fell into that group and although Russia never "colonized" Angola
or Africa, they developed a heavily Soviet-influenced political structure that the Soviets approved of and gave themselves credit for planting.
This also made Portugal very confused and sad, considering that they were just witnessing
their former colony fall under the influence of another European power.
And the further we go into Georgaphy Now, you're gonna kinda see this pattern happening in a lot of other countries
that some we even already covered, like Benin.
Nonetheless, you kinda know how it all ended.
They dropped the whole thing and built McDonald's.
Oh yeah, and Angola is also home to the Ginat Sable, which was thought to be extinct but then it was rediscovered recently.
Alright, moving on.
Alright, Antigua and Barbuda.
First of all, "Anti-GA", not "Anti-GUA."
I made that mistake so many times, it's "Anti-GA."
One thing that I really kind wished that I could have talked more about was the
frigate bird sanctuary of Barbuda.
Actually, it's more properly known as Codrington Lagoon National Park.
Which has this vast, open field of mangroves that grow up along the beaches.
And in these mangroves, thousands and thousands of frigate birds migrate every year and plant their nests.
Now the frigat bird is really cool because the males have this really red pouch of their chests
that they puff up when they look for a mate.
It's actually a pretty cool tourist site that a lot of people go to check out.
Also the country loves cricket.
Even though they're a small country with a small population, they've actually produced some of the top cricketeers in the world.
Like Viv Richards, Richy Richardson, and Andy Roberts.
The other thing that I wanted to mention was the currency.
See, sometimes even though some countries are fully sovereign,
they don't have a strong enough centralized bank to maintain a national currency.
So sometimes groups of countries band together and join forces to collectively share a regional currency.
Or they take the currency of a bigger, more economically stable country.
You see this happening all over the world in areas like Asia and Africa and I guess technically you could argue that Europe has it with the whole euro thing.
Antigua and Barbuda uses the East Carribean Dollar, which is used by:
Domina, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, and 2 British overseas territories Anguilla and Montserrat.
The funny thing is Barbados used to have this currency, then in 1972 they were like
"Naww, I don't need you guys. I'm nationalizing my own bank notes."
So that's about it. Those are a few things that I kinda wanted to talk about that didn't quite go into the videos.
There are some other things that I totally missed out on, I'm pretty sure you guys are aware of some of them
especially if you're from those areas.
And if I missed anything, feel free to put them in the comments.
Encourage other people to learn more about those countries if you know something that I didn't mention.
So yeah. That is the second episode of Geography More.
And I'm gonna start working on the Cape Verde episode. Thank you guys so much for watching. Stay tuned, stay cool.