cheap hi-balls and karaoke at the end of the world.

Since I'm back at work full-time, I'm back to drilling the 245 countries in 10 minutes. Unfortunately, I can't remember how far I had progressed when I stopped doing this last summer, but my goal (again) is to eventually be able to name them all. I'm a little rusty after months of slacking, so I got all but 90 of them today, and among those 90 were a few obvious misses: Argentina, Chad (CHAD!), Ecuador, Laos... there's work to be done, obviously.

So, the obscure country of the day today is Svalbard, which is a little island archipelago north of Norway which actually belongs to Norway and is not a country. (The 245 includes quite a few of these territories that are not technically independent, but it's OK. Better to know about them than not know about them.) The fun fact about Svalbard is that, aside from sounding like something from The Golden Compass, it is home to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, an underground "doomsday" vault of seeds that will come in handy after the end of the world.

Previously: Prisnestrovie is the Obscure European Country of the Day, Mauritius