Sting's Geography Course Trivia Quiz

Answer: Florence, Italy

The city of Firenze (or Florence in English) rests in central Italy on the Arno and is the provincial capital of Tuscany, where Sting currently has a home. It was the center of the Italian Renaissance from the 14th to the 16th centuries.

Answer: The Cliffs of Dover

The cliffs of Dover create the part of the British coast that faces the Strait of Dover and the country of France; they extend from the ancient port of Dover. The cliffs reach around 350 feet high at some points. They are famously known as "the white cliffs of Dover" because they are composed primarily of chalk. Symbolically, these cliffs have always held great defensive and patriotic value for the British, for they face the European continent from which many invasions were launched before air travel.

Answer: The Sahara Desert

The Sahara Desert is indeed Africa's largest desert, and it covers a significant amount of north Africa, from the west coast all the way to the Nile. Interestingly, around four million people manage to live there. The song that Sting sings is called "Tea in the Sahara."

Answer: Belgium

Belgium, whose capital is Brussels, is bordered by The Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and France. France also shares its border with all of the countries mentioned except for The Netherlands. However, only Belgium contains the cities of Ghent and Antwerp, and only Belgium and France are mentioned in Sting's song.

Answer: New Orleans, USA

New Orleans in the state of Louisiana was established by French settlers near the mouth of the Mississippi River and near Lake Pontchartrain, both of which empty into the Gulf of Mexico. The city is often associated with revelry, hedonism, and dark arts, and Bourbon Street is the symbolic center of these associations. Sting wrote this song after reading Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire."

Answer: Islands in the Norwegian Sea

The Faroe Islands are northwest of the Shetland Islands and southeast of Iceland; they exist as a province of Denmark. Irish hermits, most likely monks, and Vikings were among the original settlers.

Answer: Mexico

Obviously, the Spanish excludes Brazil, a Portuguese speaking nation, but with a situation involving vigilante cowboys, banditos, senoritas, and burritos, the location could be only Mexico. In fact, the song explains they found themselves "down Mexico way." Unfortunately, the townspeople renege on their deal: after the seven brothers kill the banditos, they discover there is only one senorita for all of them.

The lusty youngest brother kills his other six brothers--thus proving that "love is stronger than justice."

Answer: A coastal city of Chile

Before he reaches the comfort of Valparaiso, the sailor says he must first sail "round the Cape Horn." Valparaiso was once a great and captivating port on the coast of Chile; however, the Panama Canal diverted much of the traffic that stopped there, and the city succumbed to poverty. Recently, the town has undergone a rebirth and is once again becoming a popular tourist destination.

It is only 71 miles northwest of Santiago, Chile's capital. Sting claims that he has always been fascinated with South America and that Valparaiso was particularly captivating.

He writes, "I imagined that it meant a valley of paradise and pictured old sailing ships berthed in its peaceful harbor, resting after the terrors of Cape Horn."

Answer: An expanse of the Atlantic Ocean between the West Indies and the Azores

Bermuda and parts of the Bermuda Triangle lie in the Sargasso Sea. This body of water is named for the seaweed "sargassum" that floats over its entire surface. When Christopher Columbus first encountered this area, he made the mistake of thinking land had to be nearby because of the seaweed and attempted to measure the depth of the water, only to find no bottom. Oddly, the waters of the Sargasso Sea are largely immobile because they are surrounded by some of the strongest, interlocking currents of the Atlantic Ocean.

The title of the song is a very interesting one, by the way. Most of time, a variation of this statement is used to declare sarcastically that one doesn't need someone; in this case, however, a dolphin is most dependent upon the hole in its head.

Answer: Ithaca

Ithaca Island lies off Greece's west coast. The island has been inhabited probably since the second millennium BC. It has been occupied by not only the Greeks, but the Romans, Normans, Franks, Turks, French, and British. In 1953, most of the island's infrastructure was destroyed by an earthquake, and most of the buildings on the island are no older than fifty years. You can read "The Odyssey" for more about Ulysses's (or Odysseus's) adventures as he is sailing home to Ithaca; the epic poem was written by Homer, who may have lived on Ithaca himself.