I'm a junior in high school and in all my years of schooling, I've only had one geography class and it was a semester long course in sixth grade. That being said, in all my history classes in high school which have been honors and AP (which may be why) have spent considerable amounts of time on learning areas around what we were learning. I know a world map pretty well. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I don't see any excuses for not knowing a general map area of at least your own country - google is there for a reason.

And you didn't notice the accent? Or the lack of vodka and saying comrade after everything? Come on bro, get your shit together.

I'm from South Africa and live in the UK. I still get asked by people about whether South Africa is "next to Brazil, yeah?" so it's not just Americans making the mistakes here. Whilst the OP is, in my opinion, a total idiot for thinking Dresden is in Russia (it doesn't even sound Russian in the slightest), it doesn't surprise me about Americans not knowing the geography of an area that doesn't actually matter that much to them. It's the same in Europe. I spent more time learning about relief rainfall than I learnt about the states of India or the general geography of South Korea as (unfortunately) the former is more relevant to the UK than the latter. Besides, it's not the same with all Americans. I went away with some friends of mine and one American asked me if France is part of the UK (which it's not). I met another group of Americans about a week later, their European geography was actually pretty good. When they came to asking the questions about our knowledge of American geography we're the people who ended up looking clueless. I'm only good at knowing where places are or what capital city belongs to which country because it is interesting to me. On the other hand, I have some friends that are utterly clueless, so yeah, I wouldn't say it's just Americans that suck at geography.

The more times I tell people I'm from Poland and they ask in which part of Russia this is, the more I feel like punching new people in the face as a greeting.

you need to revisit Geography OP

It's people like you, who don't know anything about geography, who give Americans a bad name. YDI

'Murrica. Still better than the FML where OP's mother was convinced that Egypt lies in Europe "because it starts with an E" though.

ignorance is bliss?

The fact that you don't know Dresden shows a failure on the education system. I highly suggest everyone from the West read up on Dresden and the horrors of what happened there during WWII. This isn't just a failure of Geography but of History as well.

I don't blame him, I mean I do... It's just that not everyone is knowledgeable about every town/city that's historically important (even in a WW), and not everyone is good with Geography, but he should've asked where it was if there was any hint of doubt >> or, you know, accents. A German accent does not sound like a Russian one... I mean there are obvious things you should know where they are (countries, continents, capitols) but usually our History classes are so jam packed with stuff it's hard to keep track with the most boring teachers and I don't think we even had a Geography class >>; So, it's kinda their fault, kinda not.