Actually that’s really basic knowledge which someone who has a certain level of education should be aware of. OP is totally right in being shocked by this.

It might be basic for you, but it's still a field completely unrelated to his specialty. Can you tell me what country Monaco is in without looking it up? What about Lagos? If information isn't something that you can use or have an interest in, you won't remember it.

Monaco is a country in itself. It's not part of any other country.

It is. That doesn't make my question invalid, the answer would be Monaco. The point of the question is to make nemcali question whether or not knowing geography is important.

It's basic knowledge if you live in Venice or near Venice. Otherwise it's knowledge that may or may not be important to you. To a football fan there are bits of knowledge they consider "basic knowledge" that if someone professes to love the sport and didn't know would seem like "wtf" Spain and Italy are neighbors if someone told me "Venice is in Spain" until I thought harder about it I'd probably be nodding along. Not all knowledge can be basic knowledge. We learn a lot of information in our lives and judging other people as morons for not remembering the exact details of every single piece of info is stupid in and of itself. Like I said it's not related to his field and he has no other reason to remember specifically where Venice is.

Why so this being downvoted so much? Apparently a good chunk of people don’t like the idea that he isn’t aware of the geography of the entire world.