Listening to the World - Abkhazia

As part of my never ending quest for things to watch and listen to, I've always been fascinated with foreign broadcasting. As soon as I was able, I've used the internet to dial up stations from whatever country seemed most interesting at the time.

So to start a new project, I've decided to have a listen to a station (or perhaps two or three, depending on how it goes) representing every country on Earth. In alphabetical order.

I'll be using this list from wikipedia, which currently has 245 entries.

The first on the list is Abkhazia. According to Wikipedia, Abkhazia is

a de facto independent republic located on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, bordering the Russian Federation to the north, and within the internationally recognized borders of Georgia. Abkhazia’s independence is not recognized by any international organization or country and it is regarded as an autonomous republic of Georgia.

The capitol of Abkhazia is Sukhumi and the next time you pass through town you can listen to Radio Soma.

Radio Soma is a mostly popular music station (they seem to mix in some jazz and traditional music of the area - there also seems to be blocks of Arabian pop and Classical). There isn't a stream ("Our music stream is not original neither sophisticated - it doesn't matter to put him into the web."), but if you click onto the "what's playing" link, you will find some mp3s that show off the range of music they put out. (The classical tracks that were up when I visited were quite good as were the rest of the more obscure offerings.) You can also listen to the news in Russian and a selection of advertisements.

It is a plucky looking little station. The website claims that they are housed in an abandoned toilet. I hope there's some translation nuance that was missed there.

All in all, I think we're off to a nice start.