When you are traveling in remote areas and specially in countries where you do not speak the language, it is really not easy to keep up with what is happening. When I was in Korea for example, there could have been a radiation incident for example, and I would have still run around, happy about the empty roads. The internet in many places is very patchy and you do not want to run for hotspots and change SIM cards all the time. A good way to stay “online” though is to use a radio. Unfortunately, there are not many decent radio programs left and the FM frequencies, 70-108 MHz, are in many countries filled with pop and rock trash. But the short wave and long wave bands have a much higher range and are used by radio services which still have journalistic quality. Some are also on a National, Ideological or Religious Mission, but they are easy to avoid. Of course you can listen to these bands on a Transceiver. But in some countries Transceivers are illegal, so that I decided for a simple short wave radio. The good old Grunding Yacht Boy or Grundig Satellite radios do not exist any more (they are now Made in China under the Grundig Brand), so I decided for a Sony ICF-SW7600GR, which is small enough to travel and powerful enough to serve the purpose.

Even also the BBC has been a bit “CNNed”, I still found that it is covering good information and programs with an enormous coverage all over the former Empire. The frequencies and schedules can be obtained by clicking here. A little less classical is Voice of America (VoA) which also has an extensive short wave coverage from the tradition of protecting innocent souls from being taken over by Communism in the Cold War (click here for frequencies). Deutsche Welle changes its Frequencies all the time, but you can find them for download here. Radio France Internationale has an excellent coverage in Africa (frequencies here), even in the Ultra Short Wave bands.