I recently read the sequel to one of my all time favorite books "Anything Can Happen" by George and Helen Papashvily. It is a charming little book* (literally--because it was published during WWII while there was paper rationing, the hardbound book is only a little larger than the size of a paperback) which I found at a library book sale in my early teens. George was a natural storyteller, and this delightful autobiography of his adventures of coming to the US from Georgia (near Russia, not the state of the US) influenced my life for ever after. I just found that he wrote (in his book "Home and Home Again") about his return to visit his home village in Georgia after 40 years in the US.
Reading his books makes me homesick for a place I have never been to--and, because of the political instability in Georgia (which, for those who are not totally up to date on their former Soviet countries, is located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe--bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan) I probably never will.
Which is a shame, because I would LOVE to visit a country with over 9000 years of history! It is one of the oldest countries in the world, which has retained its own culture, language and traditions in spite of being smack in the middle of the territory everybody else wanted--which brought about hundreds of invasions.
Ahh, well--I am a great armchair traveler, and Google Maps has made it even more fun!
*and because it was a bestseller and book of the month selection, it isn't very hard to find a copy--the reissued 1984 paperback lists on amazon for .40!
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