I went to Georgia for the first time in 1999 and immediately fell in love: I fell in love with the Georgian red wine Saperavi and with Khinkali, a ultra-delicious Georgian dumpling filled with spiced lamb meat, coriander, parsley and cumin (among all dumplings in the world only rivalled by Xialongbao). But above all, I fell in love with Georgian hospitality: The Georgian heartland lies in kind of a fertile bathtub between the Lesser Caucasus and the Greater Caucasus. In the latter we travelled on a daring mountain track in an old Lada to Mestia, a village high in the mountains of beautiful Svanetia. Back in 1998 there were intimidating fortified towers signalling a bloody feuds even in the not so distant past, but no tarmac roads and zero hotels. The mayor of Mestia and his wife were kind enough to vacate their bedroom for us and we slept heavenly. The next day in Ushguli, the highest village in Europe (if you count Georgia to Europe), I ate the best home fried potatoes ever. 

And listened to the sweetest history of origins a county can ever offer: God was in the process of distributing the different parcels of his world to the respective peoples.He had nearly finished his job – when the Georgians hastily came running: They had been, as usual, feasting, eating and drinking, and had therefore been running a bit late. Thank God that he found the Georgians’ lifestyle so sympathetic that he gave this precious parcel of land he actually had reserved for himself, to the Georgians.