“Wait a minute. Budapest ’s in Anatruria?”
“No, it’s in Hungary.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“The stamps never got to Anatruria,” I explained. “As a matter of fact, the only government independent Anatruria ever had was a government in exile. A little band of patriots scattered all over Eastern Europe proclaimed Anatrurian independence. Then they tried lobbying the League of Nations, but they didn’t get anywhere. They even put Woodrow Wilson on one of their stamps, for all the good it did them.”
“Why Woodrow Wilson? Did he have relatives in Anatruria?”
“He was big on self-determination of nations. But by the time they got the stamps printed, Warren G. Harding was president. I doubt the Anatrurians ever heard of him, and I’d be willing to bet he never heard of Anatruria.”
“Well, neither did I. Where is it, exactly?”
“You know where Bulgaria and Romania and Yugoslavia come together?”
“Sort of. Except there’s no more Yugoslavia, Bern. It’s five different countries now.”
“Well, part of one of them is part of Anatruria, and the same thing goes for Bulgaria and Romania. Anyway, that’s where Ilona was born, but she hasn’t been home in quite a while. She lived in Budapest for a year or two, or maybe it was Bucharest.”
“Maybe it was both of them.”
“Maybe. And she was in Prague, which used to be in Czechoslovakia.”
“Used to be? Where’d it go?”
“There’s no more Czechoslovakia. There’s Slovakia and there’s the Czech Republic.”
“Oh, right. You know what’s weird? At the same time that Europe is deciding to be one big country, Yugoslavia ’s deciding to be five little countries all by itself. Now you’ve got the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union and the former Czechoslovakia. It’s like Formerly Joe’s. Remember Formerly Joe’s?”
“Vividly.”
“Oh, right, we didn’t like our meal, did we? I guess lots of people felt the same way, because they didn’t last long. There was this restaurant called Joe’s at the corner of West Fourth and West Tenth, and it was there for years, and then it was out of business for years. It just sat there vacant.”