well, you know — at least it didn’t say Slovakia.
that would be entirely too predictable, though.

     by Mira on October 28, 2005 at 7:47 am

Heh, I remember something like that on an imported Chilean wine’s label.They
had an artistically rendered map of Patagonia, of course including the
WHOLE territory as being from our good cousins to the West.Ohwell, I guess we still have a long way to go… 

     by Carlitos Yoder on October 28, 2005 at 8:14 am

Btw, Slovenia is famous - we made it to BoingBoing:http://www.boingboing.net/2005/10/27/funny_menu_translati.html 

     by vex on October 28, 2005 at 10:29 am

Heh..it is a good promotion of the white blob though. If I saw this label I would surely inquire what the white spot is.Maybe the country that was supossed to be there disappeared like in the Croatian movie (how familiar?!) "Kam je izginila Slovenija?" (btw. does anyone have this movie or kno where to find it?)

     by Vlasta on October 28, 2005 at 10:29 am

This map leaves much desired on many levels. For example, although
Trieste does get that shout-out, it’s lost its status as a major
seaport, having been relocated to somewhere up toward the Alps. This map
really should say, somewhere on it, "NOT TO BE USED FOR NAVIGATION".

     by sgazzetti on October 28, 2005 at 10:35 am

I managed to dig out the movie. Apparently it is on Severina’s album Severgreen under the title "Gdje je nestala Slovenija?"Anyone happen to have it?

     by Vlasta on October 28, 2005 at 11:48 am

sometimes these kind of ‘on purpose mistakes’ do turn out looking quite beautiful actually. i’m referring to the occasion about a year ago when the EU released a map of Europe with Wales completely wiped off. Infact, there wasn’t even a white blob, the sea had apparently washed away Wales and come all the way up to the English border. Lovely. The sheer beauty of it brought a tear to my eye.See for yourself http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/wales/3715512.stm

     by deal-real on October 28, 2005 at 12:23 pm

As sgazzetti pointed out already, the draining of the Adriatic around
Trieste is hilarious.  What’s with the "Thousand Islands"
label?  No place in Croatia is known as "Thousand Islands". 
There is a Thousand Islands in New York - Ontario (
honeymoons.about.com/od/viewtravelphotos/l/bl_photoKI_a014.htm
).   So, what else is in this Fig Spread/Jam?  
Slivovica as preservative?  That could be an explanation for the
illustrator’s faux pas, eating the fig spread on the job.

     by DarkoV on October 28, 2005 at 2:27 pm

I think the map was drawn by an American of say 25 years old. I met
a very nice young American who has been to Czech Republic, he’s 18 or a
little younger, and guess what? He had no IDEA where BiH Croatia,
Sloveina and CiCG are! He didn’t even know where the old Yugoslavia had
been. I actually carry a map in my book bag for moments like that! I
bet someone like him drew the map without consulting my map, an old
1965 Geographic map with the borders drawn in to reflect modern reality.As for orange fig spread, please pass it to Comrade Katja for immediate…um inspekcija! 

     by Katja on October 29, 2005 at 10:20 am

All this talk about ’stupid americans’ and how they have NO IDEA where certain countries are…

How many of you people can tell where the state Maine is? Or Vermont? What are their capitals? From the top of your head? Maybe something easier, Oregon?

Ok, simply put New York on the map, together with all the states around it.

Of course, before you publish something like that, you check things out, but judging people just because they don’t know where is the little fart of a country that they never heard of, is plain stupid.

Ok, rant off…

     by BigWhale on October 29, 2005 at 10:42 pm

Three years before the begining of the ugly phase of the Vietnam
war, my late mother goes to the library because in the paper she read
that President Kennedy had sent ‘military advisors’ to South Vietnam.
She found in the Los Angeles Public Library exactly 3 books related to
Vietnam,  A novel called ‘Sea Wall’ written by some French guy and
as I remember it a very bleak book, a rare cook book and a phrasebook. Los
Angeles had in those days an EXCELLENT library. They had books about
all sorts of obscure subjects. The young man I spoke of isn’t stupid,
he’s actually pretty brilliant, and had been in Eastern Europe. It
wasn’t like he was some hick who dropped out of high school at 16 to
get married, who never left Cow Town Washington or East Jesus
Kansas.  This is a guy who made it to college and gets respectable
grades in his classes.  That is the scary part, it
seems like these ‘little fart countries no one’s ever heard of as Big
Whale so delicately describes the land of his birth, are the very ones
where there is some Godawful war or other that the U.S. then becomes
involved with in some capacity or other. There was a
wonderful American satirist named Ambrose Bierce, he wrote a thing
called ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’. Here is his entry under ‘War’: ‘A
thing invented by God to teach Americans Geography’

     by Katja on October 30, 2005 at 6:38 pm

Big Whale:Where’s Slovenia? :DNo one has asked you to pinpoint exact locations of Ljubljana, Piran, Celje, Domzale etc.  But a general knowledge of where a country is located does help.  I don’t know where most American cities are admittedly, but I do know where America is.  That’s a start, right?  Not that it’s just an American problem, as many Australians have a lack of geographical knowledge too.

     by Matt on October 30, 2005 at 10:42 pm

Matt, I checked out Big Whale’s homepage, he’s Slovenian. So I’m sure he knows.

     by Katja on October 31, 2005 at 3:07 am

Fine then!!Where’s Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane, Hobart, Darwin, Perth, Broken Hill, Newcastle, Woolongong, Alice Springs, Broome, Echuca, Coffs Harbour, Townsville, Geelong, Ballarat, Toowoomba and Thargomindah?OK I’m just being stupid now

     by Matt on October 31, 2005 at 8:34 am

Matt,

I was trying to point out that asking an american where Slovenia is is like asking slovenian where some American state is. It’s not like that, it’s even worse, since American states are in general much bigger than Slovenia and you have at least a general direction where to look.

     by BigWhale on November 5, 2005 at 11:00 pm