Interesting Facts about Georgia

• The Georgian language is unlike any language you’ve ever heard. It has strange sounds, and consonants pronounced gutturally from the back of the throat.
• The Georgian alphabet has 33 letters, based onthe sort of Aramaic spoken in the time of Jesus.
• The Georgians don’t refer to their country as Georgia – rather, they call it Sakartvelo. No one knows how the country came to called Georgia in English. Perhaps, during the holy crusades, when the Christiancrusaders swept through the region. They must have heard the people spoken ofas "Gurj" which came to be pronounced eventually as Georgia.
• Joseph Stalin died sixty years ago but theGeorgians still worship him. You’ll find photos of Stalin of the Georgian-bornruler of the former Soviet Union everywhere. People here are proud that tinyGeorgia actually produced a leader strong enough to put down Hitler.
• Georgia is cradled by the highest mountain range in Europe, the Caucasus Mountains, which mark a border between Georgia and Russia.