I guess I live under a rock

[Allen]

Seems like every day I'm hearing of a country that I'm unfamiliar with. I know names change and there are 195 countries in the world, many being like states here.

I admit I don't keep up with it but I didn't realize that Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were among those that no longer exist, being split up into other countries. That's where some of the "new" names have come from.

There's plenty of others but I believe these are the most recent having taken place back in the 90's.

I guess production of the Yugo was enough to finish off Yugoslavia.

[lyman]

yugo broke up in the 90's,

my brother from another mother got the pleasure of being deployed there during that conflict, based in Hungary, and crossed the border almost every day,

[Phloating Phlasher]

I've actually been expelled from a country that no longer exists (Czechoslovakia) by a regime that no longer exists, (The USSR).
I was installing photographing film processing equipment that Britain had gifted to the Technical School (now the The Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava "S.T.U."), there, trying to wean them off of Communism in the Bratislava complex when the Soviets decided to "visit" in the late summer of 1968.
I outlived both of them!

[JohnMOhio]

Unless your Croatian or Chek you would not have heard of the split. My family background is from Croatia. Had family there during the breakup. Serbian tanks came down the road and blew up homes on each side of the road. That area where my family came from had multi nationalities and a farming community. The house was built by my Grandfather. Very interesting construction. I was there in 1988 for a visit. Took my Dad and my daughter as he was getting up in years and not likely to see his sisters again. I managed to take photos but have since mislaid them. The barn was the most interesting. No nails. Just pegs holding everything together. Also it still had a thatched roof. The farming was stopped when Grandpa passed away I believe in the 60's. What was left of the family lived in Zagreb, a major city.

The most interesting part of the house was that the kitchen was in the center of the house with bedrooms on either side. The house was heated by a wood stove and the stack went into the attic. I went up there to look around and found that the attic was used to smoke the meat. The hooks for hanging the meat were still there. I also found a "tree" (spelling/name?) used to hook up to the plow. My Grandfather scratched his last name on it. It is somewhere in the house. I managed to get it into one of our large suitcases for our return trip home.