Travel has been integrated into my life for a while, especially travel to smaller towns and villages. The soul of these places are the people who run local shops and businesses, from the south of France to the farthest corners of Mexico and Argentina to still relatively unknown places like the country of Georgia, near the Black Sea. I like taking photos of what these places offer, and of the people who run them, and post little stories about both, so that others can understand and love what makes these places unique.
But most of all, the task I set for myself is to make sure that historical places, including their names, don’t disappear in the rush of our everyday lives. For example, just recently I put the near-forgotten name of an area in Tbilisi’s city center, Kldisubani, on Google Maps. One of my new Georgian friends, who has spent all her life there, didn’t even know about it. She checked, and sure enough, that was the right name for a place she’s led many a visitor to admire. I could just see the respect in her eyes.
You can’t preserve the spirit of a country without its history and its traditions. Google Maps has become a truly effective tool for this: instead of having to seek out obscure texts or checking unreliable internet articles, people can discover living history. Moreover, they can continue writing this history themselves. And when a curious visitor like me can contribute something, it makes us that much closer and happier.
