We send our "Gute Nachrichten" to 18 European countries. This week we added another country to the list, and it didn't even exist 15 years ago. But then again, maybe we didn't add a new country after all!

I had to look twice at the postcard we received to make sure I understood the address. The request for "Gute Nachrichten" was written in perfect German, and it listed a country called "Serbia and Montenegro". That shows you how much I am "up" on things – I thought Serbia was still called "Yugoslavia".

In the early 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, post-Tito Yugoslavia began to unravel along ethnic lines: Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina were recognized as independent states in 1992. The remaining republics of Serbia and Montenegro declared a new "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" and a couple of years ago we did receive a request from a reader who listed her address as "Yugoslavia". (We have been publishing "Gute Nachrichten" since January 1997 and have nearly 14,000 names in our subscriber database.)

So actually we didn't add a new a country to our list after all. The proper name is "Serbia and Montenegro", and we changed the other address entry to that as well. In our subscriber database we use standard international automobile country codes. When we add a new country to our list, we have to update our database, since we only enter country codes as we need them. Other areas sending the "Good News" may have the luxury of calling on their tech guy(s) to do this for them. Over here, though, I am the tech guy.

Most of the international codes are logical and easy to remember, like "D" for Germany (Deutschland), or "GB" for Great Britain (which my children Ted and Rachel used to call "Green Bananas" when they saw a car from Great Britain on the Autobahn).

The international code for "Serbia and Montenegro" is "SCG". I don't see the connection, but there probably is one. But to make the confusion complete, a bit further down the list you can find "YU" for "Serbia, Montenegro". Oh well, with only two subscribers in that country I guess it doesn't matter which code we use.