The best analogy I can think of (and it isn't really good) is the bible belt in the US. So Franconia like the belt is a region that spans several German states and has a shared cultural (in the case of the bible belt religious) and linguistical indentity, but it is neither a political nor administrative unit, although there are some administrative unit whose name derives from it.Can someone explain to me what exactly is Franconia, and what an American analog would be for it?