Georgia on My Mind

It's been weeks since I returned from Georgia, but given the time I had, my snowy weekend in Tiblisi is still powder fresh on my mind. Forgive the Ray Charles title, but I'm sure Georgians would be proud to call that old masterpiece theirs.

A "mashrutka" is a beat-up van that acts as affordable regional transportation in the rising land of the Fallen Red Star. They are always running (except when they break down), often rusty, sometimes quick, and they never have seatbelts. The driver is usually a smoking, black-jacketed, well-worn wise man of the road.

I attempted to take the posh way out. I booked a flight from Yerevan to Tiblisi a month earlier. Eventually I discovered secondhand that Armavia was canceling all Tiblisi-bound flights. I never got a phone call or email from the airline about my cancellation. Good thing I had a friend on an email list of consequence, or else I'd have been left at the sleek but empty airport without a way across the Caucuses, bereft of at least 24 precious hours of my Georgia time.

The mashrutka was the way to go anyway. The ride was as one friend put it through "stunning" landscape. On the way out of Yerevan, the lesser Caucuses lifted on either side of a climbing plateau like giant, rolling white capped waves. Eventually flowing water reversed course and the mashrutka switched back and forth along steep curves into a barren, but gorgeous valley. Here I remembered the rule about riding in mashrutkas: never look forward through the windshield, lest it affect your stomach, your bowels, or your sense of attachment to mortality.

According to the sign, the new border post on the Armenian side was built courtesy of the US Embassy. The mashrutka driver ordered everyone off, and after passing through an open air immigration checkpoint, I walked across a bridge into Georgia. It reminded me of the border between India and Nepal at Kakarbitta, which was the last time I walked across a bridge that formed the boundary between two nations.

In the midst of the jet age, it is a great thrill to walk over a border.

It's always a marvel to me that so many nations are completely different when passing over an artificial political boundary, as if long ago people sensed the different aura and separated themselves as naturally if the border had been the impenetrable wall of the Andes or the Sahara.

Whereas Armenia's mountains are round, yet rough and foreboding, Georgia's mountains seem more crisply defined, but smooth and storybook like- decidedly more Alpen. The pine forests in Georgia are thick, whereas Armenia has sparse taiga-esque vegetation.

Entering Tiblisi for the first time, I immediately got the magic of the place. The spires, the lights, the steam of the hot springs, the smoke of the chimneys, and all the energy filled the river gorge which the city straddles. Tiblisi means "Hot Springs" in Georgian. Funny that there's also a Warm Springs in the State of Georgia where FDR used to go to recoup and divest himself of the weight of the Potomac.


This was the first place I've ever been to that seem like three major religions live in complete harmony. This is of course an illusion: given history, not all has always been a religious love-in in Tiblisi, and some gigantic places like New York, Jerusalem and Istanbul have even more churches, mosques and temples all in one place. But it was the way the three types of buildings were contently situated around the town - as if halls of worship were like different colannades of the same temple.

So I have a confession to make. I didn't really do a whole lot when I was in Tiblisi. But like any good student of political science, I have plenty of excuses. First of all, it was snowing beautifully (i.e. pretty hard) for nearly the entire time I was there and I didn't bring proper footwear.

Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine have something in common. The Soviet Union saw to that. They all have sword weilding "Mother" statue on hills above their capital cities. The USA installed television towers. Tiblisi has both.



I had a cozy hotel room at the Hotel City which had a glass elevator and thoughtfully supplied a corkscrew in every room (eh hem Le Meridien Senegal!).

Also I enjoyed eating so much that sightseeing played second fiddle. Georgian food is MARVELOUS. I first discovered it in Ukraine a few years ago, as there was a Georgian restuarant for a time in Sevastopol. The higher ups in the Soviet government used to take visiting foreign dignitaries out for Georgian food in Moscow to brag about this region's culinary acumen.

Next time I'm back in Georgia, I'll blog about exactly Georgian food is, but if you don't know, google it and then make a reservation. Meanwhile, above is a picture of a khatchapuri joint. Look at the adverts on the window and listen to your belly grumble.

I did go out one night. I had dinner with a Georgian friend of mine who I went to grad school with back in Denver five years ago. We ate and drank and told stories. She explained how she just barely escaped the Russians invading her country in 2008. We talked proudly for hours about how productive and awesome all of our friends are.

Ahhhhhhrrrrkkkkitechture. Very impressive here. Balconies! Pitched roofs! A mix between Crimean Tatar, Key West and Kyiv. What a match heaven and the gorge made.

Then there were the hot springs. I love hot water and will go out of my way to lounge about in it. Tiblisi's namesake is of course its hot water, the Orbeliani Baths date from the 17th century, and Pushkin had the best bath of his life there (thanks Lonely Planet). According to Gilpin, the best bath of his life so far was on Mt. Kurama in Japan, but awarded second place in his exhaustive list is the sulfur-infused, Samarkandish Orbeliani Baths in Tiblisi. This experience had all the finest ingredients. There was a near perfect temperature (around 105 degrees F) and total zen tranquility - one is granted his own private chamber with a hot spring pool and a circular hole in the 400 year old domed ceiling, just big enough to let steam escape and snow fall on one's bended arm.


It took this experience to decide that I must install my retirement cabin atop a geologically volatile area. With an daily experience like the Orbeliani Baths, earthquakes and volcanos could't possibly cause an old man to worry about dying anything but extremely happy.



So as you can see, I took lots of pictures with my new camera. These pictures demonstrate the extremely rich and diverse religious and cultural heritage of one of the greatest places I've ever visited.

These pictures speak for themselves. I didn't do any reading, tour-patronizing or museum-going. So it follows that I will end this blog by telling you all how I paid $50 to swim in 50m long Vake Pool, one of the greatest swimming pools on the face of mother earth. Not a single drop of chlorine. It is filtered by UV radiation.

Georgia - what a glorious place in time to have existed, if only for 60 hours.

Thanksgiving in Armenia

It's little more than a quick hop from Kyiv to Yerevan. It's like flying from Baltimore to Chicago, with plenty of time for turns with heavy traffic and a little weather over Midway and O'hare.

But only there's not a whole lot of air traffic over Yerevan. The plane, which had been filling the entire flight with illicit cigarette smoke leaking from the bathroom, simply began its slow descent somewhere over the Black Sea coast, and continued on that way all the hour long way to EVN. The kids next to me were Ukrainians in a rock band, on route to a gig, barely conscious, though enough so to constantly offer me the bottle of Jameson they were drinking. "This is for courage!" They said. "We're scared of flying!"

The sky was brillantly clear on landing, even in the late afternoon in winter, fortune on my side, I inhaled almost choking on the breathtaking scene of Mt. Ararat and the snow capped wonderland scattered about the wheel wells and wingtips.

The Ukrainian band opened another bottle, this time, it was Jim Beam. "What is that one for?" I asked. "We've landed."

"Of course, to celebrate that we are in Armenia!" They responded, befuddled at my nescience.

I'd come to Armenia to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends. This was my fourth Thanksgiving away from home, and I'd learned that the only proper way to spend the best American holiday abroad was with good people. (See blog I wrote on Thankgsiving for the US Embassy in Ukraine's website: http://usembassykyiv.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/its-thanksgiving-everywhere/#more-697)

I immediately liked Armenia. It adds some more post Soviet intensity to what I'm used to in Kyiv. For example, a lot of people wear black leather coats and duckbill hats in Kyiv, but in Armenia, everyone wears black leather coats and duckbill hats. In Kyiv, a lot of men smoke, but in Yerevan, nearly all men seem to smoke, and a lot too. The buildings outside the very center are ruthlessly proletariat.

This scene is actually the entrance to a metro station. The very central one.

But then again it's definitely not like any of the old red star realm I had been to yet. Like Crimea, Armenia is multi-sided crystal reflecting the bright spectrum of influences surrounding it. While Russian is widely spoken, vendors sell saffron from Iran. Turkey looms large over the food and music. One can have a khatchapuri for lunch and hear Georgian. The nut store we visited reminded me of visions of a travel show on Syria.

I always thought that a nation with such a heavily scattered diaspora across the globe should have a population at least of fifty million. After all, I think I knew more Armenian-Americans growing up than I did Canadian-Americans. But apparently, Armenia has only two million people in the whole country. This tiny mountain nation, which reminded me of windswept southern Wyoming, seems to only have half a growing season, so they make the most of it and make good cognac and good concrete instead.



My friends Nick and RaeJean live in Yerevan and they were having a big Thanksgiving feast. A good plate of stuffing is ample motivation required to hop over the Sea of Azov, even if the plane was filled with cigarette smoke. Their friend Ania flew down from Paris (much more of a trip!) and joined us for a few days of stuffing our faces with poultry, potatoes, pumpkin pie and... ...pig fat.

On orders from RaeJean (RPCV Ukraine '03-'05), from the markets of Kyiv, I brought two kinds of "salo", which is basically like spreadable pig fat, black bread on which to smear it, and of course, honey pepper vodka. The two kinds of salo are: 1.) pure fat garlic infused, and 2.) a bit ham-ish with wee-tad specks of meat amongst the fat. I was amazed at the other guests who had never tried salo before literally dove right in. Molotsi folks! The Ukrainian band kids were right - for those uninitiated to salo, liquor is liquid courage.


Thanksgiving dinner was spectacular. An American turkey and an Armenian turkey. Corn, chutney and brussel sprouts. Beer bread. Deviled eggs. Buckets of Nick's homemade beer. Salad, stuffing and Peanuts on TV. And then it began to snow.



On Black Friday, we drove up into the mountains. To the right, you can just barely see the peak of Mt Ararat erupt magestically above the clouds. According to stories this is the mountain that Noah's ark landed on after the flood. It's hard to stop looking at it, given that there are no peaks nearby that come close to rivaling it. We left the traffic clogged environs of Yerevan to visit two sites: the Monastery of Geghard and the Roman ruins of the Garni Temple. Yes, that's right, ancient Rome in Armenia - it's like trying to picture dinosaurs in Anarctica.

From the USAID funded sign at Geghard, I learned that the complex was built in the 4th century.

I really let my new Nikon off its leash on this adventure. I'll shut up and let these very postable pictures speak for themselves.