Thoughts From Prior Travels: Georgia On My Mind
Trip Start
Feb 08, 2008
1
69
123
Trip End
Sep 11, 2009
Bursa,
Bursa,
Turkey
Monday, August 11, 2008
But back here I have just been reading an extensive article in the Sunday NY Times about the hot conflict taking place in Georgia. Well, that's what travel does, as they say, broaden one. I might not otherwise have given it such attention were it not for the fact that a little over two years ago I was in Georgia, its capital of Tbilisi, and Gori, the town that has just been bombed by the Russians, apparently. I guess that's about as close to war as I have been. (I went to Gori because that was the birthplace of Joseph Stalin. I just went there to go there.
Tbilisi I rather liked. I went there because of the name, to be honest. In traveling in Turkey in 2005/6 I had joined the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT), just for whatever benefits that might concur. One of the benefits was to be invited to be a member of one or more excursions to mostly Turkish locations of historical, and usually archaeological, interest. A scholar was usually the tour leader. A tour to Tbilisi was offered. And, frankly, at the time I didn't know where Tbilisi was exactly. I thought it was farther east, like Tashkent or Samarkand.
The group assembled in Istanbul and flew to Tbilisi--whose airport, I have just read, was also lightly bombed by the Russians in the last day or so. The first thing that struck me was the Georgian alphabet, which looks something like an explosion from a pasta mill.
At the end of the tour the rest of the group returned by plane to Istanbul. I stayed in Tbilisi to have a couple of days on my own, and with the intention of taking buses back to Turkey, and spending some time in the Kaçkar Mountains of the northeast.
A couple of things about Tblisi. It was just emerging from the domination of the Russians, an emerging capitalist society. There were stores like Prada and the like on the main street. It looked to me to be a city ripe for gentrification, a notion that it could be a great place for young artists to begin the process by moving in, living cheaply and getting things going, as seems to be the usual course. (The article just read stated that the main street now contains several art galleries).
There was an "open light museum," as I believe they are called in Europe. It is a park wherein architectural samples of country homes and other structures are assembled as museum pieces of folk art. One of them in the park in Tbilisi was a restaurant. I had a meal there. Though I didn't know what I was ordering, and because the waitress was not too bright (or clever), or cagey, I ended up with about three times the amount of food I could eat. But, it was good as the best food I have ever had anywhere. It is still one of my main memories--though of nothing in particular. Just good food!
When I tried to leave the veranda dining area I was offered a glass of wine by some Georgian patrons. Then I was invited to join the group. This on a very full stomach. The head of the group was an architect, and spoke English. I am naive enough to not know how to refuse a drink, especially as somewhat over strongly offers a guest. Without going into details, it led to one of my two life's blackouts. When the guy let me out of his SUV around the corner from where I was staying, that's the last thing I remember until the morning. Nothing about finding my way into the house in the dark, and to my bed.
In the next day or two there was a massive military parade. Lots of troops marched through town, and there were many, many armored troop carriers and tanks and such. The uniforms looked pretty much like they might have been U.S. supplied, as I guess were funds for the rest of it, from what I have read. (Unfortunately, most of my pictures of all of all of this were as yet undownloaded from my camera, which was subsequently stolen in Valencia, Spain a couple of months later. No blogging then, so no computer along then).
In another Georgian town on the way back to Turkey I stayed a couple of nights in a "home stay" found in the Lonely Planet guide. It was a pretty poor town (though with a few Mercedes and BMWs tooling around). It was sort of like being back in the nineteenth century. I went to a neighborhood Sunday Orthodox church service with a blind woman from the house I was staying at. I was a little late in getting dressed, and my shirt tail was hanging out. A priest in the church pointed an angry finger at my shirt tail, strongly, I'm sure, insistant that I tuck it in. In another moment I for some reason had a hand in my pocket, and the other priest, I think, grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand out of my pocket. At least that's how I remember it.
As I approached the Turkish border I remember thinking, "I'm glad to be getting back to a Moslem country, where people are polite!"
Comments
Hey
Another good one. However it was mostly about 2005 but I enjoyed reading it, especially the pasta explosion