More News From Urbnisi

A few weeks ago my host aunt passed and now her memory lives on in the living room.  Her picture sets gently against the wall, near the television separated by a small barrier of religious icons.  Above her photo is the calendar and just above that is a clock.  It’s a sobering sight if you really think about it.

           

            A small flame, fueled by oil, illuminates her ominous glare and is refilled every so often.  Perhaps she is peering at the couch, draped in a thin carpet, no doubt worn from its constant use or maybe she is examining the woodstove that’s next to the couch, which we moved inside while she spent her last hours bedridden.  It too burns constantly and does wonders for the downstairs however the heat that it generates slowly escapes through the cracks that litter the walls before the heat can ever grace the upstairs. 

            On the woodstove sits a metal cooking pot that is filled to the brim with water, slowly evaporating throughout the day.  I’m forced to arrive at the conclusion that this is done to provide a degree of humidity in the house, but to be honest, I’m not terribly sure.  The woodstove reheats our food and keeps are coffee warm, the clothes strung around it dry much faster than they would if left to the late autumn winds that will soon turn frigid.

            Everyone in the village is sick.  The boys and girls fill the classrooms with an ever present soundtrack of coughs and sneezes.  Giorgi, the young man who lives behind us has also been courting a cough.  The men of the Urbnisi are walking slower, their endless rounds of playing dominoes now a distant memory paired with pangs of the suns warmth and the refreshing breezes of the summer.  My co-teacher has been sick for the past two weeks and it was only on Friday when I pressed upon her my medication that she said in a futile tone that it was useless.  I asked her if she had grip or the flu but she shook her head muttering only “pregnant.” 

            Yes it seems that the coming winter is bringing along all sorts of surprises and you cannot doubt its path when you see the newly fallen snow dusting the tips of the Trialeti Mountains in the distance.  But besides death, pregnancy and illness the season has proven to inspire some new sort of creativity amongst the children in the village.  To give an example of such a few weeks ago in my 6^th grade class I gave an assignment.  The children know, or are at least aware of certain nouns in English:  boy, van, man, nut, orange, bag and what have you.  Their academic exercises for a painstakingly long period of time have been reading passages from the text, mainly “Look! It is a car.  It is blue,” and so forth. 

            It’s the same format every time and so the assignment was this:  I put a list of nouns on the board and distributed plain, white sheets of paper (something of a rarity here) and informed them that they could draw a picture of any of the words that were written on the board and colour it.  The catch was that the below the picture they had to write:  “Look is a... It is...”  The only other stipulation to this was that they had to write “My name is…” 

            This went over well.  Give them the opportunity to draw, yet alone colour something and you are basically guaranteed their full compliance.  We collected their assignments and at the end of the class began to grade them.

            One stood out from among the rest.  It was a drawing of what has to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex (the jury is still out about this in the teachers lounge) and this prehistoric monster was unique in three ways:  it was completely coloured red, slightly deformed and I assume quite old since it had only a few strands of hair.  The artist’s name was Nika although you would never know it because beneath the balding dinosaur was written at a slanted angle:  “my name is DOG”.  To say that my presence here is making a difference, I feel that after this performance, that statement is justifiably open to speculation.

            Besides creativity, curiosity is also beginning to blossom as well.  That small light of remembrance posed just below the photo of my late host aunt has attracted the fleeting attention of the two young boys whom I share the house with.  This I have found to be surprising, since they have discovered the high pitch voice of Spongebob Squarepants, and having done so they have made it quite apparent that nothing else is worthy of their audience.  It was just a few days ago that Vajiko, the 1^st grader and I discovered that tweezers were flammable.  He discovered well because he lit them on fire and I discovered this after I saw him marching around the living room with a two pronged torch.  Soon after his revolution was put down he began to light small pieces of paper.  The following night it was a small stick, which he pretended was a cigarette.  Finally two nights ago the eldest of the two boys, Amirani, slightly impressed by Vajiko’s discovery, attempted to make popcorn with a small cornel of corn pinched by the tweezers and set directly in the heart of the monument to his late aunt. 

            The tweezers caught fire before the notorious “pop” sound could have happened and he could feel his finger tips growing warmer.  A small shriek bellowed out from his throat and the piece of corn and the tweezers landed in a dusty pile of books and soon the laughter in the room fell into an awkward silence.  The family rushed towards the literature that was now without a doubt lost and Amirani fled into the opposite direction.  The stamping of feet could be heard and a jug of water was rushed over and as the water turned the ashes to a thin mud a small pop could be heard. 

            But I grabbed the tweezers before this could happen, dooming his culinary experiment.  He frowned disapprovingly at this change itinerary and slumped back into the chair, fiddling between his fingers the small remainder of the corn, plotting some other adventure.  His aunt’s photo just stared.

Turkey: Sarpi, Hopa, Artvin, Kars, Ani, Ardahan and Posof

            Well to put it rather bluntly this last weekend my shoes scattered dust in numerous cities and I traveled quite a distance.  After an incredibly stressful week, haphazard planning and an ever changing roster of fellow travelers, Thursday evening I went from Urbnisi to Gori (20 minutes) and on the highway caught a mshtrutka to Batumi (6 hours) on the western coast of Georgia and arrived around 22,30.  As the morning light broke through our open hostel window (which could explain the severe temperature drop felt throughout the night) we left around 6,30 and headed to the Georgian version of Sarpi, another twenty minutes.  Crossing the Turkish border and entering the Turkish version of Sarpi, which took about an hour but if we had some idea as to how to cross a border on foot it could have been done in twenty minutes, and headed to Hopa (15 minutes).  From there we waited until 10,30 when our bus to Kars would depart.  Apparently we were over ambitious in this trek since it was around 8 when we were at the bus station (if memory serves me correctly).  That gave us about 2 ½ hours, that is until we looked at our watches and the clock on the wall which dangled above a non smoking sign and was promptly ignored.  Their clock said it was around 7.  It took about 3 minutes to realize that we were indeed in another time zone and that we had 3 ½ hours to wait.  We had some time to kill before our 6 hour bus ride.

The bus ride proved to be fantastic and extremely long.  6 hours would have been ideal compared to the actual 9 but the view was beyond breathtaking.  Overall we stopped where the bus driver thought that he might have friends.  First in Artvin, then 2 hours later in another city, then 1 1/2 hours later, then 1 hour later, then 30 minutes later and finally embraced the rest of the five hour journey straight through.  What should have taken 6-7 hours in reality took 9.     

We finally reached Kars, three hours late and got a room at the Otel Temel 2, which is about half the price of Otel Temel located directly across the street.  We checked the rooms before we agreed and downstairs we were greeted by an middle aged man in a tan jacket with a thick mustache.  “My name is Celil and I will be your guide to Ani.”  We just stared at him.  So far on this journey into Turkey the English language has proven to be more of a hobby to most than a language.  To hear it spoken, fluently, was enough to be taken aback as it was to be approached by the Turkish version of Harvey Kietel in Pulp Fiction.

            “I am in your guide book,” he said in a way that may have meant to be assuring.

            “Which guide book,” asked one of us.

            “All of the guide books,” he said with a slight hint of irritation.

            “We don’t have a guide book,” I threw out.  It didn’t take long, but Celil registered us at the hotel, set a time and negotiated a decent price to visit Ani and we set off to explore the cold night.  Kars is University town, literally, and when it was taken by the Russians it was completely redone and reorganized in a way that makes it seem that perhaps the Russians planned on staying here.  The sidewalks obviously follow some organized path (a rare thing) and the streets are mixture of cobblestone, asphalt and construction.  Students flock to cafes to share a platter of kebabs or a donner over a hot cup of tea.  Menus here don’t exist: everyone knows what everyone has and the proper price.  Cars fly down the road as the fortress and Armenian Church above the city peer down upon us.  There was just one thing missing, beer.  Not a single place sold beer.  Reluctantly, we gave up and just bought some cans of overpriced malty beverages and took them back to the concrete hotel.

            The next day we took the 1 hour drive to Ani and listened to Celil talk about, well, whatever he wanted.  He’s a stout fellow and his parents, being Lezgin, hailed from Dagestan, the same village that Shamil was from and somehow he ended up speaking perfect English and guiding foreigners to Ani.  He knew practically everything concerning Ani and even dabbled in explaining the Turkish version of geopolitics.  He was, though, very curious about Georgia and the prices of Cognac.

            Ani is the reason that we came to Kars, as is the reasons why, most likely, 96% of the foreigners that come to Kars do.  It is a completely vacant city that rests right on the closed and tense border of Armenia and Turkey.  The city is an ancient Armenian city but one wouldn’t know it reading the signs there.  The name Armenian, as well as Georgian (there is a Georgian church in the city as well) are not even mentioned.  Troubling, the city is slowly crumbling to the tests of time and is not even registered as a UNESCO Site.

This river serves as a natural border for Armenia and Turkey

            Supposedly, the city was destroyed by an invasion from Tamerlame, which is believable because he pretty much destroyed everything in the world.  There are still miniature pyramids made ofskulls being found around Iraq that he left behind.  Ani is part of what once was the Silk Road and you can walk the path down to a barb wire fence that stops you just short of the river.  Really, I can’t describe Ani, so instead I’ve posted a bunch of photos.

            We left that day for Ardahan on a 1 ½ hour bus.  Ardahan is small, very small and any foreigner attracts a great deal of attention.  Within moments we were befriended by a student who wanted to practice his English and led us from hotel to hotel, searching for a decently priced room for us.  There few hotels in Ardahan and 2/3rds of them are brothels and when you walk into the lobby its not hard to figure out which is which.  We settled at the Hotel Kura, named after the Kura/Mtkvari River that splits Georgia into two and runs through my village.  Naturally we checked out the room before agreeing to it and we were all stunned to find other peoples luggage in the room.  The employees moved the bags to a different room and we checked in.

            Our Turkish friend then showed us the city, the castle (which was closed), the park, the main street and led us to a cheap shop for donner.  Then we went for coffee and this I feel is important to note: throughout the entire time in Turkey I could only get instant Nescafe while in Georgia I can only get Turkish coffee.  This café actually served Turkish coffee.  Amazing.  He left us and before leaving told us that were bars in town but that they were hidden and that he could not show us such places.  We found them throughout the night and they were indeed hidden.  All two of them.  When we told the guy who sits behind the counter in our hotel about this, he just burst out laughing.  Hysterically. 

            The next day we went to the bus station about fifteen minutes before our bus would leave.  Naturally, the bus left an hour later and we were driven through the mountains just as the clouds were beginning to rise, engulfing us in a sheet of white that for a brief moment was picturesque before becoming totally mute.  The bus stopped for a bit in Posof and then we crossed the border again, by foot.  This border crossing was different, my Russian visa was given a quick once over then the second seemed to cause interest.  No problems arose and we went through the border and waited for our bus which never came.  What did came was a swarm of taxis and ambitious drivers who gladly accepted currency from our bus driver and drove us four, plus one more (making a total of six if you include the driver) to Akhalsikhe where there I took a 3 hour mshtrutka ride home.  Thankfully, I didn’t run into Giora, but I think that I would have if I had been there for a few more hours.    

            My host family, I’ve concluded, most likely still doesn’t know that I was in Turkey and I’m perfectly content with that.  Suspicions have arisen though since they are eating dried figs (anything dried here is hard to find) and looking over a bunch of strange photos.  As I write this, Heikki, Katja and myself are sitting in some lounge that’s connected to a hostel but more on that later…     

                       

             

How I Met the President and How I’m Certain Everyone Knows About It:

My School

            It was a Tuesday (4.10) and I was teaching class.  Exhausted, I was absolutely relieved when the bell rang, which it does manually.  Someone has to literally press and hold a black button down to summon us teachers to a different room.  That’s right the kids don’t move, we do.  Often, coffee or pastries provide adequate distractions for the dedicated bell ringer and it can be well after ten or fifteen minutes past schedule before it’s sound screams down barren hallway.  Oddly enough the kids don’t mind that class is extended but us teachers constantly steal irritated glances at the clock.

            In the teacher’s room I noticed I missed a phone call.  I step outside of the walls that are prone to echoes in such a fashion that every sound is magnified, including phone conversations, and call back the missed number just as the kids begin to pour out of the school.  Most kids in my experience try to avoid teachers at all cost, but here I’m surrounded.  “Hello,” “Garmarjoba,” “Salem,” “Goodbye”.  Each student says each word at least 259 times as if those four words encompass an entire conversation.  Barely able to understand the conversation on the phone I agreed to be in Gori the following day at 16.30 to go to some event. 

            News in the villages travel fast, very fast.  During our training we were told of an instance where a female TLG Volunteer had a male friend stay with her host family.  He spent the night in the same room and even the in same bed, a big no no in the Georgian culture.  She probably expected such an event to be frowned upon but I doubt she realized to the extent that this would become famous.  By the following morning she was receiving phone calls from other volunteers, in villages of excess 200 kilometers away, enquiring about the circumstance.  

            The next day (5.10) I ventured into Gori around 15.00.  Normally the mshtrutka barreling down the road comes at 15.00 but there were four of us and we shared a taxi for the same price as that of the mshtrutka.  In the taxi was a Georgian English teacher from a neighboring village and we started to talk, comparing our classes and resources.  Thanks to the taxi ride I made it early to Gori and enjoyed some Turkish coffee before heading to the meeting place.  The coffee was great but my phone kept ringing.  One of my co-teachers called me and said that the head teacher was very nervous about how I would get home.  To put an end to any lingering fears I said I would take a taxi back.  That worked for a whole five minutes, then she called again: “Mike, why are you in Gori?  You need to be in Kareli.”  This took a few more minutes to explain and 10 minutes later:  “Mike, the head teacher has called your host mother…she will pick you up tonight.”  These phone conversations were quickly losing their novelty.

When I finally got there a lady, donned in a bright leather red coat immediately approached me and exclaimed “Mike!  So nice to finally meet you,” and so forth.  This was apparently my Educational Resource Representative and I was slightly disturbed by this since I wasn’t wearing a name tag.  More disturbingly, all of the program officials know me as Richard, but she knew me as Mike.  I never caught her name leaving it as another mystery to unravel at some other point.  The bus was pretty modern, up to western standards and we all took our seats which weren’t attached to much of anything.  When the bus would brake your seat would simply fly off the skeleton of what should have been a bench.  Our idea of going straight to Tbilisi was crushed when we pulled into three other cities to pick up other volunteers. 

            We were told that the event would start around 18.00 and that we would be back in our villages by 22.00.  Frankly, I wasn’t the greatest math student and did not even bother to attempt to compute the numbers and the statistical reality that such an itinerary was nearly impossible. 

            Finally we pulled into Tbilisi and got off the bus and surrendered our passports and metallic materials to pass through a security check.  Hundreds of people sat about and cameras were tested while the event staff scurried about.  After sitting for about ten minutes we grew bored and restless and saw dozens of people go off to a far corner and remerge with glasses of wine.  We ran over and began sampling, a few glasses and random “Garmarjos” later we were asked to return to our seats and wait.  Moments later President Saakashvili emerged and delivered a speech about the building behind him that would now be opened, the Teachers House.  I have no idea what that is but they did hand out pamphlets which probably go into detail about it however it is all in Georgian.  Oh well.

            Saakashvili is a great public speaker, even if I didn’t understand what he said.  His body language was very informal, he cracked jokes and for a guy who makes a speech on live television 5 times a week its pretty amazing that he doesn’t use a prompter or notes.  The end of his speech was marked by everyone standing and clapping and he went off to the wine tent.  A few of us, not wanting to miss out on any action, followed him and to our amazement when we called out his name he answered us in English.  Perfect English.  His bodyguards made way, took our photos and in an instant he was dragged off by reporters.  I can say this with certainty:  Saakashvili is a massive figure.  His fist was larger than my head.  It was kind of scary.   

            We left the event and I started to doze on the bus but awoke to the city lights and familiar streets.  Gori wasn’t in this direction.  Nothing made sense until we arrived at America’s gift to the world:  McDonalds.  The volunteers rushed to get some food, we hadn’t been fed all day and most of us rushed to Gori immediately after school.  For about 20 or so foreigners to randomly show up at 22.30 at a McDonalds in the outer part of Tbilisi, I think the staff did a great job.  Slightly shocked, they handled everyone with a great amount of speed and I suspect few errors.  I couldn’t justify eating McDonalds and began exploring this part of the city that seemed faintly familiar.  Remarkably, this was the first time I failed to find a place to eat in Tbilisi.  It wasn’t until our bus filled with jeering volunteers pulled past the golden arches that I saw if I had gone one block further my stomach would have been comforted by a shwarma.  

            My ride back was peppered with calls from home asking me where I was, when I would return.  I honestly didn’t know.  I told them “twenty minutes” about 9 separate times.  After a bit, I just handed the phone to my representative and had her deal with any issues.  When we finally passed through Gori there were three others left on the bus, they asked me where I was living and I told them.  “Ah,” said one looking at the others, “he’s the guy in Urbnisi we’ve been hearing about.”  I asked them what about but couldn’t get a straight answer.  To say that the rest of the ride was awkward would be a strong understatement.  The bus pulled over at my village while on its way to Kareli, kicking up a storm of dust that clouded the head lights of the passing cars.  It was 1.00.

            The next day in the teacher’s room everyone asked questions about the event, how I made it home, etc.  Then my co-teacher told me that she shared a taxi to Urbnisi that morning with a friend of hers, an English teacher in a nearby village and she wanted to know how her friend new me. 

The Road to Akhalsikhe

 

            Akhalsikhe is a city in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region of Georgia resting right before the border that Georgia shares with Turkey and not a terrible distance from the one with Armenia.  It is not quite famous and hardly ever appears in conversation and many modern history books on Georgia only briefly mention it.  Yes, indeed, such a city does not draw in many tourists and those that it does are the ones who are simply passing through with a guide book whose pages have dull corners and fading colours, heading towards different attractions. 

            I had tried making it to this city before but there were a multitude of reasons of why I didn’t.  The first was that my stomach had adopted a rebellious nature and the second being that the internet failed to furnish sufficient information.  With time the domestic war waged in my stomach subdued and I took the leap into the unknown.  Essentially I headed to a city whose latest information I knew about was from the mid 1800’s.

            I left around noon on Saturday (1.10) from the notorious Didube Station and wandered over to where a few weeks ago I had ridden to Borjomi.  Akhalsikhe sits just a little south of Borjomi and so the mshtrutka going there was in the same congested area.  The driver stood in front of his tattered chariot, incessantly smoking cigarettes and chatting with friends while occasionally breaking from the topic at hand to belt out “Akhalsikhe!”  I spoke with him briefly which was actually quite pointless, his response to every word was “tajiki, tajiki” or “sit, sit”.  I took a seat near the back by the window, resting on a cushion that really wasn’t attached to its base and waited for my two hour nap to begin.

            It might have been ten minutes before some guy appeared at the door of the mshtrutka and just looked at me.  This, by the way, is quite normal when traveling in Georgia.  People approach mshtrutkas all the time before they depart with the aim of selling napkins, stale rice puffs, religious cards, etc.  The only thing that made this stranger different was that he didn’t have anything to sell.  Staring is also commonplace especially if you have pale skin.  He went away and returned a few moments later motioning for me to get off, which wasn’t going to happen.  Then he brought a friend and they both started talking and they agreed that they should motion for me to get off again.  After realizing the futility behind this they employed the driver who told me to get off and began rambling about something.  Obviously I was confused and miraculously a young girl stretched her head out from the front and asked in perfect English if she could help. 

            She explained as the driver left that the mshtrutka was reserved and as she explained this I glanced back to where I was sitting and saw the same two teenagers drinking beer in the place of where I should have been sleeping off the adventures of the night ere.  I was to wait for the next one which would arrive in twenty minutes or so, she said before she asked me what I was doing in Georgia.  Discovering I was an English Teacher Volunteer she informed that she worked for my program.  We exchanged numbers and the lady next to her had her give me the name of a cheap hostel that her friend owned and the name and number of a reliable taxi driver in Akhalsikhe. 

            I started to walk away and was mentally preparing to wait for the next ride when I noticed a westerner standing behind me being led by a Georgian.  His face did little to hide the fact that he was entirely confused and slightly irritated.  Brief short talk transpired and in conclusion he was trying to get to Akhalsikhe but was being led around by a Georgian who was trying to rip him off and he had no idea as to who he was.  We let his self-assumed guide argue with the driver as we escaped from his line of vision and waited. 

            He was Dutch, living in Scotland and here on holiday to pursue his pastime of bird watching.  Apparently this is the time of year where the birds begin to migrate and they do so through Georgia, passing over the lesser mountains that shadow Zemo Svaneti and Abkhazia and head down through Batumi.  900,000 birds if not more make the voyage every year and the sky can easily turn black due to their numbers.  We talked along the ride and even more so as our driver attracted the attention of the police and was promptly pulled over, given a electronic sobriety test coupled with a traffic ticket. The ride itself was only a few hours of passing through the breathtaking Trialeti Mountains and seeing the dozens of crumbling cobblestone walls that were once part of fortresses along a road that felt like it was made of crumbling cobblestone walls.  I began to panic that I would suffer a concussion from colliding with the ceiling every ten minutes but alas we arrived safely, albeit somewhat disheveled, in Akhaliskhe. 

Safara Monastery

            Immediately as we stepped off the mshtrutka, still in a slight daze from my hazardous sleep and attempting to understand where in the city we were (there are no maps that I have found of Akhalsikhe, Arthur would be a blessing here) a taxi driver approached us.  Showing him the address of where I wanted to go he mentioned the astronomical price of 30 GEL.  Then after explaining that this was a street address and certainly not the nearby village the price dropped substantially to 5 GEL.  However, Giora (a name I certainly cannot spell correctly) had other plans.  He drove us around displaying every other hotel in the city, all of which his friends owned, a theme that would be prove to be a constant in this city, before relenting to my demands to take us to the hostel we wanted.  I didn’t know the name of the hostel, just the address and the fact that it was right across from a hospital. 

            The taxi driver pulled over and rocks fled from underneath our tires as we left the paved road for the gravel driveway.  Now he insisted that at 9.00 in the morning he would be at our hostel to take us to Vardzia and Safara, two destinations that absolutely need to be seen.  Wanting to keep our options open we declined yet after an hour of his telling us what we would be doing the following day we succumbed and agreed to visit Vardzia but not Safara.  We got out, exasperated at the insistent nature of Giora only to find that he was two steps ahead of us completely emerged in the process of finding the owner of the hostel and seeing as to whether or not she was a good person.  Then the owner and him led us to our rooms and he told her he would come get us at 9.00.  That left us with roughly 18 hours of freedom. 

Old Rabat

            The rooms were the best I’ve stayed in thus far.  Three beds per room and a bathroom absolutely massive in size.  It would have been nice to have towels but then again, it would have been nice for the hostel to have a name.  The only other downside was that it was absolutely freezing, much like how one envisions a morgue.  We sat down on the beds and ate whatever we had managed to pack:  one package of raisins, a few biscuits and some weird chocolate rolls with walnuts.  Finally deciding to set off and discover what Akhalsikhe had to offer we ventured out into the twilight.  We were discussing just which way was back to the city center, attempting to rewind our mental image of our taxi ride when the girl who worked for the TLG program sent me a sms and after a few moments invited to meet us and take us to her parents house for dinner.

Giora On The Way To Safara

            Never one to turn down a free meal, yet alone meet new people I steadfastly confirmed and we marched along the sidewalks that lined the street, filled with a false sense of confidence that we indeed knew where the city center was.  After getting lost we found her within minutes and it was then that we realized Akhalsikhe was quite small.  She led us to her parent’s house and after overcoming the stunning size and elegance of their home we sat down.  Her mother served us Turkish coffee paired with chocolates and grapes as dinner was being prepared. 

The "Road" to Safara

            The conversation never lulled and those awkward silences that often come when the absurdity of some situations finally dawn never happened.  Her father was essentially a master carpenter.  He built the chairs that we sat on, designed the house with his brother, who apparently designed much of everything in Akhalsikhe, made knives and so forth.  There was some commotion however, they were going to make shashlyk from the fire place in the center of the room, but her father had lent the skewers to a neighbor and he had forgotten who.  She led us to a wall that displayed part of his knife collection, some kinzals dating back to the early 1800’s while others were some that he made.

            Her father has his own website and I encourage every one to visit it.  It is boris.ge and there you can view his works.  Traveling to dozens of villages he sets out to learn the ancient Georgian traditions of knife making and to relive the experience.  He even goes so far to hammer metal mesh across the blade leaving intricate designs. Unfortunately he refuses to sell his knives but occasionally gives them to foreign diplomats when the Georgian government comes to his home insisting that he sell them some as gifts. 

The Ducthman enjoying corn with a cat

City Center Akhalsikhe

            Dinner was soon served (shashlyk, tomatoes, shota, salad, etc) paired with wine and much more conversation.  Her father though had to depart rather early for he was building a piano for the nearby church.  As time passed the girl asked me for my last name and amazingly she had been the one who booked my plane tickets.  She even knew which airport.  Then her mother took out her collection of money and began to show us in earnest.  She had money from Finland at the birth of its independence, from India when it was under the thumb of the British and practically every where else on the planet.  The most stunning thing I saw though were numerous paper notes from the period when Armenia,Azerbaijan and Georgia were one country, back in 1918.  That’s not a terribly long time ago but there are some salient facts one has to mull over:  the first being that the Azeri alphabet on the notes was of Arabic which was later changed to Cyrillic and finally to Latin.  The other is that this government only lasted one month, literally.  Finally, consider creating a government of three brand new countries (it was the first time in hundreds of years that Armenia was independent, about 200 for Georgia and the first time ever that Azerbaijan was a state), agreeing on a currency, system of defense, taxes and so forth all in just a month.  Talk about moving fast.  I was stunned.  In front of me sat numerous paper notes from a short lived and practically forgotten collaboration.

           

            Dinner ended and though they offered to host us for the night we left and went back to our hostel.  The darkness of night had long ago filled the sky and we hurried back cold, tired and well fed.  Morning rolled in and so did our taxi driver who apparently had managed to get the owner to unlock the door for him.  He the hurried us to the taxi and we took off.  We started to climb a dirt road and after talking amongst ourselves we agreed that indeed we were heading to Safara even after we had declined the opportunity.  The taxi steadily climbed the forgotten path up along the mountain all the while Giora was blaring electronic Armenian pop music and pointing at his vehicle and saying “jeep”. 

            Giora has a son and a daughter and both live in Germany.  His son has a small girl who is three.  Giora is Armenian and so he naturally speaks Armenian, Georgian, Russian, German and I suspect English.  When Giora was growing up Armenian was the tongue of choice at home but in the schools it was the Georgian and Russian languages with their respective alphabets and was never given the privilege of reading his native language in its own alphabet, something that he says he regrets very much so.

The View From Vardzia

            Safara is a monastery hosted high in the depths of the mountains far from any kind of real road.  It is pretty difficult to accidentally get there.  Ancient and massive, a small fortress rests above it but is silently retreating.  Mass still goes on inside the church and the voices and songs echo boomingly against the hand painted murals that line the ceiling and walls as monks dressed in black garb quietly go back to their dormitory.  The old Georgian alphabet etched in stone can still be seen above the doors although it is slowly but surely fading away.

Vardzia

            We left to find Giora waiting outside, collecting walnuts.  He ushered us in the taxi and in no hurry, began cracking the endless supply of walnuts against the pristine emergency break handle and dolled out the pieces to us.  We still had to go to Vardzia, at least a two hour ride and were somewhat anxious.  We took off, veering even closer to the steep drops that only mountains can provide and descended down to a field of corn.  He asked us if we like corn and we both, confused, responded in the affirmative.  Heading back into town he drove us to Old Rabat, the old city center of Akhalsikhe where a mosque and other buildings from when the city was part of the Ottoman Empire.  Within a moment we were flying down some other road and stopped at some house and Giora ran inside and ran back out to us and thus we took off again.

            After forty minutes of traveling he pulled over at some abandoned gas station.  Then he ushered us out and took us to the trunk of his car and began handing out freshly cooked corn, insisting that we eat.  Then we left again and continued before Giora decided we had to stop again, this time in front of a massive fortress.  30 minutes later we were passing the snow capped mountains again heading to Vardzia.  Giora never stopped talking this entire time.  He talked about his upcoming trip to Germany, Armenian sites in Georgia, his visits to Nagorno-Karabakh, etc.  It only ended when the car pulled into the parking lot of Vardzia and we disembarked.

Vardzia

            Vardzia is an ancient cave city and monastery that decorates the side of a mountain.  It dates back to the time of Queen Tamara and monks still live in the caves.  Naturally, part of it has been “restored” and it is pretty obvious to see as to where.  Climbing up to reach the caves is a little daunting but is far from as harrowing as it is to descend down the stone steps that reach into mountain, without light.  The church inside is breathtaking and the caves are magnificent.  Being in a place that has been occupied for hundreds of years creates a strange sensation, especially when it’s still inhabited.  It is quite easy to lose an entire day there just exploring yet alone observing the view of that the height of the mountain provides. 

            We descended after little more than hour.  Then we waited for Giora, who had discovered some old friends in the parking area.  An hour later we left and Giora began to recount his fantastic experience.  His hand waved in the air and his laughter made the windshield shake as his hands slammed down on the steering wheel.  His friend was there, driving some mafia guys from Moscow around, and they had their two daughters with them.  These mafia guys buy cars and drive them back to Moscow.  Then they all posed for photos to put on Odnoklassniki the Russian-language version of facebook.  That was the story. 

            Back in Akhalsikhe the Dutchman and me parted ways.  I had to go back home to Urbnisi and he was to stay one more night before riding out to Batumi.  On the way to the station I made a quick stop into a stationary store in hopes of buying a calendar.  There the man behind the counter quickly introduced himself and told me that I should stay at his friend’s hotel.  No matter how hard I tried to explain that I was on my out of the city he just kept insisting, I bought a notebook and he wished me a “Good morning” as I stepped outside.

            When Giora dropped us off, he left us each his name and number incase we came back.  I still have it to pass on to others that I find heading there.  To be honest, I haven’t stayed in touch with the Dutchman but when Giora dropped us off, even after my brief traveling companion made it clear that he wanted to walk, Giora made it clear that he would pick him up the next morning at 8.00 to take him to the station for free.  There is a moral hiding between these sentences somewhere, some cornel of wisdom that I can’t quite locate.  I don’t know how this ended but I’m sure if I go back, which I most likely will, I’ll find out.    

 Every so often I’ll dedicate a blog to answering questions.  So if you have any burning inquiries just drop a line in the comment section or email me. 

Vardzia