Family Time

Since Chris left a few weeks ago, I haven't been doing much on the TLG social scene.  Part of that has to do with the fact that occasionally my brain decides it's just time to demand more solitude, introversion and introspection.  Hence the solo journeys.  I've also actually made a couple Georgian friends, and have been spending some pretty fun evenings with them.  And then my Fridays at Betsy's have also introduced me to a whole bunch of very interesting non-TLG expats.  There's only so much of me to go around, folks.

During Chris's visit, between work and tutoring and sightseeing and nights out with friends, I was stupid busy and booked for pretty much the entire time, and I didn't get to see much of my host family.  I was also pretty convinced they weren't happy with me about that, as they had started to ignore me when I was in the house.  This made me sad, as I like my host family.  But one of the things that has been the hardest for me to get used to in Georgia is that no one ever confronts any problem directly.  Georgia is the most passive-aggressive culture I have ever come across, and I knew that if I tried to talk to them about this problem it would turn into one gigantic, awkward cultural misunderstanding and things would only get worse.  They knew I was busy, that my friend was visiting.  And the fact was, even though I wanted to, I simply couldn't clone myself.

But then Chris's time in Georgia was up, and serendipitously it was only a few days later that I turned in my classes' final grades at the Ministry of Justice.  (I will miss those people tremendously, especially my incredible and talented AP class.  Hope to see you guys again!)  Suddenly it felt like I had slid into a cool pool after mowing the lawn in August.  So.  Much.  Free.  Time! :)

In a way, it made me sad that it was so easy to mend fences with my host family.  I wish I knew exactly what the catalyst was that made them write me off so obviously for those awkward weeks, and what it was that made them turn around again.  But one thing is certain, and that is that I sure did something right on May 23, that being my host brother's birthday.  I'd gone to Prospero's and picked him up an English-language book on International Law (what he's currently studying at University).

Well.  With the presentation of that gift, it was like the last few weeks evaporated.  All was right again, and that evening we had an excellent family supra to celebrate Beka turning 21.

Host Mom Marina with her two kids -- Beka and Keti

Beka's face here is awesome.

Badri and I in a triumphant vakhtanguri

During the supra, Badri got up and pointed on the wall calendar to May 26, Saturday.  On this day, Beka translates, there will be a neighborhood party down in the courtyard.  Terrific, I say.  I'm free, I'll be sure to be there.  I seriously love our neighborhood supras.

Well, Friday morning rolls around and Beka says to me with a grin: "Mary, are you ready for tonight?"

Crap.

Either they changed the date and didn't remember to tell me, or Badri pointed to the wrong day and Beka didn't notice, or all or none of the above.  It's Georgia.  After only so recently getting back into my family's good graces, I really, really wanted to show up at this party.  But I had made plans with friends at Betsy's, it being Friday night.  One of those plans even had a semi-business purpose to it, and I needed to be there.  Again with the cloning wishes.

Well, it worked out, because our neighborhood parties always start late.  I managed to get what I needed done at Betsy's, see friends, and taxi home by about 9:45, when things were just getting started!

Supra Yurt

I really do love these mtsvadi and wine nights with my family and neighbors.  The men all luuurve me because I can down a qanci like a pro, and I amuse everyone with my horrible pidgin-caveman Georgian when it's my turn to do toasts.  The mtsvadi is always so delish -- I think it's the wood they use to cook it.  Hmm... maybe attempt to do mtsvadi in the chiminea when I return home? :)

Delicious meat on sword... stick... things!

So... I perhaps was a touch hungover the next morning.  But I felt better in the afternoon, and that was good, because my host family surprised me with an impromptu trip out to their country house.

Their country house is awesome... boasts a porch swing and a hammock, and the backyard is full of fruit trees, a strawberry patch, and an herb garden.  We spent a couple minutes pulling cherries off the trees and eating them right there.

Beka gave me cherry "earrings"

I spent most of our time there reading on the swing.  Life could be worse. :)  We only ended up staying at the house for about two hours... I was kind of hoping we'd have dinner there but we left around 5:00.  On the way home, we stopped and picked up a big plastic jug of beer from the Kazbegi beer factory in Tbilisi, and some smoked fish.  It took me a minute to get into the fish, but dinner was damn tasty.  I spent Saturday night in, because I had to get up at 7:00 the next morning...

To go with my host family on a day-long tour of Kakheti.  I hadn't managed to see any of Kakheti yet, and had been told it was beautiful.  So I was looking forward to this tremendously.  It was a whole family affair, Badri, Marina, Beka, myself, plus Keti and her husband Irakli.  We all packed into their SUV and headed east to Sighnaghi.

Well, everything I'd been told turned out to be true.  Kakheti is beautiful -- a softer, less wild beauty than what I've seen in western Georgia.  It reminded me very much of the Shenandoah, and like my own very lovely home state, Kakheti is known for its wine.

Right before I left for Georgia, my dear friend Matt gave me a bottle of Georgian wine as a going-away present.  A saperavi, from the Pheasant's Tears winery.  We loved it, and in fact I'm pretty sure that bottle remains the best Georgian wine I've had so far.  Well, Pheasant's Tears hails from Sighnaghi, so I was super jazzed when we walked right by it!  Alas, we did not go inside despite my intimations.  Will have to come back again in the autumn.

We walked through the very pretty town and up into one of Sighnaghi's towers.  Back in the Middle Ages, Sighnaghi was a walled town and much of the original wall remains.  More old stones for the Ancient Ruins Nerd Girl!

Then... we left.  I was confused, as I would have really loved to see more of Sighnaghi, but no one had told me the plan for the day, which was to see a lot more of Kakheti. We drove to an ancient and apparently very popular monastery, but unfortunately I could not get the name.  All the same, it was pretty, and impressive, and old.  Go figure.

Keti and Beka walking up to the monastery

Frescoes inside

Me and a million-lari view

The monastery was (natch) at the top of a very steep hill; we weren't allowed to drive and had to take a marshutka.  At the bottom of the hill was a very cute little restaurant, and we stopped there for a typically traditional Georgian lunch -- mtsvadi, khachapuri, dedas puri, salati, kartopeli fri, and even a little red wine.

Then it was back in the car and on to Tsinandali.  I'd always thought Tsinandali was a kind of grape, like cabernet or chardonnay, but apparently it's a village.  We visited the historical estate winery in town, which sits in the middle of a huge park.

Inside is a winetasting room and upstairs a small museum.  I would have really, really liked to to either or both, but we ended up just walking around the grounds.  Very peaceful, and easy to imagine this as a Georgian estate 100 or 200 years ago.

Then it as back in the car for the long three-hour ride home.  We stopped and picked up matsoni, cheese, bread, cherries... and some other stuff on the way.  I arrived home exhausted but so happy that I had seen so much of Kakheti in one day.  My host family truly were so incredible to show me all of this (and refuse to let me pay for anything!)

And then I called up a friend and met him downtown for beer and snacks. :)  Damn good Sunday.

I have been so amazingly fortunate with my host families here in Georgia.  They have all given me so many memories and unique experiences I will remember for the rest of my life.  I hope we can keep in touch over the years!

Hiking Mtatsminda

So I finally get close to actually catching up with this thing, and then life has the balls to ramp right back up again and just keep on happening.  Lawd.  Well, I will try to knock this out, so forgive if perhaps this is a tad light on all the details and witticisms I know you have all come to expect and love.

  When we last left our hero, I was still riding the high of my successful solo adventure to Mtskheta the day before, and also was keenly aware that the day, while not lacking in achievements, had in fact been lacking in that one thing I had set out to do -- hiking.

So despite the fact that it looked an awful lot like rain, and Tbilisi has been getting a bunch of that earlier, I packed my essentials in my backpack and headed off to hike Mtatsminda.

Mtatsminda is less a mountain and more a plateau... Narikala Fortress and Kartli Dedas are on this same ridge.  But I specifcally wanted to hike up to where the TV tower makes such an impressive display every night.

There are probably no fewer than several dozen paths and roads that wind up various places along this ridge, but I headed for the one I knew -- a path that began just down the street from Betsy's Hotel.  The path starts out as stairs and pavement, but that soon falls away to a much more Georgian experience.  Paths crisscross and switchback all across the mountainside, making it hard to follow one direct route but easy to continue while making the right choice for you regarding difficulty.

Because there was no one around to stop me, I soon got bored with all the switchbacks and decided to take one of the trails that pretty much went straight UP.  This was tough going and I was glad when my "extreme" path crossed one of the slightly less steep ones again!  After little less than half an hour I made it into the pine trees.

And after only a few minutes more (why are mountains always uphill???) I could check one more thing off my Georgia bucket list.  Made it to the tower!

I'd heard there was a mostly-abandoned park at the top of Mtatsminda (where you see the ferris wheel up in the top picture), so I shimmied under a very cursory fence and went to have a look around.  Only to find that the mostly-abandoned park was in fact packed with Georgians!  True, something like 95% of the rides, shops, and restaurants were closed and falling apart, but that didn't stop the Georgians from having a day at an amusement park, dammit.  I sat at a picnic table and ate my cheeseburger picnic I'd picked up at the McDonald's below.  All these people were messing with my solitary zen, so I headed out again without staying too long.

Bird's-eye view of beautiful Tbilisi

When I finally reached the bottom again, I stopped into the beer garden next to the Rustaveli McDonald's, had some refreshment, and read while Tbilisi had its daily afternoon rainstorm.

Pretty damn sweet for a Sunday afternoon.

The First Solo Trip

Three weeks.  Three.  Weeks.  How did this happen?  Three weeks.

Right now I am simply SO grateful that I will be coming back, because the idea of saying goodbye to this country forever -- before I have seen Vardzia, Ushguli, Khevsureti, my 59th acient Georgian church (reconstructed) -- fills me with something that feels a lot like panic.  I am ready for a break -- SO ready -- but now more than ever I know I made the right decision to not write this place off forever.

That being said, I'm incredibly unenthused about the idea of facing another Georgian winter.  But that's almost half a year away so easy to not think about for a while!

It's hard to believe, but I had been in this country for a solid year and change without ever quite managing to get out and do anything alone.  I've been to multiple countries and had more adventures than I ever thought possible, but the only solo traveling I'd managed to get done were the epic plane flights from Tbilisi to Okinawa and back.  Before Georgia, going it solo was indisputably my preferred mode of travel, but the fact is that Georgia can be a rather intimidating place to adventure alone, especially if you happen to be both a foreigner and a woman.  There is safety in numbers, and it's also just comforting to know that there's an extra brain nearby that speaks your language and is going to be thinking of solutions to problems even as you are doing the same.

But still.  Not one solo trip?

A couple of weeks ago I decided that my final Great Act before leaving Georgia for the summer would be a solo trip to Kazbegi for a long weekend.  I would locate the marshutka, find and negotiate a guesthouse, hike to Gergeti Church and even a little ways up Mout Kazbek -- all by myself.

And no, this is not a post about that trip, which I have not made yet.  Last weekend was the Training Wheels Trip -- a day trip to lovely Mtskheta just outside of Tbilisi.

As I believe I mentioned in a recent post, Tbilisi's Didube marshutka station is freaking insane.  For one thing, it's enormous, with at least four semi-connected parking areas for the hundreds of minibuses.  I got off the metro and began asking directions for the one going to Mtskheta.  Only to be told by not one, but TWO Georgian cab drivers that there was no bus to Mtskheta, only taxis.  Oh hey, and he happened to be a taxi driver!! What smashing luck!  Would I like to take his taxi to Mtskheta??

I'm proud to say that I made no bones about laughing in these guys' faces.  Goddam liars.  And after about 10 minutes I did find the right bus.  What do you know?  There are buses that leave for Mtskheta, one about every 20 minutes as a matter of fact.  And they do this all day long.

I'd been to Mtskheta before, in the dead of winter with my host family, but we did not stay very long and mainly just went to Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in the center of town before hitting a restaurant for kinkhali and vodka.  I thought the town was extremely pretty and told myself I'd be back once spring finally arrived.

But what I'd really come to do on this particular Saturday was hike up to Jvari Monastery.

The only trouble was, I hadn't been able to find any concrete info or directions as to where to pick up the trail.  Online, I could only find advice saying that it was best to hire a car, and I didn't want to do that -- expensive, for one thing -- and also, what's the fun in driving?  Although this still makes no sense to me, my four-year out-of-date Bradt guidebook gave detailed instructions on how to get back down the mountain, but then also suggested a car to go up and gave only the barest nod to finding the trail from town. How on earth can you get down a mountain but not up it???

I found the tourist office in town, conveniently located just across from Svetitskhoveli Cathedral.  I asked where to pick up the trail.  And they said I'd be best off hiring a car.  I explained I had no interest in that and intended to walk.  Well, okay, she said.  I would need to find this footbridge in order to get across the river. Then I would need to cross the highway, and walk alongside it for a time, until I found the path up.  The path was not marked, by the way.  Oh, and also -- there are snakes.

Terrific.

Nonetheless, I set off to try and find this footbridge.  My guidebook gave the world's sketchiest directions that included, and I quote: "Head north past Samtavro Church, turn right around the derelict Univermag shop, right following the tarmac road past the former campsite."  And turn left at the cow, Bradt?  So I was standing in the sun, sweaty, frustrated and confused, staring at my book and wondering what a derelict Univermag shop might look like, and what freaking direction north is since I didn't exactly have a compass on me, when a nice old guy approached me and asked simply "Jvari?"

Yeah, I hired his taxi.  He caught me at a weak moment.  15 lari from where I was standing to the doors of Jvari Monastery, including 20-30 minutes at the site to look around.  I probably paid too much, but I was so demoralized with my hiking fail that I didn't even think to haggle when he offered his price.

Seriously Mtskheta.  It cannot be that hard to mark a trail, put up a few signs, even build one of those metal pedestrian overpasses that are everywhere in Tbilisi so people could cross the highway without taking their lives in their hands.  But even as I type this, it occurs to me that the army of taxi drivers would probably hate that idea, as ferrying tourists to and from Jvari is probably a big source of their daily income.

But anyway.  The point here is that I (eventually) made it to Jvari.  Kaplah?  A qualified Kaplah.

View from Jvari, Mtskheta's red roofs to the right.

Inside the church

Once I was up there, I could definitely see where the path started to get down the mountain.  I thought about paying my driver and at least hiking down, but humping it along a long flat stretch of open highway wasn't exactly the hike I had envisioned.  Also, snakes.  I went back to the car.

Back in Mtskheta, my driver let me off in front of Samtavro Church, so I went to have a quick look.  First Georgian church where I got politely and quietly yelled at for trying to take photos inside.  Those St. Nino nuns were a tough bunch!

Samtavro

That done, I decided to walk a little bit just outside of town to check out some ruins I had seen on the ride up to Jvari.  I told you -- I am a total sucker for ancient things and cannot get enough of ruined towers and fortresses.  Hell, I don't even get tired of checking out Georgian churches.

Awesome, right?

This particular fortress is unfortunately in the process of falling down the mountainside.  There were signs everywhere warning "Danger:  Landslip Zone."  And sadly parts of the outer wall have already landslipped.

It was so cool to be here totally by myself... walking up to the fortress and away from the road, I found myself singing bits of Les Miserables for no particular reason, and just kept right on because there was no one to hear me.  Started at the beginning and made it all the way to Fantine's arrest before meeting back up with civilization.

I had no further real plans for Mtskheta, so walked back to the town center and picked a cute little cafe next to the Cathedral.  I sat outside at one of the ubiqutous yellow plastic Natakhtari tables, and ordered beer, salati, and Qababi.  Food was tasty, I made friends with two strays, randomly met up with two Tbilisi expats I know from Besty's, and wrote in my journal.

One thing I always love about traveling by yourself is that the solitude offers ample time for just... thinking.  Thinking, and writing.  In September of 2010, I took a solo vacation to Eleuthera, in the Bahamas.  I rented a tiny house right on the water, and pretty much spent the entire week swimming, reading, writing, grilling, and sipping on cocktails.  It was absolutely, amazingly awesome, and I wrote a ton on this vacation, because for once the focus of the trip was not running around like a crazy person trying to see absolutely as much history as possible in the time allotted.  I let my mind and my pen wander, and filled over half the pages in my journal before the week was out.  When I went to Rome the year before, even though I was running around like a crazy person, I made sure to take the time at every meal and document everything that I was seeing, feeling, and experiencing, because I knew that I would not want to forget a single second.

Traveling with companions, even if they are your very best friends, you don't really have a chance to do any of that.  Sure, I come home and blog about it, but it's hardly the same thing.  I've missed recording the impressions of a moment, and while I always hope I'll remember and write it down later, I never do.

So I lingered for a couple extra beers at my cafe table and alternatively spaced out or scrawled, whatever seemed right at the time.

My view during lunch.

As I was finishing up, the restaurant's staff offered me a small drinking horn filled with tcha-tcha, "as a present."  I love Georgia.

On my way out, I stopped in and checked out Svetitskhoveli again.

I didn't know where the bus station was, so I just walked back out to the main road and waited.  Sure enough, a marshutka bound for Tbilisi came along in the next few minutes.  I flagged it down and was on my way home.

The first solo trip was neither long nor far, but even so I am extremely pleased with how the adventures of the day played out.  No hiking, but as it turns out I would rectify that on Sunday.  Which is something for the next post.

Gori, Part 2

After Chris and I had triumphantly humped it back down the mountain and into Gori proper, we were faced with the fact that it was not yet quite 5:00, and Gori offers limited options in terms of evening entertainment, beyond the Georgian usual involving eating and drinking.  We decided to take advantage of the daylight, tell our sore and tired limbs to fuck off, and walk up to Gori's ruined ancient fortress.  To get there, we walked through the town proper, which is undergoing some serious renovation that I can only assume is the lingering aftermath of the devastation caused by the 2008 war.

It is worth noting that the Town Center does not look like this!  Most of Gori is very pretty.  It is about the same size as Poti, I would guess, but offers much more in terms of tourist attractions and history.  Their main street, Stalin Avenue (natch), definitely does not lack in the "restaurants and bars" department.  Which we made good use of later in the evening!  But back to the timeline.

It's really easy to find the Gori Fortress.  Just look up, and then find a street going vaguely toward it.  That's pretty much what we did, and after trekking through the apocalypse above, we soon found the path to take us up.

Gori Fortress is actually kind of like Narikala Fortress in Tbilisi. It's huge, ancient, awe-inspiring, and utterly without any provided context or history. I am a tremendous nerd, so I will happily always take all the ruins I can get, but if you are less inclined I would say that this might be the one thing you could skip in Gori.  Certainly if you have to choose between Gori Jvari and the Fortress, choose Gori Jvari!  That being said, I thought the fortress was pretty awesome.  And it seriously is right in town so unless the last marshutka is leaving in the next 15 minutes, there's no excuse not to pay a quick visit.

We stumped around for a while, but the fact remained that on our break between our hike and the fortress, I had had a beer, and my bladder has the capacity of a midget's thimble.  So we had to go -- to find a very necessary toilet and also to find food, as lunch had been a very, very long time ago.

We selected the Sport Cafe for our dinner spot.  Possibly not the most ostensibly authentic place we could find, but we liked the outdoor tables, our Gori brochure recommended it, and it was right on the main drag, the one and only Stalin Avenue.  And the food was great.

We ordered pork and chicken mtsvadi, roasted new potatoes, mushrooms with sulguni cheese, and shoti.  More food than two girls could ever eat, but it was completely delicious.  Plus we got to share our uneaten meat with the cute stray dogs who were hanging around.

After dinner, we decided to hit up a night spot also recommended by our brochure -- Shardin Cafe, again -- on Stalin Avenue.  There's a pattern here.  The bar was quite cool and played good music.  We ordered a bottle of Georgian sparkling wine, and the waitress was very patient while I tried to remember the Georgian word for "cold", because warm champagne is gross.

Awesome mod shot that Chris took with my camera. :)

Mod shot of Chris.

We had a potential Georgian Problem while sitting here, playing with my camera... a very drunk Georgian man swayed over to our table and threatened to knock over our champagne with his belly.  While we made polite, "please go away, I don't speak your language" noises, our waitress charged over like an angry mother wolf defending her cubs.  She and old drunk Georgian dude had a full-on Georgian Argument in front of our table, but before long, drunk Georgian dude slunk back to his own den with his tail between his legs.  We love you, Georgian mama-wolf!!

The bar closed at midnight, which was just as well, because we were planning to get up early the next day and go to the ancient cave city of Uplistsikhe.

There are marshutkas to the village next to Uplistsikhe, but I didn't feel like dealing with all that, so we hired a cab.  I am getting good at bargaining, despite not knowing how to say numbers higher than 13.  So after a few moments of jovial back-and-forth (and charades, there are always charades), I got the cab for 30 lari which included ~2 hours of waiting time at the site so he could take us back afterwards.

We got to the site around 9:45, and honestly I don't think they were even officially open yet, because we had to wait for a guard to go find some random guy to sell us our tickets.  Getting there early turned out to be a fantastic idea, because for the first 45 minutes or so, we had this gigantic, magnificent playground all to ourselves.

Entrance from the riverbank up to the cave city

Our first view of Uplistsikhe

I. LOVED. It. Here.  The entire place is just open... you are free to climb and crawl and jump and scramble to your heart's content, and we did a lot of that.  It was so incredibly fascinating to duck in and out of these rooms and halls, and imagine what it might have looked like a thousand years ago.

Those ladder-like notches in the photo above are apparently what Uplistsikhe-ians used for stairs.  At first, Chris and I were being very hesitant and careful in our exploring, but soon the place got under both our skins and we started climbing around like crazy.  It is possible that we made some less-than-totally-safe choices here, but I had a ball and no one sprained an ankle or broke an arm.  Great success!

Amazing shot Chris took of me playing at rock-climbing!

Right after this picture was taken, I ran out of handholds and almost had a cat-in-a-tree moment, afraid I wasn't going to be able to go up OR down.  I'm not sure what kind of rock this was, maybe some kind of sandstone because my boots had really good traction. :)  Lucky thing as I just pushed myself to not think too hard about how steep it was and scrambled up the rest of the way.  Great success!

Uplistsikhe was just so goddam cool.  Two hours was not enough!

Chris getting her shot.

When we finally had to leave, our very nice taxi driver was waiting as promised.  Back in Gori, it was early enough that we could still see one of Gori's two museums that we hadn't hit yet, but our workout in Uplistsikhe had worn us out!  We got lunch in a cool little coffeehouse and headed for the marshutka station.  Got a bus without a hitch and headed back to Tbilisi.

Amazing trip, and a fitting Last Hurrah for Chris's final weekend in Georgia.  So don't let anyone tell you Gori isn't worth seeing!