Kate Provides the Pics part II

A good find during my frog hunting in Kazbegi, Georgia.  We spent a weekend in the upper caucuses about 3 hours North of Tbilisi.  We stayed a nice little homestay with two other volunteers and another traveler who happened to be from Washington, DC.   

While surrounded by gorgeous snow-capped mountains, most of the pictures I took were of livestock.  

I did happen to take a few mountain pictures however.  This is  Tsminda Sameba Church built in the 14th century.  It is very modest inside, but that's fine considering the atmosphere.  If you can say anything about the Georgians, they love building their churches in hard to reach places.  This one is 2200 meters above sea level and takes about an hour to hike here from the town below.

Also in Kazbegi, on our third day of hiking.  

Here's another one of the church.  

For some reason there are etchings of two dinosaurs above the window of the church.  Holy dinosaurs, apparently.

Yet another church picture.  This one is from ground level. and you can see Kazbeg mountain in the background.

I took a field trip with the UNDP one day to a new dairy farm that is beginning to process specialty cheeses.  They have their own home-made cheese cave.  Their cheese is unprocessed, unpasteurized, and cave aged for only one month.  For those of you who know a little about cheese, this should make you nervous, but they say they test the bacteria every day.  .  It was very delicious, though.  It had a texture much like fresh mozzarella but with a little more bite to it.

These are two of my twelfth graders, Mukha and Irakli.  Irakli was the best in my class, and  Mukha the class clown.  He loves the color yellow so he would always steal my purse and model it around the classroom.  One day early on he summed up all the differences between American and Georgian cultures by saying, "In America you ask neighbor, 'Give me sugar!.' 'No sugar!' In Georgia neighbor give you many sugar."  

Here I am in Mestia, Svaneti region of Georgia--way up in the upper Caucuses on the West side of the country.  Here they have their own language, own foods, and own traditions.  This is a traditional Svan house, untouched in 800 years.  The house is decorated with intricate carvings of the sun, as ancient Svans were sun worshipers.  I am sitting in the "man's chair." To the right left of that is a long bench for the women of the household and then across from the man is a smaller, lower bench for the children.  Between these benches and this chair is the fire.  All around the room, as you can see behind me are these window-looking things carved into the wood.  Traditionally, the livestock lived in the same one-room house as the family.  The cows would stick their heads through and eat from the trough directly in front of them and directly behind me in this picture.  The family would sleep on a platform above the animals, using the cows' body heat for warmth.  

The view of a Svan house from the outside.

The town of Ushguli in very remote Svaneti.  This town is the highest altitude settlement in all of Europe at 2200 meters above sea level (about 7,000 feet for you non-metric-types).  Now this town was living the way we were told Svans lived 800 years ago.  Remote doesn't begin to describe it.  (Sidenote: In Georgian, the word for surname is the same word for clan.  This system is still very alive and well in remote Georgia today.)

Here is the town of Mestia at night.  All the Svan Towers are lit up with spotlights.  Every family had their own tower for when inter-clan warfare broke out in the village and the family needed somewhere to hide.  Also, when avalanches came, or other natural disasters.  Women would be hidden up here to prevent the art of "bride-napping" which is still a tradition up here from time to time, but not a very accepted one.  The traditional  rule is that if she screams when she is being 'napped' the family has a right to go after her and kill whoever is trying to marry her.  If she doesn't scream the family doesn't have that right.  However, if she does scream, but the family can't catch the man who is stealing her by day break then she is considered not a virgin anymore, and therefore is married off to her kidnapper.  If a feud begins between clans it can go on for 12 generations, but no more than that-it's the cut off.  There was recently a movie made about this, where a man was going to literally take a bullet for his family to end a blood feud, but then died seconds before from a heart attack and the other family went after and killed one of his children.  Another note on the remoteness of this area:  While Georgia has been conquered by Turks, Mongols, Greece, Russia (twice), ect, ect, ect, Svans, with the help of their landscape were able to defend themselves every time, so while Georgia is kind of a cultural melting pot made from a series of conquerers, Svaneti was never touched by any of this, and therefore developed a very different existence.

Dan and I climbed 1 vertical kilometer in about 3 hours (you can be impressed) and found ourselves in one of the most amazing places.  Here is the town of Mestia below us.  

We were not alone up there.  Meet Bessy.  

It's a little tropical.  Not in temperature, but in precipitation, certainly.  This made for some over-sized Mosquitos.  

Here we are on our first day's hike.  It was a doozey, but we managed with careful maneuvering and the gracefulness you have come to expect from the two of us.  

Our final destination Day 1.  Yup.  That's some snow and ice.  

Ok, for real final destination Day 1:  This was about 3 hours beyond that last picture.  We were way up there.  We even got to witness an avalanche--small though.  

This is the inside of one of the Svan Towers where we could actually climb to the top.  People wondered how the towers stayed so perfectly preserved and vertical after 1,000 years so the composition of the mortar was analyzed.  It turns out the mortar is mixed with eggs, so it became more and more solid throughout the years instead of weathered.  It also explains the slightly yellowish tint they have on the outside.

It has to go somewhere.

Here we are at the top of the world.  We hiked up an hour to this spot.  It once was the summer stop for the "king" of Georgia, Tamar.  "King" is in quotations, because she was a queen.  But she is a Georgian hero, so she is called king.  

More frogs to add to my collection.  The tiniest one yet on this trip.  

While Dan provides the content, I will add the pictures.

Batumi

Atcharuli Khatchapuri: Every region has its own version of Khatchapuri, which is bread filled with cheese.  Batumi's version is inspired by the sea.  It is boat shaped and has a raw egg placed on top of the smoldering cheese in the middle of the bread so it looks like a little man in a boat.  You break of the end of the crusty hot bread and use it to mix the egg with the hot cheese-cooking it a little.  Then you dip chunks of the boat into the molten cheese and enjoy.  They are not that big but Dan and I together have trouble finishing one.  You will notice a giant pad of butter to the left of the khatchapuri.  We took it out because it is served with two but we thought one giant pad would be enough.  

This is the fortress in Goris, outside of Batumi .  Dan talked about this in the last blog.  It is where Matthew is buried.  It was a rainy day, but the fortress was very beautiful and it had a quaint little museum. We were allowed to walk the ramparts all the way around it.

I have come to realize since I have been in Georgia that me and heights are not that great of friends.  It took Dan two days to convince me to go on the Ferris Wheel in Batumi. It's really high--higher than any building in the entire city.  It was a white knuckle ride.

 Trabzon, Turkey

This is Sumela Monastery.  It is carved into the side of an enormous cliff in the middle of nowhere in the mountains of Turkey.  It was incredibly beautiful.

The hike up to Sumela Monestary was very foggy.  It really set the mood.

One of the frescoes inside the monastery.

Turkey was full of tasty sweets in shop windows.  We gorged upon baklava like nobody's business.  They have a special local variety that is tubular and is made of hazelnuts and chestnut honey rather than pistachios

Food has color in it?  Here in Georgia our diet is all white--potatoes, yogurt, bread, white polenta, white chicken, and white cheese.  It was so exciting to get this served to me.  It was delicious.  The hot pepper and the tomatoes were skewered and grilled.  The onions and cabbage were pickled and amazing and the lamb was nice and spicy.  

Everywhere we went to eat in Turkey we were offered tea after the meal.  It is part of the meal at no extra cost.  The tea is never made in the restaurant, but there are men running up and down every street just delivering it on these silver platters with little spoons and sugar cubes.  It's very delicious.  We spent many an afternoon in the restaurant trying to figure this whole tea service thing out.  They even deliver to guys just hanging out on street corners.  I don't know if a phone call is made, or they just walk around looking for thirsty pedestrians, or how a profit is ever made.  

For both of you still following this

Although limited access to internet inhibits me from updating as much as Dylan, I'm still trying to keep you abreast of happenings in Georgia.

Since the last update, we've been to Batumi, Tbilisi, and Trabzon, Turkey. Batumi is the main city of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara, the southwestern-most region of Georgia. What does "Autonomous Republic" mean, you ask? From my limited impression, it means that the region has more or less the same degree of autonomy as a state would in the US (ie, a good number of decisions on local issues are made in Adjara, not Tbilisi.) It had more autonomy before 2004, when the rather corrupt President of the Republic tried to seal it off from the rest of the country. This proved to be a bad idea, and he decided to skedaddle to Russia.

Batumi. Like far too many pictures on this blog, it's not ours.

Batumi is on the Black Sea and is being built up as Georgia's premiere resort town. (During Soviet times, that title belonged to Sokhumi, in Abkhazia, but that's not too accessible at the moment.) The city is at the base of Adjara's mountainous range, giving its skyline a beautiful backdrop whichever way you're looking at it. The main areas of it are very nicely developed, with new hotels, wonderful restaurants, and a beautiful boulevard walk along the Black Sea coast. It has a giant ferris wheel that Kate and I tried and a placed called European Square that features a spotlit statue of Medea. Medea was the daughter of the ancient king of Colchis, the Greek name for modern western Georgia. The legend goes that a Greek lad named Jason and his Argonauts sailed into Colchis and were given tasks to accomplish by this king (who likely lived in Kutaisi). Jason fell in love with Medea, and she helped him do these feats, earning him the treasured Golden Fleece.

"Is THIS your golden fleece?" "Yes, thanks, I must have dropped it somewhere."

Just south of Batumi is the town of Gonio, which was also known in antiquity to the Romans and Greeks. The Romans fortified the town, building a garrison there to hold around 1200 soldiers and sailors to exert Roman control over the western Black Sea. It later served as a Byzantine fortress and then an Ottoman one, and is still in remarkable shape today. It is also the alleged resting place of the Apostle Matthias, one added to the original 11 after the departure of Judas. The town and fortress were known in Roman times as Apsyrtos, named for the Colchis youth who happened to be the brother of Medea. While Jason and Medea were running from her dad, who was displeased with her aiding Jason in getting the Golden Fleece, the two of them  came across Apsyrtos near Gonio. Here they chopped him up into little bits and threw his remains into the sea.

Despite this storybook beginning, rocky times lay ahead for the couple. In later years, Jason and Medea would separate, though Medea still had feelings for him. When she heard Jason was to be married to someone else, Medea sent the bride a hand-made wedding dress as a gift. As the bride tried it on, the dress burst into flames and consumed Jason's new love. This is the source of the common phrase, "Something old, something new, something borrowed, som- AHHHHHHHHHHH"

 The trip to Batumi also saw us have our best example of "Atcharuli Khatchapuri", which we will cover in a separate food post. Another place we had this food was Tbilisi. (What a segue!) Our second trip there included a walk up to an old fortress and a statue known as "Kartlis Deda", or 'Mother Georgia'. It's a towering metal figure that overlooks the city of Tbilisi and provides wonderful views of Tbilisi and the Caucasus Mountains. The mountain upon which Kartlis Deda stands also held an old ruin of a church that was surrounded by a fence labeled "Property of the Hellenic Republic", aka Greece. Given their financial state right now, I think it's quite possible they're looking to sell.

Fortress and, in the background, Mother Georgia.

Turkey I'll cover in a separate post, I suppose. Perhaps in August?

It was my host sister's birthday on 27 April, and I got her the first two Harry Potter (or "Hari Poteri") books in Georgian. In the first one, a chapter is called "Kvidechi" and a character called "Hegridi" keeps showing up to help Hari and his friends, Roni and Hermini.

Stats:

3 - languages (German, English, Russian) and countries (Germany, USA, Georgia) in which I've seen the final chase of the Stanley Kubrick (yes?) film 2Fast 2Furious. This scene is notable for a car jumping from a small dirt ramp about 40 feet onto the roof of a moving yacht.

1 - languages (Polish) and countries (Georgia) in which I've seen the first hour or so of Air Bud. Still waiting for Air Bud: Seventh-Inning Fetch to show up on satellite.

4 - ways to transliterate Adjara I've seen here. They include Adjara, Ajara, Atchara, and Achara. I've also heard it as "Adjaria" though that seems to have been phased out. The individual letters are normally transliterated as "a-tch-a-r-a".

1 - golden busts of Ronald Reagan located behind the desk of Mikheil Saakashvili. No, he does not have a tie around his forehead.

2 - questions on Georgia's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" I got right during the last week of April. One was about chemical elements and the other was about films directed by William Wyler. My Georgian is improving.
Batumi

Vocabulary:

rva - Eight

dghebi - Days

kvira - Week

damekhmarot - Help

kishiyebenda - Please (Megrelian)

tu sheidzleba - Please (Georgian - literally means "if possible")

me - Me

Privyet - Hello (Russian)

nakhvamdis - Goodbye (formal)

mas ukvarkhar shen - She loves you

ki - yeah

ho - yeah

ko - yeah (Megrelian)

Phrases the authors thought were important to include in my Georgian-English phrase book:

"You're slacking/you're being idle."

"We are in deep doodoo."

"Ethnic minorities"

Skiing is difficult

After finishing most of the books I brought with me, I just finished reading a translation of a Georgian epic poem Kate got me for Christmas. It is to Georgia what "The Canterbury Tales" is to England, "The Divine Comedy" is to Italy, "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" are to Greece, and "Con Air" is to the US. Its title in Georgian is "V e p k h i s t q a o s a n i", which roughly translates to "The Knight in the Panther's Skin." The translation is from 1968 and differs a bit from the copy my fellow English teacher has, and I had initially worried about influence from Soviet censors, but that proved silly and I enjoyed the poem overall. It does lose a little in the translation. Like the Georgian original, it's arranged in quatrains, but apparently in the original, the last word of each line of a quatrain would rhyme, often to three or four syllables. (I don't know how to reproduce this in English effectively, so I won't try.) It also has some pretty strong Bromantic themes.

One possible cover page

Its author is Shota Rustaveli, the preeminent Georgian poet. He wrote in the 12th and 13th centuries, when Georgia was at its height of power under King David the Builder and Queen Tamar. The three of them are very important figures in Georgian history, with streets and plazas named after them in just about every major town. Rustaveli seems to be the biggest of the three - the main street in Tbilisi is named for him, as is the country's biggest cinema and the secondary street in Zugdidi. There's pictures of him throughout my school.

"Hey Shota, it's your birthday/We gonna party like it's your birthday" is just one of the many terrible puns I've come up with since my arrival.

Kate and I took another trip the first weekend of March. Our destination was Bakuriani, a town outside Borjomi in southern Georgia. Borjomi is known for the salty mineral water bottled from the town's springs, water that's sold throughout Georgia and people either love or hate. Bakuriani, however, is known for being one of Georgia's two premier ski resorts. It once hosted training facilities for the Soviet  Olympic Ski Team and is the hometown of Nodar Kumaritashvili, the Georgian who died at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. The Georgian government is helping develop it to  build the country's ski tourism industry.

Southern Georgia should not be confused with Georgia Southern University, nor with South Georgia, seen above. If you see penguins or whaling vessels, you're at the wrong one.

I had never skied before, and my first time out was an adventure. I rode a gondola up that provided amazing views of the Caucasus mountains and rocked back and forth in the wind. I then struggled with my skis on the mountain, falling dozens of times in the two and a half hours it took me to travel down the 2.2 km course. (Most of that was spent at the top getting lessons on stopping from Kate and waiting for the wind to die down a bit.) But I persevered, and the second time down went much smoother, although my face still made itself familiar with many patches of snow on the mountain.

My third time skiing was on another, much larger mountain that was probably too technically challenging for me. Instead of a gondola, it had a chair lift that required me to keep my balance on skis as I went up the mountain (something that was easier than I expected). The top provided spectacular views of the Caucasus and Bakuriani, which hopefully Kate will share soon. It was much steeper than the first mountain, and I walked much of the way, but managed to ski a good part of the lower third.

Bakuriani also included watching a donkey wearing sunglasses pass me on the street and a snow tube course that was far scarier than any of the skiing I did. We found a lovely home in Bakuriani to stay at for very reasonable price. Our neighbors at our homestay - Levan, Gocha, and Jaba - provided some great hospitality, treating us to two dinners and inviting us to visit if we're in Batumi.

Presumably, this is what Jaba's house in Batumi looks like

I realize that in an earlier post, I said the vowels are the same as Spanish. That's not completely true. A, I, O, and U are, but the Georgian E is closer to the E in the words "bet" or "let".

Additionally, I may have mentioned before a few words in "Megrelian". That's the first language of my family and many other people in Samegrelo (literally, "The place of the Megreli", just as Saqartvelo means "The place of the Qartveli"). Most speak Georgian as well (and a large percentage know Russian). Megrelian is related to Georgian, but is definitely not a dialect of Georgian. It and Georgian are probably as close as English and German or Spanish and French.

Next up: Pictures actually relevant to the text!

Stats:
7 - number of different types of domesticated animals I've walked by on my way to school over the last seven weeks (cat, dog, cow, pig, chicken, turkey, horse)
8 - day of March on which most countries, including Georgia, celebrate "International Women's Day"
2 - questions (out of 3) I understood on a recent Georgian "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?". They were (roughly)  "Which Pope Gregory established the Gregorian calendar?" and "How many African countries does the Equator pass through?"

Vocabulary:
so reg - where are you (Megrelian)
kata - cat
ghori - pig
drosha - flag
kudi - hat
kalatburti - basketball
pirdapir - straight/straightforward

Phrases the authors thought were important to include in my Georgian-English phrase book:
"He stole/covered up some money for me."
"Piss off."
"What a hottie!"
"Beer is bad for you."
"Good heavens!"

A Brief Update

Firstly, it has been a while since I have posted, so there is probably much information I will omit in this blog post, however, it just means I will return to America with more stories you haven't already read here.

Anecdote 1: Dan Learns how to Ski 

The first weekend in March was long because of International Women's Day and Mother's Day falling just a few days apart.  Dan and I went to Bakuriani, a trip I have been looking forward to since we came here.  Georgia is tucked neatly between the upper and lower Caucuses--with 80% of it's territory mountainous.  North of Tbilisi is Gudauri, the ski resort featured in the New York Times travel section just a few days before we left.  This resort is for the Europeans, and other travelers with deep pockets, whereas Bakuriani is for those of us on a Georgian budget.  We found a home stay for 10 Lari a piece per night! (This is an excellent rate.)  It had a kitchen attached and the woman who ran the house even provided us with wood for heating, so it was a great deal.  Also, it was very warm, because we had a little wood burning stove all to ourselves in the room that had very thin metal so it glowed red during the night.

Who needs a night-light when your furnace glows?

Our first day skiing was very windy.  We got to the top of the mountain and were faced with about 60 mph winds and blowing snow.  However, the snow was very lightly packed, fresh, and not icy at all.  It was really great conditions.  I ended up getting a very interesting reverse-goggle suntan, as all my face was covered except my eyes.

The view from the top was quiet stunning.  The next day we went to another hill because the Gondola was closed due to wind.  The views from there were even more amazing.  Unfortunately, my knees were shaking so bad that I only took a few pictures before I had to grab hold of the earth again.  We took a rope tow, me behind Dan in case he fell on the way up. The rope tow goes through the trees so you have no idea how high up you are until you clear the tree line.  It was so a double black diamond.  The wind had taken most of the snow with it so the steepest part was icy.  Just looking down my knees buckled, much less skiing down.  But, like I said, the view was beautiful.

Those tiny buildings just about left-center of the picture are where the run ends.  The itsy-bitsy houses to the right if you follow the line of the trail is where town is.

Keep in mind that Dan was right there at the top of the will with me--on day two of skiing ever. And I'm sure he will use many pleasant euphemisms to paint a very lovely picture of his skiing holiday, but before he does that, let me just tell you that in my entire life, while working in the yard of a hardware store, listening to rap music, watching the movie "Clerks," nor during my brief stint as a sailor have I ever heard anyone drop the "F-bomb" so many times in one day.

Anecdote 2: The Lonely Planet Got One Thing Right


The travel guide I brought with me was published in 2007.  In many places of the world this would pose no obstacle to its usefulness.  However, this is Georgia, and a lot has happened in the last 3 1/2 years.  A few things, though, have not changed, like where Mashrutkas (mini-buses) stop, and "The Supra."

Georgians do not drink wine.  They inhale it through some sort of separate tube in their throat that goes directly to some sort of extra wine-bladder-type organ.  I haven't quite figured out the anatomy of it all yet.  All I know is that it is culturally unacceptable to sip anything.  In fact, you can't even drink until after a toast has been made, and then you have to drink your entire drink.  Toasts are very traditional.  Luckily, I live in a very progressive family and have the privileged of being involved in this predominately male sport.  During Supra, generally women are stuck in the kitchen, snacking on bread and a whole bunch of terribly sweet crap while the men sit around the table and eat entire animals that the women have prepared.  In my family it is all the men and me sitting around the table, eating entire animals, and drinking entire vineyards.

Anyway, back to the toasts.  They are for brothers and sisters, parents, grandparents, small children, your last name and all those that have it, anyone whose birthday it happens to be that day, to memories, to tomorrow, to peace, and for those that have passed.  They never change, they just get rotated in and out.  Then there is the toast for anyone that is leaving the supra early, also for the tamada (the toastmaster), then there is everyone making general toasts about how much they love everyone else.  For the first month or so, I was just there to listen, learn a little Georgian, and drink.  Now I am expected be an active participant, and well, with my limited Georgian, it has gotten a little more complicated.

I want to emphasize that every supra is exactly the same in every house with every family.  Except, when you drink beer.  When you drink beer, you don't have to wait for a toast to drink, you just have to drink more for the toast.  Also, beer toasts are expected to be creative and critical.  All toasts must be ironic.  For example, last night I had my first beer supra and we toasted to Stalin--may he rest in peace, Sarkozy (there were French people over for dinner), the Israeli soccer team (they were playing Georgia that night), cheater wives, cheater husbands, Bush and Pallin.  It was a lot of fun, and instead of there being a tamada, everyone had to take turns doing the toasts.

The third drinking option, and by far the most lethal is Chacha.  Chacha is house made vodka.  Every house is very proud of their product.  My host dad spills some onto his plate and lights it on fire when we have company over just to prove the percentage is above 80, also, sometimes, to prove how easy it is to start house fires.  Also, another thing to note about Supras is that you can't have one drink.  If you drink at all you MUST drink for at least the first three toasts. This means minimum 3 shots of Chacha if it's a light night. Then after that you can kind of slack off and not drink the entire glass--until the last one which must be "bolomde!"

I offer this as an example of the powerful effects of Chacha:

 Anecdote 3: The Cure Is Worse Than the Disease

I have been sick a lot here--always with something upper respiratory-related. I think this has to do with the fact I have never in my life been around cigarette smoke and when Georgians drink, they smoke.

Yet they all have a variety of hypotheses for why I am sick, none of them involving cigarettes.
1) The beer was warm
2) I didn't wear my sweater
3) I didn't wear my jacket
4) I'm not drinking enough chacha
5) I'm drinking too much water. (I'm not kidding)
6) The water I am drinking is colder than room temperature. . .
This list goes on and on.  Basically anything they see me do that is "weird" by Georgian standards is scrutinized.

I have about 30 Moms and 1 Dad here, and they each have a better idea on how to make me well.  (This list is in chronological order.)

1) Chacha.
2) Chacha chased with whole cloves of raw garlic
3) Chacha chased with whole cloves of garlic and pickles
4) Wear an obscene amount of clothing, all the time.
5) Wear a scarf all the time; very tightly. My host mother actually chased me around the house the other morning, trying to strangle me. (With love, of course.)
6) Drink a think solution of lemon and honey
And my all time least favorite:
7) Drink warm FRESH milk mixed with baking soda.
If you can't imagine what this tastes like, go make it RIGHT NOW.

You should all feel a little more caught up on my life here by now, if only slightly.  I'm sure Dan will be posting his rendition of Bakuriani soon, so you can compare notes.

P.S. I'm sure you all already know this already, but I got into grad school and will be moving back to DC!

Also, a few more pictures from the last few weeks:

It was Giorgi's birthday last Monday.  He turned 11.

The sign says "khortsi" which means meat.

The strollers for rent had little skis attached to them. 

Dan emotionally preparing for his first day on the slopes.

The Day of the Tura

Sometimes, I can have an active imagination. For instance, one night during my first week here, my host brother came inside with a firecracker and waved me over to the back door. He motioned for me to listen, and I heard some howling in the distance. He lit the firecracker and threw it outside, where it presumably scared off the animal.
Afterward, I asked, "Wolf?", to which he replied, "No, tura, tura." Neither of us knew what a 'tura' translated to in English, and for 15 minutes or so, I had visions of a beast known as the "Tura" roaming the giant hill behind our house. It was something no American had ever seen before, sort of a combination of a grizzly bear and werewolf, with glowing red eyes and fangs as long as my fingers.
At that point, my host brother found his old Soviet-era dictionary and found the translation:
"tura - n. jackal"

This overactive imagination made itself known again the last week of Februrary. We had a really windy week, which one night led to my room door and window swinging open loudly at 4 AM. Visions of Paranormal Activity briefly dominated my thoughts before falling back asleep.

My imagination took another flight as we planned our next trip. For the last weekend of the month, we took the night train to Gori, a town about 90 minutes west of Tbilisi. Gori is most famous as the birthplace and childhood home of Josef Stalin. During my initial trip from Tbilisi to Zugdidi (wayyyy back in January), I remember looking south from the road as we passed Gori, and seeing a collection of shadowy buildings wedged between two mountains and covered in a dense fog that seemed anchored to the city.
These two things gave me some apprehension about visiting Gori. I pictured it as a place of great evil. I very much had it pegged as a snowy, urban version of the Dagobah cave.

"What's in Gori?" "Only what you take with you."

In fact, Gori was none of these things (except snowy). We had a nice time walking around the town and climbing up to spot where a fortress had been since ancient times, and where the current stone structure dates from the Middle Ages. It provided a lovely view of the town and the mountains to the north, which comprise the southern border of Tskhinvali Region (South Ossetia).

The big attraction in Gori, however, was the Stalin Museum. It was conveniently located on Stalin Ave. The outside is notable for a green train car and a large stone statue of Stalin, recently relocated by the Georgian government (in the middle of the night) out of the town's main square (Stalin Square). The same statue is replicated inside, and there's another inside Gori's train station. The yard also features Stalin's boyhood home, where he lived for the first four years of his life. It's a small building, and his family rented only one tiny room in it. Now, it's protected by imposing columns and stands alone as the only surviving building from his old neighborhood. Apparently, the others were bulldozed to make room for some sort of museum.

If you lived here, you'd be home by now and one of the most murderous rulers of the 20th Century

 Inside, the museum is chock full of pictures and artifacts our guide was sure to speed us past without getting a chance to enjoy them. There were paintings (Young Stalin in a Field Outside Gori, Stalin at the Seminary, Stalin with Stalin's Mom, Stalin Leading the 1905 Revolution He Actually Played Little to No Role In), poems (Stalin's pastoral poetry), and newspaper articles (Stalin Wins War!) There are lots and lots of photos. Some of the best include 'Stalin as a Young Man' (and quite a handsome one at that), 'Stalin Awkwardly With His Arm Around The Founder of the KGB', 'Stalin Voting for Stalin', 'Stalin With Lenin and a Whole Bunch of Other Bolsheviks Who Aren't Trotsky', and 'Stalin Definitely Not Sending Millions to the Gulag'. There are a number in which Stalin seems to have been enhanced or possibly added later, and one of Stalin with a large number of military officers, a few of whom seem to have different lighting, as if they were originally in a different picture.

Stalin proves he has a Cheka friend

Top left is Trotsky, killed by Stalin. Bottom right is Khrushchev, who denounced Stalin after Joe's death. To his left is Lavrentiy Beria (another Georgian) who purged millions for Stalin until he was purged. And then to the left of Beria...

We have this guy. GLENN BECK WAS RIGHT

There are also a lot of gifts Stalin received, including a mink coat ("He never wore it," added our guide), a giant table clock/lamp/compass/desk with a big tank on it, and a plate from the PR China for its 50th birthday in 1999 ("Oh, he's been dead for 45 years?" said China, "How embarrassing. Our mistake.")

Background: Stalin's house (exterior). Foreground: Statue of unidentified figure.

Notable for its absence was the mention of anything really negative about Stalin. I never heard the word "gulag" once, nor was there any mention of the Ukrainian famine in the 1930s or his purges of just about everyone. The guide did show us the small space the museum devoted to the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression pact signed in 1939, which included a picture of a smiling Stalin shaking hands with the Nazi foreign minister. For some reason, this picture had deteriorated far more than any of the others in the museum. The guide noted that soon after the pact was signed, "Hitler broke the agreement by invading Poland." Although the Museum only showed the first, public part of the pact ("The USSR and Germany are friends and promise not to attack each other..."), both the guide and display left out the second part of the pact ("...and super secret promise to cooperate with invading Eastern Europe.") and the fact that invading Poland was a fulfillment, not a violation, of the agreement.

"Stalin and Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov with unidentified man who is most definitely not Nazi Foreign Minister Von Ribbentrop"

We also got to visit Stalin's personal train car, which he used due to his intense fear of flying. Stalin's toilet was probably the top attraction. On the way out of the museum, I poked my head in the gift shop, but aside from some books ("Stalin Kills His Team of Rivals"), a few statues (Stalin Looking Heroic, Stalin Looking Heroic Again), and commemorative plates, the only thing that really interested me were some baby booties I saw hanging on the wall. I couldn't tell if they had Joe's picture on them or not. In other words, the museum is well worth a visit, but I'd recommend skipping the guide.

Stalin's toilet on his train car

It's like the old adage "Vote Early, Vote Often", except replace "early" with "Stalin" and "often" with "Stalin; also you are under arrest"

Meanwhile, back home, the power was out for 10 days in the days around my trip to Gori. It's been very windy, and the old Soviet electrical system just wasn't up to handling it. Fortunately, we have running water - a friend of mine in another village outside Zugdidi lost power, and with it, use of the electric crank to his family's well. He now is subsisting on hand-cranked well water, which takes a while and must be used sparingly. Power is back on now, and hopefully will remain so.

Next up: Bakuriani!

Stats:
4 - children hiding behind Stalin's train car planning a snowball ambush during our visit. (And you thought Stalin had Snowball exiled...)
2 - UNHCR SUVs parked outside the apartment building next to our hotel in Gori. Both Zugdidi and Gori have large IDP/refugee populations, as they're both located close to Georgia's conflict-prone breakaway regions (Zugdidi to Abkhazia, Gori to Tskhinvali/South Ossetia). Both towns have sections of identical houses for those IDPs, along with a number of international NGOs, the UNHCR, UNDP, and World Food Program. Both towns were also occupied by Russia in the 2008 war, so they both host EU Monitoring Missions presumably keeping an eye on the ceasefire.

Vocabulary:
atami - peach
amindi - weather
gemrieli - delicious
deda - mother
mama - father
cheemagoatch - friend (Magrelian)

Phrases the authors thought were important to include in my Georgian-English phrase book:
"Piss off."
"He's a tacky bloke."
"He's a tawdry guy."
"He's got the buzz."
"Stop it with the PDAs/Stop it with the petting (inappropriate places)"