Georgia Part 4: New friends, feasting Georgian-style, and patriotism

A few days after my arrival, but before non-Orthodox Christmas – let’s say December 21 – Rezi introduced me to some of his friends, who’d all been dying to meet me (the mystery Internet girl) since I arrived. We met up at a restaurant Rezi and I had been to once before – it’s in the shape of a huge boat! (Apparently this is the third such ship-shaped restaurant, as the first two burned down. I couldn’t help but think of Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail: “The first castle sank into the swamp, so they built a second one. That sank into the swamp too. The third castle caught fire, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up, lad, and that’s what you’re going to get!” Unfortunately, the reference isn’t funny if you don’t know Monty Python, so in Georgia I just kept it to myself).

So as not to overwhelm me, Rezi introduced me to just a few friends at first:

· Gogi (Giorgi) – Rezi’s older brother. The first night we met he was rather shy about his Russian and didn’t say much, but I subsequently found him to be very smart and engaging. I came to appreciate his willingness to let me get a word in edgewise, and best enjoyed the times when he, Rezi and I hung out on our own, because they were always considerate to keep the conversation in Russian (as soon as a fourth person showed up, the game was over – the urge to speak Georgian won out, and I’d be left out of the conversation).

· Tamazi – cheerful, extraordinarily well-read, very smart, and always telling me “how it is” in America. My favorite Tamazi quote, which became something of an inside joke among Rezi, Gogi, and me, is when Tamazi turned to me and said, “Alli, do you know who your president is?” I just looked at him, exasperated, and said, “Of course I know!” I don’t think he was actually intending to question my intelligence, it just didn’t come out in Russian quite the way he wanted. Later Gogi explained that Tamazi’s question was probably a vestige of Soviet propaganda – in school they were taught that some 70% of Americans don’t know who their own president is.

· Temuka (Temur) – 32 years old with a law degree, he works for the administration of the naval academy in Batumi. Temuka was the only one among our group who was not at all shy about speaking Russian with me right from the start, and so it was he who provided me my first introduction to Georgian culture and history.

· Eliko (Elene) – Temuka’s younger sister, a cheerful beauty with a ready laugh, she speaks excellent English – especially considering she’s never been abroad. Temuka and Eliko live with their parents right next door to Rezi’s family; their parents grew up together, and Rezi and Eliko grew up like brother and sister.

The first time I met everyone, they were all pretty shy about using their Russian – though pretty much everyone knows Russian, and most TV and movies are in Russian, they don’t often have the need to speak it out loud. Temuka was the exception, and jumped right into conversation with me. Eliko, excited for the chance to practice her English, stuck to my native language, so the whole evening – four hours in all – Georgian, Russian, and English whirled around me. Thank goodness I went to Georgia now, when my brain is already pretty good at switching between not understanding at all and Russian and English; if I had come at this time of year in 2005, I wouldn’t have understood ANYTHING, and my brain would have exploded trying. In all, we all laughed a lot, and I was really impressed by the totally relaxed and welcoming camaraderie I felt from the group.

Our dinner in the boat restaurant was my first exposure to feasting Georgian style. First rule: order more food than anyone could possibly eat. Food is served family style – everyone takes a little bit of whatever they want from the dishes in the middle of the table. Often there are so many of them that they’re perched precariously one atop another. Second rule: there must be drinking, typically wine, but sometimes vodka. The drinking is coordinated by the tamada, or toastmaster, who is responsible for making all the toasts the entire evening. Our tamada on December 21 was Temuka. Toasts do not end at a simply “Here’s to us,” or “To your health,” but go on for several minutes. The more the tamada has had to drink, I’ve noticed, the longer the toast goes on, as he adds in illustrative stories and anecdotes. The tamada also chooses a second-in-command who is responsible for adding anything to the toast that the tamada may have forgotten, or that the second would like to reiterate. It’s important to clink glasses with everyone at the table, often more than once. After the toast, it’s polite to drink nearly all of the wine in the glass in one go, leaving only a few sips at the bottom – but I learned early on that that’s a quick way to make yourself ill, and a “democratic” tamada will not take offense if you don’t drink to the bottom. Toasts that I heard over and over again throughout my stay include: to us, to our parents, to our grandparents, to those who have passed on, to life, to children, to women (for this one all the men take the toast standing), and to Georgia. There were lots of others, but those toasts were repeated every time we gathered. Temuka on that first night, and everyone else after, was always very considerate to toast in Russian so I would understand. Often these toasts were prefaced with “This sounds much more beautiful in Georgian” or “Russian can’t express this the way I’d like to,” but I found many of the toasts very moving, despite the “limitations” of the Russian language. I wish I’d recorded an evening of toasts so I could translate them for you – until you’ve experienced a Georgian toast, it’s hard to imagine.

Georgians are incredibly proud of their history and culture – and with good reason. Temuka explained with pride how every major conqueror in the world has conquered Georgia at some point in its 5000 year history – Romans, Mongols, Azerbaijanis, Russians, Greeks, some others – but they’ve preserved their culture. They expressed no sense of shame at having been conquered so often – how could it be otherwise, they reasoned, Georgia’s such a small country! Also, Georgians claim to be a very tolerant people; as evidence my Temuka cited Georgia never having an anti-Semite movement and, more recently, that Russians living in Georgia have experienced no negative fallout (i.e. hate crime) from the August war. Temuka also explained all about how Georgia is the cradle of winemaking. There used to be over 5,000 varieties of grapes represented in the vineyards of Georgia, but now there are only about 2,000 left, as conquerors always destroyed the grapevines when they attacked. Some varieties of grapes are found only in the vineyards of one or two families.

The first time I heard the above information, I was deeply interested. The twentieth time – not so much. I’m hoping it’s just because I was visiting for the first time, but I heard about Georgia being invaded by every major conqueror and yet still being a tolerant and open people from literally every person I met, and particularly from men, because they were usually raising toasts. I also heard a lot of, “You guys in America, you have it all good, while WE…” which sort of got under my skin after a while. Yes, the overall standard of living in America is higher than in Georgia, but America is a huge country, and the people in it have a huge range of experiences. I felt like I ended up smiling and nodding a lot as three or four people talked to me all at the same time – often about the same topic – but leaving me with no opportunity to get a word in edgewise.

Every Georgian I met was fiercely patriotic. Among the younger generation – Rezi, Gogi and Co. – there was a general consensus that if you live in Georgia, you should speak Georgian. More than once on our walks we’d overhear someone speaking Russian, and Rezi would say with disdain, “See how he lives here and doesn’t even speak our language? That is wrong. He lives his whole life in Georgia and doesn’t speak Georgian.” I often tried to defend the non-Georgian speaker (maybe he just moved here, maybe he does speak Georgian but he’s taking a break to speak his native language with his friends, etc), but Rezi was steadfast. When I pointed out that we were having this very conversation in Russian, he said, “That’s only because you haven’t had time to learn Georgian yet, and I haven’t learned English.” Gogi was fond of declaring, “I’m speaking the language of our official enemy only for you, Alli.” Several times I heard about their Russian neighbor, who understands Georgian but refuses to speak it. It was clear that that neighbor was not a part of the close circle on Rezi’s street into which I was readily accepted.

I do, in fact, want to learn Georgian. It’s uncomfortable to be the one person in the room that everyone else has to modify their behavior for – and besides, even when I was there, they spent a lot of time joking in Georgian, and I’d like to at least have an idea of what they’re joking about.

Georgia Part 3: First week and impressions of Batumi

The first week or so followed a fairly predictable pattern. We’d wake up around 10 or 11, lounge around for a while, then, driven by starvation, finally make our way out into the bustling town. Every “morning” we ate breakfast at the same café: octagon-shaped with floor-to-ceiling windows all around, the kitchen and counter filled the center of the restaurant, with seating all around the edges by the windows. Our first time there, some boys were setting off homemade firecrackers in the park next to the café. Every time one went off I jumped. But mostly it was quiet at that café, which is why we liked it (though he grew up in a noisy culture, where people talk loudly and often gather in large groups to shout over one another, Rezi doesn’t like a lot of noise. Thus, his evaluation of a restaurant hinged on the quality of the food and whether or not it was quiet). Every day we had the same breakfast (after Day 4 or 5 our waitress stopped even asking what we wanted): we started with a cup of thick, sweet Turkish coffee, which we followed up with khachapuri Ajara-style and a glass of orange juice.

I’m going to write a lot more about food later, but I want to take a minute to discuss khachapuri. Khachapuri, at its most basic, is a flat bread filled with cheese, and is one of the most common foods in Georgia. There are several ways to make it, each indigenous to a different region in Georgia, and often it is reminiscent of cheese pizza without the tomato sauce. Ajara-style is definitely my favorite. The bread is football shaped and formed into a shallow boat, into which is spread Georgian farmer’s cheese (which should be salty, but not too salty, because the more salt, the lower the quality), about four tablespoons of butter, and a raw egg. You then mix up this delicious mass with your fork (and if you’re me, you take about ¾ of your butter and add it to Rezi’s khachapuri, because that much butter makes you ill, but he likes it, and plus his metabolism can handle it), so you end up with a bread boat filled with a thick, yellow-and-white liquid mass. Working carefully so as not to allow the egg/butter/cheese mix to escape, you then tear off chunks of the bread, dip them in the goo, and devour. So. Yummy. I want one now.

After breakfast we would walk around Batumi, sometimes in silence, as time went on, more often in conversation. We went to the aquarium, which was kind of small and sad and Soviet, but still had some interesting fishes, and to the zoo, which was mostly closed up for winter, though we did see a couple of monkeys, a baboon, and a whole herd of guinea pigs, which delighted me. We wandered around the port and up and down The Boulevard. We would walk for a while, then sit on a bench for a few minutes, then walk some more. The first week the weather was wonderful – sunny and in the 40s (though poor Rezi was still freezing all the time. I joked that if he was cold already he’d be better off not visiting Iowa in winter). Basically, we didn’t do much at all except get to know one another, which is exactly what we needed. This also provided the perfect opportunity for me to unwind, which I’d been longing to do since the BEGINNING of the semester.

As we wandered around those first few days (and more later as I saw more of the town), I noticed a sharp contrast between “touristy” Batumi and real Batumi. Batumi (population 150,000) is the capital of the Independent Republic of Ajara within Georgia (Ajara was once a separatist region like Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but was reintegrated into the country peacefully several years ago), and is an important port city. It’s most important economic activity, however, is tourism. Once a Soviet resort hot spot, it now plays host mostly to Ukrainians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, and other local folks (except Russians). The coast (along The Boulevard) is teeming with cafes, restaurants, and bars, which sat eerily quiet while I was there. They were typically open, but often we’d be the only clients in a restaurant with seating for 50. I imagine in the summer it’s quite a different story. In addition to The Boulevard, Batumi boasts a large park by the sea, home to exotic birds, trees from different parts of the world, and fountains that dance and light up to music at night. A sign at each of the park entrances proclaims in pictographs (like the no-smoking sign): No bikes! No littering! No dogs! No cows! Yep, folks, it’s NOT okay to drive your cattle through the seaside park in Batumi (Flossie was very disappointed – she’d so hoped to see the peacocks). In addition to the upiquitous park benches, I was happy to see numerous garbage urns, which were emptied on a daily basis (I’m not going to get into a huge Russia vs. Georgia thing, but seriously, what few trash urns there are in Piter get emptied only when the dvornik feels like getting around to it. Kind of like sidewalk snow removal. Actually, kind of like EVERYTHING the dvorniki are responsible for doing). A large billboard near the movie theatre proclaimed in English: “Batumi: A part of Europe!” They’re certainly trying to make it look that way, at least where tourists hang out. In this part of Batumi, there’s lots of construction, including the city’s first skyscraper (which looks oddly out of place among the mostly two- and three-storied buildings). Unfortunately, after the August war, much of the construction was halted as materials became scarce and money dried up, giving certain areas a half-finished feel. At some point, however, there will be a fancy new set of apartment buildings that only foreigners will be able to afford, an oceanarium with dolphins, a new stadium, and more hotels.

As you move inland and towards the mountains, the real city becomes visible. The streets and sidewalks tended to be in pretty bad shape – a couple times I cursed myself for wearing heels, particularly at night, because walking was just plain treacherous. Buildings were brightly painted in lots of different colors – even the high-rise apartment buildings, leftovers from the Soviet era, have been redone in vivid reds, blues, purples, greens, and yellows. Most houses were two-storied affairs with balconies, laundry hanging out to dry on clotheslines, and stone walls enclosing yards with mandarin and kiwi trees (I ate kiwis fresh from the tree in the backyard – in January!!) and, of course, grapevines. From what I saw, oder houses, like Rezi’s, had the staircase on the outside of the house – so you end up getting rained on on your way to the second floor. Rezi’s house has no corridors – either all the rooms lead one into the next, or you can only access a room from an outside door. The bathrooms, while they had plumbing and electricity, all tended to be separate from the house (once again, getting rained on). Additionally, the houses tend to be headed by wood-burning stoves and electric heaters, since gas became too expensive for most people once it was privatized after the fall of the Soviet Union. That means that I ended up being cold a lot more than I thought I would, since it was cold both indoors and out (especially in museums. Brr!).

There were slot machine casinos EVERYWHERE (like in Piter three years ago, before they passed a law that shut most of them down); although I don’t really understand the appeal, they must be pretty popular (and successful) for there to be so many of them. Streets were lined with shops whose wares spilled out onto the sidewalk, blending one into another so it wasn’t always clear where one ended and the next began. There were definitively western-style stores in some places – like for clothes and electronics and stuff – but most of the stores for food and day-to-day wares were more like closets than stores, the inventory stacked in magical ways to make it all fit and not come tumbling down.

One street we crossed to get to Rezi’s house was lined with loitering men toting tool belts, chain saws, and other equipment. “You can tell how good the economy’s doing by looking at this street,” Rezi explained. “Those men are all unemployed. They congregate on this street, and if someone needs a worker for the day or a project done, they come here to find someone to do it. The better the economy, the fewer of these guys you’ll see standing here.”

Batumi definitely has a small-town feel. Near the end of my second week there we had to go to the airport to make some changes to my plane tickets. While we were waiting in the parking lot afterwards for our ride to pick us up, I heard a rooster crow, which tickled me pink – it was the first airport rooster I’ve ever heard (there’s also a rooster on Rezi’s street somewhere that is bad at telling time and insistently crows at all hours of the day).

Georgia Part 2: Arrival

I arrived at the tiny Batumi airport around 2:30 PM. Ours was the only plane on the tarmac, and, despite my nerves, I was delighted by the warm rays of the sun and the gentle, +12C air. In the airplane I was on the verge of tears as Batumi came into view. “What am I getting myself into?” I thought. Sure, Rezi and I had chatted online for five whole months, and I felt fairly confident that he was who he said he was – but what if I was just being extraordinarily and uncharacteristically naïve? And even if he wasn’t some sort of con man, what if it turned out that we just didn’t like each other? Of course, these thoughts didn’t just occur to me as we were landing – they’d been spinning around my brain for weeks as the date of my departure grew closer and closer. At one point during the last week of classes I even considered calling off the whole trip. But the prospect of spending my 3-week vacation in Petersburg in the deadest, darkest part of winter spurred me on. “I can always just leave early,” I reassured myself.

Waiting for my suitcase to come down the baggage claim conveyor belt, my nerves were all on edge. What would our first reaction be? What would we say to each other? Suddenly, someone walked by the automatic doors that open into the lobby and they slid open with a whoosh. A throng of about fifty Georgian faces all eagerly peered in at the recently arrived (я хотела написать «смотрели на надавно приехавших»), seeking their friends and loved ones. Which one of them was mine? Then I spotted him. Standing near the back of the crowd was the tallest, lankiest Georgian I’d ever set eyes on. He saw me too, and we waved to each other before the doors slid shut once more. “Hey,” I thought to myself. “Not a bad start. We waved. That’s a good first reaction.” Reunited with my bag, I strode resolutely into the lobby, parting the sea of curious faces as I slowly made my way forward (I was definitely the tallest, blondest girl in the airport, and everyone eyed me with interest. I didn’t see another natural blonde the whole three weeks I was in Georgia). Rezi and I hugged awkwardly, then made our way to the waiting car, where his close neighbor, Avto, patiently sat, smoking. “I wanted to take a taxi,” Rezi explained, “but my friend Avto insisted on driving us.”

Avto drove us to the apartment where Rezi had rented us the loft for the duration of my visit. We climbed three flights of stairs to get to the apartment, then inside the apartment made our way to the third floor – our home for three weeks. It was a spacious room with slanted ceilings, mustard-yellow walls, and a curious selection of framed posters, including a couple of bikini-clad pin-up girls and one larger-than-life depiction of a very small dog. We slept on the saddest fold-out couch I’ve ever laid eyes on – the springs were all broken, and the foot of the bed sagged so heavily that the first night we slept practically sitting up. We subsequently propped up the end of the bed with a footstool – but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Rezi took me out to dinner at a restaurant by the sea. We sat in awkward silence. He’d say, “So say something,” and I’d say, “I don’t know what to say. You say something.” I giggled too much from nerves; he mumbled, shy of his spoken Russian, and I couldn’t understand anything he said. After dinner we went for a walk down The Boulevard – a brick-paved path lined with benches and palm trees, their fronds tied up for the winter, which stretches for no less than two miles along the rocky beach. We still didn’t talk much, but it wasn’t as awkward as at dinner. It was more that we’d spent 5 months doing nothing but talk, so now we were being quiet.

Georgia Part 1: Two nights on a train

Here it is, the long-awaited Georgia Blog Post. Ironically, it took my computer breaking, thereby denying me the distractions of Facebook, iTunes, Spider solitaire, and, occasionally, homework, to get me to actually sit down and write. Admittedly, I have pages and pages of notes, but to turn them into something that would be interesting for others to read seemed to require more time and energy than I could find in the past couple of weeks. Because this blog post is covering three weeks of occasions, impressions, and thoughts, it’s very long. Therefore, I’ve broken it into several more manageable chunks, to make it easier for you both to read about and to comment on specific aspects of my trip (I know the feeling of getting to the end of a long blog and forgetting what I wanted to say about something at the beginning). Part 1, written on the train ride from Piter to Kiev, I’ve typed up from my handwritten journal; everything else here is written from the “I’ve been back in Piter for two weeks” point of view, rather than the more immediate “Holy cow I’m in Georgia!” point of view. Please enjoy!

Georgia Part 1: Two nights on a train

18/12/2008 12:15 AM

I’m sitting in Moscovsky train station in Piter. Nikolai and his friend, two random Russians who took interest in me in the metro, helped me with my luggage on the transfer between Dostoevskaya and Vladimirskaya metro stations, but they didn’t insist when I declined coffee. [Note: In Russia, coffee = sex. Usually.] I’m nervous as hell about this trip, although I’m feeling some post-rush around calm. At least I do –– f***. I forgot the peanut butter. And I thought I had everything. Well, I guess Rezo will just have to go without. He’s managed for 24 years, I’m sure he’ll manage a while longer. Dang it!


18/12/2008 11:20 AM

[On the train from Piter to Moscow] I ended up in a compartment with FIVE men. The two on the end were friends and talked a lot; the rest of us sat in silence. When the train left it was super hot, but by the middle of the night I was glad for the thick wool blanket. Every time I rolled over I woke up, but I did manage to sleep long enough to have a dream. Only now I don’t remember it.

We arrived on schedule, and I decided to take my bags to the storage room at Kievsky train station. Luckily, Kievsky is located just five metro stops from Leningradsky [my arrival point in Moscow], so I only had to wrestle my stuff through two metro stations – no transfers. Wrestle is definitely the word I would use – even though I’m using Galya’s small suitcase, I also have my computer tote, purse, and bag of provisions for the train. I sort of wish I was hungrier so I’d eat that stuff faster.

I’m sitting in McDonald’s right now, drinking the first cup of coffee I’ve had in Russia that’s been worth the four bucks and eating Galya’s apple pirozhki, which I snuck on a plate to make it look like I bought them here.

My train to Kiev leaves in about five hours. After breakfasting and resting my feet (I’m in heels! Smart, huh?), I’m going to spend a few hours perusing the collection at the Tretyakov Gallery. I’ve been to the Tretyakov Gallery of Modern Art a couple times and really liked it, but the “classic” Tretyakov I’ve been to only once, in 2005, and we had a tour guide who kept switching between Russian and English so that my poor brain couldn’t understand anything she was saying (I’d only been in Russia about two months at that point, and my listening comprehension was still not that great).


18/12/2008 4:30 PM

Sitting in the train to Kiev. We should be taking off in about 15 minutes. Some asshole selling cell phones of questionable origin started hitting on me in the train station, and wouldn’t leave me alone, no matter what I said. I told him I was married, I told him to leave me alone, but he kept following me all the way out the station and down the platform to my car (which, of course, was way at the far end of the platform). It just really pisses me off that a woman traveling alone is instantly open to disrespectful, objectifying treatment from men. I SHOULD have just as much of a right as men do to travel in peace without having to fight off punk jerks all the time.


19/12/2008 6:45 AM Kiev Time (7:45 AM Moscow Time)

I ended up traveling with just four people in my compartment, so there was a little more room for everybody. At the same time, my traveling companions were the most interesting ones I’ve had to date. Artyom – works in a construction company near the border with Ukraine, returning home after an urgent business trip to Moscow. Andrei – quiet, 30-something, plays pop music (in the form of downloaded ringtones) on his cell phone WAY too loud. And Irina – Irina takes the cake. 41 years old, she’s just returned from a birthday party and is completely drunk. Not the slur-your-words kind of drunk, unfortunately, but a belligerent drunk. She kept saying rude things to the guys, like, “I’m watching you, thieves! I know you want to steal my phone!” and absolutely HORRIBLE things about Ukrainians – even though Andrei was Ukrainian, and she herself was on her way to Kiev. She kept assuring me that the Ukrainian customs officers were going to be total bastards in comparison to their Russian counterparts. Luckily, I got on her good side by filling out her Ukrainian migration card for her – she was too drunk to write legibly in the little boxes – and she left me alone.

While Irina alternated between a sound sleep and rude exchanges with our fellow passengers, Artyom and I had a bit of our own stilted conversation (I’m just not sure what you’re supposed to talk about with strangers on the train, or how much info about myself it’s appropriate to reveal) before he went off to find someone else to talk to. I went to sleep the first time around 8:30, woke up for Russian customs and passport control at 11:15 (I was the only American in my car. Everyone, including me, watched the multi-entry visa stamping process with interest – I’ve never seen it done before), then woke up again around 3 AM Moscow time for Ukrainian customs and passport control.

We arrived in Kiev at 5:10 AM local time, Andrei helped me with my bags, I exchanged $20 for grivnyas, and got in a marshrutka to the airport. 45 minutes we drove – and that with no traffic – and now I’m waiting to check in, because so far it’s too early.

I wish I had some time to explore Kiev/ Ukraine. It looks a lot like Russia, but everything’s in Ukrainian, which is just different enough from Russian that I don’t always trust that I understand what I’m reading. Everyone I’ve talked to so far speaks Russian, thank goodness. I’ve heard that in some parts of Ukraine, particularly in the western part of the country, they’ll pretend like they don’t understand you if you speak Russian. I can imagine some fairly frustrating situations arising in the event that my interlocutor also didn’t speak English.

Just a few hours from now I’ll be in Georgia. Don’t even really know what to expect. What I’d really like to do is take a shower. Hope it’s not rude to ask for one first thing.

Eureka!

So the reason I haven’t been writing is not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I’m having time management issues. I feel like I’m in middle school again and need someone to check my assignment book every night. Sheesh. Anyway, I had an epiphany I’d like to share:

You can make vegetable pot pie in a square pan.

Yes folks, it’s true, the fact that the pan is not round is not a real encumbrance on the pie-making process. It’s just that sometimes I get so stuck in my idea of how something “should” be done that a completely obvious answer to a rather simple problem just doesn’t occur to me. The lack of a round, American-style pie pan has been a real sticking point with me until today.

Thinking outside the box. Woot.

Workin on it

I'm working on an extensive Georgia blog post. Thanks for your patience. In the meantime, here are some pictures.

New Year's Pictures

I'm still alive and kicking here in Georgia, wrapping up the last few days of my visit. The time has gone so quickly; I'm not ready to go back to Piter yet!

I've got about 20 pages of material to put up here, but it's not ready yet, and I'm saving the editing for the train ride home. Till then, here are some New Year's photos to tide you over.