Skiing at Gudauri

The adventure which is skiing at Gudauri, north of Tbilisi and about halfway to Russia, starts with a wish.  Our wish was to see snow this season, because as it does get cold seasonally, the climate in the capital does not often provide for snow.  So, the wish was there a long time ago--snow.

This Mandarine Man (in lieu of a Snow Man) represents our boredom, inside, with no snow. He looks pretty powerful, but he's actually only 10 cm tall. Much like us stuck at home, it seems much more difficult to change than it actually is. 

Procrastination is the next hurdle to overcome.  Though one may have the urge to do something, one may not have the means.  He dismisses any winter trip because travel will be difficult, equipment must be found, and schedules must be changed.  Procrastination is overcome when an acquaintance suggests a trip together, allowing the party to pool its communal woes, wishes, and responsibilities.

And that is how it started.  Darren, a acquaintance I met through my banya group, came to town to visit in-laws, and suggested we make the trip.  Two days of skiing, one overnight stay, and...snow!  He offered up his father-in-law's purple 4x4 Niva to get us there.  He suggested a guest-house where he had had some good experiences.  He pointed us in the direction of equipment rental (through the guest-house owner) and after arranging a departure time, there was much rejoicing.

Off we went in our purple Niva. 

He generally smacked of a fearless consciousness and patience with Georgia.  It was understood.  He was of a different vintage.  Darren came from a time not too long ago where political killings were the norm, there wasn't electricity, and the presidential cabinet owned all the hotels in town.  So, when we encountered a massive, slow-moving queue for lift tickets, he patiently stood in line while we began griping about the lack of efficency. The other skiiers around us were not nearly as frustrated as us, for they had bottles of wiskey to take pulls from and finish before they reached the cash desk. It was 10:30 am (very early for Georgians).  Upon reaching the cash desk where a single woman was selling tickets (the talented individual happened to be texting on her phone), she nearly handed me a 100 GEL note (approx. 65US$), thinking I had put it down to pay for tickets--I did the honest thing.  We were sure the magic that is skiing would begin.

Not so.  Lift lines in Georgia are a lot like democracy in Georgia.  Everyone knows how it's supposed to work in theory, and gripes when it does not, but does nothing practical about it.  We waited at the "end" of the "line" which is more like a dog-pile of thirsting sailors competing for the last cup of grog on an infinitely long voyage.  men were pushing their children between other patrons, women would take off their skis and give a suggestive smile, as they passed by others in the cluster*#%@, walking on others' skis as they passed.

This would not annoy so much if each of the seats on the lift were occupied.  Georgians seem to have this puppy-like need for social connection; so much so that if one wrestled his way to the front, able to look at the empty chair beckoning him as it turned around the center of the cable-wheel, intoxicating all who could only just glimpse it through a crowd usually only seen at papal masses and UNHCR camps, he would not move to seat himself.  He would stand.  He would wait.  He would yell to his freinds behind him, only centimeters from others' ears and blocking others who did have their whole posse, to hurry their slow butts up. 

And so the day had begun, triple-chairs floating away into the distance empty, empty, then with five people, empty, two, one, three, empty, four, empty...

Once we made it up the first lift, feeling confident about having our rental gear, lift tickets, guest house figured out, and our lives from the first lift-line, we realized that the greatest challenge we would yet face on this trip was the line for the second lift. Many people took off their skis to get through the turnstiles, others pushed ahead or through the line, children were stuck, unable to get themselves up the small, icy hill to the lift because they would begin to slide backwards.  Several vendors were prepared for this, offering all manner of spirits on the slopes at 10,000'+, pictured below.  I was scared at this point for my life.  I can deal with reackless skiers, but with drunk skiers I have had little experience.

The very British Darren charged ahead, experienced, cool, with his skis in hand, while we spent a very angry hour with our skis on, but going nowhere. Other skiers began standing on top of our skis, trying to get as close to the front as possible. Others jumped the turnstiles without any concern, even though I have never seen turnstiles jumped in the Tbilisi metro. We found it necessary to push, just to keep our place, but once we reached the lift itself, we saw all the people who had cut us in line were waiting at the actual lift--for their friends to show up and meet them. Thus, there were dozens of people in the front of the lift line, but alas, as before many of the (quad) chairs were going up with only 2 or 3 people in them...some were empty. We had a pretty short fuse at this point.  Below is a photo from the next day, monday, when the place was nearly empty.

Note the lift line being jumped. 

Luckily, Georgians are pretty pitiful skiers.  The steeper, windier heights scared most of the normally fearless Georgians.  We decided to spend the rest of the day on the upper parts of the mountain, and did not have to navigate that particular lift again. We began skiing and finally noticed just how gorgeous the scenery was. It was not a huge resort, with only a few hotels, so when you came down the slopes, you saw tremendous, snow-covered mountains, instead of highways and condos (but they're coming soon).

Quite specatacular indeed.  From the top of the highest lift, one could see the 5033 m (16, 558 ft) stratovolcano summit of Mt. Kazbegi (behind us), and the mountains of South Ossetia, Chechnya, Ingushetia. The views could only compare to what we've seen on top of 14ers, in terms of distance and multitude of peaks in view. 

Kazbegi was beautiful, with her main glaciers in full view. 

After two days, we were ready to come back.   We had not had enough skiing, but life has to happen some time.  We have come to miss the stray dogs in the lift lines, and the inviting, undeveloped atmosphere of  the base of the resort, what Georgians think is a tourist economy. 

Old needs die hard.  Fulfilled with the knowledge that snow existed inside these borders, mandarine-man-o-cide was the most effective way to go.  Sora brought her wrath upon him, and we ate him.  But before we did so, we wisely secured his power of attorney.

Nic & Sora

Happy New Years

The New New Year and the Old New Year have come and gone.   Fireworks have turned to ash and children's injuries have had sufficient time to heal.  The crowds on the capital's main drag, Rustaveli Avenue, have dispersed, and thankfully taken their drunken Abba renditions with them.

Our landlord's mother traveled from Abkhazia to greet the new year with us.  She ate one piece of meat, three pieces of candy, and had about a half-liter of cha-cha (distilled wine, Georgian vodka, the local firewater, moonshine).  Just before midnight, we made the way to our balcony and observed all manner of fireworks.  Our landlord squeezed off a few rounds from his Kalashnikov and 2010 was born.

Orthodox Christmas was celebrated with much less fanfare.  Some churches opened as bells tolled; worshipers came and went from midnight and into Christmas dawn.  No Kalashnikov action.

And Old New Year woke me--at midnight for a handful of fireworks. 

Batumi and an Old Year's Reflections

We returned home early in the morning from Batumi, on the Turkish border, although we did not go to Turkey--maybe next time.  The trip was well worth it and travel was not as painful as expected.  Score one more for Georgia over Russia.  We took the night train, a trip just long enough for one to fall asleep but not long enough to actually get any sleep.  After arriving home by train, then taking the metro and walking up our hill toward home in the morning twilight, one of the sweepers began to ask us where we were from, where we were going, and so on:

"We're headed home," I replied.

"What do you mean? What are you doing here?"

"We're researchers.  We live just up the street."

"Oh, students..." she said.

"In principle, yes."

Disenchanted, she copped to a passerby, "Just talking with the tourists!" 

[Do tourists come to stay for over a year?]  "I told you we're not tourists. We live here."

"Well, welcome."

"We've lived here for four months already." Half-asleep, I sneered at her.

She grunted, "Ah,"and continued into the darkness

And we tiredly climbed the stairs to our apartment, showered, and slept. 

We had spent three days there walking along the Black Sea coast, conversing, reading, and eating khatchapuri adjaruli (cheesebread adjara/local style) wherein we consumed about a hundred times the daily recommended amount of cholesterol.  This partucular dish is a baked shell with salty local cheese, a raw egg, and a lump of butter.  The egg "cooks" for a minute or two out of the oven and the filling is mixed up together, whereupon the edges of the baked crust become dipping material.  Very tasty and very bad for you:

We stayed at a hotel which was inland aways.   It was owned by Ukrainians and they were very nice.  Sora was happy, as we got to go ice skating once (which we could not acheive in Russia), went for a morning run (dirty air due to Baku oil transit, but better than Tbilisi), and enjoyed the seaside in general.  It was a much-needed rest. 

This week has been a nice break from Russian study with my tutor, as I don't feel she is much help. Although I can enjoy a short story here and there, I'm not much one for fiction, and that's all she cares about--antiquated writing and poetic exploration.  Let's not kid ourselves.  The Russian masters know their stuff and poetry is beautiful, but my goals in Russian have nothing to do with reading poetry.  They have to do with criticizing the political process, analyzing human rights, and documenting security and economic issues.

My interest/research subject is education, further complicating matters.  She doesn't have any children and has just as little exposure to them, making conversation very difficult as she is "old school" and believes such absurdities as "children younger than fifth grade don't have any interests of their own, its up to parents and teachers to stimulate them." and "there was nothing wrong with the education system before the reforms..." Not to mention she has not traveled anywhere since she was in University (to Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Mexico City), and even then never in her own region, Yerevan, Baku, etc. I feel she is out of touch with the world in general, hindering me to a great extent.  

Although I don't have any formal projects right now, everything has certainly piled up.  The list goes on.  Still plenty of UGRAD (exchange program) applications left to read and I have a big chunk of data to organize for the research center I'm affiliated with. 

Aside from laundry and groceries, we must find a decent matress so that my back doesn't get any worse.  This may be more difficult than it sounds, as everything shuts down for a few days over the new year holiday as people recuperate and make merry.  It is raining at this writing, so we're not headed out to the bazzar today, meaning this will have to wait until the new year. 

We should be headed to Armenia, Turkey, or elsewhere in Georgia in a few months.  I want to visit a colleague from the embassy where I worked before he moves to a new post and Sora has a professor in Istanbul this coming summer.  Was thinking about going to Baku, but despite not having anything of interest in Azerbaijan, the Azeris feel it is a great privaledge to visit.  A visa application costs 131US$, as opposed to about 30US$ for an Armenian visa and 20US$ to Turkey.

Due to my ignorance and rushing while uploading photos of Batumi (and incidentally from a day trip to Mtskheta also), I accidentally deleted all but one photo of our trip.  It is an unimpressive shot of a section of fountains in the coastal park, pasted below.  Apologies to those who expected photos. 

Turkey

After much fanfare, we were able to secure a turkey through a friend.  The magic is just incomplete without a turkey, and as I love turkey so much, I simply had to have one.  We did it up garlic-style with stuffing and boy was it good. We were able to find pumpkin the night before, and as we sacrificed the pumpkin (so it may have pleased the stomach gods), we disregarded how much work pie-making was going to be.  The pies we made turned out OK except that the crust was no good.  We could not find N. American pie pans, so we had to make do with what we had.  The filling turned out well, and that's all that people want to eat anyway, right?  Well, unless we're talking about crust in my family.  Below is a shot of Sora looking pumpkin-cidal. 

It turned out I was the one to commit pumpkincide, however.  We were both up late making pies, and as Sora's energy began to wane, I found a friend in the M*A*S*H* movie and stayed up with a pie whose filling refused to set.  At 2am it decide to start burning, and I decided I ought to call it quits while Frank Burns and Hot-lips were still ahead. 

The turkey, although a primary component of thanksgiving, is not the be-all end-all (except for some like me).  So the table had to be perfect, and the ladies did a wonderful job job making it so.

And to our dear friend, whose fate was sealed the day she was born, we thank you for feeding us.  Sorry about the rapid and border-line violent thawing measures, but we had to get you in the oven!

And as we go into this next week with turkey sandwiches and turkey soup, I look forward to the day I can make turkey again...maybe Christmas?  Thus ended the best holiday there is.  one without materialistic assumptions, religious conotations, ethnic exclusions, nor modern political scores to settle.  Though there is always a bone to pick (in this case literally and figuatively) with such a statement, Thanksgiving remains my  favorite holiday because of its inclusivity and universality among North Americans. 

The Great Outdoors: Backpacking in Borjomi

The post is not very punctual, but I figured it should be written anyway.  Our October trip to Borjomi National Park was lovely, complete with wildlife, campfire, and ancient fortresses.  We began early, but evidently not early enough, as the Marshrut we needed left by the time we got to the proper metro station.  We ended up finding a place on a marshrut with a neighboring destination and proceeded west off into the morning only after an hour of waiting for the arguments about seating, why we weren't going, why the driver didn't have change, etc. to subside.  About two hours later, Dan and Liz, our neighbors, and Sora and I arrived at the ranger station.  A quick check-in and

Anyway, we left from Likani and went to Queviskhebi. After a steep initial hike, we came to a clearing suitable for camping.  we intended to climb a summit if water and daylight allowed, but stayed the night.  After breaking camp next morning and heading down out of the park, I took several photos of the mountians and flora around us.  Sora and I had to geta photo in a clearing.

On the way down we happily stumbled upon a serene meadow.  The gradiet was more preferable than the steep, loose dirt of what we came down.  

 

Of course, we had to get a group shot.

 

There we found an apple tree with some yummy apples.  Very few were wormy, which made a nice treat for lunch.  

 

As we went further into a system of meadows, tall pillars of rock began to rise above usfrom the surrounsign forest. 

 And on one such pillar were the remains of a fortress, a testament to the history and resilience of this region.

  We began to see more wildlife as we descended to the villiage:

 

 

And some not-so-wild life:

 

A great, long trip; and Dan & Liz's first!  Now if only those passing by would happen to have space for us...

 

March of the Do-gooders

My expectations were low.  One of the few "institutions" that was carried over from soviet times successfully is that of organizers and bosses to put on shows for outsiders and talk the talk.  My experience on my first brief foray into being one of those do-gooders on the gound was quite mediocre. 

We went to and Internally-Displaced Persons (IDP) camp near Gori this past Thursday.  There we were shown some of the work that a group called Hellenicare does.  This is a travelling clinical service with several sponsors.  This first photo is of IDPs waiting outside one of the houses-converted-into a clinic.  The clinic is composed of three nurses and a doctor, a van + driver, an ultrasound machine, EKG machine, diabetic testing/solvents, simple meds.  The house is one of the many built after the 2008 Russo-Georgian war by the government.  This settlement seemed to be quite well off, with electric and gas hookups.  There was minimal running water in the buildings;  outhouses out back. 

Life seemed to continue as usual in this settlement, with standard domestic crops and animals in the yards separating the perfectly blocked-off settlement.  Here is about half the corn I saw in the yard--the other half not husked.  We saw very few children around since we were there during school, but residents in general did not seem jaded about not knowing whether they could ever go back to their homes.  Even if residents were allowed to go back home, many of their homes no longer exist. 

After visiting the IDP camp we traveled back to Tbilisi to see an orphanage, in part supported by Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption, an organization my family has long been involved with.   The Group supports families who have and who wish to adopt, as well as sponsors direct aid projects which benefit orphans and related infrastructure.  This third photo is one of three siblings who were orphaned.  The oldest was able to speak Russian with me, as he lived in Russia for a time, but in general the children could not understand me nor I them.  

The fourth photo here is some of the kids at the entrance.  Despite the great intentions of such projects, I cannot help but question the utility of giving kids a sack each with some sweets, a set of paints, and some pencils.  It pains me to see a seventeen year-old guy receive a sack with such meaningless things as heart-shaped stickers and a small notebook...and then a large stuffed animal later.  

For the most part, kids were happy, and the sacks were appropriate for the ages of students there.  They were happy with attention and the occassional flash of a photo.  Just being visited goes a long way to putting a smile on a face. A boy helps us with our heavier boxes upon our arrival:

Some of the kids gather around an American nurse drawing hearts for them:

Tbilisova

Every year there is a festival in the capital called Tbilisiva (Tbilisi Day).  Last weekend many streets were closed as crowds swelled in our part of town around performances, vendors, and folk attractions. In old town, a stage was set up below the mosque and trademark old homes with multiple balconies.  Group after group performed, each representing a different ethnicity found Georgia.  The group in the photo is a Ukrainian women's group.

 Our landlord, Justani, was also in attendance with his nephew, Luka.  Here is a photo of them together with Sora, festivities in the background.

The bridges were packed and people were everywhere milling about and enjoying the music and festivities.  here is a shot of the bridge nearest our house with the presidential mansion in the background. I think he was going for a Reichstag/White House/Greek-Asian fusion, but time will tell how architechture schools feel about this new interpretation of the executive image. 

All in all, a wonderful weekend--but by the end of it, one is Tbilisova-ed out.  There are even more photos:

Kabob fodder in a van and wine in the foreground.  

 

The classic painting re-enacted; a supra on a raft.  Our neighborhood in the background.

 

And one more from our front door: