There are innumerable castles in this country, and many
of them are located within 30 miles of Tbilisi.
For some reason, they fascinate me.
You’d think after looking at two or three, I’d start thinking, “Oh,
look, another castle. It looks just like
the other fourteen I’ve seen. Let’s go
drink another beer.” But no. I see them, perched on top of these mountains
where even goats don’t think of going, and I think, “Oh, look, another
castle. Let’s go see if this pile of
rocks is different from the last fifteen piles of rocks I’ve seen.” And off I go.
Sh’vilo castle (Shhh-veelo) was once, like most other
castles, the main source of protection for the neighboring villages. Inevitably, there was a small village in
close proximity to the castle that was occupied solely by those craftsman,
architects, builders, stonemasons, and soldiers who worked at the castle. It’s hard to imagine sometimes: many of these castles took hundreds of years
to complete. So you had generations of
stonemasons, for example, who did nothing their whole lives but work on this
one castle doing the same tasks. Their
sons picked up the trowel, so to speak, as did their sons. And I’m sure a lot of these tasks were so
menial and dull, they made selling corn dogs at the traveling carnival seem
like a stint in the double-0 sector of Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Yet there they were.
This castle also protected all the other villages in the
valley. Some of these villages grew
crops and raised livestock for the castle’s use; others just carried on their
daily activities until the marauders came through. Then everyone dashed into the castle,
bringing their livestock and everything they could carry, seeking protection
from the landlord to whom they’d all been paying taxes for the last couple of
years. They’d stay in these unconquerable
castles, usually under siege, until either the attackers got tired or bored and
left, the weather made gathering food for the attackers impossible, or the
castle ran out of food and water and surrendered. Rarely were there actual attacks on the
castles; they were just too impregnable.
You can see that in these pictures.
Imagine being the ground commander getting the order to climb this very
steep hill, under constant observation and fire from the castle’s archers,
until you get to the base of the walls where you be subject to attack from
crossbows and having boiling water and human waste dumped on you from the
castle’s turrets. From there you have to
find some way to either scale the walls or knock them down. And the walls at Sh’vilo are approximately 20
feet thick at their base. And Sh’vilo
was only a middle-sized castle. Makes
you think a career in the Navy might have been a better choice.
On to another subject:
Euro 2012 is in full flight here and Georgians are huge soccer
fans. Each bar “adopts” a country
playing in the tournament (Georgia isn’t playing or every bar, naturally, would
be cheering for the home team). The
establishment in which I spend too much of my time has chosen Spain. The bar then displays that country’s flag in
the window or hanging in the front. So,
if you want to cheer for Germany, you find the bar where the German flag
flies. That way, everyone in the bar is
cheering for the same team. This
eliminates fights in the bars. It’s
actually pretty ingenious. It also
demonstrates how the Georgians have had it bred into them over dozens of
generations that conflicts are to be avoided.
Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has announced a
campaign against software piracy.
Apparently, 91% of all non-business related software in this country is
illegally pirated. Think about that –
91% of all software – Microsoft Office suite, for example – is illegally copied
and sold at less than market value. And
the president’s going to stop that. Not
sure how he intends to do that – random searches of laptops, maybe? But it’s another example of Georgia bending
over backwards to reach out to the West.
I’ve seen two fights in the past week involving
Gypsies. First, some background: Gypsies have lived in Georgia for hundreds of
years. They are considered second-class
citizens, the “untouchables” of Georgian society. While technically citizens of Georgia, they
are outcasts. They are the criminal
element of society, if you will. Their
primary source of income is begging and theft, mostly pickpocketing or “strap
cutting.” At most money exchange sites
and in the tourist areas, gypsy children, some as young as 4 or 5, will stop
you on the sidewalk to ask for money.
Immediately, put your hand on your wallet. The scam is, while one or two are asking for
money, another one is behind you lifting your wallet. They’re not very smooth at it, so you feel the
wallet being lifted, but they’re very quick.
Then they all run like crazy. Or,
if you have a fanny pack or a camera on a strap, they’ll run up on you from
behind, cut the strap with a box cutter, grab the pack or camera, and run like
the wind.
Each group or family has its own “turf” and fights often
occur when one group encroaches on the territory of another. This was the cause of one of the fights I saw
this week. So you have a half dozen
children (none of whom, apparently, go to school since they’re out on the
streets every day) fighting while their teenaged Fagins are commanding the
battle. (The leaders are always teenaged
girls; I’ve never seen a male gypsy over 13, and I’ve never seen adult
leadership of these wolf packs.)
The Gypsies also rush into stores, grabbing as much
merchandise as they can, and then rush out.
The idea is, he can’t catch us all, and what’s he going to do with the
8-year old girl he does catch? Well, I
saw the answer to that question when a shop owner did catch an 8-year old
girl. He promptly took her out into the
street, took off his shoe, and paddled her.
The girl’s Fagin came running, staying just out of the shopkeeper’s
reach, while screeching and throwing rocks at the shopkeeper. Finally, after exhausting himself spanking
the child, the shopkeeper let her go, picked up some rocks of his own to throw
at the leader, and then retired to his shop.
Passers-by treated this whole incident as street theater. No one attempted to intervene. One local, obviously seeing the distress on
my face as I watched this, told me, in English, “They get what they
deserve. They are criminals.” Thus the life of the Gypsy minority of
Georgia.
Finally, we’ve had some real thunder boomers this
week. As I’ve said, I live in a valley
that runs east to west. Since the
weather rolls in from the west generally, you can see storms coming from a long
way off. We had a ferocious storm this
week, hail and rain like a cow peeing on a flat rock. The storms roll through quickly, however, and
leave some beautiful rainbows. These
were right outside my balcony, so close I thought I could reach out and touch
them.
