Traveling the Georgia Military Highway

Hello, again.  This is going to be one my longer blogs so you might want to take a minute and get a beverage, go to the bathroom, kick off your shoes, and get comfortable.  This weekend I drove the Georgia Military Highway from Tbilisi to the Russian border.  First, some background:  The Georgia Military Highway (GMH) was established as a trade route in the 1^st century BCE.  The Russians developed it into a carriage road in 1783 through the labor of over 800 soldiers, an incredible number at the time to be dedicated to simply building a road.  It was the primary trade route from the Black Sea to Russia and north until 1883 when a railway opened from the Black Sea to Moscow.  About 100 years later, the Roka Tunnel opened in what is now South Ossetia and the Gori-Tskhinvali road became the major north-south thoroughfare until the 2008 war. 

The GMH is still an important route from Tbilisi and central Georgia to the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains, at least in the summer months.  This is the route, all 138 kilometers of it (85 miles, give or take), that I decided to drive this weekend.  The primary feature of the road, other than the mountains, is the Aragvi (Uh-rug-wee) Rivers and the mountain streams that flow into them. 

The first stop was at a church in Tsilkani, a 5^th century basilica that is one of the oldest churches in the country.  It’s famous for its icon of the Virgin Mary allegedly painted by St. Luke on a board from Christ’s cradle.  I don’t want to appear skeptical, but I think the paint was still wet last weekend.  I’ll let you be the judge.  Whatever you think of the painting’s provenance, the church is impressive and a local point of pride.

A short drive took me to Ananauri (Anna-nor-ee), an amazing church complex on the farthest point of the Zhinvali Reservoir.  The larger church was completed around 1689, and has one of the most unusual carvings anywhere:  a huge cross standing on the back of two dragons, flanked by two vines being eaten by deer above two angels with moustaches and two lions.  The carving is a combination of Christian, Persian, and pagan influence, but is unfortunately situated so close to the outside wall it’s hard to get any kind of framing for a picture.  Here’s the best I could do, and that picture cost me my sunglasses as they slipped off the top of my head while I climbed a short wall, balanced on one foot, and took the picture. 

This picture was taken from the guard tower and overlooks the lake and the two churches.  Finally, the bell tower, also built sometime in the 17^th century, houses a secret underground room, accessed by the steep and narrow stairs shown below, where soldiers hid before rushing out to attack intruders.

The road continues to a town called Pasanauri (Pass-a-nor-ee), a town of literally two streets:  one runs northbound and the other southbound, separated by an island of houses and small markets.  The interesting facet of this town is the confluence of the White Aragvi and Black Aragvi Rivers.  The waters of the Black Aragvi are darker than the waters from the White Aragvi, and the contrast as they flow side by side can be seen from the banks. 

It’s about this time that I started running into the little roadside stands selling everything from local fruit and produce to woolen socks and sheepskin hats.  Many of these mini-entrepreneurs actually live and sleep next to their merchandise, as you can see in the photo below.

This region is also famous for its free-range cattle, which go wherever they want.  They seem to want to spend most of their time chewing their cud on the bridges that span the rivers and streams.  There’s a constant breeze blowing along the stream beds, keeping the bugs off the cows.  Unfortunately, they tend to hog the road, and the only way to get through the herd is to pay a boy a lari (about 60 cents) to walk in front of your car and shoo the cattle out of the way.  Of course, once you’re past, the cattle go right back to what they were doing.  Everyone wins – the cattle are insect-free, the local children make a few bucks, and I get to take interesting pictures.

The streams themselves are fascinating along the GMH.  Take this one, for example:

The water is so rich with iron that it colors the pump and surrounding rocks with a dark red tint.  It also stains red and pink the chins of the local cattle as the iron soaks into their “beards” as they drink.  No picture of that, though, as cows apparently don’t like foreigners shoving a camera in their faces.  That’s another story, and picture, for another time, though, and is going to cost you at least one beer to hear.

 The run-off from the mountain streams and snow melt pours down the mountains, collecting in pools that the locals, both bovine and human, use for drinking and bathing.  The water is filled with sodium in this part of the region, tasting a lot like mineral water. 

There are also a number of waterfalls, all of them ice cold with water so pure you can drink directly from the waterfall.  You’ll also notice in these pictures a large snow bank, still present in late July.

The last metal to make an appearance in the local waters is calcium.  This picture shows the “calcium falls,” formed when the calcium is leeched from the streams.  Yellowstone Park in the US has similar formations.  Don’t drink this water, though; it takes terrible and is warm. 

Leaving the town of Gudauri (good-or-ee) I ran into a local beekeeper selling honey from a semi-trailer which served as home for his hives and his living quarters.  I pantomimed to the man that I, too, am (or at least was) a beekeeper and he gave me a tour of his hives, all amazingly strong and healthy.  We stood in the back of his trailer/hive/home, and discussed the finer points of beekeeping, again mostly through pantomime as the man spoke only Russian even though he is Georgian by birth (not uncommon in this region; Russian is the first language for at least half of the Georgians living here).  After purchasing a kilo of his finest honey ($8 for 2 pounds of the sweetest and lightest honey you’ll ever find), we consummated our deal (but certainly not our relationship) with two shots of chacha (pronounced zha-zha, like the second “g” in garage), a national spirit made from fermented grape skins and similar to Italian grappa.  I’ve had experience with chacha before (to my eternal regret), but this time managed to keep the toasts down to a minimum as I had to drive. 

After a six-hour drive (and remember, the road is only 85 miles long), I entered the town of Stepantsminda (known in Russian as Kazbegi), only 15 miles kilometers from the Russian border.  The drive took so long because I couldn’t resist stopping at every spot that gave me a view of the mountains and valleys.  One in particular will stay with me forever.  It’s a rock that hangs over the sheer side of the valley, about a 1000 foot drop to the streambed below.  You stand on that rock, with the wind blowing, looking down at a positively fatal fall, and the adrenaline definitely flows.   

Stepantsminda (St. Stephens, pronounced Step-aunts-minda), or Kezbegi if you prefer (Kaz-beck-ee), has some of the most awe-inspiring views of the Caucasus you’ll ever see.  The weather was misty, unfortunately, but you still get the idea.  I spent $35 and rented a room with breakfast at the local hotel.  The room was the size of a jail cell, so small that the 10” TV sat on a nightstand since the room was only large enough for a bed and nightstand.  It was, however, clean and friendly (more than I can say for the kitchen staff).  Breakfast was of the European variety – bread, lunchmeat, locally made yoghurt, granola, and smoked fish.  What – you don’t eat smoked fish for breakfast??  Yeah, me, neither.  Since I was obviously identified as American, though, the cook managed to scramble up some eggs and fry some sausages to go along with Russian black tea – very strong and hot.  I’m a fan.

After my filling breakfast, I hiked 7 kilometers to a monastery near Mount Kazbek, the highest peak in the Caucasus at 5100 meters (almost 17,000 feet).  The large, mist-covered peak in the background is Mount Kazbek.  The monastery, as I said, is a 7 kilometer hike, about 4.5 miles.  It takes over 2 hours to hike up and about 10 minutes to sprint down.  It’s one steep SOB, I’ll tell you that.  And at the top is a working monastery, none too friendly it happens, especially to women.  Women visiting are required to change into dresses and are hissed at by the monks if they dare speak inside the church.  I’ve never seen that anywhere else in Georgia, and it was a bit upsetting, so I hiked back down to Stepantsminda for another beer or 12. 

This trip was everything I love about Georgia – historic, quaint, rustic, and filled with warm and friendly people – and I can’t wait until my next roadtrip.  Thanks for reading.

Death rites in Georgia

Sadly, I am now qualified to write on Georgian death rites.  My friend and karate instructor lost his 12-year old son this weekend, struck by a car while crossing the street.  Today was the viewing and I went to pay my respects.  Besides being heartbreakingly sad, it also provided a window into Georgian culture, albeit a window into which I would have preferred never to have peeked.

Georgian viewings are not held in a funeral home or a church.  Funeral homes here have the job of simply preparing the body for burial.  (Cremation is frowned upon by the Eastern Orthodox Church.)  They pick up the body from the hospital (which serves as the morgue), embalm it, prepare it for the viewing, collect the casket from the casket seller, and deliver the casket to the home.  That’s where the viewing takes place – in what 50 years ago we would have called the “parlor.” 

On the way to the viewing, I stopped and bought flowers.  The traditional arrangement for funerals is lilies shaped in a cross.  I then drove to the town of Rustavi, the 3^rd or 4^th largest city in Georgia, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) outside of Tbilisi.  My friend’s family lives in a 40-year old, nine-floor Soviet-style apartment building, without a working elevator, on the top floor.  As I entered the building, I heard wailing echoing down the steps.  Not crying, not sobbing but wailing – heart rending wailing that stirs up emotions thought buried by thousands of years of evolution.  I climbed the concrete steps to the top floor, torn between my duty and desire to pay my respects to my friend and my brain’s reptilian complex telling me to run back down the stairs, leap into the car, and drive away as fast as possible.  At about the fifth floor, flowers have been taped or tied to the handrail.  Both handrails from here to the top floor are covered with flowers.  On the steps lie more flowers, as if someone simply got tired of attaching flowers to the rails.   

At the top of the stairs is a small landing, perhaps 5 foot square.  On that landing are crammed ten or so folding chairs, so close they touch.  On each chair sits a man, each dressed in a black shirt, silently smoking.  They are male relatives of the family.  They greet me with a nod and go back to focusing intently on the end of their cigarettes.  My friend meets me on this landing.  I shake his hand and kiss his cheek, the traditional Georgian greeting.  I express my condolences and he ushers me into the apartment. 

It is a small but well-kept apartment.  The floors, like the walls and the ceiling, are cement.  The floors are covered by worn but brightly colored rugs and the walls by wallpaper that was probably hung when the building was built.  From the ceiling in each room hangs a naked bulb from a wire.  I’m escorted through the foyer, past a very small kitchen with very old appliances, into the parlor.  It takes all my effort to keep from gasping out loud.

In the center of the parlor, on the floor, sits the casket.  It is an adult-sized casket and fills the vast majority of the room.  The entire top of the casket is glass, and inside is my friend’s 12-year old son, wearing his best “school clothes.”  I place my flowers on the floor next to the casket, adjacent to a framed 8x10 school picture of the child.  Surrounding the casket are 20 or so folding chairs on which the female family members sit, all in black with their heads covered by black scarves.  I follow someone else who is there expressing his condolences.  We walk around the casket, expressing our sympathy to each of the women.  The mother is leaning on the casket top, wailing to her son.  This is the sound I heard when I entered the building.  It is a pitiful crying as she calls to her son. 

When the mother tires, another female family member picks up the crying.  It is a constant background sound throughout my visit.  The weeping is constant and very loud, as if Death could be scared away by the sheer force and volume of the heartfelt sobbing.

I move back to the landing, again expressing my condolences to my friend and I leave.  One does not stay long at a viewing unless family.  (Family members are expected to stay at the home during the entire one-day viewing period.)  The lamentations follow me down the steps, guaranteeing a long and sober drive home. 

The funeral, held at the local church, will be tomorrow.  The funeral home will come to the apartment tomorrow morning to pick up the casket, giving the child one more night in his home.  From there it will be delivered to the church.  Funerals are traditionally attended only by family members and very close friends.  After the funeral, the casket will be taken to the gravesite where the family will spread food and drink on a picnic table (Graveyards here in Georgia are all well equipped with picnic tables and concrete benches.) and have a family meal.  The casket sits on a rack, hovering above the open grave.  The headstone is usually black marble engraved with a photo of the deceased.  When the family leaves, workers will come and fill in the grave by hand.  And my friend will take his family back to their apartment and try to make sense of this tragedy.  He will fail, as do all parents who lose children.  And next week he will return to work at the Academy where I work, and his wife will return to her job, and their remaining son will go back to school, and they will try to pick up their lives.  And in that they will succeed because my friend is strong.  It is a strength he would have been happy never to have known he has.     

Meeting with Georgians

In this job, I spend a lot of time in meetings.  That’s not a good thing because normally my schedule has fewer holes in it than Stevie Wonder’s dartboard.  Georgians, however, rarely make a decision without having a meeting.  Unfortunately, they are rarely productive.  The effectiveness of a meeting is not judged on whether it produces any tangible results or products.  Instead, Georgians, as best I can figure, hold meetings for three reasons.  The first reason is to appear busy without really working.  Meetings are indispensible when you don't want to do anything.

The second reason is to appear important.  And, since everyone wants to appear important, meetings are very popular.  It is not uncommon to be called to a meeting in a large conference room just to find out you’re only meeting with one other person.  But, it’s in a conference room, so big things must be happening.  Inevitably, your meeting will be interrupted by someone who wants to join the meeting so he or she can appear important, too.  S/he rarely has anything to contribute, but they want to be able to say, “Well, we held a meeting in the conference room to…” whatever the goal of the meeting was.

This is usually hard to figure out since Georgians view agendas the same way they view traffic laws and wedding vows – as mere suggestions at best or foolish wastes of time at worst.  What gets discussed in meetings depends on the ADD factor of those in the room.  Agendas are, in a word, fluid.  More fluid, in fact, than the contents of the town drunk’s lunch tray.  Thus, in Georgian meetings, topics change rapidly as something new and shiny is introduced and moves immediately to the top of the agenda where it remains until someone else thinks of something new and shiny to displace it.   

But I digress.  The final reason Georgians are so fond of meetings is that it gives those attending the meeting the opportunity to affix blame for issues that should have been resolved in the last meeting.  Naturally, the “fixee” is the one person who misses this meeting.  Great wailing and gnashing of teeth occur as garments are torn and breasts beaten while the absent member of the group is excoriated for everything from the weather to the roughness of the toilet paper in the executive washroom to the fact that the sun is going to burn out in a couple of billion years.  Picture Mel Gibson at a traffic stop, and you get the idea.  In a way, it’s healthy.  It’s cathartic for those attending; less so for the poor slob who missed the meeting, usually because s/he is attending some other equally as important meeting in the other conference room.

Regardless of the meeting’s purpose, all meetings are run the same way.  They never – never – start on time.  They start when everyone finally arrives.  Time is measured here by what we call “GMT” or “Georgian Maybe Time.”  The meeting, scheduled to start at 10, will start at 10-something.  10:10, 10:30; even 10:50.  Time is not all that important.  In fact, a chalk outline is being drawn around punctuality and most Georgians can't even identify the victim.

If there is a TV in the room, it will be on.  Loud.  The most popular shows seem to be Spanish soap operas dubbed into Kartouli.  Remember what I said about the ADD level in the room?  Spanish soap operas, which obviously are filmed in third world countries where even the minimum amount of clothing is impossible to find, don’t help as meetings come to a standstill whenever a scantily-clad actress is shown.  Fortunately, this only makes up about 95% of the soap opera’s allotted air time, allowing at least 10 minutes an hour for business.  Why is the TV on all the time?  I have no idea.  None.  But you can bet it will be, further stretching the already challenged attention spans in the room thinner than the elastic on Rosie O’Donnell’s G-string. 

And keep in mind that a primary goal of the meeting is to look important.  So, few meetings are actually “chaired.”  Instead, attendees compete heatedly to make sure their opinions are heard.  So there’s a lot of shouting, gesturing, finger pointing, table slamming, and paper rattling.  One’s opinion must be presented even if it is in total agreement with whatever’s already been said.  Otherwise, how would everyone know how important you are?

Keep in mind that even in America, a meeting moves at the speed of the slowest mind in the room.  In other words, all but one participant will be bored, all but one mind underused.  So, eventually, the meeting peters out after everyone has made his/her point.  The meeting doesn’t so much adjourn as slowly dissipate as members leave to attend equally important meetings in other conference rooms.  Interestingly and usually, most meetings end when the soap opera does.

Oops, gotta run.  I’m late for my next meeting.  Thanks for reading.