Driving in Georgia, part 2: I say sidewalk, you say traffic lane.

In Kartouli, the Georgian language, there is only one word for “finger” and “toe.”  Georgians, therefore, say “toes are fingers for the foot.”  But there is a word for “sidewalk” and another, different word for “parking lot” and yet a completely different word for “traffic lane.”  This makes me wonder, as I walk the streets of this fair city, “Why, then, are these people parking, or even worse, driving, where I’m walking?”

            Georgia has seen an explosion of vehicles.  Just in Tbilisi alone, the number of vehicles on the streets, both registered and unregistered vehicles, has doubled in the past five years according to Georgia Today newspaper.  The number of available parking spaces, however, has decreased by almost a third.  Simply put, the city planners failed to anticipate the problems of automobile transportation.  Everyone was expected to take the plentiful public transportation, so it was deemed unnecessary to take into account the needs of average pedestrians.  Thus, Georgian drivers have taken to parking wherever there’s a space large enough to fit their car, and this usually means parking on what some pedestrians might naively mistake for a sidewalk.  Here, it’s taken as a minor nuisance and generally ignored.  In America, their behavior would cause multitudes of not necessarily sympathetic pedestrians to go bug-eyed apoplectic. 

            Let me give you an example.  I live on Abashidze Street which runs parallel and two blocks up from Chavchavadze Avenue, one of the main streets in the city.  I enjoy walking along Chavchavadze; it has stores, restaurants, clubs and bars, schools and shops, and a large number of apartment buildings.  Picture Market Street in Philadelphia, if you want.  Chavchavadze Avenue is, on the maps, a six-lane avenue; however, the many cars parked, long term, in the outside lanes, clog the avenue to, usually only four, but often just two, barely passable lanes. 

 

             So what’s a driver to do?  The answer, unfortunately, has been to drive up on the sidewalks, blowing their horns at pedestrians to clear the way.  (To the best of my limited knowledge, there are no words in Kartouli to describe people like that.  There are many choice ones in English, however all are unprintable in a family blog such as this one.)

            But as big a problem as it is to simply walk the streets, crossing them is much, much worse.  In the US, drivers generally understand that they should not accelerate into humans attempting to cross the street on foot.  Here, not so much.  I’ve seen grannies leaping out of the way of SUVs which are, more often than not, driving at highway cruising speeds down the sidewalk.  On the main streets of Tbilisi, there are no red lights to allow pedestrians to cross.  Not that it would matter if there were.  Drivers do not give way in Tbilisi.  Not in the pedestrian crosswalks, not in the city squares, and especially not on the sidewalks.  Add to that the fact that by Georgian law, pedestrians do not enjoy the right of way ANYWHERE, not even in the crosswalks.  Further add to that an excessively macho approach to driving and you get a situation described on the Lonely Planet website this way:  “Pedestrians are at risk as drivers assume they’ll get out of the way of moving cars – bad luck if your sight or hearing isn’t too good.”  Lonely Planet goes on to describe motorists who “would rather ‘mow you down’ than lose face by giving way.”  Now to be fair, drivers say they have no choice but to keep moving.  “If you stop suddenly to let a pedestrian pass, someone will hit you in the rear going very fast.” 

            So how do you cross the street?  There is the “take a deep breath and lurch forward” approach; there’s the “Usain Bolt” approach as you sprint as fast as you can before the driver has a chance to time your speed and lead you appropriately; and there’s the “dodge or die” approach where you play Frogger with traffic, dodging cars to progress across the street one lane at a time, often finding yourself marooned between cars cutting in front of and behind you as you hop from one foot to the other waiting for the smallest gap to appear between cars so you can sprint to the next lane.  Or you can take the underground passageways.

            The underground passageways are darkly ominous, often unlit, bodily-fluid filled, malodorous, graffiti-marked tunnels under the streets.  While some of the tunnels have been commercialized, like the two below, many are stinky, ammonia-smelling, dark tunnels used by the homeless or weak-bladdered as dormitories and/or bathrooms.  By the way, see that liquid on the steps?  It hadn’t rained in over a week the day I took this picture, so use your imagination to figure out what all that fluid is.  Think about it, but don’t tell me.  I don’t want to know.

            Ah, you say, that’s just city driving.  Certainly, it’s calmer on the highways outside the city.  Less targets, I mean pedestrians, after all, and fewer cars.  Ask my wife about that.  We drove to the northern part of the country on a beautiful, sunny day this past summer.  I think she aged about 20 years in that one afternoon.  It seems she found the ride a bit hair-raising at first, what with the reckless and incessant passing, and the total disregard for lane markers (when there actually were lane markers which was pretty rare).  I explained to her that Georgian drivers do not ignore the white lines at all.  In fact, they use them for alignment:  two tires on the left side of the line and two on the right.  As oncoming traffic is doing the same thing, driving can resemble a perpetual game of “chicken.”  And if you need to pass, no problem – by all means do so, whether on the right or left.  If you are going around a curve, so what?  It’s the other guy’s responsibility to avoid you.  He’ll move over.  Or not.

 

 

            She also didn’t understand the unwritten rule of Georgian driving, something buried deep within the psyche of every Georgian male:  that the vehicle in front of you must be passed at all costs.  And the longer you delay passing him, the lower your testosterone level drops, and the greater chance your wife or girlfriend will run off with that fellow in the BMW driving 60 mph on the unfinished shoulder.

            Debbie also was unaccustomed to another staple of Georgian driving, namely cows (and the occasional pig or goat or sheep) on the road.  Cattle roam free in Georgia, even in Tbilisi, and they particularly enjoy being on the roads with the cooling wind generated by whizzing cars.  The cows pay not a bit of attention to drivers.  A bus can miss a lazing cow by inches and she won’t twitch an ear.

            I figure that Georgian drivers must be the best in the world as they maneuver around pedestrians, parked cars, cows, pigs, blind curves, and potholes the size of small apartments, all with effortless aplomb and all while looking directly you as they talk.  But the best thing about Georgian driving is this:  if you stay with it long enough, you’re eventually going to end up at a place like this: 

 

 

            Thanks for reading.   

Driving in Georgia, part 1

Ask anyone who has visited this lovely country what they remember most and you’ll get the same answer:  Georgian drivers.  The point of driving in Georgia is not just getting from point A to point B; it’s so much more.  It is, in its simplest form, a series of competitions – competition between drivers and the police, drivers and other drivers, and drivers and pedestrians.  Let’s start from the beginning.

            Getting a driver’s license in this country is much more difficult than in the US.  As in the US, there are two parts of the licensing process – the theoretical and the practical.  In the theoretical process, the would-be driver has 30 minutes on a computer terminal at the local DMV to answer correctly 27 of 30 questions randomly chosen from a bank of 1500.  That’s right – 1500.  The theoretical manual is about 4” thick, and lists the 1500 questions and answers the examinee must know.  Most Georgians (well, Georgian women anyway; men tend to think they already know the answers to all driving questions and, consequently, tend to fail miserably on their first attempt) spend hour upon hour memorizing these questions just so they can pass the theoretical portion of the exam.  The test costs 50 Lari ($30), pass or fail, and the examinee must pay each time s/he takes the test. 

            If the examinee is successful, s/he moves on to the eye test.  Interestingly, and quite frighteningly, the eye test is only for color blindness.  There is no requirement, none at all, for the driver to have 20/20, 20/40, or even 20/40,000 vision.  I guess if you can find your way to the DMV and then to the correct room for the exam, your vision must be OK.   There is also, as you might expect, no hearing test, physical exam, or drug/alcohol screening.  This alone explains some of the moves you see on the highways here. 

            The other part of the exam is the practical portion.  Here the driver must negotiate an obstacle course behind the DMV.  There is no road test here.  Pass the obstacle course and you’re in.  But that’s not easy.  First off, you can’t use your own car.  Every examinee must take the test in a Skoda sedan with manual transmission.  Inside each Skoda is four webcams and underneath are sensors which register when the car crosses forbidden lines and curbs on the course.  The first challenge is backing into a parking space only slightly wider than the car.  I don’t know why they even test this since no one ever pays attention to the lines after the get their license.  People park wherever there is space, regardless of whether that space was designed for parking.  That explains why the sidewalks of Rustaveli and Chavchavadze Avenues double as parking lots.  And if the space is smaller than one’s car, no problem; instead of parallel parking into the spot, I’ll simply pull in nose first and put it in park.  The fact that my rear end hangs out well into the right hand lane doesn’t concern me at all.  It is, after all, your responsibility to avoid me. 

            But I digress.  After backing into the parking space, the examinee zigzags through a serpentine maze defined by traffic cones.  Not too terribly difficult, but enough to cause some white knuckled wrestling with the steering wheel.  Then a Y-turn into a square space large enough to handle two mini-vans side by side, followed by a figure-eight through more cones before coming to the climax of the examination:  the hill climb.

            The hill has a long incline, perhaps at 30-45 degrees, a long flat portion, and then a long decline, again at 30-45 degrees.  The driver must come to a complete stop at the bottom of the first ramp.  S/he must drive up the ramp, stopping halfway up.  From there, s/he must display mastery of the clutch and gear shift by getting the vehicle in upward motion again without either sliding back down the incline or flying over the edge.  S/he repeats the process on the flat portion of the hill, and then again coming down the other side.  This is the Waterloo moment when the driver and the examiner who rode with him/her suddenly get out of the car and switch places, with the examiner driving back to the DMV building.  The test is over and the examinee has failed. 

            You get five chances, one week apart, to pass the obstacle course.  If you do, you get your lifetime license.  Yup, lifetime.  There are no renewal protocols here.  Your license is yours forever.  FOR. EVER.  You are now permitted to enter the world of driving in Georgia where hesitancy is not tolerated and aggression is its own reward.  Suddenly, the traffic laws you memorized to pass the test become mere suggestions.  Lane markings are options for you to consider and zebra crossings are happy hunting grounds for drivers eager to show their superiority over mere pedestrians. 

            The only chance the pedestrian has for surviving the reign of terror created by Georgian drivers is traffic congestion.  When traffic only moves at 4mph, there is at least a 50% chance you can cross the street without serious bodily harm.  And what causes this congestion?  According to a nine-year study by the Georgian Ministry of Interior, the root cause of traffic congestion is, “more cars on the road than ever before.”  The other ally for the pedestrian:  highway construction.  I used to think the word “Tbilisi” meant “warm place.”  (It really does mean that, by the way.  “Tbil” means warm and “isi” is the suffix meaning place.)  Nope; “Tbilisi” really is translated as “under construction.”  I would guess two-thirds of the streets and highways in Georgia have been rendered completely impassible by highway construction.  Eventually, all of this construction will make Tbilisi, and Georgia, a better place for drivers and pedestrians.  Of course, by the time all the construction is complete, we will all be extinct and millions of cockroaches will enjoy crawling along the wide open, cone-free highway system. 

            To understand why highway construction takes so long, you have to look at how a typical construction project works in this country.  Phase I is when the Traffic Cone Division places 60,000 traffic cones in, on, and around the proposed construction site.  Often, this IS the project since placing traffic cones on a stretch of street the length of Pennsylvania uses up all the money designated for the entire project.  Since the money’s now gone, there’s no choice but to leave the cones in place and move on to the next project. 

            Phase II is characterized by fat men who come with jackhammers and sledge hammers to smash every piece of concrete and asphalt into pieces no larger than a dime.  Except for the larger pieces which are left behind for trucks to pick up and hurl at the windshield of the cars following the truck.  This moves us to Phase III where nothing happens for six months. 

            Phase IV begins when huge, powerful pieces of construction equipment are parked in and around the construction site.  Many of these pieces, I believe, don’t even have engines.  Eventually, these pieces are worn away by weather and vandals and are chucked over the shoulder into the nearest ravine.  Eventually, however, the project is completed and traffic moves again.  Or at least for six to seven weeks when the Ministry of Poorly Constructed Streets and Highways declares that particular part of the road impassible and returns the entire project to Phase I. 

            I’m probably being too harsh.  There is one piece of highway construction equipment that does its job perfectly.  As you pass the construction site at the same rate of speed as the Statue of Liberty, past miles and miles of traffic cones and construction equipment being swallowed by growing vines, you’re sure to find a generator-powered electric sign telling you in English to “EXPECT DELAYS.” 

            On the streets that aren’t yet under construction, the recent fad is “drifting,” usually in the prerequisite BMW or souped-up Honda Civic.  To get an idea of what drifting is, and at the same time to get a birds’ eye view of riding in a Tbilisi taxi, check out these sites:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EutGUdwHQQ

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ShZJM3WzFA

 

            As always, thanks for reading.  Next time, I'll look at driving in Georgia from the pedestrian point of view.  If I'm not run over and killed by then.   

The booming female reconstruction business

I spent yesterday living the European life, sitting in the outdoor café of Tartine, a French brasserie that serves pastis, an Ouzo-like aperitif.  It was 68⁰, probably the last weekend of the year that will be so nice.  It’s also the last weekend of wedding season.  As I sat there for an hour or so, sipping on my third pastis (did I mention that I really like pastis?), I watched three wedding parties driving around the square, honking horns and waving at everyone.  The whole experience started me thinking on the institution of marriage in Georgia.  I’ve already written about wedding protocols here, but this time I’ll take a slightly different approach to the subject.  I haven’t attached any pictures to this posting; read a little further and I think you’ll understand why. 

Georgia is a very conservative country.  It is a male-dominated society where the roles of women are very strictly defined.  Historically, women are encouraged to take husbands from the woman’s village.  That has its advantages:  the groom has been “vetted” over the years by the girl’s family, the young married couple will probably stay in the village (most likely in the groom’s family’s house), and the young bride has been pressured by society to maintain her innocence because she’s well known in her village.  This is important because one of the expectations for a new bride is virginity.  That’s becoming an issue in a country were the rate of illegitimate births is growing by bumps and grinds.  The issue is even more stressed when so many young Georgians come to the big city, Tbilisi, for school or jobs, but return to the villages to get married.  And lots of these émigrés to Tbilisi are young women who discover that their bubbles of dreams and hopes are not the only things getting pricked by city life. 

So what’s a young woman to do?  She doesn’t want to go against tradition by getting engaged to a boy from the city, an unknown to her family and neighbors in the village.  At the same time, she can’t risk returning to the village as “damaged goods.”  Thankfully, it’s Western technology to the rescue.

Recently in Tbilisi, several new clinics have opened to deal specifically with this problem.  They are called “obstetric reconstruction clinics” or “female aesthetic clinics.”  Their mission is simple:  they repair hymens, thus returning their young clients to a state of grace.  A sexual “get out of jail free” card, so to speak.  I’m not kidding you.  I have absolutely no idea how they do it.  I tried to figure it out, but I had a hard time focusing on the topic.  Well, I could focus on the “topic,” but not on the TOPIC, if you get what I’m saying. But, anyway, I digress.

Yes, Virginia, there is a sexual Santa Claus!  You simply make an appointment, pay up front, take a short anesthesia-induced nap, miss a day or so of work, and boom!  You’re ready for that trip back to the village.  My experts on the subject (meaning the two or three women I drink with at the Soviet Club, who may or may not have actual experience in this area) tell me that these clinics’ marketing strategy targets “athletically active” women who may have accidentally torn their hymens playing sports or riding horses.  Right.  Or to be more precise, Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.  It doesn’t cost much (about 900 Lari, roughly $540) and in some cases is even covered by insurance.  A small price to pay for a happy husband and an approving village.  According to my experts again, it’s all done no questions asked.  Well, except for one question, I guess:  do you have the money?  You do?  OK, go into room 2 and drop your pants.  (Which, truth be told, is what made the clinic necessary in the first place.)

And all this time I’ve been shaking my head at Georgia’s lack of technology and old fashioned mores.  Hmmm.  I wonder if the clinics handle male love handles? 

 

Thanks for reading.  And aren't you glad I didn't  post any pictures?  

 

Reflecting on working with Georgians

We’ve recently been tasked with revamping the academic program at the National Defense Academy here in Georgia.  I’ve been thinking about that and how we should approach it.  So I’m thinking aloud here, basing a lot of my thinking on my experiences in Iraq.  Sometimes it seems we have a “reverse Midas” situation – everything we touch turns to crap.  And the main reason is, we rely too much on what works for us.  I think it’s important that we don’t try to teach the Georgians how to do things the American way using American procedures.  I saw every contractor in Iraq do that; I know that I’ve been guilty of doing that with the Academy’s tactical officers and occasionally with my own “advisee,” and I know it would be a terrible idea to try it with the Academy folks because when our suggestion/recommendation doesn’t work we don’t ask why it failed; we simply say to the host nationals, “OK, then try it this other (American) way,” and to ourselves we say, “Thank God we’re here to fix this.”

You see, American contractors tend to look at problems in one of three ways:  as colonialists, as imperialists, or as missionaries.  This leads to either patronization, where we treat the locals as our servants, or to paternalism, where we treat them as children.  Obviously, neither of these is going to work with the current Georgian group.

My experiences in Iraq taught me several things:  1) if the locals don’t want your help, leave them alone.  We can’t force our ideas on them; all we can do is wait for them to decide to try our ideas.  2) To be successful, we have to take on the mindset of a servant instead of a leader.  That means asking the people we’re trying to help, “What do you feel is important and what do you want to do?  What does the final product look like to you?”  And that means that, sometimes, we have to direct them away from what they think they want.  They may want something that’s too hard, too costly, too dangerous, or just too wrong for them.  We have to direct them, through soft power, to what is best for them.  Once we do this, our role is to help the customers find the knowledge they need to do what they want to do.  Sometimes we’ll be the source of that information; sometimes we won’t.  If we’re not the source of that information, we have to do the research to provide it.

We forget that our job is to talk – specifically, to ask questions.  Even though it may sound counter intuitive because we’re supposed to be the advisor/expert, we need to listen more.  Our job is not to tell the Georgians what to do and how to do it.  Our job is to shut up and listen, and to offer options and ideas once they decide what they want to do.  Our guiding question should be:  “What can we do to help you get to where you want to be?”  Where they want to go is sometimes irrelevant; how they get there isn’t.  Having said that,…

Planning is incompatible to advising because we plan in a vacuum, because we plan using US methodologies and procedures, and because we plan assuming greater US resources and motivation.  I see our role as guiding the Georgians in their planning process, no matter how inefficient or slow that process may be.  I see our role as being planning resources for the Georgians, just as we would use higher sources in the US.  We also have to look at the Georgian planning process from their point of view.  The most important – if not the ONLY – things we can contribute to that process are confidentiality (so they’re not afraid to bounce ideas off us), passionate service (so they learn to trust us), and truth, specifically where they are, what they have, and what they need.  All of these, however, must be based on what they want, not on what we think they need.  This will be easier if we delete the word “I” from our vocabulary, substituting the word “we.”

We can’t change the Georgians; however, we can be a part of the Georgians changing themselves.  That means picking our battles.  And fighting small.  Let’s get some wins under our belt, let’s let the Georgians win a few battles, before we tackle the big issues. 

The late Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch wrote a book, and later produced a video, called The Last Lecture.  If you haven’t seen it, you should watch it; it’s on youtube.  In that book and lecture, he said a good lecture has a “head fake” built into it.  That’s where you think the lecture is about one topic designed for a specific audience, then you discover it’s meant to be a totally different topic for another audience.  Did you catch the head fake here?  I’m not talking about training Georgians; I’m talking about raising teenagers.

Thanks for reading.  And good luck.

The Georgian way of doing things

I’m planning my escape home in May.  The plan is for me to come home for Dan’s graduation and then Debbie will accompany me back to Georgia, spend a couple of weeks here, and then fly back alone.  So I did my due diligence online, scouring the web for cheap airfares.  I had to use a local travel agent because I couldn't get my return flight (PHL to TBS) to show up on Debbie's itinerary. In other words, I couldn't get us on the same flights online. It took 6-1/2 hours to get everything straight. It took only an hour or so to find an itinerary that worked -- short layovers and cheap fares. Then the bureaucracy that is Georgian rules kicked in.

Air France won't accept credit card payments online from Georgia (Georgia has an international reputation for running credit card fraud rings. It's been cleaned up a lot in the last 3 years or so, but the reputation is still there.) so I had to pay only cash. No problem. I go to the local TBC bank but they have a limit on how much cash I can get on my Amex. They recommend getting half today and half tomorrow except the travel agent has told me the itinerary might not be there tomorrow, so I decide to try my luck at the Bank of Georgia. Except the Bank of Georgia won't accept Amex so I have to use my debit/Visa card. Again, no problem. Except they need my passport for such a large transaction of cash. So off I go back to my flat to get my passport (not far but irritating especially in the cold). So now I have cash. (I'm making this seem easier than it was; it took over an hour and a half with waiting in lines at TBC and then BoG, running back to my flat, waiting in line again, getting the paperwork, & then waiting in line at the cashier window.)

So now I'm back at the travel agent (again, still walking in the cold). But before they can take my money and issue the tix, they need my passport info. No problem; I still had it with me from the trip to the bank. They make a copy and write down all the info they need. It’s going too well, I guess, so the travel agent throws me a curve.  Not one of the big, roundhouse, spinning curves you can see coming and time properly.  This curve is more of a Steve Carlton slider – looks like a fastball until you start your swing, and then, whoosh!  It’s gone.  Unhittable.  So here comes the slider:  the travel agent also needs Debbie's passport info. Why?, I ask. Because Ukraine Air doesn't accept e-tix so they're printing hard copies which can only be done after verifying passenger info and identity which is, of course, a passport. I think I have Debbie's info on my computer which is, of course, back in my flat. So back I go (farther than the bank walk so at least I'm getting my exercise for the day). Fire up my laptop; plug in my thumb drive, and voila! All of the info I need on Debbie's old, expired passport. Frustration level rising rapidly.

I call Debbie at her office. "Do you happen to carry your passport info on you? No, I didn't think so. Where is your passport? In the blue box? Got it. Thanks. I love you. Bye." So I call Dan (about 8.30am in PA). Dan runs up to the office but can't find the blue box. I tell him to call Debbie and then get on Facebook. He does this (very quickly, I might add) and gives me the info I need over FB. I then run back to the travel agent (OK, walk fast; it's been a long day). I give them Debbie's passport info (which is now in my updated thumb drive folder for the next time this comes up), doublecheck and verify my itinerary, and sign the form stating that I know the tix are non-refundable, non-transferable, and non-changeable. Time to give them my money and get the tix. Except their cashier is on dinner break. I wait 30 more minutes until he shows. I pay and go back to the travel agent's desk (who, by the way, can see the cashier's window and has watched me pay). She asks for the receipt from the cashier. Back I go, mumbling under my breath words that would greatly increase, but not necessarily enhance, the agent's knowledge of English. I get the receipt and hand it to the agent. She then, finally, prints my tix, gives me my itineraries, staples my receipts to the envelope, and hands me back the passport information. I leave the travel agent for home, 6-1/2 hours after I first walked in. And I'm pissed because I should have known better. Georgia runs on bureaucracy (holdover from the old Soviet days, I imagine). I should have realized this and left my flat with my passport, laptop and thumb drive, and cash that I had gathered over the previous 2-3 days.   But I didn't think ahead, so it cost me a lot of time and karmic energy. It's harder now to escape Georgia than it was when the Soviets ran this place.  Oh, well, at least I have the tix.

Just another Georgian day, giving me the opportunity to burn off some bad karma.  Thanks for reading.

Adventures of a wannabe foodie in Tbilisi

I like my little apartment.  A lot.  I like being able to walk around in my underwear and to put my feet up on the table and to eat my dinner seating on the couch watching TV.  I like scratching where it itches and singing along with iTunes.  I even like cooking for myself.  OK, I REALLY like cooking for myself.  I have a few specialties that I can do well – breaded chicken breasts, for example, and I have had more than a few failures – I’m looking at you, bologna stir fry.  But as much as I like cooking for myself, I like food shopping that much more.  There’s something about looking at a collection of meats, fish, fruit and vegetables and thinking of what I can make from them.  I imagine it’s the same feeling an artist gets when he looks at his palette of oil paints.  (Now THERE’S the height of hubris – comparing my limited abilities at the stove with those of an artist at his canvas; but this is my blog so I can indulge myself a bit.)  And Tbilisi has more than its share of places to buy food.

There are, of course, the big three – Carrefour, Goodwill, and the Embassy Commissary.  The first two are comparable to a Super Walmart; they’re both a large big box type of store with a well-stocked grocery section.  Carrefour is French and most of the products are European; the Goodwill has goods mostly from Russia.  The Commissary is the go-to place for American foods that we can’t find anywhere else in country – peanut butter, Bisquick, and bologna, for instance.  And at the Commissary I can read the labels on the cans and jars. 

Originally, I thought I’d just look at the picture on the label, thinking that naturally a picture of the inside would be on the outside.  Until I hit the baby food aisle with hundreds of cans with pictures of babies on the outside.  So that logic petered out.  In Carrefour the labels are mostly in French or German.  I can usually make those out pretty well.  Occasionally I run into some Italian or even Polish, but by looking at the other cans in the aisle I generally get the idea.  In Goodwill, however, this is not a good strategy because most every label is in Russian or Georgian.  I remember once when Dan, as a child, got into the pantry and pulled all the labels of the cans.  After a week of beets for breakfast and condensed milk for dinner, I learned to lock the pantry door.  That’s what it’s like in Goodwill – I know there are some cans I want and some I don’t, but figuring out which is which is often just a game of chance.  I might as well flip a coin. 

That’s one of the frustrating things about the big box stores.  They have everything you’d want, but it’s hard to figure out where and even what it is sometimes.  And even if I figure out what’s in the can or jar, the preparation instructions are written in the same language as the label.  Now we’re off on another adventure.  I usually inspect the label for numbers.  6-8, for example, on a package of frozen ravioli probably means 6-8 minutes in water.  But does it really?  Is the ravioli already cooked?  If not, for how long should I cook it?  I assume it goes into boiling water.  Or does it?  Do I add it to already boiling water or dump it in cold water and bring it to a boil?  How long should it boil?  Obviously, my inexperience as a foodie is quite the hindrance.  I can make spaghetti and hard boiled eggs and breaded chicken breasts.  After that, well, it’s all a learning experience.  My fallback solution is to figure out what’s in the can or jar or frozen package and look it up on foodnetwork.com, the foodie’s Rosetta Stone.  From there I can usually figure out how to cook whatever it is I’ve picked up.  After some more research, usually, to decipher instructions like “braise” or “parboil” or “blanch.”  Whatever happened to “fry” or “boil” or “stick in a 350⁰ oven for 30 minutes?” 

Which leads to another problem – my oven.  It’s gas, which, I understand, is a good thing.  It has to be lit by a match and then the temperature set.  But the knob doesn’t have temperature markings.  Instead, it has a small flame and a large flame.  Nothing else.  I bought an oven thermometer, in Celsius, of course, which if nothing else has strengthened my mental math skills:  “Let’s see, 200 Celcius times 1.8 is, hmmm.  And then I add 32 or do I subtract 32?”  So much of my cooking is frying.  Fried pork chops, fried eggs, fried chicken, fried everything.  Except what is boiled:  oatmeal, eggs, spaghetti, and frozen ravioli.  As you can imagine, it does make for some gastronomical adventure if not courage to accept an invitation to eat at my place. 

So while I do shop at the big box stores, nothing compares to the adventure and joy of shopping on the economy, especially at this time of year.  The traditional Christmas and New Year meals here are turkey and suckling pig, so numerous stalls have popped up selling both live and dressed turkeys and pigs.

You simply pick the one you like and wait while it’s butchered and dressed or you can pick one all ready for the oven.  Same with the fish:  pick the one you like, tell the man how you want it, and boom!  It’s done.  Sort of like street theater, if you’re idea of street theater is Benihana’s. 

Or you can pick a nice pork roast or rack of ribs from the Pig Man.  He’s set up a nice little road side stand right outside the National Defense Academy where he peddles his pork.  (That almost sounded inappropriate – peddles his pork.)  Fortunately, the meat is now kept fresh by the natural refrigeration of the weather.  I’ve seen pork like this hanging all day in the summer heat; caveat emptor, I guess. 

 

 I like the marketplaces best of all.  The fruits and veggies are displayed beautifully, are dirt cheap, and are remarkably fresh.  I do wonder, however, how they’re getting fresh bananas and pineapples in Georgia. 

You can buy ANYTHING in these markets.  If you’re a big coffee drinker, you can buy coffee beans in bulk – 50 kilograms (110 lbs.) worth of bulk.  I’ve also bought spices here in bulk.  Too much bulk, actually.  Do you know how much spice those small containers in the grocery store contain?  One ounce, usually; that’s almost 30 grams.  The prices of the spices are listed per 100 grams.  So, it made sense to me to buy 100 grams each of my favorite spices – cinnamon, cardamom, oregano, tarragon, thyme, and paprika.  Do you know how much 100 grams of cinnamon really is??  It’s a large, large bag; that’s how much.  Anyone need to borrow any spices?  Come see me; I have quite a large supply.  And I wondered why the clerk looked at me so strangely when I said I wanted 100 grams of each.  She must have thought I was trying to corner the market.  At the very least I gave her something to talk about with the other spice merchants when I left.  Hell, I’m surprised she didn’t shut the stall and go home – I definitely helped make her quota that day.  Of course, I won’t be buying any more spices the whole time I’m here so maybe I’m not so dumb after all.

My all-time favorite places to shop, however, are the markets on the corners outside of my apartment building.  They usually have a large variety of fruits and vegetables and always seem happy to see me.  This is actually kind of surprising considering my usual purchase is something like two potatoes and an onion or a small bunch of carrots and one broccoli tree.  Or, if I’m really hungry, a small bag of beans (not magic beans, unfortunately; and by the way, beans are not a fruit, magical or otherwise), two apples, a small hand of bananas (yes, a bunch of bananas is called a “hand” of bananas.  I strive to educate as well as entertain.), and a cantaloupe.  I’ve learned not to pick things myself, though.  I picked up an onion the other day just to have the woman who runs the market actually slap my hand until I dropped the onion.  She then picked one she thought better and handed me that one.  So now I point at what I want and show her with my hands how many I want – either by showing her fingers or by holding my hands out like I’m talking about a fish I’d just caught:  hands close together for a small bunch of grapes or wide apart for a big bag of walnuts.  I’m sure she thinks I’m a few feathers short of a whole duck, so I think she feels sorry for me.  I’m sure she wonders how I’m actually cooking her produce without burning down the whole apartment building.  (“All foam, no beer,” I can hear her thinking as I walk away.)

She also thinks my foodie IQ is lower than the temperature.  She points to produce that I’ve never seen before and have no idea how to prepare or eat it.  Pomegranate, for example.  How the hell do you fix pomegranate?  And what do you do with all the seeds?  Does it get peeled or eaten like an apple?  She points out to me these items and laughs when I look puzzled.  (Maybe she doesn’t like me that much after all; I could just be her only source of amusement.  A walking circus, perhaps, albeit one a few clowns short.)  So we’ve both learned to stick with the basics – potatoes, green beans, onions, tomatoes, apples, bananas, and grapes.

Then it’s inside for staples.  These corner markets are like American convenience stores – just the basics.  My local market is very small with one aisle through the center.

 

Here’s where I buy milk, bread, eggs, and beer – the four food groups.  Just the other day, though, while walking down the center aisle (which is only wide enough for one person; when someone else wants something at the end of the aisle, she either has to wait for me to get out of her way, push me aside – the most likely course of action – or do an end run around the store’s walls.) I did a classic TV double take – they had Ripples potato chips!  Real, honest-to-God Ripples.  Not Russian knock offs, not soggy potato crisps (whatever the hell those are), not even locally made Pringles wannabes.  No, actual Ripples.  Fortunately, I’m still allowed in the store despite my doing the happy dance in the center aisle, holding the Ripples over my head like a trophy, emitting primal screams of victory and joy, and stripping the shelf of every single bag. 

Maybe that’s why I enjoy food shopping; it is, in itself, a type of adventure.  Finding what you’re looking for, or finding something you didn’t even know you were looking for, takes away some of the frustration of not being able to tool down to the local Acme and filling your cart with familiar items.  So that’s my New Year’s resolution:  trying to take each event, even one as mundane as food shopping, as an adventure.  Let the fun begin.

Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!