Well, i spent the last week and a half working my way across Georgia. too many stories to post here, but i am converted to the church of Couchsurfing, suffice to say.
i spent 4 days in Tbilisi and then left for one night in Borjomi. Borjomi is to the south and was kind of a spa/ resort town for soviets during the CCCP days. there is a mineral spring there that is bottled and is reputed to be good for your health, but alot of westerners (myself included) think it tastes like feet. but the town itself was quaint. nestled in the mountains. there is a creek that runs out of the hills and feeds into a raging river. i hiked up the creek into the forest when i was there. peaceful. good to be surrounded by trees. but that was about it.
took a marshutka (minibus- the main form of public transportation) to tkibuli to crash on a couch for two nights. my first couch surfing experience. stayed with a czech woman who is an EVS volunteer (European version of the Peace Corps), working for an NGO that a czech group started. it was a small town, way out in the sticks. there i learned that georgians actually still kinda hold up Stalin as a national symbol. they seem to not focus on WHAT he did so much as simply tout the fact that he is the most famous person in the world to hail from Georgia in the last 100 years. so yeah. there is a fucking statue of Stalin in front of the city hall. larger than life and completely surreal...like "Where am I? What year is it?"
there is another statue of the man at the entrance to a now defunct and decrepit ex-coal mine on the edge of town. i got a couple of great photos. next time i get my puter online, i'll photo dump.
from there i went to zugdidi, a town in the west, about half an hour from the border with Georgia's Russia-backed autonomous region of Abkazia, in the northwest. i stayed with a spanish guy who worked as a security monitor on the ceasefire at the border. went out with his friends and met some great internationals from the Czech republic, slovakia, sweden, spain, poland, the states, scotland. had a few pints and talked shop and asked questions. it was pretty cool. don't wanna freak you out, mom, but it was exciting to be told that yes, in fact, i was in a city that is within what is considered a 'conflict area', meaning that shit still isn't settled and you may not be as safe as it seems...but it actually did seem pretty safe. and zugdidi is a really cute town with a bbig park in the center of the city with huge fir trees. all the houses have fresh fruit trees all around. fig, plum, tangerine, pear, apple, walnut. had some good georgian wine and made dinner the second night and then i got a ride in the EU bulletproofed landrover to the bus station this morning and now i am in Batumi, down, 30 km north of the Turkish border. right on the black sea. i walked down to the water and soaked my feet for a while today. met two backpackers from Iran at the beach and helped them find the hotel (they were looking for the one i am staying at). its wild to make friends from places that you cannot go to. learn firsthand that people are people. build international relationships, one facebook add at a time. har har.
but yeah. its good to be here. back to the water. the black sea is actually pretty turquoise, at least, this time of year. tomorrow i'll take another marshutka to turkiye. it will sadly be my last, for in turkiye, the same vehicles are called dolmus. and i think they are a little more expensive.
tomorrow i go to Trabzon, on the turkish black sea coast. 1 or 2 days there and then a night in Samsun. from what i understand, samsun is a good jumping-off point for Cappadoccia, so there i will head.
its looking like i'm not going to get the internship at this point, so i am now wholeheartedly throwing myself into travelling Turkiye for 3 weeks instead of 1. with couchsurfing, it seems totally do-able and i am getting really excited.
when i found the hotel today and got settled (may i add that my room is like $12 for the night?), i met a couple that just came from Turkiye. the guy was from england and the woman was from Italy. backpacker vagabonds. he had just spent 4 months travelling turkiye. heading to georgia, azerbaijan, kazakstan and china. good luck, brother (and sister). but homey gave me his dog-eared, well worn and well-loved copy of Lonely Planets Rough Guide to turkiye. 800 pages of knowledge. and a pocket sized turkish language book. didn't need it anymore and just asked me to pass it on when i am done with it. this felt like very good mojo for embarking on the next leg of my trip.
georgia has been amazing. friendly people. rich (current) history that i knew very little of. the political situation is so fucking complex and interesting. i think back to when i first came out in january and the main goal was to spend a weekend in Tbilisi and now i have travelled clear across the country and i feel so fortunate for all of these experiences that life has afforded me. i am a little sweaty and stinky. my feet are tired and my backpack is heavy but it feels really good to be here.
i miss you all. wish you were here to share some memories with me. but i'll bring home pictures and stories.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Tbilisi, oh Tbilisi, my crumbling beauty
its raining here (as it has been for a month, it seems) but i'm feelin good. tbilisi was invogorating. i have to write an 8 page paper today, which sucks, for my final assignment for capstone, but thats alright. i'll crank it out. i'm feeling on top this morning.
well where do i start?
we got in friday afternoon and took a cab to where we THOUGHT UNHCR was but couldn't find it.
in the states, agencies and alot of non-profits etc have street-level space and a big sign out front. out here, alot of the places i have had meetings with had 3rd or fourth floor apartment space in run-down buildings and almost no signage. it gets very confusing and UNHCR Georgia was the same. but we eventually found it.
it was impressive. they have a big operation up there in comparison. something like 50 staff to our 15. so they have some big, big programs and they are getting an impressive amount done. it looks like they have some great leadership and i am jealous of any UT student next year that gets to work with them. but i suppose it would be easier to get lost in a big operation like that, so i'm sure there are some plusses to a small shop like the one i'm in (like being able to design and run with my little pet project). but they gave me a briefing on Livelihoods/ Income Generation projects out there and it was pretty awesome and now i will integrate some of their project successes into my recommendations for Armenia... which is good for me and will make my shit a lil' stronger.
got back to the hotel and went out to dinner at a good georgian restaurant with dude. the food was dope and we drank a bottle of the house red wine, which was great (especially compared to the rot-gut in Armenia). went out to some bars after and i got KEEEEE-RUNK!.. stayed up all night and spent 75% of saturday incapacitated with a hangover of epic proportions. got up in the late afternoon and tried to walk it off, exploring the city a little bit, venturing this way and that to try and get my bearings. it was kind of like yerevan at first, in that i can't read the street signs, so i will have to basically memorize the city. which worked for the most part. alot of wandering and kind of guessing which way to go. but thats cool.
yesterday we walked all over the city, which is kind of a crumbling beauty, a brokedown palace (i think thats a grateful dead song, but its still an apt description). there is an old castle on top of one of the hills that loom over the city. i can't really describe how gorgeous this was so i'll just have to post pictures. suffice to say that things like Hamlet and the Odyssey come to mind when trying to scramble up the side of castle walls to these parapets that looked out over the old city.
the old city itself is lined with winding, senseless roads, cracked and potted with broken asphalt and decaying buildings, as if the map of the city were the wrinkles of an old, old woman's face. there are grapevines everywhere, climbing across powerlines, up the sides of buildings, across the abandoned ones...there are about as many construction sites where new office buildings are going up as there are mouldering skeletons of old soviet apartments, most of which are still lived in.
the two churches that i went into were absolutely beautiful. Georgian Orthodox churchesbeing sacred, don't allow cameras inside, so i didn't get any pictures, but the insides are painted floor to ceiling in these vibrant murals of the saints and religious imagery in these strong, simple lines that are just mesmerizing. and they have an aura inside, different from Armenian churches. i don't know how to describe it, but it was amazing. both churches (Armenian and Georgian) are dimly lit, just candlelight. but Armenian churches have bare rock walls, while Georgian churches are painted. i'm not saying one is better than the other, but Armenian churches feel more ancient, like the ghosts of an old religion, which these Georgian churches feel alive with it. not better, but a stark difference.
thats about all there is to tell. it wasn't enough time, but i'm going to head back up there in a week and a half, after i tie up my loose ends here and i'm ready to go explore. alot of georgians asked "Have you been to Baku (Azerbaijan) yet? and when I told them No, they said "Oh, you've got to! Baku is nicer than Tbilisi!" so now I'm definitely curious. we'll see.
well where do i start?
we got in friday afternoon and took a cab to where we THOUGHT UNHCR was but couldn't find it.
in the states, agencies and alot of non-profits etc have street-level space and a big sign out front. out here, alot of the places i have had meetings with had 3rd or fourth floor apartment space in run-down buildings and almost no signage. it gets very confusing and UNHCR Georgia was the same. but we eventually found it.
it was impressive. they have a big operation up there in comparison. something like 50 staff to our 15. so they have some big, big programs and they are getting an impressive amount done. it looks like they have some great leadership and i am jealous of any UT student next year that gets to work with them. but i suppose it would be easier to get lost in a big operation like that, so i'm sure there are some plusses to a small shop like the one i'm in (like being able to design and run with my little pet project). but they gave me a briefing on Livelihoods/ Income Generation projects out there and it was pretty awesome and now i will integrate some of their project successes into my recommendations for Armenia... which is good for me and will make my shit a lil' stronger.
got back to the hotel and went out to dinner at a good georgian restaurant with dude. the food was dope and we drank a bottle of the house red wine, which was great (especially compared to the rot-gut in Armenia). went out to some bars after and i got KEEEEE-RUNK!.. stayed up all night and spent 75% of saturday incapacitated with a hangover of epic proportions. got up in the late afternoon and tried to walk it off, exploring the city a little bit, venturing this way and that to try and get my bearings. it was kind of like yerevan at first, in that i can't read the street signs, so i will have to basically memorize the city. which worked for the most part. alot of wandering and kind of guessing which way to go. but thats cool.
yesterday we walked all over the city, which is kind of a crumbling beauty, a brokedown palace (i think thats a grateful dead song, but its still an apt description). there is an old castle on top of one of the hills that loom over the city. i can't really describe how gorgeous this was so i'll just have to post pictures. suffice to say that things like Hamlet and the Odyssey come to mind when trying to scramble up the side of castle walls to these parapets that looked out over the old city.
the old city itself is lined with winding, senseless roads, cracked and potted with broken asphalt and decaying buildings, as if the map of the city were the wrinkles of an old, old woman's face. there are grapevines everywhere, climbing across powerlines, up the sides of buildings, across the abandoned ones...there are about as many construction sites where new office buildings are going up as there are mouldering skeletons of old soviet apartments, most of which are still lived in.
the two churches that i went into were absolutely beautiful. Georgian Orthodox churchesbeing sacred, don't allow cameras inside, so i didn't get any pictures, but the insides are painted floor to ceiling in these vibrant murals of the saints and religious imagery in these strong, simple lines that are just mesmerizing. and they have an aura inside, different from Armenian churches. i don't know how to describe it, but it was amazing. both churches (Armenian and Georgian) are dimly lit, just candlelight. but Armenian churches have bare rock walls, while Georgian churches are painted. i'm not saying one is better than the other, but Armenian churches feel more ancient, like the ghosts of an old religion, which these Georgian churches feel alive with it. not better, but a stark difference.
thats about all there is to tell. it wasn't enough time, but i'm going to head back up there in a week and a half, after i tie up my loose ends here and i'm ready to go explore. alot of georgians asked "Have you been to Baku (Azerbaijan) yet? and when I told them No, they said "Oh, you've got to! Baku is nicer than Tbilisi!" so now I'm definitely curious. we'll see.
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