[Republic of] Georgia on my mind

[kileskus]

Istanbul - Batumi - Tbilisi - Baku (and some stops in between)



With the recent intriguing political developments in Georgia, and having not been to a CIS country in several years, I thought now would be a good time to visit. I had a few Velocity points to use prior to the upcoming changes so redeemed reward tickets on Qatar to Istanbul and then from Baku on the way back.

Georgia is a country of 3.7 million people. It's located east of Turkey, south of Russia, and west of Azerbaijan. It's known for being one of the first countries to convert to Christianity, having a lot of cholesterol-raising but tasty dishes, and hosting a part of the Caucasus mountains, although the most beautiful part is purportedly in Abhazia, the Russian-backed breakaway region that forms one of today's post-Soviet frozen conflicts.

I had wanted to go to Abhazia but my visa application waa denied. According to a local friend, it was likely because entry is not permitted via the Georgian side, although nominally on the Abhazian MFA website they do recognise it as a crossing.

The weather was bad for many days and this was my first time in seven years holidaying with checked luggage. Also, the older I get the less adventurous I become. Therefore, I planned my activities to maximise sleep, minimise having to drag luggage around, and avoid any hint of rain. (The one time I did venture out into a storm, I experienced an inexplicable loss of friction whilst walking along the beach and had an unplanned and unwelcomingly invigorating bath in the Black Sea. Thankfully I had been carrying only my old phone.)

I hope you find something interesting in this report. Feel free to share thoughts/questions/experiences - I feel that coming in winter and not being a wine drinker my views and experiences would differ from others'.


The Mother of Georgia statue meant to represent the Georgian nation. In the left hand she is holding a wine bowl

 

[kileskus]

Istanbul



'Sailing to Byzantium' is my favourite poem. A reflection on the physical frailty tethered to the inexorable process of ageing, it describes the narrator's journey to Byzantium, the erstwhile seat of Western civilisation and religion, for spiritual reinvigoration. 'Ulysses' by Tennyson runs in a similar vein; that narrator however searching more for intellectual and physical renewal.

I have tattoos inspired by both these poems, with the Hagia Sophia featuring in one of them. So it was with some sadness that, having finally arrived to see Istanbul in person, I wasn't allowed to access the ground floor of the mosque, although of course the views from the upper floor are still stunning and there were some of the exquisite mosaics remaining.



At the Grand Bazaar, my Turkish-speaking friend tried to ask permission from management for us to go onto the rooftops, a desire inspired by James Bond and International (a movie based on the sordid story of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International). We were politely told to leave them in peace, but did see an interesting carpet along the way:


The Istanbul war museum has a daily performance of a mehter band, Ottoman military bands associated with the Janissaries, an elite infantry unit comprising Christians from the Ottoman territories, usually from the Balkans. While the Janissaries were not Turks, most mehter music was composed by Turks and was the inspiration for 'Rondo alla turca' among other pieces of western music experimenting with ideas from the Orient.


The band members even dress up in Ottoman military costumes for the performance.

The city also has several shooting ranges that are open until 11 p.m. and include the opportunity to fire Turkish pistols, so that made for a pleasant evening activity after the museums closed and it was too dark and rainy to walk around outside.

I flew Turkish Airlines to Batumi in western Georgia. Check in and boarding were mildly chaotic (no formal priority boarding for business/*A status holders either). The flight was almost completely full. In economy they provided a cold lunch that I thought more than sufficient for a 90-minute flight:



Batumi was raining, so I headed straight to my hotel and finished off the rakı I got from Turkey. I would recommend the Efe brand - they were the first private company to produce rakı and it is delicious. Despite the similarity in name and method of production, I thought it tasted less like rakija and more like mastica. The rakı ran out but the rain did not, so I made a quick trip to the shops to get some Georgian chacha, which is a grape vodka that tasted slightly like rakija and a lot like hand sanitiser.

 

[SuePa]

I'm following with interest, as I'll be visiting Georgia, along with Azerbaijan and Armenia, in September, on a group tour.

 

[kileskus]

Batumi



The Georgian people used to be divided into two tribes by a mountain range. The western tribe was called the Colchis and the eastern the Iberians. It was to the Kingdom of Colchis that Jason and the Argonauts came in search of the golden fleece. The origin of the myth likely stems from the fact that western Georgia is rich in minerals including gold and archaeological evidence attests to advanced goldsmithing techniques employed by the Colchis when it was an ancient Greek colony.


This statue of Medea holding the golden fleece stands in central Batumi. Georgian culture has a strong focus on family (the concept of the clan seen throughout the Caucasus) so I find it a little ironic that they choose to venerate Medea despite her killing her own brother to elope with Jason.

The Colchis and Iberian kingdoms eventually broke up into smaller groups. Unification of the Georgians started in around 1000 AD but it wasn't until around 1100 under King David the Builder that the process was completed. However, the kingdom would split apart again over the coming centuries due to Mongol and Turkish invasions.

Present-day Batumi is the capital of the Adjara province, a semi-autonomous region mainly populated by the sub-group of Adjarians. It's a resort city so in winter there is mainly construction on the beach and many restaurants and entertainment venues are closed. There wasn't a lot to do and the weather meant that the Kolkheti National Park that I wanted to see in the nearby town of Poti wasn't open.


There are a few nice buildings to look at but it takes about 20 minutes to see the whole of the city centre.

The most iconic food in Georgian cuisine is probably khachapuri, cheese bread. The archetypal khachapuri, and that which you will find served overseas in Georgian restaurants, is the Adjarian style. Batumi is the place to get authentic Adjarian khachapuri:


The 'boat' shape is distinct to Adjara, whereas khachapuri from other parts of Georgia will be round like a pizza or square. The filling is cheese with an egg on top. You eat it by putting a pat of butter on it then mixing the cheese, egg and butter together. Once mixed, you rip off pieces of the bread from the sides and dip it into the centre.

The dish on the right is kharcho, a soup made of beef and rice and seasoned with a distinct Georgian spice mix.

Kuchmachi is another western Georgian traditional dish. It's made of chicken or beef offal with chopped walnuts and pomegranate seeds. It's better than it sounds and is quite warming (I had it after falling into the water while walking along the beach), but is quite heavy as I find most Georgian dishes to be.



I took a bus from Batumi to Sarpi on the Turkish border to have a look at the church there, dedicated to St-Andrew.



He's the same guy of the Scottish flag and is the patron saint of Georgia, Russia and Ukraine for his proselytising work. While he didn't convert Georgians to Christianity, he did a lot of preaching here and first landed on the Black Sea coast before heading to Ukraine and then Russia.


In Georgian Orthodox iconostases, Mary will be on the immediate left of the holy doors (the centre doors) and Jesus on the immediate right. Then, right of Jesus would be the patron saint of that church. So in this iconostasis, the icon on Jesus' right is of St-Andew with his distinct wavy hair.


This is the customs checkpoint building in Sarpi. According to the German architects, its design is meant to represent "coming together" and Georgia's "progressive spirit".

After that it was on the train to eastern Georgia. I bought a first class ticket as it was the last ticket remaining. First class gets you more legroom but isn't very helpful if you end up in the 4-seater rows.


The windows are shaded so I couldn't get any good views of the countryside either. The main entertainment of the trip was the English announcement when we were departing Batumi: "Dear passengers, the train is about to depart. Please leave the train."

 

[kileskus]

Kakheti

Kakheti is the eastern region that borders Azerbaijan. It's the most fertile land in the country ("you can throw a stone into the soil and a tree will grow"), characterised by mild winters and hot summers, a valley with two major rivers running through, framing mountain ranges that form a protective barrier from frosts, and black and brown soils with moderate-high clay content. Georgia has the oldest viticulture in the world with clay wine storage pots (qvevri) dating back to 8,000 years and most of its wine is produced in Kakheti.


Farmland in Kakheti

Wine tours are therefore popular in this region. I consume Khayyam's rubaiyat with pleasure ("There are no riddles wine knows not to read") and can drink any glass of homemade wine that a host will put before me, but I don't know a merlot from a cab sauv. So I went to look at churches instead.

The last settlement before the border with Azerbaijan is called Udabno, which means 'desert'. The government created the town by bringing over Svan people, a sub-ethnicity from the west known for being adept shepherds and fierce warriors, to help keep Azeri shepherds out.


Udabno

At the border is the David Gareji monastery. David was one of 13 Assyrian monks who came over in the 6th C. He initially settled in Tbilisi and was a healer who was frequently petitioned by the locals, so he closed up shop and went with some of his disciples to the remotest area he could think of, a mountain in the desert. They lived in caves that helped protect from the harsh mountain wind.

Over time the monastery grew and it was fairly well protected geographically but still had a watchtower and walls to help fend off attacks. In 1617 the Persians invaded Georgia, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire, and killed up to 100,000 Georgians including 6,000 monks at this monastery.


The cave at the bottom right was his and has been left open. The other caves have had doors added to them and are where the current monks live.

2 hours' drive north brings you to the Bodbe nunnery in the name of Ste-Nino. Nino is an extremely important figure in Georgian history. She was a Roman missionary who came to Georgia in the 4th C to preach Christianity. She camped out near the garden of the then-king Miriam in a bramble bush and stayed there for 9 years trying to gain an audience with the king, and converting some people during that time.


Nino's cross and a symbol seen all over Georgia. The horizontal bars are angled down as she made her cross from a grapevine. She also tied some of her hair to the cross so that might be present in some imagery

King Miriam refused to see her even when she healed the queen from a serious illness. Then when he was on a hunting trip, there was a solar eclipse. He tried praying to the pagan gods to get the sun back but it was only after trying Nino's god that the eclipse ended. Miriam then declared Georgia to be a Christian country, becoming the third country to convert after Armenia and the Byzantine empire.


After converting the king, Nino went off to this place called Bodbe and died quietly. The king built a church around her burial site. After Georgia became part of the Russian Empire, the Russian tsars took a liking to the church and turned it into a nunnery.


The iconostasis, very Russian in its painting style and extravagance.


One of the murals inside depicting the final judgement

Nearby is the town of Sighnaghi, which I wanted to visit to see the mosaic on the town sign.

Spoiler: Click for a diversion on Soviet art and Georgian mosaics

Art in the USSR had to follow the doctrine of socialist realism whereby it had to have depictions and interpretations in line with Marxist-Leninist ideology. The period under Khrushchëv's rule after the death of Stalin was known as 'the Thaw' and saw some relaxation of censorship. Artists were allowed more freedom of expression and national expression in the form of folk motifs began to seep through into visual arts. For example, we see grape ornamentations on Moldovan buildings and storks on Belarusian ones.

Mosaics in particular began in the 1960s and accelerated under Brezhnev's regime. They appeared at bus stops and on public buildings, most often completed by local artists from local ceramist workshops. And, a lot of the time, they had a national flavour. Even, slowly, noncomformist art such as abstraction began to appear; in Stalin's time such art was violently opposed as it was the exact opposite of socialist realism.

Georgian Soviet mosaics are not well preserved, with many having been destroyed when the buildings they were on were sold to private enterprises. Passive if not active societal intent to erase remnants of a traumatic part of history has likely accelerated the decline of Soviet mosaics. It's only been in the past few years that there has been public dialogue on preserving and reclaiming them as works of art, and as national, Georgian art.

So, what excited me about this Sighnaghi sign: an abstract Soviet mosaic welcoming you to a small Georgian town, half erased but still hanging on.

It's also a charming town to look at from its fortress, which was built in the 18th C as a sort of Great Wall to help fend off invasions but was not needed as the Russians annexed Georgia and there were no further attacks.


View of Sighnaghi town from its fortress

Finally, to Telavi the capital of Kakheti for the night.



Dinner was at a popular restaurant known for its khinkali.

On the left is a type of salad called pkhali, made of minced vegetables like eggplant or cabbage with chopped walnuts inside and pomegranate seeds on top. On the right of course is khinkali, large dumplings usually made of pork and/or beef and eaten with friends. The best khinkali comes from the east as they add more broth inside. You're supposed to hold it with your hands, bite off a bit, sip the broth out and continue eating. The stem is left so you can keep track of how many you've had.

 

[RooFlyer]

I really like your trip reports with the history and informative insights. And having visited Georgia and enjoyed it immensely, I can follow the story, and you, around.

 

[craven morehead]

Istanbul - Batumi - Tbilisi - Baku (and some stops in between)

View attachment 427493

With the recent intriguing political developments in Georgia, and having not been to a CIS country in several years, I thought now would be a good time to visit. I had a few Velocity points to use prior to the upcoming changes so redeemed reward tickets on Qatar to Istanbul and then from Baku on the way back.

Georgia is a country of 3.7 million people. It's located east of Turkey, south of Russia, and west of Azerbaijan. It's known for being one of the first countries to convert to Christianity, having a lot of cholesterol-raising but tasty dishes, and hosting a part of the Caucasus mountains, although the most beautiful part is purportedly in Abhazia, the Russian-backed breakaway region that forms one of today's post-Soviet frozen conflicts.

I had wanted to go to Abhazia but my visa application waa denied. According to a local friend, it was likely because entry is not permitted via the Georgian side, although nominally on the Abhazian MFA website they do recognise it as a crossing.

The weather was bad for many days and this was my first time in seven years holidaying with checked luggage. Also, the older I get the less adventurous I become. Therefore, I planned my activities to maximise sleep, minimise having to drag luggage around, and avoid any hint of rain. (The one time I did venture out into a storm, I experienced an inexplicable loss of friction whilst walking along the beach and had an unplanned and unwelcomingly invigorating bath in the Black Sea. Thankfully I had been carrying only my old phone.)

I hope you find something interesting in this report. Feel free to share thoughts/questions/experiences - I feel that coming in winter and not being a wine drinker my views and experiences would differ from others'.

View attachment 427495
The Mother of Georgia statue meant to represent the Georgian nation. In the left hand she is holding a wine bowl

Signing on

 

[kileskus]

Mtskheta

The three consonants at the start make this place hard to pronounce, but it's far from the longest consonant cluster in Georgian. There can be up to eight consonants in a cluster, and when you throw in ejectives (consonants that kind of sound like they have a snare hit after them, listen to the full alphabet here and you'll notice them), it makes Georgian a notoriously difficult language for anglophones to learn. While preparing for this trip I was practising these consonants on my commute, and found that on busy Melburnian trams people leave more space around you if you sound like you're half-beatboxing half-choking.


A view of Mtskheta, enclosed in a triangle by mountains as the hypotenuse and the rivers Aragvi and Kura making up the sides

Mtskheta was the first capital of Georgia and remained so until the 5th C when that honour was passed to Tbilisi. It's a holy city of the Georgian Orthodox Church (meaning no entertainment venues like bars or casinos can be operated there). Three of the religious sites here are collectively on the UNESCO World Heritage list as the Historical Monuments of Mtskheta. I note with amusement that the UNESCO website acknowledges challenges with "preventing inappropriate interventions in the landscape setting of the property". One such inappropriate intervention, presumably, was the building of the police station. Since 2004, police stations are built with glass to represent transparency, but the glass would not be congruent with what UNESCO was trying to preserve. So a compromise was reached - grass growing on the roof of the station.



On a mountain overlooking the town is the Jvari Monastery, built in the 6th C and more or less intact since then with minimal renovations apart from the roof. On this mountain used to be a statue to the pagan gods. After Georgia was converted to Christianity in the 4th C, Ste-Nino (from the previous post) took down that idol and erected a cross. The Jvari monastery was built around this cross.



On the outside walls there is quite a bit of graffiti dated from the 40s and 50s, likely by soldiers who were at the nearby military base. There is also fresh graffiti from recent visitors - I saw some even from the day of my visit.

In Mtskheta proper is the Svetitskhoveli cathedral. The name translates to the Life-giving Pillar. At 84 m high, it was the tallest church in the country until 2004.



The story goes that when Jesus was crucified a Georgian Jew (there is a significant population of Jews here) took his robe and gave it to his sister, who was clutching the robe when she died. She was therefore buried with it. Ste-Nino came in search of that burial place and found a cedar tree had grown over it. She wanted to build a church with that wood and had the tree cut into seven pillars. However the workers couldn't budge the seventh and final pillar at all and it was needed to support the centre of the church. Nino prayed about it and an angel came down and lifted the pillar up, and when he touched it the pillar began to produce myrrh that could heal ailments.



This is the seventh pillar and underneath it is where Jesus's robe is buried


St-Andrew's relics are here too. This model of a foot has a compartment that contains a fragment from one of his foot bones.


The iconostasis

Spoiler: Digression on Russian literature

The Caucasus was a source of inspiration for Russian writers during the 19th C and more specifically the Golden Age of Russian poetry. The Caucasian war from 1800-1864 saw the addition of new territories to the empire that brought with them warmer climates, breathtaking mountains and peoples with martial cultures and atavistic traditions - in short, everything that was missing in St-Petersburg.

Tolstoy, Pushkin, Turgenev, and Lermontov are some of the writers who drew inspiration from the Caucasus. Lermontov, the quarrelsome army officer who would seduce women with his verses and die in a duel at 26, was exiled twice to the Caucasus, much to his pleasure I'd imagine as he adored the mountains and got along rather well with the Circassians and the Georgians. A Hero of Our Time is set in this region, with the opening seeing Pechorin on the Georgian military road from Tbilisi.

While best known for that novel, Lermontov was also a painter and a poet. His poem 'Mtsyri' is about a young monk in what is believed to be the Jvari monastery due to the first stanza:

A few years ago, where
Merging and murmuring,
Embracing, like two sisters
The rivers Aragvi and Kura,
There was a monastery.*

As I mentioned earlier, Mtskheta sits at the confluence of these rivers. Later on in the first verse there appears to be a reference to the Svetitskhoveli cathedral:

Now there's a greying man,
Half-dead guardian of the ruins,
Forgotten by people and death alike,
Who dusts the tombstones
On which are etched
The glory of the past, and about
How such-and-such king, weighed
Down by his crown, in such-and-such year,
Handed over his people to Russia.*

This sounds much like King Erekle II, who ruled until his death in 1798. He was constantly harried by the threat of Persian invasion and sought assistance from the Russian Empire, it being also a Christian state. The Russians sent troops to protect Georgia. When Erekle's son King George XII died in 1800, Russia simply swept in and annexed Georgia, using Erekle's treaty to establish legitimacy of the annexation. Both Erekle and George (the last king of Georgia) are buried in Svetitskhoveli.


Erekle II's tombstone

* My translation. Intended to preserve meaning rather than meter. I make no claim to being a lyric poet.

There is also the Samtavro nunnery. It is on the grounds of what used to be King Miriam's palace, which was completely destroyed.



As I mentioned in my previous post, Ste-Nino spent years camping in a bramble bush in the king's garden:


This is purportedly the original bush. Apparently the Soviets tried to burn it but it would keep coming back.

On the outskirts of Mtskheta is the Shiomgvime Monastery, named after St-Shio who was one of the Assyrian monks along with St-David. He also founded a cave monastery that has since expanded.



The interior of the church (not the original frescoes) looks like an art museum.


Four churches is enough for one day for me. It was back on the road and a quick stop to grab some bread and coffee. There is a traditional bread called shoti that is made in a clay oven called a tone. The bread is stuck to the sides of the oven and peeled off with tongs when cooked.




The next destination was the mountains.

 

[OZDUCK]

I would think that this is probably the first TR to include the translation of a Russian poem into English by the TR's author - well done. And the photos are fantastic.

 

[kileskus]

Stepantsminda

The main ski resort near Tbilisi is Gudauri, about a 3 hour drive away along the Georgian Military Road. This is a road built after Russia annexed Georgia in the 1800s and is based off trading routes that had been used for thousands of years. It connects Tbilisi to Vladikavkaz (capital of the Republic of North Ossetia in Russia).


The road leaving Tbilisi

It was vital in the economic development of the Caucasus during the empire and continues to be important for trade especially for Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, Uzbekistan etc. Armenia is heavily reliant on it as they have no seaport and Russia is their largest trading partner.

It's outdated now though, with tunnels that weren't made for modern trucks and can only handle one-way traffic when trucks are involved, holding up a lot of vehicles and potentially leading to crashes. The tunnels are not illuminated so it's hard to see if you're going against the direction of traffic at that moment in time. There are a lot of winding sections of the road as well. All of this to say, you should be a confident driver or hire a local driver.



It was particularly slow that day because the road had been closed the previous few days because of a little avalanche and now there were a lot of desperate Armenian truckies.


The Zhinvali reservoir. There used to be a town in this valley but the Soviets moved everyone out and flooded the area. Now the dam powers half of Tbilisi





A one-day pass at Gudauri costs 70 GEL (~40 AUD) and there are a couple of companies around offering equipment rentals for around the same price. There was no wait for the lift the day I went - it gets busy mainly in Feb. The day was so warm and sunny that the snow was crusty so I only skied for a few hours. Saw a few people going backcountry who'd found some fresher powder but I'm not a confident enough skiier for backcountry especially when there'd been an avalanche recently.


Nearby town of Sioni

We were going to stay in Stepantsminda for the night, a town with an elevation of 1,740 m used as an acclimitisation base for climbing Mt-Kazbek. Kazbek is the second highest mountain in the Caucasus.

I hired a FWD to go up to the Holy Trinity church, which is a further 400 m up from Stepantsminda.




It was built in the 14th C and its elevation meant it was pretty well protected, so during invasions icons from other churches would be stored here for protection.

The iconostasis is different to the other churches I've seen here. The local icons are on the holy door instead of flanking it. The deesis row (the row above the local icons on a traditional Orthodox iconostasis) are frescoes here and are contemporary. On the left we see a red-headed Jesus and while this camera angle doesn't capture it, there's the Virgin Mary to his right, you can see her hand, and John the Baptist on the left. The forefather row (at the top) was done much later and is Russian-style I think.


Mt-Kazbek seen from the Holy Trinity Church. You can just see that there's a pinkish hue to it - that's from the pink granite it's made of. This was taken at sunset so unfortunately doesn't quite capture the redness. It makes Kazbek easily recognisable.


And this is the sun setting, again seen from the church

On the way down there was a car ahead of us who got stuck in the snow and we had to tow them out. Then our FWD got stuck as well and the priest had tow us out.


Early evening in Stepantsminda


Dinner. In the centre is chakhokhbili, a chicken stew (I remember eating this almost daily in St-Petersburg's stolovye canteens many years ago), in the left borsch and the round kind of khachapuri. And on the right of course homemade wine.


Morning in Stepantsminda, with Mt-Kazbek (the pink one) overlooking the town. In the centre you can just make out the Holy Trinity Church sitting on top of its mountain.

 

[kileskus]

Northern Armenia

I had some good shisha last night in a Tajik bar in the Armenian quarter of Tbilisi (39 GEL for a bowl, it's not Athens or Istanbul but it's decent). I find negronis complement shisha well.


Nice to find a place that uses natural coal

The bowl lasted two hours and after more negronis than necessary I booked a group tour to Armenia on Viator, a site I've only used for wild alien countries like New Zealand before. Since I did the tour today and I want to rant, I'll jump ahead of my other planned posts on Georgia.

There were four of us on the tour and a driver and guide. We drove from Tbilisi to the Sadakhlo-Bagrateshen crossing point. Sadakhlo is a mainly Azeri-populated village and you see Azerbaijani Cyrillic on shopfronts and billboards.


Georgian passport stamps. I find them interesting as I haven't seen many stamps with the country's flag and outline on them

Australians have visa free entry to Armenia, Canadians don't. Armenian border guard asked if I'd been to Azerbaijan, requested my other passport, scrutinised both, scanned them several times, looked at me several times, and then started examining the security features of each (angling the pages, rubbing the thermochromic ink). Then went to talk to his boss. Maybe he was stunned by my glow up from my teenage passport photos and wanted to be assured of its authenticity. Came back and after two more flipthroughs finally let me go.

Most people in the country belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church. While this is referred to as Oriental Orthodoxy, from what I understand there is a fundamental difference in beliefs from Eastern Orthodoxy (e.g. Georgian, Serbian, Russian). Armenians don't think Jesus had a human nature. Their beliefs and practices seem more Catholic to me, but happy to be corrected. Eastern Orthodox Christians can't take communion at Armenian churches, which is usually a sign of fundamental theological divide. (I say usually because in 2019 Moscow broke communion with the Constantinople patriarchate because of the latter's granting of autocephaly to the Ukrainian church. That was political.)

First destination was the Akhtala Monastery, built in the 10th C and largely intact since then.



It was initially a Georgian church since back then this land was part of Georgia, so the art inside is Eastern Orthodox style.


One of the walls with multiple icons of saints. Their faces were scrubbed out by Arab invaders as in Islam you can't have faces in a mosque due to the suggestion of idolatry. From my understanding this is why the icons in the Hagia Sophia currently are veiled.


The altar. Instead of an iconostasis there are curtains, and the Bible rests open on a stand in front. The original Georgian iconostasis has been dismantled and lies in different areas of the church.


Parts of the original iconostasis propped up against a pillar holding an Armenian-style icon of St-Bartholomew. He and St-Thaddeus were the original evangelisers who came to convert Armenia and both were executed there.


An Armenian-style icon depicting, I believe but am not 100% sure, the invention of the Armenian script by Mesrop Mashtots, on the right, in AD 405. On the left is probably Patriarch Isaac, head of the church at that time, who supported his efforts. As commonly seen in many languages, the development of an alphabet to translate religious texts is like a Cambrian Explosion for the development of that language. (For a loose English analogue, see this article on Tyndale's Bible.)


An Armenian cross. It looks kind of like an anchor because of the flowery bits coming out the bottom. Another distinguishing characteristic is the embellished tips of the arms.

After 30 mins it was back on the road again. The mountains in northern Armenia form part of the lesser Caucasus. Still part of the Alpide Belt system (the belt of mountains from the Alps to the Himalayas) but unlike most of the mountains in the system Armenian ones are often dormant volcanoes.

I think that's why they look different to Georgian mountains which are fold mountains.

Next up was the Haghpat Monastery. The suffix -pat means 'wall' and it is in a lot of Armenian place names. I'd imagine maybe analogous to -pils in Latvian, it describes places that were fortified against attack like churches or forts that grew into towns.


As with Akhtala, it was built in the 10th C with minimal restorations since. It combines Armenian folk architecture with Byzantine and Roman influences.


The gavit, a lobby-like area between the doors and the entry to the church proper that containts tombs. Bodies can't be buried in the church itself.


The altar of the main church. There are four smaller churches attached to the main one. It's a pretty big complex.

We had a break for lunch after this. It was included in the tour price and was at a local guesthouse.



Home made cheese and dolma, which apparently originated in Armenia. It's eaten with a yoghurt sauce that's like tzatziki but without cucumber.

 

[kileskus]

Northern Armenia (cont.)

Was bumping up against photo limit in last post

Our last destination was Sanahin. Along the way we passed a copper mine from the Soviet times.


The cable car used to transport workers to the mines on the mountaintop has just been hanging mid-track for decades.

In this region the Soviet apartment blocks (khrushchëvkas) are made of a rock called tuff which is volcanic and found locally. It has a pinkish colour to it so the apartments look pink. Now, the windows of the van were tinted which I didn't realise on the tour, so the photos are coloured. You'll have to take my word for it that these buildings are pink in real life unlike the usual Soviet white.


Sanahin is the town where the Mikoyan brothers were born. Artyom was the one who lent his name to the MiG corporation (Mikoyan and Gurevich).



A preserved MiG-21 outside the Mikoyan brothers museum, delta wing and snazzy wheels on display.

The museum is not part of the tour. I had thought of skipping the Sanahin church to visit the museum, but since it's a Monday and museums here are usually closed on Mondays, I didn't exchange any money at the border figuring I wouldn't need it. When we went to see the MiG though, we came across the museum director who said the museum was open but they only accepted cash. Given the 30 mins we had in Sanahin I didn't have time to go exchange.

So missed out on the museum but had a chat with the director. Her name is Aykui and she's been director for 41 of its 43 years of existence. Her mother is from the Mikoyan family and they've all hung around this town since the original Mikoyans came over from Nagorno-Karabakh. She often has Georgian tour groups who come to see the MiG but don't visit the museum. Usually it's the Chinese and Vietnamese members of tour groups who want to go inside (maybe because the Vietnamese army used MiGs a lot?).

Artyom Mikoyan is buried in Novodivichiy cemetery in Moscow, where Tupolev and Sukhoi are also buried. His brother Anastas is buried there too and is equally interesting. While he served briefly as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, he's best known, in order, for 1) introducing hamburgers, ice cream and canned food to the Soviet Union as the commissar of food industry; 2) coolling the Cuban Missile Crisis through his personal connection with Castro, which although he wasn't foreign minister for anything was testament to his ability to cultivate foreign contacts; and 3) his surviving of the execution of the Baku commissars (the Baku 26 as they are called, members of the Bolshevik Baku commune shot by the Menshevik-British Transcaucasia government after the fall of Baku in 1918. Although Mikoyan was a leading figure in the commune, he was spared for reasons unknown. He adopted the children of the commune's leader who was executed).


The Sanahin Monastery, also from the 10th C and in more traditional Armenian architechtural style


The altar. As you can see it's quite bare bones as is the whole church. Part of this was pragmatic - the architect figured that in an invasion the faces of any icons would be erased so he put inscriptions on the walls instead of icons to convey Biblical stories.


An example of the inscriptions in Classic Armenian

After this, we headed back to Tbilisi. At the border the Armenian officer asked again to see both passports and again inspected all the stamps. The Georgian officer, despite my pleading, declined to stamp my Canadian passport. He said he had to stamp the Australian since the Armenian exit stamp was on the Australian. I have not come across such an excuse before and don't see the relevance given my initial Georgian stamps are on the Can passport and my Turkish stamps are on the Aus. I take care with separating my passports as I would need them to travel to countries that don't like other countries (e.g. US and Middle East, Ukraine and Russia). Since I've already applied for an Azerbaijani visa on the Canadian, this means AZ will know of my visit to Armenia. Which then means I have technically lied on my visa application and might need to redo (emergency fee 50 USD given my flight is in the next 3 days). This might also have consequences for my future plans to visit Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenia was disappointed by Russia's lack of support in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. If anything Russia was helping Azerbaijan. So Armenia relied more on France for military and moral support. France is the third largest host of the Armenian diaspora and the first European country to recognise the genocide, and the two countries have had close ties for decades. Because of this, Azerbaijan stirred up trouble in New Caledonia to get back at France. I remember seeing the photos from the protests last year and one had an Azerbaijan flag. Some 1800s colonial proxy war vibes going on... I would like to visit New Caledonia though.

So. In summary the tour was good. I liked seeing Armenian churches and was surprised at some of the differences. But it was a rash decision to go and the passport issues have me worried about future travel plans and the slight possibility that I will be denied entry to Azerbaijan now that a) I've been to Armenia, and b) I've technically lied on my visa application about entry to Armenia. Neither on their own is criterion for refusal. But I really need to go back to work so I worry nonetheless.


This is what I'm having tonight, all from duty free from the border crossing today. Some Armenian brandy (Ararat is the best brand) and Georgian wine. To help with the anxiety of not making it back for work on time, and to help me read the news articles on yesterday's Belarusian elections. Lukashenko won. Surprise surprise

 

[kileskus]

Ananuri and Pankisi Valley

Heading back from Stepantsminda, we stopped by the 14th C Ananuri fortress and church complex.



It sits on a hill overlooking the Aragvi river (the same one that goes down to Mtskheta) and was used between rival tribes. There are secret tunnels underneath the fortress leading to the river to get water to survive sieges. The fortress name comes from a local woman called Ana who was tortured by a rival clan to reveal the location of the passage but she opted to die instead of disclose it.


In winter the riverside looks a bit desolate, but in summer a lot of people like to go rafting here. There are a lot of tour operators offering "halal rafting" in this region since there has been an increase in Muslim tourists coming here. I find the term kind of funny, as though to suggest when non-Muslims go rafting we bring a BBQ with us or something. Maybe it would help counterbalance the raft in certain situations?


Tsar Nicholas II liked this spot so much he had a little road bridge built just for him, his family and his new car. It still stands, though currently half-covered by snow


Closer pic of the complex. There are two churches and in between a little Ingush watchtower. There are towers like these for millenia over the Caucasus, mostly associated with Ingushetia. The Svaneti people of northwestern Georgia have similar towers but with three windows instead of one on the sides. How this Ingush tower ended up in the Ananuri fort I don't know - the Ingush/Chechens had in the past made incursions into Georgian territory so maybe they captured and held this fort at some point. Or maybe their watchtower design was simply borrowed.


There are a lot of interesting old murals inside the main church, like this one of judgement day.

The next destination was the Pankisi Valley. This is a place most Georgians haven't been to because it's mainly populated by Kists, the Georgian name for Chechens. As I mentioned above throughout history the North Caucasus peoples like the Ingush and Chechens had raided Georgia but few settled here. During the decades-long Caucasian War of the 1800s when Russia set about conquering the Caucasus, refugees from the then-independent Chechnya moved to Georgia to escape the fighting. That was the first wave of immigration. The second wave happened during the Chechen wars in the 1990s. They all settled in this valley and didn't mix much with the Georgians so since the first wave most of the inhabitants in the valley are pure ethnic Chechens, though they've added Georgian suffixes to their surnames.


View of the Pankisi Valley with two of the five villages visible


A typical looking house in the villages. Traditional Chechen houses are built from stone, wood or straw, with large windows either side of the door and a flat or gently inclined roof. The Kists here often go to Chechnya, usually once a year, to re-immerse in their culture and bring that back to their valley and try to re-create it. Architecture is one aspect that's seen in.


One of their two mosques. I was not allowed in. The speakers are kind of poor quality and you can hear them buzzing during call to prayer.


The Georgian Orthodox church in the valley serves 2% of the population but is a lot bigger and in better condition.

In summer tourists come for horse riding. The Chechens were traditionally good horsemen so I guess they brought that culture over. Since I couldn't do that I opted for a guided tour instead by a local who turned out to be a 16-year-old (English proficiency appears to be poor among the middle-aged and older residents). Her name was Linda and while she knew a lot about Chechen culture she wasn't super well versed in history so some of my questions couldn't be answered. She was excited to be going on an exchange program to the US next month.

Since the Kists are Muslim they make a kind of non-alcoholic beer called Kisturi made from rosehip and hawthorn. I visited their distillery, which was initially funded by the US but is now self-reliant.

On the top right shelf you can see bottles with special labels, two with the Chechen flag and one that says slava Ukraini.


The vats of the ingredients. The closest vat contains rosehips. The ingredients are dried here for seven days and then fermented for another seven, the process being halted before alcohol can form.


It makes a decent head when poured (this photo was taken a while after) and has a slight taste of hops, with a sweet but not too sweet hint of berries. It's kind of like an amber ale. We drank it with sliced churchkhela seen in the pic. It's a candy made from walnuts covered in a grape juice and flour mixture that's made into a kind of hardened jelly. It's usually sold in sausage-like strings.

Over the drink the owner told us about the journey the distillery has had from being a US-funded startup to now seeing its products on shelves in Tbilisi and Chechnya. He's looking into expanding into other ventures. He also said he hates the Russians for what they did to Chechnya and would never go back (unlike the Kists that go to Chechnya regularly). He didn't say but I would assume he was from the the 90s immigration wave, probably came to Georgia as a child.

Accommodation was at a guest house and the host made dinner.

On the left is Georgian khinkali, to the back Chechen manty with a carrot stir-fry like topping, and in the centre one of the key Chechen national dishes zhizhig-galnash. It's pasta with beef and eaten with a garlic sauce, in the two smaller bowls, that's made of mashed potato, onion and a lot of garlic. It tastes better than it sounds!

If I were to come back to Georgia again I would try to go horse riding in Pankisi in the summer and study the locals more. I think it's a good tourist destination if you're interested in culture or want to experience Chechnya without going to Russia.

I found it interesting that my guide was going to the US on a grant, that a major local business was foreign funded, and that the local primary school is funded by the EU. I appreciate this foreign aid has done a lot for the local community, and I also think it's a stellar piece of soft diplomacy. After all, this is a group of 5,000 people who are ethnically and culturally indistinguishable from Chechens in Russia, who visit Chechnya regularly, and all of whom have reason to resent Russia. The local school, of note, does not teach Chechen. Nor is there any signage in Cyrillic or Arabic - everything written is in Georgian even though the people speak Chechen as their first language. This is consistent with much of the global Chechen diaspora that has below-average literacy rates due to the rather convoluted history of their alphabet and their lack of a notable literary tradition. But it does make me wonder about the eventual assimilation of this population.

On the road back to Tbilisi, in a town not too far from the capital, I saw this statue and had to do a double take:

Most have been removed around the country, with only a few remaining in random small towns and in his hometown of Gori, which was my next destination.

 

[kileskus]

On politics


The national parliament building, with a scrubbed out hammer-and-sickle and constant police presence. To the left is a memorial to the victims of the April 9, 1989 demonstration during which the Soviet army attacked protestors, killing 21.

I was hoping to catch a protest or two here. There were some major protests in Tbilisi before I arrived and in Batumi after I left. There is also a blog with planned protest times but I found they published the times too close to the actual rally, or they didn't publish the big demonstrations until partway through or after they'd finished. So, really you should be an active participant or know people who are to be.

Unlike at the start when demonstrations were at Parliament, in the past month it appears they've moved to other buildings like town hall, broadcasting corporations and government offices not on Rustaveli Ave (the main street). The ones listed on the blog that I caught were smaller rallies consisting of a handful of people wrapped in large Georgian, EU and American flags in front of a parliament building that was constantly patrolled by police. Later in the evening some demonstrators would block traffic on the street.



The street vendors have also caught on - on top of pomegranate juice, popcorn, winter hats and children's toys they've begun selling handheld Georgian and EU flags.

SInce the initial demonstrations, 'ACAB' has been spray painted all along Rustaveli Ave but most of it and other protest graffiti has subsequently been sprayed over.

The Georgians I've spoken to throughout my time here have been a mixed bag. Some have been ambivalent, others Russian-leaning, others proud Georgian in a Soviet sense (i.e. proud of Stalin for his role in ending WWII), but most proud Georgians in the belief that their people have left an indelible mark on the development of humanity and belong at the table as equals with the European countries. The Georgian people are older than some European nations, are older than the Russian state. In that sense, the newly elected government's decision to step back from EU ascension is a bitter pill to swallow.



In Gori, Stalin's hometown, there's a statue to him and museum about him in Stalin Park. There are some here who are proud of him for becoming a Georgian who made it on the world stage. Stalin is a Russian name; his real name was Iosef Dzhugashvili.


The house he was born in

He wrote and published poetry, in Georgian, in his early years, before he became wrapped up in his revolutionary work. He became leader of one of the most powerful countries in the world. He was an effective military commander himself during the Civil War and helped defeat naz_ Germany in WWII. He ensured his own son would be sent to the front line and didn't offer him special treatment - all of the Red Army soldiers were his "sons". Yakov Dzhugashvili died a POW in Germany. So, in a sense, if your family happened to be in the small minority that was not directly affected by repressions, or if your sense of patriotism was a little discalibrated, you could be proud of the strong, fair, Georgian leader Stalin supposedly was.


The Stalin museum in Gori has seen few revisions since it opened in 1957. The carpets are from that era and the captions of the displays are predominantly Georgian and Russian with English sporadically added as an afterthought. There is a small showcase with photos of Georgian intellectuals who were shot during his reign. There are a few quotes from Lenin questioning the suitability of Stalin's character to being leader of the USSR. There's a separate room from the main exhibit that has some stories about people affected by the repressions and photos of the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. But overall, the museum seems at times almost a shrine; his intellect, literary works, achievements, strength of character are highlighted, and laudatory quotes from western leaders are included. These are not translated into English and I suspect many Americans and British don't know about these quotes.


Roosevelt: This is a man who combines unshakeable determination with extensive good-naturedness.
Churchill: It is Russia's happiness to have had a genius and steadfast leader as Stalin during these difficult years. He was an outstanding, imposing figure of our time...
De Gaul: Great Russia and you personally have merited the appreciation of all of Europe, which can only live and thrive free.

But to view this in context, Europe and the US needed Stalin on their side because they'd just defeated a bigger enemy. They had little reason, politically speaking, to not sing him praises. Did they know, speaking in the 40s and 50s, what was happening in the USSR?

By the same token, while the criticism of the museum for being pro-Stalin is fair, I also think the museum needs to be viewed for what it is: a time capsule preserving a 1950s point of view.


His desk lamp, a contemporary donation from Marshal Zhukov


Mikoyan, Stalin, and Ordzhonikidze in 1926. The museum has a relatively neutral stance on Ordzhonikidze, a native Georgian who played a major role in the Soviet takeover of his country and in the initial purges of intellectuals (he would later soften his stance, come into conflict with Stalin, and commit suicide).

Khruschëv denounced Stalin's cult of personality after the latter's death, but think that in 1950s Georgia, when the full scale of horrors was yet to be revealed, and they were still drunk on the victory of 1945, and their Georgian boy had recently passed - they likely did think quite positively of him. Then Khruschëv began to embarrass himself on the international stage and was replaced by a Brezhnev whose time in office is unkindly remembered as 'the Stagnation'. There were no strong leaders after Stalin until Gorbachyov.



I think this museum is important in preserving a part of the mindset of the past, and in preserving the personal history of Stalin. He was a monster more than a human, but he still had passions, feelings, family, all of which are on display. The statues need to be taken down though, and the Gori town council needs to sit down and seriously think about unpegging its identity from its most infamous inhabitant. (Gori is the capital of the Shida Kartli province. The current autonomous republic of South Ossetia, which broke away from Georgia with Russian support in 2008, is on territory previously part of Shida Kartli.)

The National Museum in Tbilisi has a good exhibition on Soviet repressions but has room to expand; I saw elements reminiscent of the now-suspended Gulag Museum in Moscow, and if they could re-create something similar it would go a long way in educating locals and visitors.

 

[RooFlyer]

When I visited the ‘Stalin museum’ I was given a sort of private tour by one of the curators or volunteers who spoke English and it was an unambiguous, unapologetic pro Stalin fan club show!

But this is quite common across the central Asian countries, isn’t it? In Samarkand, our guide heaped the praises of Timur, not withstanding I think the count was that he killed 5% of the then world’s population. Similarly, some of his fellow warriors in adjacent ‘Stans’.

 

[kileskus]

I didn't do a tour but there was an English one happening when I visited and from overhearing the guide, his presentation was quite balanced. He even said the museum was old and had a lot of stuff from the 50s that hasn't been touched.

I was speaking with one of the staff members who based on appearance and lack of accent I would guess was Russian rather than Georgian.

It'd probably be quite common in a lot of small countries that produced great leaders and had past glory days. I haven't been to Central Asia but everywhere in Uzbekistan and especially Samarkand would understandably be proud of Timur. They flourished under his reign and the 5% were, well, mostly foreigners. Temporal distance also helps. For now while the trend is towards a critical view of the USSR in the CIS countries, I wonder if similarly, a few centuries from now when anyone personally affected has died out, they'll go back to remembering those leaders fondly.

 

[Disco]

Very interesting TR and enjoying the photos and detailed explanation of historical sites, poetry, literature and political aspect.

 

[kileskus]

On antimicrobial stewardship and morning tipples

I was sick for a couple of days so my well-meaning local friend went to a pharmac_, presumably relayed my symptoms and came back with some chloramphenicol. For the degree of my symptoms and the potential causative pathogens, chloramphenicol was kind of like hammering a nail into a wall by running a car into the nail.

They don't give you medications in a box. They take out the aluminium sheets from the boxes and give you a sheet, without the box or any written instructions. The pharmacist gives you verbal instructions. There's no discussion of contraindications.

At home I'm used to giving patients detailed medication information, and to having the infectious diseases department hound advise us on antimicrobial stewardship - the judicious use of medications in light of a worsening global situation with antimicrobial resistance. I've also not prescribed oral chloramphenicol before, and hesitate to prescribe even the topical kind because of the rare but potentially life-threatening complication of aplastic anaemia (where your bone marrow can no longer produce red blood cells, white blood cells, or platelets).

After three doses I was fixed and on the road again, and haven't noticed any signs of low platelets yet. But I feel guilty about my contribution to antimicrobial resistance. And I plan to write a letter to whichever body governs therapeutic agents about my concerns regarding the risks of allowing medications with potentially serious side effects to be sold without prescription. I probably don't have the right to waltz in on my medically-advanced-country high horse and lecture them without knowing the state of their medical system, accessibility of health care, and local antibiotics guidelines, but I am a little concerned.

---
My accommodation in Tbilisi was in the historic district of Sololaki, not far from the main Rustaveli Ave. It was 60 AUD per night for a pretty big room and included breakfast.


I had thought about the Hilton Garden Inns (at ~140 AUD per night incl taxes) but they're both too far from the city centre and from the rail and bus stations.

The manager/owner was a very personable gentleman from Baku who personally saw to it that the breakfast beverage options looked like this:

Juice to the left, chacha (Georgian grape vodka) in the dispenser, and sparkling wine on the right. The chacha was infused with cinammon because he thought the smell of chacha was too strong. It was delicious. He would pour shots or flutes for us and toast our health and happiness.

Well, after that and the antibiotics I haven't had any more health issues on my trip.

He explained to me how chacha is made: at vineyards after grapes are crushed to make wine, the leftover must is fermented. After distillation, it's bottled and released, as opposed to brandy for instance which is made of the same ingredients but aged first. That he says is why it's got a high alcohol content.


A chacha still. From the Tbilisi Wine Museum

In the evenings, my favourite bar was 41 Degrees, a basement bar named after a 1918 avant-garde art group that makes coughtails that are similar to classics but with Georgian ingredients. The prices were on the higher side though, as you can find coughtails and mixed drinks in the city for under $10.


The Rustaveli, a Manhattan made with chacha. It is named after Tbilisi's main street, which in turn is named after the national poet Shota Rustaveli.