Lack of Posts, Twitter, 10 khinkali in 10 minutes!

I’ve noticed I’ve been posting a lot less lately. I think there are a few reasons. First of all, I’ve been pretty busy at work, compiling and summarizing documents. It is now basically done, and it feels pretty rewarding. Other reasons probably include laziness, and the fact that I’ve gotten a book that I’ve started writing in.

Also, I’ve started using twitter, and have been updating that more often than my blog, just a few words as updates. Optimally, I’d like to expand upon on these in blog entries, cause some of them are pretty interesting.

A lot of stuff has been happening recently, and I have stuff I want to write about from more than 2 months ago, so I’m going to get this stuff out before more recent stuff erases it from my memory.

I’ll start with today. I went to work early-ish, partly because I’ve been sick and have been going to bed at times that are usually ridiculously early for me. So I get in and finish up that thing I’ve been working on, our staff meeting gets canceled, and so I head off to meet Stefano to do some Georgian homework before our lesson.

Lesson goes ok, we’re both a little sick and drink some cold powder in hot water during our lesson. Tim popped in and mentioned that neither of us have updated our blogs in a long time.

Afterwards, Stefo heads home, I go back to the office, check some stuff and realize my internet isn’t working and that I’m still sick, so I decide to head home too. I cross the street and wait for a bus. Busses home almost never come, but today I hardly had to wait for a 33 which I take to work often, so I presume it goes hack home too.

So, I sit on the bus for a while. After half an hour, I sortof lose track of where in the city we are, and after another half hour I realize we’ve gone past metro stops I’ve never even heard of. Sitting on the bus was nice, I was listening to jazz on Georgian radio (my new cellphone has a radio tuner), and I was getting nice and warm in my coat, but an hour was enough. I got off and walked about 10 minutes back to the last metro station we past. It was the second last station to the end of the line, almost in Gldani, this neighbourhood that I’ve only heard of in the context of a punch line of a joke making something that is incredibly far away from anything.

Boy, it looked pretty rough out there. Living in the center of the city, I’ve forgotten that pretty much every city I’ve been in gets pretty raggedy around the edges, and Tbilisi sure does. I suppose I’ve noticed it before, but it can be a little charming, with patchwork concrete buildings as each apartment does makeshift renovations. I guess I was just feeling a little down, and it looked pretty dismal.

While walking to the metro, I decided I was going to get something to eat, so I made some plans. When I got out of the metro near my house, I saw a 33 bus going by and wondered if it was the same one I had gotten off of 15 minutes before. I headed to one of the better khinkali restaurants in the city (some of my Georgian friends claim it sells the best).

I sat down and ordered 10 khinkali and a beer. Oh, yeah, khinkali, they are these dumplings, probably originally from Mongolia, they exist in some form or another all the way from Mongolia to here at least. They are the size of a small fist, with the dough coming together at the top like a nipple, filled with meat and essentially broth. You cover them with pepper and then grab the nipple and take a bit, sucking out most of the juice. 2 might be a small snack, I typically eat 6 for a meal, my record has been 13 of them at once, so 10 is a fair amount for me.

They came and I just ate 10 of them in 10 minutes, along with 2 beers. I kind of waddled home, feeling very proud of myself.

P.S. my twitter is http://twitter.com/sweenalicious

Orthodox Christmas Eve

Well, my last posts have been so upbeat, I really feel I should report on the dark side of Tbilisi. However, I have not yet encountered this dark side too much, maybe next time I’ll have some grim news or be depressed.

At the moment I am cat-sitting in Saburtalo (a neighbourhood of Tbilisi – it can be a bit rough, but I am in a posher part, near Hotel Adjara), but last night I went back to the apartment where I normally live to clean up a bit (from Christmas even!) for a dinner we had tonight with my roommate. We invited this wonderful lady Tsira who runs a guest house here. Both my roommate and I have stayed with her at one point. He was kicked out for some kind of hanky-panky, but Tsira doesn’t hold any ill feelings. I stayed with her just after I arrived here. She owns (with her husband Boris – who does hold ill feelings apparently) a house with a full courtyard and a number of bedrooms surrounding this yard. The courtyard is one of the most amazing places I’ve been, filled with plants and Boris’s ceramic art. Apparently I was the first American to stay with her. During Soviet times, the house was made communal, and families were given different bedrooms, and only recently did ownership revert to Boris and Tsira.

Anyways, we promised to invite her over to our place, along with some people I met who stay with her, and finally we got around to it. I got home about 2 hours before they were supposed to come and started peeling potatoes and cleaning. Somehow I managed to cook up kasha with chicken, some soup, and latkes (драйники in Russian), all without tasting it as I went along. I was so afraid that something would turn out wrong but everything went quite well. By the end I was so hungry that I would be satisfied with almost anything edible. I guess my cooking was on auto-pilot, but I’m still amazed that everything turned out pretty well.

I invited Tsira as well as Volf and his wife. Volf stays with Tsira, and was there when I lived there. He is German, and his wife, Mari is Georgian. He is in Georgia teaching German at a public school, while Mari is in Germany studying. It is great that they are back and together, and it was really great to have them together with Tsira at my place. When I was staying with Tsira and first met them, I just spoke Russian with them, that is just what we spoke there. Since then, it has been really interesting, seeing how we switch between common languages depending on the circumstances, even mid conversation depending on personal whims.

Luckily everyone turned up half an hour late for the dinner, so most of the stuff was prepared, I only had to fry up the latkes. It was a scene reminiscent of our Christmas brunch with our guest drinking in the living room and me standing over the stove frying up potato pancakes, swearing loudly at the inevitable cuts from grating potatoes and the oil burns from flipping the latkes. It is a little silly, just as my thumb regrew skin, and the burns on my other hand went away, I get the same injuries again. However, they are completely worth it – even just the few latkes I will eat are worth the whole process.

The dinner was amazing, such a nice meal, really Russian and Eastern European food (that is what I can cook I guess), along with s bit of Georgian touches, like some nice cheese, some wine from the corner store, and some pastries from the shop down the street. Shaman even showed up. I know I’ve mentioned him before and haven’t really told much about him, but I’ll give a fuller story later. That guy shows up every Sunday like clockwork, and will also come to every party we have even if we don’t invite him. Somehow, he just knows when there will be food and company.

The dinner ended with mint tea with honey (with a splash of cognac in it), and after Tsira left. Ian (my roommate), decided to get out a bottle of vodka, too ashamed to drink in front of her after the kerfuffle that led to him being evicted. Then most of us headed to this bar which I’ve been to a few times, enough to know the owners, and even though it has changed its name, we still call it Traffic. It used to be under renovation, but people would still go, buying drinks from the nearby grocery store. Even after it opened its doors as a real bar, people would come with non-sanctioned booze. It attracts mostly young expats, and the foreign community being small and tight enough, we all know one another.

I made a mistake a few nights ago, offering some of my non-bar purchased Ukrainian pepper vodka to one of the owners. He got a bit angry – “You are cool, but that is not cool – this is a bar, you can’t do that here. You are a guy like me, I would sneak alcohol into bars, just don’t show it.” It really cast a shadow on my evening – I was a bit stupid in doing that (I had been drinking a little), but I managed to avoid bad feeling (as Shaman would say).

A few days later (early in the evening when there weren’t any customers) I brought a bottle of cognac infused with chipotle peppers as a present for the owners, who are adventurous barmen. We each had a sip, fire running down our throats, and they approved. When I went back tonight, which is Orthodox Christmas Eve, Mark (one of the owners), mixed up a cocktail consisting of the chipotle cognac, some coke, a bit of tonic, and a slice of lemon. It was delicious and had a bit of a bite after you swallowed it. I forget the name of the cocktail that the barman made up, but it involved my name and then some SAT word. It was pretty good. I also gave them the idea of making cayenne salt for putting on the rims of drink glasses.

I gave my friend Aleko a call. He’s half British, half Georgian, very Orthodox apparently. Every time I call him, I start speaking in Georgian to see how long it takes him to realize its me, and to see how long I can hold up a conversation in Georgian. This time he was in Church, and not really in the mood for going to a bar.

Tano, a DJ and a good friend was there. He is now the bar’s Saturday DJ, and always a good guy to talk to. Apparently he has one of the largest collections of vinyl in Georgia. He came over to where we were and greeted the friends I brought, hugging Volf, who he had met before. We had some drinks and danced a bit, and I feel that’s about where the story wraps up, especially because I’m getting a little tired and I should get to bed. My right thumb has a pretty deep cut but, but I think it will be ok in the morning, and my left hand has a few big burns on it which I’m sure will be fine tomorrow as well.

I probably don’t have to go to work tomorrow seeing as how it is Christmas, so I’ll be able to sleep in. I still plan on tomorrow being productive – I’m working on creating an annotated bibliography of documents on IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) which is quite interesting, and I’ll do some Georgian language work. We’ve gotten to verbs, and it is one of the most interesting patterns I’ve ever seen. Taking Georgian really is reigniting my love of language and linguistics, I just hope that I’ll be able to get a critical mass of vocabulary and grammar so I’ll be able to use it and learn from conversations with people.

The quickest way to my heart might just be Georgian food through my stomach

So, I’ve mentioned before the random feeling I get that I really love this place (or possibly just this world). I also get another similar feeling just as strong which I’ve noticed pops up from time to time. The fully formed thought comes into my head that I live really well, that my life is excellent judged by my standards, and compared to the lives of most other people on this world. This is a pretty humbling feeling, and I am incredibly grateful for what I have.

I’ve noticed a pattern with this particular feeling. Whenever I go out to a restaurant for food here I feel it. I sit down and eat at some place here and inevitably this feeling of complete satisfaction will come over me.

Almost every restaurant here has practically the same menu, which means I can go in and know exactly what I want without having to look at what they have. Well, then I get what I wanted, and it is a feast. Seriously, every meal I have had here is one of the best meals I have had in my life (and costs on average less than $10).

I only realized that there was this pattern a day or two ago, and I am still trying to figure out the exact reasons for the triggering of this emotion which is pretty strong and consistent. I suppose I really like food. As a quick aside to my sister who might be worrying, I’m not gaining much weight as far as I can tell.

About My Last Post

My last post seemed a little melodramatic. I don’t think that there is an impending risk of war here, it is just something we talk about a lot. Many of my expat friends lived through the last conflict here, and it was an incredible emotional burden for them. It turns out that they were in very little danger, but at the time, they had no idea what was going on. My Georgian friends also went through incredible emotional stress, with some even fighting in this August conflict. As a result of this, it is something that people are constantly worry about and it is a common subject of conversation, where people can air their conspiracy theories, or even rational thought out ideas, based on incomplete information and the unstable situation here.

I do think there will be some kind of conflict with Russia at some point. I am not sure when, or how big it will be, but I don’t think the conflict is completely resolved. There are reports of instability in the regions, notably between Ossetians or Abkhaz against Russians. The Abkhaz ran away from Georgia because they wanted to protect their culture and independence, but now they are afraid that Russia will absorb them and erase their uniqueness. Furthermore, it seems to me that neither the Russian nor the Georgian government are totally rational, in a way that their goals are directly opposed to each other.

One theory about war is as follows. Right now in Russia there is incredible instability in the North Caucasus , similar to the conflicts in Chechnya, but across a wider geographical swath. (Besides this, there are big fears that Russia is going to have widespread civil unrest because of the economic crisis.) Anyways, this theory on war is that the situation in the North Caucasus will keep heating up (as it looks like it will), and eventually the Russian supply lines to Tskinvali and South Ossetia will get blocked. At this point, Georgia, Russia, or the Ossetians might do something stupid and the conflict could explode again.

As I mentioned in the previous post, there are plenty of other theories of when this is going to happen. We’ll see. As much as I talk about it, I am not taking it too too seriously, and am not losing any sleep.

In Case of War

So, I was visiting a friend, Tomas, yesterday for coffee before this running/drinking club thing I joined (called the Hash House Harriers – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_House_Harriers). Taped to his fridge was a list of stuff to get before a war with Russia. He had all kinds of things on it, a lot of dried goods like rice, as well as a kerosene cooker, and all the cash from his bank account. He even put firearm (with a ? next to it) on the bottom of the list. He put Jan. 15 as the date by which to execute this list, his calculation is that there will be a war with Russia roughly corresponding with the Obama inauguration.

Meanwhile, I’ve been hearing a lot of rumours myself that there will be a war sometime around New Years, similar to the Russian attack on Chechnya a few years ago. Apparently Russian soldiers in Abkhazia have been intimidating Georgians on the border, reminding them about that attack. I know these are just rumours, but I still decided to make a list myself, entitled “In Case of War.”

I went out and bought about 20 candles, a bunch of matches, some cans of sweetened condensed milk, a few churchkhela (this Georgian food that keeps well and is high calorie but healthy-ish – nuts on a string dipped into condensed grape juice like candles, they are called Georgian Snickers sometimes), and some new socks.

I’m still going to go buy some buckwheat (grechka in Russian) and some pasta, and take out a bunch of dollars. I feel like all this stuff will come handy at some point, and I’ll use it, so I don’t feel bad for stocking up. Also, the electricity is going to get cut off at some point, even if there isn’t a war, it’s happened a few times already. About the dollars, the Georgian Lari seems pretty unstable and artificially propped up, so having USD could be handy.

I might have gotten some moonshine as well, but my freezer is already filled with it, because people keep adding to my stock faster than it would be humanly possible to drink it. Although, speaking of alcohol, I recently went out to probably the biggest grocery store in Tbilisi – Goodwill, where I got some more booze. We were just picking up supplies for the Hash event, and stumbled upon the liquor section. There were about 10 tasting booths staffed by attractive young Georgians giving out free samples of all kinds of wine, cognac, and vodka. They had some quite nice and very affordable cognacs so I bought 2 bottles to add to my cabinet. That will be nice for the cold winter days, sipping on some fine cognac, swapping rumours about when the Russians are going to come.

Tomas has a friend who also made a list of things to do in case of war. This list consists of only one thing: Go to Tomas’s house.

Love of Georgia

Today, walking out of the apartment where I am catsitting, I went past huge tables of fireworks and Christmasy decorations, old ladies selling arrays of nuts/seeds and single cigarettes. Then I noticed a guy with a few crates of soft drink bottles filled with homemade moonshine and wine, and my smile really just spread even wider across my face (I didn’t get any – my freezer at home is still full of moonshine).

So I got into the office this morning (actually closer to afternoon today), and sat down, started talking to Dan, the other Fulbright guy, also working out of my office.

“So, I had that feeling again, that I really like this country. I’m not sure why. Maybe I just like the world, well, I know I do, but I feel like I really like this place especially, but I can’t figure out why I do.”

“Well, maybe, that’s cause of all of the parties. There is always something to do, the social life here is pretty busy” he said.

This is true, and I have gotten a real great circle of friends, mostly expats, and we have a great time together, but I don’t think that is why I feel these things I feel about Georgia.

“Yeah, good point, hanging out with friends is awesome, but that’s not when I really feel I love Georgia.”

“Well, let me tell you about why I like it here. Last night, when I was taking a cab home…”

“With Pam and someone else, right?”

“Yeah, Pam and Stefano. Anyways our driver was an old guy wearing a Svan hat. When we got going I asked him [presumably in Georgia, Dan's Georgian is pretty good], ‘So, are you a Svan?’”

“The driver smiled and said, ‘No. my wife is Svan, but I’m from Racha. Have you ever been there?’”

“‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I was in Saketsia.’”

“‘Oh!’ said the driver, ‘That is 5 kilometers from my village. Have you ever tried kvanchkhara [a type of Georgia wine]?’”

“‘Yeah I have, I liked it.’”

“‘Well, that is what my village is called – Kvanchkhara, the grapes for that wine come from my village.’”

“Then the driver promised to give me some of the wine. He is going back to his village after Easter and is going to stay there until the harvest, and when the wine is ready, he is going to bring some to me, he said that it is just incredibly delicious. I think I’ll get a trip to his village at some point.”

Well, that is what makes Dan love this place. I’m still trying to figure it out for myself.

Suprajacking: Georgian Hospitality

So, halfway through last night I had this incredibly strong feeling of really loving this country. I mean, there are things that bug me about this place, but I’m relaxed enough to forget about them, and often they are just the other side of the coin of reasons that make me love it here.

My biggest example is that when visiting Georgia you will get hit over the head with hospitality. All the time, in the most unexpected ways and places. I heard one of my favourite stories when I got back to my house to meet an electrician about a month ago. At the time, we had 3 Americans staying with us. They had gone to Gori for a day or two and had just gotten back at about 4:30 in the afternoon. One of them was sleeping in my room, one was throwing up in the bathroom, and another was about to go out for a bit to walk it off. Apparently, they wanted a drink before bed when they were in Gori but were disappointed with the night life there, so they decided to go to one of the casino/slot club places that are everywhere. Right after they get in some guy comes up to them and invites them back to his house. Meanwhile it is pretty late and they have already eaten, but are practically forced to eat another huge meal and drink enormous quantities of wine and moonshine. The next day, the guy comes and picks them up at the hotel at 9 or 10 in the morning and they go out for a breakfast of soup and cognac. Then they had a great day until they just crashed and headed back to my place.

I’ve started calling this “suprajacking.” Supra in Georgian apparently literally means ‘tablecloth,’ but gets used to mean meal or feast, which take on epic proportions here. Actually, almost every meal here I have had has been a feast. Anyways, the supra has been a bit fetishized by foreigners, perhaps because they keep getting suprajacked by aggressive Georgian hospitality.

So, yesterday after work, I went to dinner with Stefo, his parents and girlfriend Khatuna, and a friend of mine who joined us. Near the end of the meal, I got a call from Dan, the other Fulbrighter in Georgia, who is staying at our apartment now. He was at a restaurant with his real estate agent, who just found him an apartment and was spending most of his commission on a feast. The real estate agent sends his friend’s wife to pick me up.

We stopped to gas up the car, and there was a firetruck and about 7 police cars outside of the restaurant next to us. Apparently Misha, the president, was having dinner there. Our restaurant was a few doors down, this huge banquet hall with musicians at one end and all kinds of wall hangings and mirrors. It seemed a combination of nouveau riche and Soviet. The music was the same kind of mix, half soviet style songs, half popish stuff.

It was at this moment that I had the inexpressible feeling of love for Georgia. It got really weird really quickly though. I go in and meet my friend, who had been drinking (well everyone had been). He asked me if I had gotten his text which he just sent. I hadn’t gotten it yet, and he said “Well, too late.”

I went and sat down next to the real estate agent, Levan. He told me that his friend is the nephew of Ilya II, the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox church, and is going to be a priest in 3 months. The nephew of the Patriarch! That’s essentially the Pope of Georgia. The real estate agent himself almost became a priest once and worked in churches for a while. Around this point, my phone started to vibrate – it was the text message from Dan:

Message 11:
Bware religious
fanatics
From:+995 91 XX XX XX

The real estate agent then started saying how happy he was to have guests like me in Georgia, that “Jews have been guests in Georgia for…”

I had a moment of not knowing why he brought up Jews, but I finished his sentence “for twenty three hundred years.” Every time it comes up that I am Jewish I get this 10 minute speech on how Jews have been guests in Georgia for 2300 years, and that Georgia has some of the lowest rates of anti-Semitism, which is true as far as I can tell.

The message from Dan took on new significance, especially as Levan then asked me “So yeah, you guys killed our Saviour. What do you have to say to that?”

I supposed I should have been really shocked at this whole adventure, but I guess my life has gotten to a point that stuff like this, while not commonplace, is not unexpected. Living in Russia and traveling around the former Soviet Union I really got into a situation where I just have no expectations for what is going to happen. I bet traveling in general would do it, I don’t think it is at all unique to me, but I do think these regions are places where almost anything can happen. Maybe Russia more so than Georgia to me because Georgia has all these traditions and rituals. All of my suprajackings have had an almost routine to them, like the order of the toasts, and the praising of guests. I love them, but it becomes a bit tiresome, so maybe that’s why I was fine with the comparative novelty of being accused of killing Jesus.

I brought up points like the fact that it was the Romans who crucified him, to which Levan quoted the part where Pontius Pilate washed his hands of the killing. Then I brought up how, well, it was not all Jews who did it, maybe just a few bad apples a couple thousand years ago. This satisfied him, and he raised his glass in a toast. The first toast is to guests, so this first toast was to me, and to Israel and to Jews. Every toast afterwards seemed exactly like that as well. They respected that I am Jewish, they thought that orthodox religions could get along fine. They did not know that I am not orthodox, and I don’t think they even noticed that I ate the piles of (delicious, delicious) pork they ordered specifically for me, because they were in the middle of a huge Orthodox fast (although they were drinking and smoking which they aren’t supposed to do – their reasons for them not supposed to be smoking were pretty ridiculous).

I had some more tests on my religious education. For example: why wasn’t Moses allowed into the Holy Land after 40 years of wandering. I started in on the philosophical response about how the Jews who had been slaves in Egypt would not be able to form a healthy society in Israel. Wrong. Levan’s version of religion was based on extremely literal interpretations of the bible, which is what I’ve noticed about a lot of believers here. The soon to be priest, Dato, seemed much more moderate though, in both his drinking and the religious stuff he had, although he had some quirks of his own.  Dan said how he had a girlfriend, but that I didn’t, so they started right away promising to find me a good Georgian girl.  When Dato found out that one of our friends (Stefo) has a Georgian girlfriend, he immediately offered to bridenap her for him.  Bridenaping apparently still takes place, usually with the consent of the girl, but still it seems a bit weird, a bit too Georgian to be true.

Well, after a few hours of drinking and toasting and talking about religion, Levan realized that he had to give his elderly mom some heart medicine. He invited us all back to meet his mom and then we were going to go to Dato’s house for more food and drinking. Apparently it is not ridiculous here to wake up one’s elderly mother and children at midnight for impromptu champagne (which Levan picked up on the way). The mom was pretty amazing, woke up, took her medicine and even had a bit of champagne. She was so thrilled to be talking to Americans (even though they considered me a Jew, not an American) in Russian and Georgian. It was pretty amazing, I could understand the vast majority of what she was talking about, understanding the Georgian from the Russian context.

She pulled out a newspaper clipping which had a picture of her from ages ago, when she was coal miner, taken with Georgia’s most famous modern poet – Galaktion Tabidze. Then she pulled out an article about how Saddam Hussein was Stalin’s grandson.

Eventually we left, we’d been there for a while, and had left the soon to be priest’s pregnant (but still drinking and smoking) wife, daughter, and wife’s friend in the car. We managed to convince Levan to stay home, and just told Dato to take us home.

I went to bed, but woke up early cause of some guy who kept calling for a Levan (it is one of the most common names here), and didn’t realize that not only was there no Levan with me but that I don’t speak much more Georgian above the level of “There is no Levan here, leave me alone!”

In the office today, Dan got a call from Levan the real estate agent. Apparently he is not supposed to drink and has blood pressure issues, although it seems like the necessity for hospitality is a higher responsibility then one’s health.

Hopefully I’ll have a post soon about my traveling, my birthday celebrations, and what I’m up to for the holidays (besides watching Pineapple Express a few more times). I do know already that I’m going to be hosting a Christmas brunch on the 25^th although there is orthodox Christmas here as well. I also know that I will be cat sitting in an apartment that has heating, satellite TV, the internet, and well a cat, 4 things that my apartment is lacking. Actually 2 rooms in our house don’t have lights, so I really should go out and get light bulbs, see if I can fix that.

Best Driving Lesson Yet

So, today, I had possibly my best driving lesson ever, although its only been the 5^th lesson or so. I get the place where we meet, and Makho, my instructor tells me we’re going to go to do some driving on steep slopes. So I pull out (used reverse for the first time), and we head along Tbilisi’s busy, potholed streets.

We headed up to Sololaki, a neighbourhood built on the slope of one of sides of the valley that Tbilisi is in. Then we kept going up, towards something Makho called funicular (cable cars), up switchbacks and passes to the top of the mountain overlooking the city. We stopped at one point – Makho told me to get out and look at this house, visible from a lot of the city. I had always thought it was some kind of business center, but apparently it is also the residence of Georgia’s first billionaire – Boris Ivanishvili. It is this huge mansion with a helipad and a huge pool that has a 60 foot waterfall (unfortunately not running) going into it.

Driving up the mountain was pretty fun with ridiculous hairpin turns and other crazy drivers. This is reinforcing my idea that this is good all-purpose driving training, that I’ll be pretty prepared to drive anywhere. I’m starting to wonder if I’ll be good at driving video games, which I’ve always been pretty bad at.

I’ve started carrying an icon around with me. Most cars have some kind of rosary or icon by the driver to prevent accidents, and I think I could use the insurance. I got a Georgian St. George icon (this one – http://www.chaganava.com/eBooks/enamels/screenshot_scr_icons.jpg). To me it really looks like St. George is slaying an alien sent to earth by the spaceship in the upper right hand corner. So, hopefully I’ll be protected against alien abductions as well. I think it is good to have a sense of humour about the scary driving here.

Well, the cool part of the lesson was when we were pretty far along in the mountains past Tbilisi, and Makho tells me to stop the car on a (relatively steep) slope – I was figuring he was going to teach me how to park on a hill or something, but he just told me to turn the car off and release the brake. I did this, expecting the car to move forward, but no, the opposite! It started moving backwards up the hill, accelerating even. Makho laughed at my surprise, and explained there was some kind of magnetic pole in the mountain. It was pretty amazing, apparently one of the few places in the world where this happens. Anyone else have experience with this?

Then we headed back and I had to navigate through a series of poles, one group set up as slalom with incredibly small amount of room between them, and the other set up as figure 8. First one was tricky, second was a piece of cake.

I’m at work now, the office is pretty empty – most people are at a round table in Kutaisi. I’m going to head out soon, pack for my trip, and then go to the weekly banya for a steam and maybe a relaxing scrub before the long train ride across the country.

Quick Update

Hey, so sorry I haven’t been updating as much lately – I’ve been incredibly busy, and I really should get it all out just so that I can keep track of it, and you can see what I’ve been up to. Here is a quick (and probably incomplete) update of my life from the past bit.

I have a new job – I am working at Transparency International. Essentially I am doing the same research, but for them focusing on pensioners who are Internally Displaced persons. They aren’t paying me, but I get to use their resources, which so far have been contacts for interviews, the internet, and lots of tea from the kitchen. Hopefully they will publish the report I’m going to write and my research will feed into larger projects. I am doing interviews with local and international NGOs, as well as with elderly IDPs themselves, and researching aid projects. Eventually I’ll start talking to ministries and aid donors. The plan is to better target aid to needy, vulnerable people, and hopefully I’ll have good relationships with the people I interview so they can read and implement the report I’ll produce.  It feels really great to be so busy, and possibly have an impact on something that I’m really interested in.

As part of my job I will be heading out to Zugdidi in western Georgia where most of the IDPs from the first conflict live. I’ll be going to a round table of local and international NGOs and then heading out to IDP collective centers to interview the elderly. I really should be preparing myself to be incredibly mentally traumatized (by their living conditions), but I haven’t really that much.

The first part of this trip will be going to Batumi on the Black Sea and then popping across into Turkey to renew my Georgian visa. After Zugdidi, there was a chance that I could be going to Gali, across the border in Abkhazia, although that looks unlikely. I’ve heard a lot of crazy stories about going there, involving gangster border guards, kidnapping, torture, and ransom. I don’t scare easily for traveling, but those stories among others made me not want to go there, although it would be an incredibly interesting trip – many IDPs have returned to Gali, but their situation is tenuous, with the Abkhaz government (perhaps forcibly) distributing passports.

Next up for new stuff is that I am taking driving lessons. I didn’t learn to drive in either Canada or America, but while here, I decided why not? Lessons are quite cheap, and if I can drive here (with potholed roads and crazy drivers), I’ll be able to drive anywhere, although I might get tickets. My first lesson was 45 minutes driving around a big parking lot to get a hang of how to use the clutch etc. (I’m learning on a stick shift), and then we just headed out into crazy traffic. Each lesson since has just been driving around the city. My Georgian isn’t good enough yet, so the lessons are in Russian. Getting a license is quite cheap, so I’ll do that eventually, maybe a car if I’m here for a while.

My plans for Christmas and New Years are to stay in and around Tbilisi. A friend is heading out to pick a few hundred kilos of ripe persimmons which he is going to turn into fruit vodka, so I’ll try to get a bottle of that. I also have thousands of pages of interesting reading to catch up on, and I’ll try to get out and learn to ski in the mountains near here.

Some more on Tbilisi, part 2

So, back to regularly scheduled programming. I’ve been up to a lot of studying lately – lectures/conferences, research, as well as recently started Georgian lessons. However, I still have a backlog of stuff that might be interesting, starting where I left off a bit ago.

Anyways, as I mentioned before I was walking with Stefano around the old castle on the mountain top and we met some locals. They managed to get my number from Stefano and so I invited them to my upcoming party. They said they were busy in the evening, so I set up a date with Ana, the Georgian girl, earlier in the day.

I don’t remember if I talked about my dating experiences for my month in Russia, but they were pretty surreal. During one, the girl’s boyfriend showed up outside the café – he was unhappy to see me, and she was unhappy to see him. The other story also ended up with the girl probably having a boyfriend as well as some interesting details too complicated for here.

This date was not an exception. The girl interested in me, and well vice versa, showed up with her friend Shoko as a chaperone of sorts. This was awkward mostly because Shoko only knows Georgian, while Ana and I were talking in Russian. We walked along Rustaveli, the main street here, Shoko and Ana arm in arm, while I chatted with Ana. We sat on a bench eventually, and I figured out why they couldn’t come to my party – they are not allowed out after dark. I also think that Ana doesn’t have a cellphone, and had to communicate with me with Shoko’s (using some of the most incomprehensible quasi-Russian sms language I have ever encountered). Also, they are 19, not young ‘tweens, for whom I could see a curfew being applicable.

We talked about society and gender roles in Georgia, something which I had already heard about. Society, while opening up, is still very traditional with sex before marriage strictly forbidden for girls, but permissible for most men, most of whom have some kind of encounter with a prostitute while still in their teens. Also brought up was the paradigm that Russian girls are sluts, with the idea that a Russian would be ashamed if they were still a virgin at 30, whereas a Georgian girl would be proud of that fact.

In all, it was quite pleasant, but I didn’t see much of a future with girls who couldn’t hang out after dark, whether or not they planned to be virgins until marriage. I’ve been getting more text messages from Ana, she told me that if I ever have a party during the day, she would be able to come (with Shoko of course).

I left them to go prepare for my party (which Stefano beat to writing a blog post on – http://ourmanintbilisi.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/ben-ians-housewarming/ ). Knowing Georgians, I decided to pick up some food beforehand, so I got a few bags of chips, some bread and dip, as well as some candy. My friends and friends of my roommates started arriving – the first 4 or so people here were all Georgians, and we hung out in the kitchen and had some beer and nibbled on the snacks. When they heard more people were coming, they conversed in Georgian and went and got their coats. They came back with bags of food – mostly sausages, and more bread.

More Georgians showed up, about half of them had more food contributions – candies, cakes, a huge jug of wine, beer. I already had chacha in my freezer, so I brought that out too. We moved the kitchen table and all the chairs we could find into the dining/living room until we could barely squish everyone in. Then we started feasting and toasting. I was simply amazed how my plan for a simple party with music and dancing and chatting had turned into a full blown supra.

Ian, my roommate eventually showed up after a long day working his two jobs and joined in, and other people kept trickling in. Shaman showed up (I’ll explain about him in the next post I think), and so did the guy we started calling Warmongler, as well as one of Georgia’s top rock stars actually. Warmongler is this defense contractor working in Georgia, and in our crowd of NGO workers and people who value peace, he became disparagingly known as someone who would profit off the blood of the innocent. So, first, Warmonger, then with the “l” added – a touch of Swedish linguistics apparently. Anyways, it was a bit of a shock to see Warmongler – after running into him I had thought we wouldn’t run into him again, and I don’t know how he heard about our party. He did have some interesting talks with Shaman though, who told him about this 700 year old woman his mother knows. Warmongler listened to all of this with a straight face and asked Shaman how old he thought he was. Shaman said that, oh, you must be much younger, perhaps only 300 years old.

The party went very nicely, the Georgians mixed with the expats well, there were Georgian dancing lessons, and one of my friends got an accidental call from me with me teaching someone how to sing along to a Clash song, the phone accidentally dialing from my pocket.

People stayed quite late, most left by 5, but a few stuck around, including Shaman who fell asleep on my couch, and Tano, a DJ who I talked to until he left at 7 in the morning. At this point I went to bed, exhausted and glad that everyone had finally left, but still pleased with how well the party had gone.

At 10 in the morning, my house phone starts to ring, and I pick it up. Its my landlord, and I groggily say “Hello Rezo.”

Rezo says “Good morning Ben, I heard you had a great party,” which is a strange thing to hear from a landlord.

“Yeah, it was ok, thanks, we weren’t too loud, were we?”

“Oh, no, but the neighbours still told me about it. Someone vomited off your balcony onto their stoop. Go clean it up.”

So I throw on some clothes and get my mop and bucket and go clean up the sick in the courtyard. The lady, whose stoop it was vomited on was quite pissed – she has kids (who she does not want to expose to debauchery) and no time to clean up other people’s vomit. Another neighbor was there, and helped too actually, so we got it cleaned up pretty quickly. I went home and had a beer, then took a bit of a nap before going and meeting Stefano for a coffee. We then decided to go to the Dry Bridge Market, to see if Stefano could pick up an expresso maker. Long story short, we met a (probably alcoholic) Georgian who glued on to us (as Georgians are wont to do), followed us around talking to us about Italian Neo-Realist films, and eventually found us a tiny antique espresso maker that some guy was trying to charge 50 dollars for. Too much, and we finally managed to escape from the Georgian guy.

I went home and then went for khinkali with Ian. I think this was the week in which I had khinkali 5 or 6 times – they really are incredible. Following this we went and met some expats at a beer garden, and then picked up some more beer and snacks and headed to Stefano’s place. At this point, I don’t know how we had the energy, I think it was meant to be a quite evening, but when you make plans like that in Georgia, they are almost always sure to go wrong as a Georgian will come along and do a cannonball in your pool of tranquility. In this case, there was a pounding at the door about halfway through our glasses of beer.

In comes Stefano’s neighbor, a smallish guy, bursting with energy. He sat at the head of the table and led us in toasts and told us about him. He reached the peak of his career at 24 or so as the vice minister of Sanitation and health for Georgia, and now at 28, he is trying to form a political party, but didn’t really have any political goals. While he was incredibly charming at first, it seems like he really just wants power, but it is unclear what he is going to do with it which sounds like a very dangerous situation.

Anyways, he goes around the table and does toasts to each of us, giving us Georgian nicknames. Stefano becomes Stefo, and we drank to Stefo. I finished my whole glass of beer, and the neighbor, called Meskho, gave me an indication of approval – that was the right thing to do, it means that I really respect my friend Stefo. Then came my nickname. I’ve been called Beni a lot here, the –i just puts the name in the normative case, but Meskho decided on Beno. At this point, Stefo weighs in, a little grumpy with his nickname, and puts forward Bepo. So we toast to Bepo, and again I think I manage to drink all or most of my glass. Meanwhile Stefo sipped his beer, although Meskho urged him to show me the same respect I showed him. He wasn’t going to, so I stepped in. I took Stefo’s glass and downed it. Meskho almost flipped out.

“What!?! How can you do that? Only I do that. I am here, you can’t be me too! Wow.” He was incredibly pleased at my honor, well, at my restoring Stefo’s honor by finishing his glass. Apparently it was amazingly Georgian.

We continued drinking until Meskho would leave at 4, and then headed home. I had to get up early to let in Mats, the Swedish journalist who was moving in to live with us for a bit and then went to bed.

I got up later, and headed out with Mats for more khinkali, but decided to stop at Ian’s office first. We walk in mid-Supra – they have a table full of grapes and khinkali and chacha. Apparently one of Ian’s co-workers had come back from her cottage with bunches of grapes and a little chacha, and the guys in the office took it upon themselves to turn this into a whole banquet. We joined in the feast. What a country this is.