Ben Sweeney’s Weblog

Another post coming soon – I’ll write up my travels from in America an on the way back to Georgia as well as the traveling etc. I’ve done since I’ve returned.

Also, my mom was recently in Georgia for a bit and she quite enjoyed herself.  She took some notes, so I’m trying to convince her to write it up for me to post here.

In other news, apparently they are removing the large Stalin statue in Gori.  Articles at Georgia Today and Art Club Caucasus.

Georgia has an interesting relationship with Stalin’s legacy.  Many still look up to him as a Georgian who achieved a high position of power, and you can find portraits of Stalin in some homes and occasionally small statues scattered around the country.  However, while I feel that Georgians on the whole don’t mind the Russian people, the August war polarized many Georgians against the threat of Russian imperialism and the former control of the Soviet Union.

There was a rumor that during the August war Saakashvili, jealous of the reverence that Stalin receives, wanted to bomb the sculpture and blame it on the Russians, leaving Saakashvili as the proud, strong leader of his own country, with no other idols to compete with.

So,  I’m back in Tbilsi.  And my Fulbright is over, so things are changing.  One of those things is that I’ll be posting more here hopefully – keeping a record of this time of my life for myself and others.

I was just in America for a short stretch, where I got to visit my family a few friends, and help out with the Orientation for outbound Fulbright grantees.

Returning to America after about a year, I felt culture shock for the first time in my life.  It wasn’t that much, and a lot of it could be explained by jetlag and flu like symptoms which hit as soon I got in (either food poisioning or something that was going around Tbilsi right before I left).  The two things that struck me were the amount of cars in every driveway, and the grocery stores with all the produce – you had no idea where it was from, often it was shrink wrapped – I’m too used to people sharing rides or taking public transit and buying fresh vegetables off the street.  In any case, it is nice to be back here, even though I still miss friends and family at home.

Anyways, I’m off again, I’ve had a bit of a trip here – some time in Turkey with my sister, then a bit of work here, then a weekend on the seaside – I’ll cover that later.  Now I’m off for the mountains for a few days, will go to my friend’s granny’s place and then try out my tent for a night or two.

But I’ll be back soon enough.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

So, I got in and have been relatively busy since I’ve landed. I haven’t started any real research yet, my main goal now is to find housing, and I’ve been making plenty of new friends. I’m floating around a bit at the moment, rented a top floor of a Georgian family’s house for my first two nights, slept at a new acquaintance’s house for a night or two, and tomorrow I’m going to be moving to a guest house for a week while I continue to search for a permanent place. I’m going to try to find a multiple bedroom place with some roommates, so I’ve been checking through connections and calling interesting leads and real estate agents. In all, I’m not too worried about finding something – a place will come along, I just hope it is cheap and in a good neighbourhood.

There is quite an interesting expat scene here – everyone speaks English, but there are few Americans. Most seem to work for NGOs, like humanitarian organizations or the UN, and have great stories about the wild places they’ve been, and the relative futility of their aid work. The community seems quite close but open and easy to join. I’ve been out for beers a few times, and went to a sauna with a bunch of them at one point too.

Last time I was here, I ate one of the big national dishes – this delicious cheesy bread, every single day. This time around, I decided that I should pace myself so I don’t get sick of it or balloon in weight. So far, I’ve been failing, and it turns up everywhere, so I’ve had it about twice a day. It is still incredible, so I’m not complaining.

Besides the cheesy bread, the food is delicious and the beer cheap. The typical meal I’ve been eating is a salad of cucumbers, tomato, onions, a few spicy peppers, coriander (and a ton of salt), kebabs (pork mostly, but I prefer lamb a lot more), bread, and cheesy bread. The guy I’m staying with now has a great yoghurt connection and shows up with three jars of this wonderful home made yoghurt every day.

In all, it is wonderful to be here. Tbilisi is an excellent city, full of character. It is built along a river in a valley, so there are steep winding cobbled streets with beautiful buildings. Many are shabby with an air of grandeur. I’m starting to learn the neighbourhoods and their different nuances, and I’ve been working on learning the Georgian alphabet which is useful because the street signs, if there are any, are undecipherable.

Yesterday I went out to the American Embassy, which is in the sticks – they needed a place with a lot of room to build a huge fortress with layers of security to prevent a terrorist attack. I was shown around and given a dossier on Georgia, including the biography of every minister. I’ll be back there on Monday for a security briefing, where I’m expecting that they’ll tell me about all the dangers and tell me not to go to Abkhazia or South Ossetia.

On the way back from the Embassy, I ran into a group of elderly people gathered in front of the Parliament – just what I came to study. Unfortunately, I had somewhere to be, and the person I talked to wasn’t the right guy to choose. His Russian was broken and heavily accented, and I figured out that the elderly there were either sick and wanted help, or had relatives in jail and wanted them to be released early.

Who knows what tomorrow holds. While looking for an apartment, I’m going to be doing background research (bought a good book on the history of Georgia), learning Georgian, and making more friends.