Took the three-day weekend to head off to Georgia. As in
Tbilisi. Departing on Friday night and returning Monday evening gave me the
perfect amount of time to spend in the city, get my fill of Dunkin Donuts and
see the house where Joseph Stalin was born. In addition, I witnessed a “flash
mob” concert in Old Town, rode another cable car and toured a cave city.
This living abroad thing is really cool, and the coolest
thing for me is that I get a new starting point to travel from. I still make
quick trips, same as always, but now I can start from somewhere that’s a
seven-hour time difference from the East Coast. The trip to Tbilisi, including
commute time to the airport (which is a solid hour), took me less time than my
drive up to see a Braves game in Atlanta.
Deciding to cater to the Marriott points whore beast that is
inside me turned off to be a good move, too, as the Courtyard there is smack in
the middle of Freedom Square, kind of the central area and a great place to be located.
(The hotel itself was wonderful, too – a step up from what I remember
Courtyards to be.) Oh, and there was a Dunkin Donuts right on the corner. I’m
not ashamed to say that in the three days I was there, I think I ate (or
brought home) half a dozen donuts. I did not, however, cave and purchase the “Georgia
runs on Dunkin” mug, but it was a tough call.
Boarding planes in Turkey, though, is a monster. I think the
little bus to the plane fries everyone’s brain because honestly, I’ve never
been on flight that has seen more people have trouble finding their seats. It’s
a letter and a number on a piece of paper and all you have to do is match up
that letter and number with the ones on the top of the row. It never occurred
to me that it might be difficult, but oh, wow. I stood in the aisle, trying to
get to 22B, for probably 5-7 minutes as I waited on people not to struggle with
their bags (although they did that, too), but to figure out which seat they
were in. Someone would get to a seat and there’d be someone in there, and a
long discussion would ensue. In some occasions, people would act surprised that
their ticket, which read something like “14B” was not welcome in, say, seat “20A.”
They were that far off. On the way back, I was seated in 10D and someone came
and rudely flashed their boarding pass in front of me, insisting that I move.
It said 10F. I was like, uh, no, your seat is over there – and pointed to one
filled with a woman whose boarding card said 11F. Really, people, it’s not that
hard!
Beyond those annoyances, though, the flights were fine.
Turkish Airlines is pretty good and has good food, served by a guy wearing a
chef’s hat.
I’d met a friend there and we set out to see the main sights
on Saturday. In all, we walked about 20 kilometers up and down windy streets.
The Old Town area was my favorite, with its little stores, homes and roofs all
sticking out at various angles. We took the cable car up there – I’ve been in
an abnormally high number of cable cars since joining Foreign Service – and the
view of the little roofs was nice. At the top, we poked around the fortress and
got an up-close view of Mother Georgia, the status that lords over the city.
Women keeping watch is apparently par for the courses in former Soviet cities –
my traveling companion said there was on in Armenia, too.
On the way down from Old Town, we heard live music and
happened upon an outdoor concert. It seemed to mimic a flash mob, but was
obviously planned. The musicians were dressed in street clothes, but stiff
costumed, if that makes sense. The cellist wore a policeman’s uniform, the
French horn players were dressed as maître ds, the wind instruments, for the most
part, were either wearing work clothes or construction vests, depending on
where they we were seated. The percussionists were wearing suits. And so on.
Then, after each song, they’d disassemble for a minute or two, then the
trombone and big brass players would return, sit down, and start, followed by
the percussionist, and then the construction worker woodwinds would come in
before the regular Joe workclothes wind instruments came.
It was clearly organized – they had several photographers
taking shots of the crowd, plus a drone doing the same work. It was a nice
break to sit for a bit and eat a donut. (Through the course of the weekend and
trip home, I had two each Boston Crème,
caramel covered and the one they called “Georgia,” which looked like aa Boston Crème
but had “GEO” written on it and was filled with caramel-flavored goo.
The next day, we’d planned to go to the Stalin museum but
there wasn’t a train (or at least Marriott told us there wasn’t a train) at the
time we wanted to go, so we went to this pioneer town-like thing where they had
homes from the early 19th century. Georgians love their wine, and
each of the homes had wine cellars and winemaking materials. They stored it in
the ground, in very large vessels they’d buried. I enjoyed it.
We met some friends of my traveling companion for dinner,
and since they were new to Tbilisi and hadn’t seen the sights, we decided to
hire a driver and see the Stalin museum the next day before going to the
airport. It’s an hour away, and honestly, it was impressive but a bit
depressing. Lots of photos of him, though. And the train car – supposedly bulletproof
– was cool. It reminded me of touring Elvis’ plane at Graceland.
Speaking of … there was a restaurant called “Elvis”! Sadly,
it was closed, but it’s smack dab in Tbilsi, between Freedom Square and the
Hard Rock café!
At Gori, the city where Stalin was born, we also visited a
rock city called Uplistsikhe. I’d never heard of it but out driver suggested
it, as the Stalin museum only took about an hour. It had something to do with
Queen Tamar, but I can’t say that I know who Queen Tamar was. We did no
research for that stop; it was just there. I’ll have to look into it.
Visiting the former Soviet nations is kind of cool; it’s a
different thing to experience. I decided to go to Moldova in October, so it’ll
be interesting to see how they compare.
Next week, I’m off and am heading to Israel. I’m glad to be
back in the saddle as far as traveling goes.
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