The 'rents are in town, and it's been a crazy (uhm... erhm.. how long has it been a month?! yikes) time since I last wrote on this here interweb journal-log thingy.
We went *back* to Uplis Tsikhe and Atenis Sioni, saw Stalin's hometown again, walked up and down the mountains and ancient fortresses of Tbilisi, took a trip out to Sighnaghi, where K's dad/stepmom and my dad/stepmom both took many many megabytes of pictures, and the weather stayed beautiful. Then we took a long daytrip to Davit Gareji again, to look at beautiful half-destroyed frescoes and cave-monks. The days were interspersed with voraciously appetited meals consisting of all the high points of Georgian cuisine -- fried eggplant with walnut sauce, fresh greens, dumplings, shishkebabed meat, etc. etc. All in all it was like a brief, intense recap of our entire year here.
Needless to say it's been a little overwhelming. I haven't been able to post mostly because the internet ran out in a long, and frustrating, and mostly boring-to-anyone-but-me story involving Georgian bureauocracy, my stupid backfiring money-saving plan, and hours and hours in various lines and on the phone.
Internets are back. Parents are here. Today we check out the antiques market and tomorrow we go up to the ancient capital of Mtskheta to see some beautiful churches, and maybe I'll write something that makes more sense, or post a couple more translations in a bit.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Sunday, June 03, 2007
The Town in Rocks
Went to the cave-town of Uplistsikhe (pronounced "oop-leet--seek-hey") this morning.. Took the nine a.m. train out to Gori (town motto: Birthplace of Stalin! He Changed History!) and then a taxi to the caves. They're only a couple miles away from Gori.
It's a strange town, built mostly out of rock, sometime in the millenium before Christ. It reached its peak in terms of people (20 k) and size in the early middle ages. Now it's a bunch of empty caves with some strangely beautiful carvings in them, and a lot of mysteries surrounding them. Number one: why would an entire town full of merchants and traders decide to live in caves? Number two: where did they go?
On the way back, we discovered some of that legendary Gorian hospitality (motto: Our taxis will leave you stranded, but unlike Stalin, we probably won't have you killed!) and spent some time in the parking lot of the Uplistsikhe monument begging for rides back, to little avail (apparent Gori bus driver mottos: "Fuck you! We're Full!)
What's weird about this is that Georgians are, deservedly, legendary for their hospitality. So, not being able to get someone to help is very, very unusual. Ah. well.
Hit the roads to wander the seven kilometers back to Gori, there to take the train back, when a busload of school kids from Tbilisi stopped, and offered to pick us up. "Are you going to Gori?" we said. "We're going through Gori, to Tbilisi!" they said. "You're going to Tbilisi?!?" we said. "Eventually!" they said.
And thus began the adventure of the second half of our day. We went to an old church (Atenis Sioni, if you're paying attention to names) and then spend three or seven hours picnicing beneath a weeping tree, eating fresh pork roasted on the ground, and cheese bread, and cucumbers, and potatoes, and watching a busload of sixth graders run around like wild things.
It was... well, incredibly fun. I played a little soccer (I wish I'd been thirty when I was in sixth grade. I totally would have been picked first every time in Gym class) I ate a bunch of pork. I hung out with an incredibly determined kid, who used all twelve of the English words he knew to convey a surprisingly large and subtle amount of information. I received a gift (an orthodox rosary, courtesy of the sixth graders) and became a "guest" for the Georgians, which is much like being a "mascot" especially when the "guest" is "American" which means "exotically cool."
And I hung out and chatted with the tour's English teacher, who was very kind, and helpful. And when she asked what I did, and I told her I was a poet, she sighed with the kind of dreamy exoticism that I cannot even begin to describe, and said "A poet...? Oh, wooooowwwww." I'm sorry Karen, but she did. It made my whole day.
Then I watched the students' history teacher wrap up all the garbage from the picnic, and throw it into the stream we were sitting next to. And I thought "I should say something!" Then I thought "I really don't want to walk home from here." And so I kept my fool mouth shut, as about three and a half kilos of unbiodegradable plastic bags and cups and knives sailed down the stream, toward the river, and eventually out toward the Caspian sea. Unless a cow eats it.
On the way back the bus driver graciously dropped us off near a metro station, and when we got on the train, we realized that we had been gone almost exactly twelve hours. So there must have been some kind of kismet going down.
All in all a good day. Maybe I'll upload some pictures of the cave cities soon. Meantime click the link waay up there. The website's awful, but the pictures are descriptive.
It's a strange town, built mostly out of rock, sometime in the millenium before Christ. It reached its peak in terms of people (20 k) and size in the early middle ages. Now it's a bunch of empty caves with some strangely beautiful carvings in them, and a lot of mysteries surrounding them. Number one: why would an entire town full of merchants and traders decide to live in caves? Number two: where did they go?
On the way back, we discovered some of that legendary Gorian hospitality (motto: Our taxis will leave you stranded, but unlike Stalin, we probably won't have you killed!) and spent some time in the parking lot of the Uplistsikhe monument begging for rides back, to little avail (apparent Gori bus driver mottos: "Fuck you! We're Full!)
What's weird about this is that Georgians are, deservedly, legendary for their hospitality. So, not being able to get someone to help is very, very unusual. Ah. well.
Hit the roads to wander the seven kilometers back to Gori, there to take the train back, when a busload of school kids from Tbilisi stopped, and offered to pick us up. "Are you going to Gori?" we said. "We're going through Gori, to Tbilisi!" they said. "You're going to Tbilisi?!?" we said. "Eventually!" they said.
And thus began the adventure of the second half of our day. We went to an old church (Atenis Sioni, if you're paying attention to names) and then spend three or seven hours picnicing beneath a weeping tree, eating fresh pork roasted on the ground, and cheese bread, and cucumbers, and potatoes, and watching a busload of sixth graders run around like wild things.
It was... well, incredibly fun. I played a little soccer (I wish I'd been thirty when I was in sixth grade. I totally would have been picked first every time in Gym class) I ate a bunch of pork. I hung out with an incredibly determined kid, who used all twelve of the English words he knew to convey a surprisingly large and subtle amount of information. I received a gift (an orthodox rosary, courtesy of the sixth graders) and became a "guest" for the Georgians, which is much like being a "mascot" especially when the "guest" is "American" which means "exotically cool."
And I hung out and chatted with the tour's English teacher, who was very kind, and helpful. And when she asked what I did, and I told her I was a poet, she sighed with the kind of dreamy exoticism that I cannot even begin to describe, and said "A poet...? Oh, wooooowwwww." I'm sorry Karen, but she did. It made my whole day.
Then I watched the students' history teacher wrap up all the garbage from the picnic, and throw it into the stream we were sitting next to. And I thought "I should say something!" Then I thought "I really don't want to walk home from here." And so I kept my fool mouth shut, as about three and a half kilos of unbiodegradable plastic bags and cups and knives sailed down the stream, toward the river, and eventually out toward the Caspian sea. Unless a cow eats it.
On the way back the bus driver graciously dropped us off near a metro station, and when we got on the train, we realized that we had been gone almost exactly twelve hours. So there must have been some kind of kismet going down.
All in all a good day. Maybe I'll upload some pictures of the cave cities soon. Meantime click the link waay up there. The website's awful, but the pictures are descriptive.
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