GEORGIA
April 13, 2018 to April 15, 2018
2018-04-12 LONDON TO GEORGIA
‘I don't like to say goodbye’
Stupendously charming 21-year old Abdalbaset (Ibrahim Mohammed …and it goes on from there, each name a link to a direct paternal ancestor) hefts his back pack and waves goodbye, but not without a ‘salaam aleichem’, peace be with you. We miss him and his fatigue-shattering laugh immediately.
He has been entertaining us with his open-faced sweet charm and stories of his native Libya since he introduced himself over our seat backs on the bus to the airport three hours ago. Now, way too many hours of travel from London this morning weigh us down here at Istanbul's other airport. Abdal is a natural buoy.
He unfolds his life for us.
There's his studies (‘my father ordered me be doctor. It is boring. I want to study business.I want travel like you’), his father (‘he is a little bit dictatorship’), country (‘old, old, old places, before Egypt, and Greek, too, better than Turkey, many deserts, and the places with water in the desert'), food (‘so good, food no other place has). He won't let us pay for our cold water and his coffee (‘I am addict'.)
On an earlier leg of our trip Dennis wakes from his drowse on a comfy Turkish bus. The banks lining the 8-lane inch-worm path of the highway from Istanbul’s Attaturk airport are a linear garden, dropping color mile after mile. Some are wall gardens, vertical designs in great cursive sweeps of color. The flat gardens are the glory. Tulips, native here, briefly the most valuable commodity in the world during the Tulip Craze in besotted 17th century Europe, more so even than gold, spread their rainbow chalices under Istanbul's sky. ‘You must come back to Turkey in April' has been friend Zeki's temptation for years. He is so right.
2019, here we come
This trip, in 2018, we begin in London, leaping times zones and continents. Up at 7. London to Istanbul’s Attaturk Airport. Shuttle bus to Taksim, Istanbul’s ‘happening district. Dinner in Taksim. Shuttle bus across into Asia and Sobiha Gökchen Airport. Plane to Tbilisi, Georgia. Ride into the city at 4 am with George, owner of Parallax Hotel. Two planes, two buses, a car and 24 hours after waking in London at the west end of Europe, we fall into bed in the very eastern most 'European' country, straddling the Caucasus, and technically in Asia. Azerbaijan and Iran are just to the east.
In between there is Abdal, another loop in the gentle string between us and the many good people on Mother Earth. This is why we travel
2018-04-13
GEORGIA DAY 1
The baby cries.
‘No problem’ says Beka. He puts his coffee
down on a stone railing picks up, cuddles, and kisses Marsho, chubby, and with
startling pale green and silver eyes like her father's, and says ‘I take you’
We nod at the abandoned coffee. He laughs. ‘Later I come back for coffee'.
Beka overheard us trying to figure out how to
get to the Opera House, and with Marsho wrapped in his arms leads us down
alleys, over torn up streets, and tells a bit of his story. He's an artist.
There is no work here. He and his pregnant wife went to Sweden for work. Marsho
was born there but that did not get them any special rights to stay (as her
birth would in the US, he reminds us). They had to leave. Now they are here
again. He speaks Russian, Georgian, English, some Azerbaijani. (‘I don't know
how.There are many different people here. I just speak.’). He leads us to a
spot with a clear path to Tbilisi‘s main drag. If we need any help, ‘please
call me'. We take his number, another connection. You never know. Surprises
happen.
Beka’s finger points our route and we
free-form it from there. Tbilisi is rebuilding everywhere. Roads dead end in
construction sites. This is like navigating Boston’s cow paths-cum-streets, in
blinders. There are benefits to blind wandering. Tbilisi has a seductive
under-fragrance everywhere: baking bread. Another creeps in and we follow it to
a park filled with the wonders of Georgia’s gardens Three foot tall torches of
truly long-stemmed roses tower over bins of lilacs spilling huge purple pompoms
against walls of tulips, carnations, fresias, anemones.
Georgians seem a dour-faced and unsmiling
lot. At first. They just don’t beam in public. Make a connection in a shop, on
the street, need help, and they are friendly and helpful, justly famous for
hospitality. It's not effusive, but real.
It’s true of George, owner of Parallax
Hostel, who picks us up at 4am, Beka and chubby Marsho.and Raju, transplanted
from Mumbai, and 24/7 guy in charge at Parallax. The house is a few hundred
years old, now 4 guest rooms, and a dormitory. We are comfortable in our room
with private bathroom, two single beds and a double. Downstairs is a kitchen,
all equipment supplied. Upstairs is a covered balcony overlooking the narrow
street. It's where we meet Michael from India, share travels.
We're a short walk, corkscrewing through the
deceiving streets, from Carrefour, the best supermarket we have ever seen. It
has guys baking fresh bread in a traditional tandoori style oven, and a
charming lady who helps us select one of Georgia's famous wines.
Best? We’re a few paces from Restaurant Imeruli.Sakhli.
Our first full meal is:
Strips of eggplants seasoned with coriander and
wrapped around ground walnuts, pomegranate seeds on top.
Red beans stewed with sprigs of cilantro and
a hint of chili peppers.
Thick dumplings filled with broth, ground
meat, spices.
2 big beers
The bill Is 14.7 Gel. That's $5.86.
Yes, we're happy with
Parallax Hostel and with Tbilisi.
2018-04-14
GEORGIA DAY 2
She
dies, of course.
But
first we turn our legs into stubble walking through Tbilisi to its Old Town.
Old it is, founded 1600 years ago. Worn walls, not quite rubble, and narrow
twisting streets, tell of an embattled and dangerous past. Churches tell
another story. Perhaps. Candles release the gold of icons, luminous eyes forward,
concentration upwards into the dark vaults, then to heaven. Outside a man
covers himself in expansive, generous signs of the cross. A woman kisses the
door jam. Christianity came here, early formed, has lasted, an intense part of
life for some, even after decades under the Soviets.
Lifted
through the air way above Tbilisi and its river by wires, pulleys, and magic,
we grab terra firma, the stones of an ancient fort, a true aerie. I offer to
rescue a gaggle of traveling buddies from selfie-dom defeated by the view. My
reward is a half dozen genuinely delighted smiles. They are from Iran,
perambulating Persians, all smiles, again, as we commiserate about our
governments.
It's
6:30 when we join the crowding before the red and white striped Moorish style
opera house. Three hours later the curtain rings down to roars, stomping,
waving arms, and Puccini’s Chinese fantasy opera, Turandot, has enslaved
another audience.
Tbilisi
Opera and Ballet Theater is a gilded 19th century confection,
layered in tiny box stalls up to a massive crystal chandelier, icy topping.
It's an appropriate setting for this brilliant piece, tour de force for any
opera company, and especially for the two leads, singing stratospherically over
Puccini's largest and lushest orchestrations They do it. And then some. The
super-nova, even in this star- glutted performance, is the conductor. He leads,
possessed by the music, explosive, demonic in drive and intensity. We are
lifted off our seats by the sound. At the end, the two lovers, united by their
self- absorbed maniacal purpose, do recognize briefly the sacrifice of the
slave girl who died, love unrequited, barely acknowledged, to save the tenor.
Turandot is about privilege as it attaches to the powerful, deadly. But we
applaud wildly.
5
years ago I was a mandarin in a dozen performances of this opera. I’m counting
on a repeat in early 2019. Maybe without the Fu Manchu mustache. It itched.
2018-04-15
GEORGIA DAY 3
‘I
was born here.’
We're
standing in the narrow street in front of our hotel deep in a baby fest. Chubby
Marsho bounces, beaming, arms outstretched, from hug to hug, a journey stamped
with kisses…from daddy Beka, to beaming young and clearly besotted godfather,
to George, young, ambitious owner of the hotel. He is related to everyone in
this neighborhood in some way. Our hotel, 3 large rooms, a dormitory, kitchen,
spread up a winding staircase to a rooftop ‘party room' and covered balcony is
his family’s wooden house, has been for generations. After 9 years as Parallax
Hotel, it's still just another door on Vakhtang Orbeliani, barely announced,
its new life not intrusive. George, and we, like it that way.
So
do 3 young computer guys, long-time buddies, up from neighboring Armenia for
the weekend. They have stayed here before, and, like us, hang out on the
balcony. Cheerful, always smiling Vache, efficient David, and serious faced
Razmik warm to English, and ply us with a universal ice-breaker---chocolate (‘Armenian
and very good'). They're bright and articulate about their country, now in the
midst of a polarizing election. They sum it up succinctly: “He is Armenian
Trump”.
They
leave us with a taste of Armenia's fabled hospitality. Numbers tap-tapped into
multiple mobiles they make us promise to call them when go south to Yerevan
tomorrow. Done deal!
At night we sit and sip with George, and kind Raju,
resident Indian house manager. The wine is good, gets George's nod of approval.
He makes his own, of course, pretty much a standard past time in Georgia,
perhaps the origin of grape wine. George spins magic out of a map of his
country. Its beauty is sorcery.
A nod passes between us. Next year, again, in Spring.
ARMENIA
April 16, 2018 to April 18, 2018
2018-04-16
GEORGIA TO ARMENIA
Brad
Pitt slides into the shot gun seat. Well, not THE Brad Pitt, but his twinnish
younger brother. And even better looking. To quote Harvey Fierstein in Torch
Song Trilogy ,’If he has an IQ over 30 there is no God.’ Time may tell if the
universe is godless.
We
are seven for the 9 am departure in the comfy marshrutka (minibus) for the 6-hour,
$15 passage southward out of Georgia to Yerevan, Armenia.
To
my left is Grandma, in black, and in charge. Good smells come from her bag.
Behind are soft and disembodied voices, two. Our driver has a face carrying the
DNA of Central Asia, angular, high cheeked, well beaked. He helps grandma in
and out of our van, solicitous and attentive to us, too.
An
hour of smooth roads lined by red poppies, yellow-green whatchmacallits, and fruit
trees in high blossom, white and fluffy, and we are at the border.
Stamp,
exit, ride across the back line on map, ‘been to Azerbaijan?’, stamp, and
enter, welcomed, unsullied by a previous trip to enemy Azerbaijan.
Armenia
looks different, the roads more sinuous as we climb into a range of the
southern Caucasus. The slopes are fuzzy green with new growth, soft flannel
backdrop for the sharp lines of stone villages and helmeted churches. 4 hours
into the trip we reach 6223 feet, pass it, drop down off the pass. Above us
wide patches of snow speckle the mountains, no longer green, dark, mammoth
negative Dalmatians nuzzling the bright sky. Grandma taps me, points left out
her window. Lake Sevan is immensely blue and immensely big, dazzling.
Brad
speaks. Perfect English, only slightly accented.
‘Be
prepared. There are demonstrations in Yerevan. It’s safe,but be prepared for
adrenalin and adventure’. Don’t worry. You will be safe.’ (Note: The powerless
President wants to become Prime Minister, a more powerful position. He's not
popular. The people, especially the young people, are speaking.)
Brad
arranges for the driver to drop us off near our AirBnB, and also the info that
he speaks Armenian, Russian, and Polish, too. He smiles.
Yes,
the universe is godless.
But
not without its saints.
First
to descend is the waiter who brings our cold draft beers at the sidewalk café a
short walk from our drop off. Our AirBnB host, Chaga, is in Paris, but her
cousins have stepped in, are at 13 Sayat-Nova, 3rd Floor, to show us
around her spacious digs, two bedrooms, kitchen, balcony, reams of sunlight
through acres of window, washing machine, now ours, $76 for 3 nights.
It's home within 5 minutes.
2018-04-17
YEREVAN DAY 1
SIze
does matter.
At
least it did to the kings of ancient Armenia in 700bc or thereabouts. One
ordered bulbous pottery jugs and metal cauldrons---capacity clearly
marked---dedicated to wine. The biggest holds 1200 liters, about 320 gallons.
It inhabits one end of the many rooms in Yerevan’s superb History of Armenia
Museum.
My
eyes usually glaze over after about an hour of dusty cases, fuzzy descriptions
in museum-eze, intelligible only to the in-crowd, and pieces of cracked pots.
Not so here. 500,000 year old stone tools invade and stay in my imagination.
They were made by our 25,000 times great-grandmother.
We
walk upwards through the history of this rich region. In 2000bc, great-granny
wore a delicate gold necklace, filagree and carnelian ancestor to art deco,
4000 years ahead of its time. Sometime about 1200bc an astronomer fashioned a
metal model of the heavens showing Earth, sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn. It carries a hint that he knew the planets---earth
included--- were spheres.
We
wear out by 300AD, when Christianity arrives, retreat back through history,
down the stairs and out into Armenia's present. Republic Square and its famous
singing fountains (mute until summer nights) are brilliant under clear skies.
Yerevan gets a bad rap for air pollution. Not from us, and not today. It's
glorious, the sun gentle.
As
is what we see of the demonstrations against the unpopular President. There are
crowds here in Republic Square, Center City, Yerevan. Some streets are blocked
by young people sitting on benches. One is napping. Passers-by, slow down, or
stop, or keep on with their early afternoon business. Uniformed official types look
bored. Our news feeds, if they mention Armenia at all, spew the usual
news-as-hyperbolic-entertainment hysteria: ‘Yerevan crippled by violence’,
etcetera and so forth.
We
stroll homeward, the warming sun filtered through Yerevan’s urban forest, and
end the afternoon sipping cold draft beers outside the restaurant that served
our taste buds so memorably last night. With food this good, people would
flock. Maybe that king 2700 years ago put all that wine to good use, dallying
with elegant ladies in their gold, under skies singing with the harmony of the
spheres.
I hope so.
2018-04-18
YEREVAN DAY 2
‘It
was a sound bomb, nobody was killed’.
Articulate
Razmik, of the kind eyes, shrugs. ‘The leader of the demonstrations wants a
soft demonstration. No guns, no violence.’ Will it make a difference, I ask.
Shoulders rise, fall. ‘But, we have to do something.’
Armenians
know something about oppression. A million were killed during the Turkish led
genocide of the early 20th century. The guys ask us to see the film
‘Promise’, about the genocide.
Raznik,
Vache, and David, our balcony friends from Georgia, collect us this morning and
lead us up sleek escalators that climb the slope of Yerevan’s spectacular
Cafesjian Center for the Arts, contemporary art showplace, partner to the
History Museum. At the top we are high above the city but way below the
showpiece of this landscape, 17,000 foot Mt Ararat, perfect volcanic cone
brilliant white against blue. It is sacred in Armenian tradition as the place
where they emerged after Noah's flood, defining them. And it is now in Turkey,
stolen along with the million lives of the genocide. It is Mother Earth's
eternal reminder of the cost of hate and violence.
‘I
hear Istanbul is beautiful. We don’t like Turkey, but there are good people
everywhere.’ Razmik and the others lead us away.
We
head into the hills. Stream beds become ravines then deep gorges. We climb to
the 1st century temple of Garni then to the 12th century
Monastery of Geghard, crossing from Sun Cult to Son Cult. Armenia makes a
successful case for a return visit. The guys vote YES.
‘This
place has energy.’
‘Smell the animal smell. It is so good. Better
than the city.’
‘I
love lasagne’
The
five of us ride over rough roads through the white fluff of bursting apricot
orchards, dropping morsels of our personalities. These guys are childhood
friends. Vache just taught newly licensed David how to drive. David and Raz are
helping Vach in his new computer career. They welcome and absorb us, seal the
deal over home-made wine, fresh peach and cherry juice, cheese, REAL tomatoes,
thick yoghurt, warm bread, and a two-foot platter of barbecued beef, pork,
lamb, kebabs, sausage. Clearly size still matters in Armenia.
We
drop Raz off near his home outside Yerevan with a bag of baked goodies for his
wife and almost 4-month old Tigran. David and Vach walk with us until we
convince them we know our way. The hugs and cheek rubs are real and deep.
Armenia is no longer a shape on a map. It is
the faces of these 3 guys who did not have to do what they did, but did it
because ‘there are good people everywhere.’
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