From Tbilisi to Mtskheta

Some days of our lives remain – fixed points of reference for all that was before and all that comes after. Our first day in Georgia was such a day....

 

We can see no fewer than 12 ancient churches from our windows and balcony, plus the modern national cathedral and the president's house. We are located in Old Tbilisi, just uphill from the ancient sulfur baths/banyas. (which will play a big role in activities in a day or two.....) Tbilisi seems a city caught between not just cultures, but centuries. Streets of rubble outside the apartment enclosure gate lead, in only a few blocks, to gorgeous inlaid pavement.

 

 

Still in the clothes in which we arrived (luggage lost, you'll recall) and with aching heads not yet in that timezone, we follow Nic through the streets, over a bridge, down another road, down, down down into the deep Soviet era subway. We emerge somewhere distant, and wend our way back out of the subterranean walkways, where impoverished people peddle the ubiquitous wheels and wedges of the salty, Georgian stinky cheese (non-refrigerated), cheap toys, old clothes and heartbreakingly, their family heirlooms. There is no time to stop, as Nic pushes on, having warned us about the Gypsy children sent out in droves to beg. “Give them food, they can eat it,” he advises. “Give them money, they will never see it.”

We break out into the sunlight, near blinded and wend through a bustling open-air market overflowing with bananas, watermelons, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and garlics and many fruits and vegetables I haven't a clue as to their pedigree.

 

The bins and pull carts, barrels and boxes follow somewhat orderly lines, but everywhere there are vans in every spare space and people hurrying this way and that, or talking with men standing at the vans. Negotiating, we learn for their destinations and fares. They are the marshrutka of Nic's research (Russian Analytical Digest, Dec. 2010) vans that take people, mail, packages and news from place to palce throughout most of the former Soviet countries.

 

Nic negotiates. We stuff ourselves into a back seat and we are off, bouncing over rutted roads, stopping to drop off people and pick up packages. There is no air conditioning in the late July heat. Nic points out the American Embassy and the road from the airport we traveled in the early morning hours.

We are on our way to Mtskheta, a village outside Tbilisi in which stands Svetitskhoveli, site of the first Christian conversion in Georgia and for hundreds of years, designated the “Mother Church,” and National Cathedral, before that title was bestowed an a brand new cathedral in Tbilisi.

 

Once there we enter the massive building.....

Back in Tbilisi Again

Our first views of Tbilisi were in the darkness before dawn, in the back seat of a taxi speeding through a sleeping city. Nic and our driver, pointed out gorgeously-lit public buildings. “Look there! Parliament!

“There – The Sheraton where the revolt took place. It's been repaired.”

“Over there – the Opera House!”

Above everything, high on the hills surrounding the city, the lights of the Georgian TV station and the fortress, Narikala – both bathed in sentinel lights.

 

It is, we learn, the view from the bedroom window of the apartment as well. In fact, Nartikala is the view from the kitchen window and the apartment balcony as well. The fortress and its fortifications date from the 4th to 17th centuries. At any time of the day it looms large – especially so over Old Town Tbilisi where Nic and Sora live. Tbilisi has many symbols and this is one of the most important.

In reality, we spent most of our days while in Georgia in Tbilisi itself, by turns gracious, grubby, grappling city coming to terms with it's past,it's present and its future all at once.

Tbilisi is a meeting ground, stomping place, rolled-over conquered, conquering, sophisticated, crude, hopeful, fatalistic, tradition-bound, welcoming, cautious contradiction. Here east meets west meets middle-east. Largely over looked by the world, Georgia and its people survived communism only to struggle with democracy, embrace most things west while rattling sabers at our old cold-war nemesis; Russia.

My great apologies for leaving you in Khaketi, on the Grape Road in the middle of a funeral procession for so long! It was a dark place to abandon my readers, but my router died and with it access to my laptop treasure-trove of pictures. (Now that I have conquered the picture-posting thing it seemed a shame to attempt painting only word pictures of our adventure.)

We spent only that one day on the Grape Road, although for some readers it may seem longer. But without that day, I wonder if I could have begin to grasp the spirit of the Georgian people and the shift occurring in this place. It is not just a tug-of-war between east, west and Middle East. it is a struggle to shed the last vestiges of Soviet era machinery and a stumbling, bumbling dash from the past into the 21st century.

It is still dark when we arrive, dragging the one bag that has stayed with us into a dirt courtyard, around cars bedded down for the night and up steep curving stairs to the apartment. After thirty two hours of travel, sleep and wake are at war and for a few hours, sleep wins.

When the sun comes up.......

 

 

Life and Death in Georgia

The procession came from the left, up the incline to the paved road from a cluster of tumbled-together village homes. Nic was up front of the car, bargaining for strings of garlic and onions with several elderly villagers at a makeshift stand, when it appeared.

 

As we watch from the car, six men and boys in plaid shirts, carrying an open pine box on their shoulders led the way. Just as they met the paved road, the front man on the near side slipped in the loose dirt, momentarily unbalancing the open casket on their shoulders. The casket lurched, giving us a sideways impression of an elderly face in repose, looking decidedly green-black. He recovered and the procession moved on, across the road and down the far side. It was followed by a straggling procession of women, girls a few men and young children in black, carrying all manner of colorful umbrellas against the afternoon heat. No one looked especially sad.

“Now there's something you don't see every day,” I remarked.

“No,” agreed Sora and was silent a moment. “And not only do they don't embalm here, they still lay the deceased out at home," she added. "Then they summon the family and friends to morn. It can take a week or two for everyone to arrive before they hold the funeral.”

We considered the weight of that information in silence. The heat of the August day there in the car is stifling. It's August. I try not to imagine the smell.

Nic returned from his successful produce negotiations at the village stand.“She was ninety two,” he announced, cheerfully, as our driver pulls out and proceeds slowly down the road and past the casket, being loaded into an ancient hearse. “She was the village matriarch. They said she had a good, long life.”

I set to imagining a matriarch who drank some good Georgian wine every day of her long, adult life, who will return to the earth to nurture her grape vines. While the aesthetics of American life don't encourage most of us to think about death in this fashion, it may be good to recall that dealing with death in this way is quite ecological. Quite green, in fact (no pun intended). In the United states, a slowly growing trend toward green funerals is making a comeback, as a biodegradable reaction to the environmental impact of embalming chemicals, as well as a return to the natural cycle of life.

I'm not sure it will really catch on here. But such is life, and death, in Georgia.

The Real Bounty of Georgia

Nic begins negotiations with the matrons for buckets of peaches as the rest of us attempt to stay in the shade along the two-lane paved road..

 

Trucks, ancient cars, fancy new sport utility vehicles and donkey driven wooden carts loaded with hay, boxes of produce or barrels of something, pass us in both directions. The sport utility vehicles careen around the carts, defying the obvious dimensions of the road width. Looking about, I realize we are not so much in a village, as stopped at a cluster of buildings; probably an extended-family compound. Fields and vineyards stretch out around us, fences lean crazily bordering narrow, dirt lanes. The building materials are varied and ingenious – cobbled together from stone, concrete, wattle, plaster – whatever building materials were available. These people use what they have to create sanctuary.

One of the women trots across the narrow, busy road to the trunk of an ancient Soviet-era car and selecting from this or that box in the trunk, loads another bushel. She hurries back across the road, apparently telling Nic that these have been hand-selected for us.

I pull out my camera to get pictures of the negotiations. Seeing the camera, the matrons are thrilled to pose with Nic and Sora – the Americans who speak Russian. They smooth their aprons, pull off their head scarves, some lower their heads shyly, peaking up coyly toward the camera. A couple of them just downright blush. I suspect that, in their lives, there haven't been many pictures taken of these kindly matrons.

 

An excited conversation follows in Russian between Nic and the matrons. Suddenly, one matron turns and runs off down the shady lane at a dead run. I have no idea of her age, but she would have done justice to a high school sprinter.

“What,”we wonder “is going on?”

“They want copies of the pictures,” says Sora, as Nic scribbles something into a tiny pocket notebook. “And she has gone to get the family wine.”

The family wine! So we net not just peaches – but some of that special Georgian amber wine!

Nic pays for the peaches and we get them loaded in the back of the car. Back up the lane runs the matron, waving a plastic soda bottle of the family vintage in one hand and holding in her other hand the strange, bumpy, white-coated cords of churchkhela, the sweet, chewy, Georgian delicacy. Since the grape harvest is just beginning and making these, Sora tells us, takes many steps of dipping, drying and then rolling in sugar, we assume that they are the last of the previous season. And the wine, we learn, will have come from the huge, clay kvevris, or wine amphoras dug right into the ground for aging the family vintage.

Panting from her sprint, but beaming from ear to ear, the matron thrusts the precious gifts into Nic's hands and stands back. Her shoulders straighten and with dignity, she smooths her apron. Everyone nods and bows and smiles. We have been honored with the legendary Georgian hospitality!

I suddenly “get” that the real richness of Georgia is not just it's bounty, but the hospitality of its people. Their very traditions are rich, generous, accommodating. This is a people that appreciates the bounty of the earth, and the spirit of generosity that feeds both stomachs and spirits. Long-suffering, and as we are to learn, often frightfully ignorant of the humanity of their neighbors, they possessing an understanding of the basic human connection...the thread that links all of us is life itself, love and family. That thread is what drew us to Georgia.

It is a thread that links this place and this time to my own upbringing on a Wisconsin dairy farm. Just such hospitality was offered to guests at the modest family farm. I feel a sudden fullness in my chest and tears gather behind my eyes. The image of my Mother, proffering her homemade buns, just-made jams and jellies, still-warm cookies and steaming hot Norwegian coffee to friends and strangers alike in her country dining room, join the images of this Georgian country road. I swallow hard.

Back into the car we pile. Within a few miles we have stopped for watermelons, peaches, then again for tomatoes, and finally for strings of onions and garlic. At that point another pure Georgian experience awaits us.....

Some Seasons are Meant to Celebrate

Georgia is beautiful; a strange mix of wild spaces and barely-tamed places.

 

Its striking mountains, carefully-cultivated vineyards mesh into identity-challenged fields of hay with sunflowers sprouting about, and unfettered cattle roaming the roadsides. (Combine that with Georgian speeding vehicles and you've got steak tartar -- on the hoof.) The land under cultivation is both hard-won and generous. “Georgians,” Nic says, “say that just about anything will grow here, if you just drop it on the ground.”

I have visions of the the Narnian lamp post falling from the sky and taking root here, not as a lone sentinel, but becoming a forest of gas lights!

Our pace on the return is interspersed with produce negotiations.
 

The third truth of Kakheti is that when produce comes into season – it is time to celebrate the harvest! The roadsides are lined with families selling watermelons from the trunks of their cars. The sun is merciless. Town elders in long-sleeve shirts perch on wooden benches and crude hand-made chairs, holding umbrellas or squinting beneath make-shift sun shades, next to crates of cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, onions, garlics, leeks, peppers, corn, squash.

Women, dresses mostly in black, fan themselves next to boxes of strawberries, buckets of peaches, heaps of the first grapes and "churchkhela," the Georgian confection created by threading the nuts on long strings,dipping them repeatedly in concentrated grape juice, then rolled in confectionary sugar and hung to dry.

 

The result looks a lot like a bumpy stick of licorice or a skinny stick of sausage and is said to contain enough concentrated energy that they were carried on military campaigns. (It must be the original energy bar!)

Sadly, we are too early to attend the traditional, autumn rtveli (wine harvest). The Kakheti wine processing is like no other in the world – labor-intensive and quite different than European practices. After pressing, the grapes, the juices, skins, stems and seeds are all fermented together, yielding a wine that is raisin y, and Madeira-like, with a clear, amber hue. The method is dying out in the region's commercial vineyards, but the family plots and family vintages continue in the traditional way.

A fortuitous stop in a tiny village – well actually it was a few buildings and a lane running back from the highway—proved fruitful. At that juncture stood four village matrons surrounded by buckets of peaches. “Peaches!” Nic exclaimed from his interpreter's seat beside our driver. “Pull over!”
(or at least that's what I assume he said, since he spoke it in Russian.)

The driver braked and careened to the side of the road and out we piled.