October 2016 – Dennis's Travels

When you cross the border into Georgia from Armenia there is a subtle difference which took me a little while to appreciate, and it is that things are less scruffy. The houses look a bit better maintained, the roads are smoother and the land is tidier. The unemployed guys standing around smoking and fiddling with the front of their underpants were better dressed and the shops had more stuff. I was sharing a taxi and we got dropped off at a metro station on the outskirts of the capital, Tbilisi, and after changing money I thought I would get a taxi to my hotel as I didn’t want to cope with working out the mysteries of the metro right then. It turned out to be not too far but the driver was either a moron or from another planet and it became a major production with the usual acrimonious ending where he thought I should pay for his lack of knowledge plus a lot of tourist tax. When I became more familiar with local prices it was clear he got more than he should have but it was about half of what was being demanded. Always get out and retrieve your bag before payment negotiations.

There is a lot to like about Tblisi. I was staying in the old city which has cobblestones and heaps of places to eat and drink and even the obligatory Irish bar where I watched the ABs play Argentina starting at 2a.m. The city is built around a river and has some very modern stuff including a cool pedestrian Peace Bridge which Hamilton needs, and lots of old decaying buildings which one day when restored will be very cool. Some won’t make it as you can see the cracks and it is surprising how far a building can lean without falling. They mostly date from early 1800 as the place was leveled in 1795 by an invading bunch of Persians.

I need to digress into history a little here but will return. Georgia was absorbed by Russia after the levelling and stayed that way until 1991. Apparently in the Soviet days it got a little more leeway than other parts, maybe Stalin being Georgian helped, and it was the big agricultural supplier as well as the main wine making area. When the Soviet break up happened Georgia ended up with economic chaos as their market for agricultural stuff disappeared, power was in short supply and food hard to get. The locals I have talked to about those times get a funny look on their faces when discussing it. I asked one person why this happened and was given an example of how Soviet industry worked in explanation. – a ballpoint pen has about five parts and each would be made in different parts of the empire and assembled in another. So when a couple of the parts are made in now independent republics that have no understanding of how to make or source or trade the rest the specialist factories accumulate huge stockpiles of useless parts and eventually close down resulting in unemployment and no pens. Also Georgia was at that time basically at war with Russia over two areas that wanted to leave, South Ossetia and Abkhasia. They lost and although these places show on maps as part of Georgia they are really Russian. And then in 2003 came the Rose Revolution which was peaceful (hence the bridge) and the old guard ex Soviets resigned and the revolutionary leader, Saakashvili, won the following election and set about remaking the country. He has been described to me as a crazy man which I think means he had big ideas that seemingly were impossible. One was to eliminate corruption and crime which were pervasive then, and he did it. That was amazing as I am sure it would originally have been no different from all the other now very corrupt ex Soviet countries. Apparently he started with a group of honest army officers, then fired all the police and I think with European help trained a new lot from scratch. Along with that government departments were made as open as possible and citizens can see lots of stuff on the internet that used to be hidden. When I am home I’m going to find out more because this is unique. He also had some very modern buildings put up, and that leads back to modern Tblisi. Because there are some there he was responsible for.

My main focus in Georgia was a three-day wine tour that I organised with a local agency that specialises in such things but they definitely do not specialise in effective communication. However, it was a well organised and comprehensive look at the oldest wine industry in the world, which has been around for at least 8000 years and has over 500 different grape varieties. The traditional way of production uses large clay urns (qvevry) that are buried in the ground rather than stainless steel tanks or barrels, but they also do that as well. The traditional white wine takes a bit of getting used to, but I have fought my way through to appreciation, and the best reds are very good. When the economic chaos happened and the Russian market disappeared a lot of vines got pulled out but things are going well for them now and in USA Georgian wine is a new cool thing, apparently. My guide was certainly not typical given her very bright red orange hair colour with blond undercut at the back and lack of a husband, but she was very knowledgeable and good fun.

Georgian custom is the guests are king and all kings want to eat and drink a lot. The two go together although drinking may be done solo as well. One drinks wine and chacha with the later being the same as French eau de vie or Italian grapa. However you describe it I reckon it’s drinkable aviation fuel. One does not sip and appreciate the flavours, one listens to lengthy and sincere toasts about subjects such as families, ones country, peace, wives, friendship, rugby and even late one evening, Russian people. That was because there were a couple with us. Having listened and done lots of glass clinking, sometimes twice because the speaker thinks of additional details for the toast, one drinks the lot immediately. This is ok with glasses of wine because there is recovery time before the next toast reaches its climax, and I know about drinking wine, but chacha is a different story and extreme cunning is required to avoid falling over. The highlight of the wine tour was such an evening where the guide, driver and I were guests of a family in a house in a small village. The patriarch was a gifted toast maker in six languages and a good musician as were his daughter and son. The food was all home grown and delicious and the best bit of all was at the beginning when touring his orchard and garden we stopped by the special dinning shed and he shifted a big round stone off the top of his qvevry which was buried and ladled out glasses of wine for us. I want one of these close to my bbq. The worst part was at the end, when I thought I had done very well in avoiding too much chacha, our host produced the dreaded formal cow’s horn drinking vessel and we had to have one last toast in the proper way with the horn. Those things hold quite a lot. The next day I asked the guide if he was just a gifted actor or was he for real, and she said it was just him. He gave me a bottle of chacha as we left which was gratefully received by the guy on reception when I returned to Tblisi.

After all that punishment I headed for the purity of the Caucasus mountains and a small town called Mestia. It is in one of a series of very isolated valleys surrounded by big rock and ice serrated ranges that reach to a bit over 5000m. They have their own language and think Mr Saakashvili is a great guy because not only did he get them a real road that doesn’t close during the six months of winter snow, but he also had a town square with public buildings constructed. The police station looks like a giant leaned very hard on the top of one end. All of which means there are now jobs in tourism and no one is complaining about all the changes. This time of the year the forests are gold and red and spectacular, however that and the mountains are not the big tourist attraction. The special thing about Mestia and the surrounding villages is that in the 10 – 12th centuries the families built defensive towers attached to their houses and over 200 still remain standing. Apparently they not only had to contend with raiders from the north coming over the mountains they were also very enthusiastic about feuding with each other. The place has a Lord of the Rings feel about it and is stunning.

I was the oldest tourist about and the only one not clad in trekking gear and a pack but people still talked with me, especially when they knew where I was from. Everyone either had NZ high on their list or had been there for a wonderful time. I stayed at Rozas Guesthouse which cost $15 a night for a spacious room and breakfast. The downside was no sheets, no towels, no soap or shampoo and shared bathrooms of which I was only unprepared for the lack of a towel but a t-shirt did the job. Also it was a bit of climb up a very rough track. The upside is you meet lots of interesting people including a Sri Lankan Tamil now living in Oz who drank pinot noir, outside of Georgia, and had very similar opinions to me on everything apart from the legality of a certain Sri Lankan spin bowlers action. We were having a beer at the local cafe when he saw someone get a litre carafe of red wine, he smiled and said we have to see if that tastes acceptable, and we did and it was. I also made a mistake when I popped into the owner’s room to ask about the wifi. Mr Roza immediately sprang up from watching tv and whipped the top of an admittedly small bottle of chacha and once again lots of toasts took place.

I flew to Mestia from a small secondary airport near Tblisi in a Russian twenty seater belonging to Vanilla Air. The plane was about a third full which is no surprise because they don’t exactly encourage travellers. I tried to book a few months ahead and was told bookings could only be made 28 days in advance. So I waited and tried again to be told I could make a booking but it had be paid for in three days or it would expire, and no, they did not accept credit cards. However a bank transfer was a good thing – this was for a $40 fare and the costs of a transfer were more than that. It was a great flight alongside and over mountain ranges and then down into the valley threading our way around the sides of stuff towering way above us.

On the way out I used the usual transport which are van buses called marshrutky. It was very full. For the first time on the trip it was raining. The road was of average condition but mostly switcbacks with a long way to the roaring rivers at the bottom and luckily the driver was only moderately aggressive. I had one the next day on my way to a resort city on the Black Sea who had a sincere belief in his own immortality and that every other driver would get out of the way. No one else seemed worried.

Drivers in Georgia are generally not too bad apart from the tailgating that seems a necessary behavior. I haven’t seen any gangsters in their nazi cars with shaven heads and big gold necklaces. I assume Mr S’s anti corruption efforts made them find something else to do. Georgian people are very thankful for the rule of law and I suspect a bit amazed at what happened although they did vote out Mr Saakashvili, and there was an election a couple of days ago which was pretty low key. His party came second again. The man is now governor of Odessa in Ukraine and one assumes they must have some major problems there to convince them to bring in an honest outsider.

This is a great country to visit and if you have the time when going to or leaving Europe next give it serious consideration. You can fly to Dubai from Tblisi easily. Even a few nights in Tbilisi with a day wine trip would be different than usual and it is safer than Auckland, for those of you who worry about such things. Despite the cultural desire to toast every possible good thing I haven’t seen any drunks causing trouble or aggressive social behavior. The expat guys I met when watching the rugby test included a kiwi who had worked in a lot of countries and he thought Georgians were people with a good attitude and a way of life that had a lot to be said for it. He had recently turned out in a oldies rugby team, for the first time in twenty years, that raised a lot of money for charity and reckoned there wouldn’t be any other place where your opponents would include two government ministers and a billionaire.

The last part of my travels was a visit to a long time beach resort city on the Black Sea coast close to the Turkish border, called Batumi. During the Soviet times that border was closed and it declined but once again Mr Saakashvili came to the rescue and decided it should be a fun place again to bring some money into the area. It is a nice town to spend a couple of nights and a good mixture of different architectures plus a six kilometer boulevard along the shore. I don’t think much of stony beaches so have only looked at it but I did pay to ride up a very modern tower which just moved ever so slightly in the breeze at the top. It was comparatively expensive at $5 as things here are pretty cheap. A main course in a nice restaurant plus a couple of glasses of wine costs less than$15. As I may have said there is a lot to like about Georgia.
Dennis

Quite possibly the only thing you know about Armenia is that they have a disagreement with Turkey about the use of the word “genocide”, and if you know more you can have an extra glass of wine tonight. The main historical things to know about Armenia are that it is an ancient nation and the first christian one dating from 301; that it has been almost continuously either been ruled by another power or has been fighting a war; and that between 1915-22 the Turks caused the deaths of about 1.5 million Armenians while doing some ethnic cleansing. The Armenians say this was genocide and the Turks hotly deny it.

They certainly do not like Turkey as indicated by a sticker I saw on a car which showed two smiling cartoon boys peering enthusiastically on the Turkish flag. Apart from all the deaths, the Turks also cunningly got hold of the Armenians beloved Mt Ararat which is easy to see from their capital, Yerevan, and this is apparently like having a never healing wound. Right now they have an ongoing fight with Azerbaijan about an area called Nagorno-Karabakh which is ethnically Armenian so the Armenians fought a war with the Azers and currently still hold it. Although they try to balance between Russia, Iran and the USA, a tricky thing to do, the Armenians really are largely reliant on Russia economically and militarily.

Depending on what cultural followings you have you will know about some Armenians. – Agassi, Kacharturian and Kardashian to mention a sample. The body shape of the latter is not common in Armenia. The population has dropped from a bit over 3 million to about 2.8 in the last ten years due to economic immigration and there are an estimated 10 million outside the country. Remittances are very important when a good wage is US$300 a month and unemployment is over 30 percent. As with all the ex Soviet countries it became independent in early 1990s and the communist bosses renamed themselves and hoovered up assets and political power. It is a democracy but only one party has ever been in power.

I flew into Yerevan from Dubai on Flydubai which is an airline for very short people. I have to say that Armenia has one of the easiest and cheapest visas I have come across and getting through the formalities on arrival was a breeze. Yerevan is a very likeable capital, about 1.2 million people, with a central area that has lots of trees, parks, cafes, bars and statues. There isn’t really anything old and touristy so I went to the Armenian Genocide Memorial which was impressive and quite briefly to the bronze age stuff in the History Museum. Then I concentrated on food and wine.

The sights outside of Yerevan that one is directed to are mainly very old churches and monasteries, which I dutifully have seen. Most of them are in isolated places, usually in the mountains, and the differences between each of them have to be pointed out. The most interesting bit was a monastery that was built over a small dungeon where super saint St Gregory was incarcerated for thirteen years with only snakes for company. The then king, Trdat 3, was going crazy so Greg was hauled up out the pit and cured the king who gratefully turned the state religion to Christianity in response. That was 301 AD. And I got to climb down a slippery vertical ladder, which was not designed for the digitally challenged, to experience this place. When I made it to the bottom I found three nice Indian people so we had a discussion about the recent cricket test. All the tourist attraction churches and monasteries were constructed between the ninth and twelfth centuries, just in time for Chiingis/Gengis and his horde to come and make a mess of them.

I did two days of trips out of Yerevan with the same careful and interesting driver. At 18 he had gone to join some of the diaspora in the USA and without the necessary documents he got a job in LA and became a jewellery maker. Subsequently he got married, had two children, bought cars and an apartment, always using another Armenian’s name, and he never had a driving licence. After twelve years and with children getting to school age he decided to try and become legal which eventually meant he had to return to Armenia and start again with the application. As well he had to pay a US$5000 fine on arrival in Armenia for having avoided his army conscription. A couple of years later while still going through the immigration hoops he got an email form his wife asking for $2700 being his half of the cost of his divorce and has never heard from his children since. He is an intelligent thoughtful person but given to believing stuff that he sees on the internet and we had long conversations with me politely explaining why much of it was nonsense. He told when were finished how appreciative he was for having someone as wise and educated as me as his client and he had learnt a lot. What a sound person.

After Yerevan I headed north for Georgia and stopped a night in Vanadzor, a place of about 80,000 people. It’s a good example of what life is like outside of the capital. Almost all of the industrial plants from the Soviet times look like they have been the recipients of a nuclear explosion, derelict, rusting and stripped of anything of value. There are lots of long unfinished building projects, a few flash new places and plenty of small obviously struggling businesses. Most of the housing is in decaying apartment blocks. It’s another place Kay would not want to live in. Near by is the Debed Gorge which was a magnet for monastery builders because of the spectacular scenery and steep cliffs that could be fortified. On my way to the border with Georgia I looked at four of them in the company of a Polish chap who took a real Bible with him and spent much longer than me at each one. He was with me because I had hired a taxi and he was available to pay half the cost. The taxi driver was about fifty and not small, one of those guys whose neck is as wide as his head and his name was Ashot. I remember because it was cleverly on the back of his car in small silver letters the same size as those that said Mercedes. He was quite happy to tailgate police cars before ripping past them and when we were behind trucks I think the front of the car was under the back of the truck. I can’t be completely sure because although I started out in the backseat intending to take turns I quickly decided to stay there.

I have to mention agriculture so Colin doesn’t feel left out. There is not a huge amount of flat land where I have been, but what there is is cropped and it has recently been harvested so everything is brown and bald, waiting for winter snow. There is some market gardening, lots of grape vines and large areas of walnut plantations. It all looks small scale and there is not much machinery to see. Although we did pass one new huge tractor with the biggest and meanest looking plough arrangement I have ever seen, obviously someone has relatives who have done well in the U.S. In the hilly areas there are nomadic people who are presently driving their stock down to winter in mean villages. Apparently they are not Armenians because Armenians do not deal with livestock, apart from eating them. It must be true because I haven’t seen any stock in the cultivated areas.

The roads vary from great to not so good which is better than expected, and the driving behavior is reasonable. In Yerevan you can step onto a pedestrian crossing with complete confidence that no driver will try to crush your toes. That was a surprise. There are lots of traffic cops who I have been told are only a bit corrupt and when they are patrolling they must have their flashing lights on, which is a good idea because you can see them from way off. The reasonableness of drivers led me to think that maybe this was a place where people know how to queue properly, but when I asked about that the response was a gesture in the shape of a semi circle. On my way to Vanadzor we had to stop for gas, I assume cng, and I was ordered out of the car while filling took place. In the forecourt was a little building that appeared to have two atms inside and I had seen these before and wondered why they had signs with “bet” written on them. And yes, they were automated self serve TAB equivalents. I watched three young layabouts put their cards in and then instantly watch their money fly away.

Armenia was an add on to the main attraction which is Georgia but my short stay has been worthwhile, although I probably wouldn’t enthusiastically recommend it to any of you. Equally I wouldn’t do it for Dubai either which I spent a couple of days in on the way over. As far as I am concerned it has two good things, the Burj Khalifa which is stunning (the tallest building anywhere) and a very nice metro. Not long after I started looking around I suddenly remembered the gist of a poem from my school days. Ozymandius by Shelley which you can Google. Quite how my brain suddenly reached back that far is a mystery.

Hajogh.

Dennis.

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories