Category: Georgia

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Azerbaijan Georgia

Azerbaijan and Georgia.

At the airport in Muscat we queued up for our Arabian Air flight to Baku in Azerbaijan. I felt sorry for the people behind us because I was a long time waiting for my boarding pass. Unknown to me they wanted to see my travel insurance document, which I didn’t have because the only other time it has been requested was for Belarus, and then I had been given notice of the requirement. I explained it was based on my credit card and started trying to find something online that might help. The man went away to talk to his superior about this stupid old man, several times, and eventually was all smiles and I was let through. The driver at the other end who took us to our Airbnb apartment in Baku had a common problem, no change, and scored an extra $5 from me. I might be cynical but I never believe drivers who tell me that. Luckily we had arranged him through our apartment host, otherwise we would never have found our way in. We drove into a shambolic large courtyard and he led the way through two doorways, up a flight of stairs, outside to an attached lift shaft, up a couple of stories, up some steps, through another door, and there we found the key under the mat. No lock boxes here. It was a nice spacious and central apartment and we soon got used to getting in, although you wouldn’t want to argue with the lift which had a very definite and speedy method of operation.

Baku has a rather European feel to it and fronts on to the Caspian Sea, the water of which has a luminous quality owing to its surface because there are lots of oil wells in it. No one seems to go swimming. Azerbaijan is one of those countries lucky to have an oil industry and the attendant riches do not appear to have been spent as wisely and as widely as those in Oman. However, the big city and capital, Baku, has got a fair bit of it as evidenced by some stunningly modern buildings. One, which has not yet been completely finished, looks like a big shiny upright circle, although Paul tells me it represents the crescent moon. It’s a moslem country. The most stunning are the three Flame Towers that deservedly dominate the skyline and at night are lit to look like they are on fire. We booked the usual free walking tour and were the only customers for our nice young female guide. The only problem with that was she would know exactly who had tipped how much at the end and, being from NZ, we were not sure if we were mean or overly generous, so we also bought her a coffee and asked more questions.

Azerbaijan has the usual old history of this area, continuing invasion and destruction, with a brief interlude of independence in the 1920’s. After exiting from the defunct Soviet Union it was once again independent and ruled by a guy who handed his title to his son who is the current dictator. Every town has at least a park and street named after the family and you can’t miss the photos. Any idea that they are not responsible for everything new and wonderful is soon squelched when you read the signs attached to places like the carpet museum we visited. This building is in the shape of a rolled up rug and the many people “working” there had no sense of humour at all. This dour and unsmiling behaviour seemed common in public places.

After our tour we decided we would go and conquer the metro system and take the three rides to the bus terminal we were to leave from in a couple of days. The Lonely Planet said it is large and confusing so we didn’t want be trying to find our bus without some knowledge of the place. We got there and sort of circled around ticking off places that were not what we wanted, and eventually found the right ticket booth and bought some tickets. Walking back to our apartment from the metro we found the street our balcony looked over was lined with shiny new black vehicles and I thought it would make an interesting photo. While I was taking it I noticed a guy in jeans, amongst all the uniformed ones, who seemed to have noticed me. About five minutes later there was a very aggressive bashing on our door, and there he was. He demanded I delete the offending photo, demanded our passports, and carried on asking stuff about what we were doing. At some stage Paul asked who he was and he briefly flashed a badge that apparently meant he was a police person. It was all a little worrying but not stomach churning and eventually he left, probably convinced we were not some Armenian assassins. Given that it is a dictatorship that had just chucked thousands of Armenians out of Nagorno-Karabakh I should have been a lot more sneaky about my photo.

When we returned to the bus station a couple of days later it was to start on our way to a little village called Lahich in the mountains north of Baku. We made sure we had plenty of time and got to Bay 2 where we were met by several gentlemen talking loudly but incomprehensibly to us We showed our tickets and one took them off to the ticket office, came back smiling and escorted us into his bus which immediately left half an hour before originally planned. The bus took us to a small town where we found a taxi driver who said he would take us to our village. When we got to the main entrance it was closed and he didn’t have any idea about alternatives despite asking lots of people. Eventually we bumped up a rudimentary rock-lined road to the back entrance of a place where we were not staying. Luckily the owner spoke a bit of English and we were pretty close to our objective so we paid off the driver, walked through the not-our- place and eventually found ours. It was a Hostel and a bit basic but we had a room each and a shared bathroom. The man in charge was called Rashid, I think, and the only words he said that we understood were “No problema”. And nothing was a problem apart from the power being off and consequently neither Google translate or maps were available to help. Just like the old days and it was fun. We looked around, eventually found the more commercial street, watched a guy making nails, found a feed, avoided breaking an ankle on the river stone paved skinny roads and managed to arrange a ride back out the next day.

Our driver was definitely a local, he had a Lada Niva which is neither big nor especially comfortable and he also had a mobile phone that he used all the way back to the main road while driving. I was in the front unfortunately. The road was unsealed, essentially single-laned, and of the variety that has big cliffs above one side and big cliffs below on the other. When we got past that danger we had a lot of roadworks to pass along and he stopped using the phone and slowed down so everyone passed us. When the road works finished he sped up considerably and started passing everyone. In town he was even more adventurous and when we finally got to our next place my right foot hurt from all the phantom braking I had been doing. Having said that, it was an attractive drive beside the foothills of mountains that sometimes had snow on, and the bushy woods are all turning gold at present.

Sheki is a small historic town in the mountain foothills that was once part of the routes for trade from Asia and even has a small silk industry still. Or so we were told. Which of course means you have to buy a scarf or a carpet. The former is easier to carry. We had quite a flash hotel this time and visited all the sights which invariably meant walking up and down hills. The next stop was the border with Georgia.

Our driver dropped us off in front of the very large gates out of Azerbaijan which were firmly closed. We had a sort of chat with a Belarusian truck driver who was on his way to Kazakhstan, and eventually we were beckoned through, being the only walkers there. The exit side was easy and friendly, there was a fair walk up a long badly paved path to Georgia where all went well and there we were in a new country. There were a couple of taxis waiting for targets like us and eventually a deal was reached and we set off for another historic old town on a hill, Sighnaghi. It has the distinction of being in the centre of the largest wine area of Georgia and it’s way above a plain looking out to the Caucacus Mountains, which we couldn’t see because of the haze. Our accommodation was the Dabid Zandarashvili Guest House, which I mention because should you ever go to Georgia, and you should, staying here is a cultural blast. It’s not luxurious but acceptable and the first thing that happens on arrival is David gives you a tour of the property, the first stop being his rudimentary winery where he lifts the lid off a big vat of red wine, dips in a glass each and hands them to you. Of course you have to taste and its perfectly drinkable. Then we were sat down at the considerable remains of what was either a late breakfast or early lunch and told to dig in, no cost, including more red or white (orange to be more technical). We then escaped for a wander and, as I suspected, I had been in the town before. We were booked in for an evening meal at David’s and previous experience helped me mentally prepare for it. There were 2 young Slovenian guys, a Canadian and an American couple, a lone US guy, a lady from Hong Kong, a French/English couple, and 2 NZers. I was considerably older than any of them. Our host and official toast master was David who undoubtedly has done it hundreds of times before but he was very good and sincere. The food keeps coming and the wine flows with no limits. After a while the toasts start, to visitors, to family, to women, and the list continues each one with a not-short speech. You are supposed to empty a full glass with each toast but I knew this had a predictable end so sneakily sipped. Eventually the wine is replaced by chacha which is the local grappa. The first to give in was the lady from HK who took a good sip of chacha and declared she was drunk and left. One of the Slovenians was well gone by the end, and Paul was smiling a lot and shifted to be with the youngsters where the talk was getting louder. I avoided the strong stuff and sipped wine but ended up at probably three times my usual limit of 2 glasses. The next day most of us went on a wine tour which got off to a quiet start. We are all now experts about the singularity of traditional Georgian wine making.

David drove us to the bus station and sorted out our Marshrutca ride to Tblisi. That’s in a van and is what locals use. We arrived at a busy station for these vehicles and none of the taxi drivers approached wanted to drive into the centre. So we found the metro, sorted a card, and got on. Being Soviet era the lines are very deep and the escalators very long. On the way out and up I think I was trying to straighten up my bag, and I think managed to get against the side, and suddenly found myself flying backwards through the air and landed some steps below where I started from, sprawled over the steps, and wondering what I had broken, apart from a woman I must have hit on the way down. Luckily, the only thing wrong was a bleeding forearm which was missing a bit of skin and the woman seemed all right. I got tidied up in a nearby cafe, stopped shaking after a while, and all was fine. I rather suspect Paul was wishing he was somewhere else while the fun happened. That evening I accompanied him to a few craft beer places and all was well. We once again did the free tour which was with a big group this time and we all learnt lots. Tblisi has lots of fairly friendly dogs wandering around, all with a coloured button thing attached to their ear. Our guide told us this indicated they had been neutered and the population was expected to diminish. By the time we finished the tour 5 of them were attached to us and got quite noisy if their canine logic told them we were threatened. The guide wasn’t always easy to hear. We had a very nice apartment with a balcony which is a greatly desired feature in Tblisi, and no room for fancy black vehicles in the road below. As I said a mere seven years ago, I like Georgia and I still do. The quality of wine helps and the graffiti is clear about youthful political leanings – “Fuck Russia” is very common. Interestingly, the present government is tilting towards Russia and trying to fire the President, who has little power, as she was appointed by the previous Western-oriented lot. Paul found an intriguing sounding museum a couple of stops out on the metro. It looks like one guy’s obsession about the very wonderful Stalin and the building is where he and others clandestinely printed communist stuff the first decade of the 1900’s. The man in charge asked where we were from and commented that NZ was OK, not like those fascists from the USA.

One of the interesting things about travel is the brief encounters with people and the later realisation that you will never know the full story about things they say. Did our Omani guide and driver really hate being at home with his wife, or was he just making excuses for trying to make as much money as he could in the tourist season? Did the solo American guy at David’s have an interesting reason why he converted from R.C. to Orthodox? He was in the army from age 17 so he could get to uni free and had seen a lot of the world since. How about the waiter from our last meal who told us he had a Nigerean father and Georgian mother. Why did the father get stuck in Georgia, and eventually marry the only female he knew who spoke English? Today I had an email from a guy we talked to in a wine shop in Slovenia. He had told us he was very keen to visit NZ and I said “happy to help.” The email says he is arriving in February so that’s one encounter that might get further explanation.

I’m presently looking down on Georgia on my way to Dubai. The last time I tried to make this flight I arrived at the airport exactly one month late. You wouldn’t believe how many times I have checked to be sure there would be no repeat.

Dennis.

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Georgia

Georgia. Do your best.

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