Tag Archives: georgia
into the grey
I got up at four and fumbled with my luggage for a while, then I hopped in a cab. Thirty minutes later I was at the airport. It turned out to be just like any other place in Georgia – there were street dogs hanging around outside: The flight was delayed for one hour. Two […]
Mayakovsky, hero and enemy
I took a walk through the village of Baghdati today. There was a special reason why I had come here, and it was this guy: Vladimir Mayakovsky. One of the most gifted poets of the early Soviet Union, he was initially a fervent believer in Socialism, but he later became disillusioned with the reality of […]
cows and pictures of the dead
I couldn’t hang out in circuses and swimming pools forever. So today I packed up my stuff and walked out of Zestafoni: Someone had apparently been trying to make the road a bit prettier by painting murals on some of the walls: This echoed some of the older murals that the Soviet Union had left […]
backstroke
The hotel I was staying at consisted of four rooms that were located on the top floor of a gym. I walked past the weight room and the exercise rooms every day, but I never went in. I didn’t want to lift any weights or do aerobics or take part in a karate class. Here’s […]
unhatable clown
Zestafoni is a quiet little town in the west of Georgia. They say it’s a place where not much ever seems to happen. Today was different, though. Today, the circus came to Zestafoni: “Are you planning on going?” the people at the hotel had asked me. I had said no. I generally didn’t like the […]
rain in the dark
I woke up, packed my stuff, sat down for some tea with Inga and Gela, and then I said goodbye: I knew the day wasn’t going to be short and easy. But I had no idea just how long and difficult it was going to be. The road kept following a river through the valley, […]
Matthew 10:14
When I left Surami, the air felt a bit warmer than the day before. And yet I could see that the fireplaces and the ovens and the radiators were hard at work: I thought how nice it must be to be there, inside one of those buildings, doing nothing, just enjoying the warmth. But I […]
She-ra is NOT a pickle
I had bought a jar of pickles, and I devoured one after the other: And then it dawned on me, how in English there were two words for one and the same thing, just in different states like water and ice: cucumber and pickle. One is a fresh vegetable, the other one has been stored […]
(ancient) ruins
I woke up at five thirty in a hotel room, looked out of the window, saw that it was raining in the dark, and went back to sleep. When I started walking it was already nine thirty, the rain had stopped, and the road was very quiet: There was a dead dog in a puddle […]
a tyrant who hides and a beggar who doesn’t
When I started walking in Gori I turned to the north, towards the white mountains in the distance: And when I had left the city behind me, I continued walking in that direction for another half hour or so: It was then that I realized that I wasn’t going to find him. Stalin. He had […]
The Price Of Independence
Gori is so small that you really can’t walk around without passing Stalin every once in a while: So today I walked past him, and I went through a few back alleys with some weird graffiti: And then I reached the fortress: It was on a hill in the center of the town, and when […]
Stalin’s birthplace
Both my pairs of long pants were in the laundry, so I went out in my shorts with a pair of long johns underneath: It looked ridiculous, and children would point at me in the street, but at least I didn’t have to go far – the Stalin Museum was only a few blocks away: […]
viruka
The good news: My big fat winter sleeping bag was with me, so the night hadn’t been too cold for me. The bad news: everything was wet. The tent, the sleeping bags, the therma-rest – it was all covered in dew: I decided to start the day with some sightseeing. So I bought a ticket […]
1-1-0-0-0
For some odd reason, this had been a formidable night. I felt refreshed and happy when I got up and went to the kitchen to boil some water for my tea: Nino and Nugsari, the owners of the guesthouse, showed me a place with pictures of their son Ramazi, who had been hit by a […]
just as lost
The world was still wet, but at least it had stopped raining. So I said goodbye to one of my favorite churches ever and got on the road: It was quiet. There was hardly any traffic. There were hardly any people. Even the villages seemed empty: Once I saw a cross by the roadside: And […]
what I found in a flame
The rain had never really stopped. And it was devious, too. Sometimes it would pause for a few minutes, just enough for the puddles to become still and for the people and the dogs to come outside again: But then it would start all over again – drip-drip-drippity-drop as if there was never going to […]
different views
I was staying in a guesthouse that was nice and warm and very close to the cathedral, and it was even supposed to have a view. Only not so much from my room: Outside, it was raining in a determined way: So I stayed in my room most of the day, and only one time […]
churchorama
There was a monastery on a hill overlooking Mtskheta. It was called Jvari, and I had seen it before, first on the map and then with my own eyes when I reached Mtskheta. So today I took a taxi up the hill to check it out: The view was like something out of an Austrian […]
the end of a journey
The tiger. He destroyed his cage. Yes. I left the apartment at about ten in the morning: Got the Caboose from her garage, loaded her up, and got on the road. Tbilisi was doing its best to show that it was a big city: I passed a monument of some horse-riding dude: And then, after […]
TLW posters?
When I went back to the tailor to pick up my pants, sure they had fixed them. But I figured I probably needed to buy a new pair sometime soon anyway. The problem was simply that my pants (along with the rest of my things) were getting old. And so I decided to make some […]