A Secondhand Republic

In a smoky Internet "cafe" in Tbilisi, Georgia. Internet cafes seldon serve coffee--or anything at all--but the name has stuck. Only have about a minute left here before the smoke overwhelms me and the sun sets outdoors (I want to watch the sun set over the Caucasus mountains) so I wanted to check in with just a few words before writing something more substantial either later from this same place or in a couple days from Baku, in Azerbaijan.

So much to share... a few highlights:

-- I've now learned firsthand some reasons why communism, at least as executed in the Soviet Union, was an idea so bad it bordered on--no, crossed into--the absurd. Batumi, the first city I visited in Georgia, across the border from Turkey, looked as if it had recently been pillaged in a war. Everything was literally gray and collapsing: buildings, streets, cars, kiosks...

Here in Tbilisi, the population seems to be shaking off the gloom, but only slowly, and everywhere I can see bits of communism's legacy. One example: there was no incentive to use space in commercial buildings efficiently, since no one paid rent. The average restaurant is palacial in scale and has four tables. The department store has five floors, 50% functioning escalators, and features bored babushkas (older Georgian women) sitting behind counters where consumers must ask to see merchandise (there's no browsing the shelves here.) There are about four babushkas to every one shopper. And about 60% of the ground is bare.
There's also no inventory in the back. Everything for sale is visible right away.

-- Spent time in an Eastern Orthodox Church and in a synagogue today. More on this later. Outside the Church, a shop sold "super totalizators." No idea what they are; the door was closed.

-- People drive on both sides of the highway here. "The British influence moderated through the Ottoman Empire," suggested Sasha. Perhaps. There's nothing like the adrenaline rush of driving full-bore at oncoming traffic in a thirty-year old Lada.

-- The bus I was in crashed yesterday, into a car heading the opposite direction, of course. No one was hurt, we lost only half a front bender, and everyone continued on. The police, who were driving behind us escorting a Briggs-like money truck, ignored the incident.

-- At the home where we're staying, the owner knows two words of English: no problem. This is quite reassuring and also very reminiscent of Jamaica.

-- Used a toilet in the basement of what appeared to be a mosque converted to a sulfur bathhouse. Enough said.

-- Batumi was so war-torn that even the babies seemed sad. Not kidding here. The scariest thing is that the city one hundred miles up the coast *is* war-torn, and I have no idea how much worse it can be. In fact, the country is teeming with refugees from that particular province, named something like "Abkhazia." This sounds suspiciously like the prison in those Harry Potter books.

-- Lonely Planet refered to Batumi as a "beachside resort." I observed as we walked toward the stone-colored waters of the Black Sea, that it was more a "beachhead of last resort"--indeed, about the only non-gray thing in town was an out-of-place market with gilded walls laden in Baroque art. It, too, had about six employees, and no customers.

-- Breakfast in Batumi was baked pizza dough filled with a lightly-fried egg and topped with a slab of butter. Yum.

-- The people at the border wanted a bribe, but eventually one pinched my cheeks and let us through.

-- The public market was great fun--about the only bustling place in Batumi. We were the first tourists that the town had seen in longer than anyone could remember, and so were treated to lots of free samples, Priceclub-style, and repeatedly asked if we were sailors.

-- In Trabazon, on the Turkish side, high school students named Volcan and Durak invited the two of us to visit their campus on guest speakers on America. "Our school is very historical," they said. We went with them, of course, and had a great time--until the headmaster discovered we were interrupting the normal flow of the school's premiere English class, and promptly expelled us.

-- Met the Georgian consulate in Northern Turkey yesterday. He was, among other things, a chain-smoker, who glared at Sasha and me suspiciously when we asked him for a via.

-- People move into buildings as each floor is completed, producing the incongruous appearance of laundy hanging to dry off the third floor balconies while cranes and somber men work to assemble the next floor up.

Time to depart. I'll be sure to send more along at the next opportunity.

Tomorrow we may head for the Russian border along the Georgian Military Highway, but in light of visa issues and a certain degree of violence in Chechnya, we should stay in Georgia for the time being.