En Route to Tbilisi

I am on a bus with a Muscovian Jew who leaves tomorrow from Tbilisi to Los Angeles: quite a coincidence. He is instructing us to visit Israel--all Jews should, he maintains. At least, that's what Sasha says he is instructing us. It's handy to travel with someone who speaks about a third as many languages as there are countries in the world.

Nothing fits together here in Batumi, Georgia. The doors are larger than their frames, the streets than the town's population could possibly fill. At the restaurant where Sasha and I ate last night, there are four tables and five different kinds of chairs--in a space which could probably seat forty if it were efficiently used.

The local shopping mall sells the same thing on every floor, including a detergent named Barf. Down the street a farmer's market smells of fish and village capitalism.