Georgian Baptism

In true Georgian fashion, Murman (Dana’s boss) called us Saturday morning to tell us we were expected at an outdoor café to celebrate Gogi’s son’s baptism in a few hours (Gogi is Jenik’s friend and also the kind man who picked us up at the airport—his nieces and nephews are the ones who keep stealing us to go sightseeing). Murman couldn’t remember the name of the café, or what street it was actually on, but he told us it was near the hippodrome (apparently that’s the word for horse arena) and by a fence.

So we got dressed, flagged down a cab driver, and tried to explain to him that we didn’t know where we were going, but that it was somewhere near the hippodrome and a fence…and trying to explain this in Russian was quite painful. As it turned out, the café was just on the other side of our block and Dana and I both felt like idiots. And then we feasted…

There were about 50 people there to celebrate Dato’s baptism. It was our first real supra since coming here as the others were just semi-supras. We’d been supra-ed enough to know the secrets to survival: basically, you have to take tiny spoonfulls of everything and eat very slowly. Never ever let your plate get empty or you will be bombarded with beef tongue!

We’d made it through the first few hours with success. You can’t believe the pride we felt when the servers started dispersing tarts and coffee—we’d made it through a supra without stuffing ourselves silly!!! So Dana and I gleefully attacked the strawberry tarts…but then the servers brought out more food…and more food…and more food… Dana and I were so confused! Once the coffee arrives, that means dinner’s over, right?!!! But no! In fact, we were only a third of the way through the supra as Georgian dinner’s do not end until everyone sings… And sing we did.

At the supra we met some delightful people. Two of them were a British couple who were here to write about the energy conference—as foreign correspondents they get to travel all over the place and see interesting things so their conversation was lovely. They invited us to their home in Scotland, to their summer home in Montauk, and also some other places. I was starting to get the impression that they actually wanted to traffick me, hence I decided it was a good time to leave.

On the way home, Gogi insisted on taking us sightseeing the next day. And so Sunday we went to Ananouri.

Georgian’s have bizarre ideas about time and he kept insisting that it was only a 10 minute drive outside of the city…in fact, it was a couple of hours, but the scenery were great. Once again the driving was terrifying—I got the best picture in the world and it definitely shows the excitement of riding in a car in this country! It’s even more exciting out of the city where cows and pigs roam freely and half the fun is seeing how close you can get your car to them without actually hitting them…

But we did, in fact, get to Ananouri safe and sound. Ananouri is an old Georgian fortress that was built in the 9th century…and was reknowned for being impossible to overcome...but it was, in the end, overrun by Turks. We got our fill of sightseeing…

And then we feasted.

Anyone notice a pattern?

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