Georgia on my mind

Like Armenia, Georgia is a blank spot in my mental ethnography. For too long it was swallowed up in that huge amorphous blob called the Soviet Union. But Georgia occupies a very special place in the Russian romantic imagination. Georgian legends filled with mystical knights, slashing tusks, and leaping stags fueled 19th-century Russian poets.

Today Georgia is a fragile country. Since independence in 1991 a military coup replaced one president and a popular uprising replaced another. Bandits and kidnappers prowl some areas, Russian troops and Chechen rebels are fighting in the Pankisi Gorge, the Abkhazians have effectively seceded, taking prime Black Sea real estate with them, the Ossetians are trying to secede, and you need your passport to get into Adjara, the other province on the Black Sea, because it's ruled by some random unofficial dictator called Babu who no one can seem to get rid of. They say now the mafia runs Georgia. It's easy to believe. A few days ago while sipping a beer at a sidewalk cafe in Tbilisi I saw a short well-dressed man stroll past with a tall beautiful woman on his arm. A silver plated pistol was strapped to his belt like a fashion accessory.

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Seventeen of us jammed into a marshrutka heading north from Tbilisi, the capitol of Georgia, along the Georgian Military Highway. The road is pretty good past the Zhinvali Reservoir all the way to the ski resort at Guadauri. It peeks at the Jvari Pass. From there to where it dead-ends at the closed Russian border the road is a slalom course of deep potholes and terrifying drops into the gorge cut by the Tergi river.

My travel companions are Liesel-- the wife of an AUA colleague-- and her friend Holly. Both women are liberal feminists, devoted Mormons, and hard-core travelers. Liesel grew up in the San Juan Islands. She did a two-year stint in Armenia as a Peace Corps volunteer and another two years in Korea as a missionary. She speaks Korean and Armenian. Holly grew up in Jackson Hole where she fought forest fires. She spent many years as a missionary in rural China. She speaks Cantonese and Mandarin. They threatened to convert me if I didn't behave.

The marshrutka dropped us off a few miles from the Chechen border in a little town called Kazbegi. Although we wouldn't see it until the mist cleared the next morning, Kazbegi is in a narrow gorge surrounded by some of the most magnificent peaks in the Caucasus. In the freezing cold we hiked across the river and up a muddy hill past grazing pigs and donkeys to Vano's place.

Vano has a speech impediment, yet speaks twelve languages. His house is popular with mountaineers headed for the Gergeti Glacier and beyond to the 5047 meter summit of Mt. Kazbek. The last step in the stairway leading to Vano's front door is missing. Inside climbers from Poland, Australia, and Slovak Republic are photographing maps, checking gear, and boasting about past climbs. Armenian duduk music is playing on the radio. On the wall hang pictures of Jesus, pictures of nude women, and a yellowed portrait of Georgia's favorite son, Josef Stalin. The wallpaper is peeling and the toilet doesn't work.

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Later that day we huddled between a group of Italians and French in the town's only functioning cafe. We ate hachapuris (Georgian quesadillas) and drank vodka, the only items on the menu. (My Mormon companions drank water.) I almost started a food fight when I brought up the World Cup.

Although visibility was still poor we decided to join the Italians on a trek to Tsminda Sameba, a 14th-century church that is only at 2170 meters and looked close on a map. Three hours and countless steep, muddy switchbacks later, we reached it. A monk with a long beard and a long black robe rushed out and handed black wraps to the women in our group. It was bitter cold on the mountaintop so everyone assumed the wraps were for warmth. We were wrong. The monk didn't want women wearing pants to enter his church.

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Our first night in Tbilisi Liesel and I headed for the town's ancient sulfur baths where Pushkin and Dumas once bathed. We struggled to communicate with the proprietor. Liesel wanted a bath and a massage. I just wanted a bath. I was shown to a grotto, stripped to my bathing suit, and climbed into the hot sulfurous water. A few minutes later a man walked in, stripped nude, wrapped himself in a towel, and began cleaning a surface with a soapy towel. Perhaps he was the cleaning crew, I reasoned, perhaps he didn't realize that the room was occupied. "Excuse, excuse, man here," I croaked in Russian. He ignored me. After a few minutes he turned and motioned for me to lie down on the surface he had soaped.

"No massage, no massage," I said in a panicky voice.

He shook his head, affirmed "No massage," then once again motioned for me to climb up on his soapy slab. We repeated this little exchange several more times before I gave up and mounted the soapy shelf. It's hard to resist the authority of a man in a towel.

I'm not homophobic. Let me start over. I am a bit homophobic, but that's not the only reason I hate massages. Even if "Raoul the pool boy" had been a beautiful Geisha I wouldn't have wanted the massage. I just don't like strangers handling me. I become obsessively worried that someone is going to try to stick a hand up my butt. I just wouldn't know quite what to say in that situation.

Raoul did get dangerously close to my butt. He made me flip over and got dangerously close to my crotch. Fifteen minutes later he finished and demanded $10 for his massage!

I wondered if Liesel, who was aware of my massage phobia, had sent Raoul into my room as a joke, but it turned out my experience paled in comparison to hers. I had her bathing suit in my bag and had forgotten to give it to her when she went into her grotto, so she was totally nude when she received her hour-long massage from Raoul's big brother, Igor.

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When Liesel and I arrived in Tbilisi we simultaneously realized that we had chosen the wrong country to live in. It turns out Georgians and Armenians don't like each other because Georgians think Armenians are ants who work first and play later, while Armenians think Georgians are grasshoppers who play first and work later. It seems true. Georgians seem to love life and it shows in their cafes, art galleries, lifestyles, food, wine, and beautiful but crumbling architecture.

Georgian hospitality is famous. After dinner Nino, the proprietor of our hotel, gathered all of her guests on the balcony for a glass of famous Georgian wine. She filled our glasses, and then offered a ten-minute toast to world peace, good friends, life, etc. Only after the toast could we drink. Immediately our glasses were refilled and it was the next person's turn to make a long toast as is the Georgian toasting tradition.

At 2 AM Nino was still pouring wine and toasting when Liesel and I left to pick up Holly at the airport.

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Maybe you have to get to know Georgians before their hospitality kicks in. The next night we took Holly to a restaurant that had two claims to fame. First, in addition to being a restaurant it was also an archaeological site. Second, George Bush ate there the year before when he visited Georgia. A picture of him with Georgia's boy president hangs above the seat where he sat. In the picture a light bulb hanging over his head makes him look smart.

We were the only customers in the restaurant. Our waitress didn't speak English. Not that it mattered, we only saw her twice in the two hours we spent there. The only other person we saw was a bare-chested accordion player who needed to be tipped to go away.

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