In Search of Stalin

First off, let me tell you: I'm done traveling. I've worked the past 4 out of 5 weekends, and when I wasn't working, I was in Azerbaijan. So, this past weekend was my first weekend off (except I did eventually end up working Saturday) and I greatly enjoyed spending the week planning my vigorous schedule of pajama wearing and travelblog typing. I’m only telling you this because you need to understand how only the most exciting of adventures could seduce me out of my pajamas into my travel shoes.

And this adventure was none other than operation “Stalk Stalin’s Great Grandson.” My ever ambitious roommate, Paul, is currently writing an article about Stalin for his local newspaper. We both agreed that an interview with Stalin’s great grandson would provide that extra special kick to sell a few more papers. But we had to find him first…

And so we were off to Gori, the city where Stalin was born and grew up.

As it turned out, finding Stalin’s great grandson wasn’t as difficult as one might think. Basically, we walked into the Stalin Museum in Gori and asked for his phone number—which we were quickly given—and that was it.

Not to be undone by the anti-climactic nature of our search, we still enjoyed the guided tour of the museum in which we learned that there may have been some problems during Collectivization, but in general, Stalin’s leadership was a positive thing for the Soviet Union. …creepy…

After the museum, we went to Uplitsikhe which is an ancient city hewn from rock. The myth goes that the city was carved by slaves who were each given an axe. Once the slave had worn down the axe to a nub (ostensibly from hacking out stone), he was given his freedom.

The city must have had at least 1500 inhabitants. It was huge! The cave dwellings just kept going and going and going. You could even see where they carved out shelves and cubby holes. There were conveniently little steps carved in the stone so you could climb up and up and up. You can’t tell from the pictures, but each hall was decorated with beautiful engravings. Many of these engravings have been etched over by tourists leaving their mark. Some of this tourist graffiti was from the mid 1880s—itself something historical to see.

While the museum was great and the ancient rock city was awesome, the best part of our trip was our taxi driver who looked like a young James Gandolfini. I kept expecting him to talk about ducks or something equally cute and cuddly.

We took a marshrutka back to Tbilisi and it was the most god awful ride ever. The minibus was crammed with 21 people and I was unfortunately on the gimp seat (the seat that’s not actually a seat but a little pull out bench in the middle of the ‘aisle’). However, I still managed to impress Paul with my ability to sleep in the most uncomfortable of places. At one point he had to give me a sharp poke to keep me from curling up in the lap of the woman next to me. I tried to apologize, but I think the intent was lost in translation.

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