With three fellow PCVs, I finally made it up to Georgia, the easiest nearby country to visit. Both the countries to the south, west, and northeast provide their share of difficulties in visiting, and Turkey requires a plane ride. Fortunately, Georgia is just a bus ride away.
We went to go skiing, in Gudauri, about two hours north of the capital. The four of us met in Ganja and took a bus directly to Tbilisi, via the Red Bridge crossing in western Azerbaijan. The Red Bridge is in fact just a brick bridge, and is perpendicular to the border, not the route to cross, as I had imagined beforehand. The idealist in me was a bit disappointed; I have to admit.
Tbilisi is a smaller city than Baku, and feels definitively older as well. Baku only truly became a major site under the Soviet Union when Azerbaijan was used for its oil and natural gas, and Baku was convenient for these goals. Tbilisi, in contrast, has been the major city of Georgia for centuries, and in addition to straddling a large river, is filled with old buildings, churches, and topped with a large fort.
Our bus actually dropped us on the outskirts of the city and we experienced our first moment of culture shock. We realized, very suddenly, that even though we have spent the last year and a half becoming proficient at Azerbaijani, we didn’t speak a word of Georgian, and only a few words amongst us of Russian. Additionally, we couldn’t make heads or tails of the Georgian alphabet. We were back to square one, just as we’d been when we first stepped off the plane in Baku. It was a jolt, and in fact, a little frightening to be so helpless for a change.
We spent the first night in a hostel in Tbilisi. Another first for me, and while it gave me a taste for what hostels are like, we left spent the majority of the afternoon exploring the city and left early in the morning, so it wasn’t quite the full hostel experience. However, it was enough to remind me of my time at Genesee Valley, so perhaps I know more of hostels than I think. I’ll just have to go back.
One thing that Tbilisi and Georgia have in spades is good food. We had a delicious meal of chicken cooked in a garlic-spiced broth (yes, they cook with spices!). We had bacon and eggs for breakfast (yes, they eat pork—Georgia is predominantly Christian). The main food Georgia in known for (to us at least) is a dish called khachapuri, which is sort of a pizza sandwich. The most common sort is dough with cheese inside of it. There are variations that involve egg and more cheese being baked on top, or with beans inside as well. Basically, it’s delicious any way you have it. And it’s everywhere. I doubt I would have lost as much weight as I have if I could eat khachapuri every day. We spent a considerable amount of the trip wondering how our lives would be different if we had been placed in Georgia.
To return to the purpose of our trip, we came to ski. And ski we did. We arrived around midday to Gudauri, a resort up in Caucusus, above the tree line and among some of the most beautiful mountains I’ve ever seen. I have never skied anywhere like it. We feared the weather would be bad, but the entire weekend, the sky was brilliant clear blue, which turned out to have its own downside, as none of our group had thought to bring sunscreen. Oops.
The slopes were just as nice as the weather, and while I was out of practice and shape, and my muscles that I had forgotten I had reminded me of this the next day, it was a lot of fun. I only fell down five or six times!
Sitting on the gondola in our ski gear, with mountains in the background, and the sun shining down, we were shocked by how good we felt, how away from everything that had been our lives for the past year and a half. It was a real vacation; a vacation like we’d take back in our pre-Peace Corps lives. This wasn’t exploring a new culture or studying a new language, this was pure fun and games.
By the time we made it back to our sites, it was time to get ready to celebrate our second and last Novruz in Azerbaijan. But that’s for another post.
No comments:
Post a Comment