Sorry, I wrote this last week and thought I had posted it, but I apparently had not.
One of the places I’ve wanted to go to for months is
Sighnaghi. It’s supposed to be very
pretty. More importantly, it houses what
is reportedly the best (and only good) Mexican restaurant in Georgia. Clearly, my visit was overdue. I combined this visit with visiting my friend
in Kakheti, since Sighnaghi is located in the Kakheti region. I started my journey with a marshrutka ride
to Gurjaani, where my friend lives.
Being stubborn, I thought I would just see where to get off instead of
asking to get let off where I was supposed to.
I passed Gurjaani by about 3 villages.
I called my friend, hailed a cab, and set off. The cab driver chatted with me and exercised
my Georgian. I tried to switch, as
always, to Russian, but he did not, so I continued in broken Georgian. He gave me his number in case I needed any
more rides and refused any money (the ride cost about $0.30 so it was not a
great loss), which was my first introduction to Kakhetian hospitality, and
another reminder of how giving the Georgian people are. I found the café my friend was in, dropped my
bag off there because my friend knows the people who work there, and got to see
the sights of Gurjaani. It is the capital
of Kakheti, which means it has a lot of banks, second-hand shops, and other stores,
but it is not really that exciting.
Still, the tour was nice. We
capped it off with cake for me and champagne for both of us. Right about the time we were thinking of
leaving, the waitress brought us both a piece of cake and a fresh bottle of champagne. Some of the men in the café had bought it for
us, which my friend says is not that uncommon.
We enjoyed our treats and then realized that the place was closing. I went downstairs (we were on the 2nd
floor) to grab my bag and was stopped by a man who wanted to take a picture of
us…on my camera. My friend came
downstairs, we took pictures with the man and his friend and nodded while they
told us we should give it to them via Facebook or Skype, and then my friend
went outside to the bathroom while I went back upstairs to pack up my things.
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| our new friends/evidence |
As I was making the rest of the champagne portable, I heard
the sound of breaking glass. I looked
downstairs to see two men fighting by the door.
I thought they had broken the glass on the door, but they simply had
broken other glasses. I tried to hurry
as a brawl sprouted. More broken glass
and exclamations from the women who worked there proved an unexpected theme
song to my task. I finished right as my
friend came back up to tell me to go. When we walked downstairs, we could see
blood all over the floor. One of the
guys had a bloodied face, and his jacket was ripped up. We safely made it out the door to see the
cops finally sauntering over to the café (which was glass, so the fight was
clearly visible). Apparently our two new
friends had been attacked right at closing time.
My friend assured me that had never ever happened before as
we took a cab home. We arrived home in
the dark, as the power was out. It
returned a few minutes later, went out again, and then returned for good. I met her delightful family. They spoke a mixture of Georgian and English,
while the dad spoke to me in Russian, since he had studied there. He seemed quite pleased I knew where Rostov was. My friend told her family about the fight as
we sat, which was good, because an hour or two later, two cops showed up. As my friend had taught her local police
English over the summer, I thought maybe they were her friends or friends of
the family. After they started asking
questions in Georgian, I understood they were investigating the incident at the
café bar. The dad translated into
Russian for me, so the interview was a great mix of Georgian, English, and
Russian. We basically said what had
happened, and my friend suggested that I show the cops my photos. This greatly pleased the men, who left
immediately after seeing these pictures.
We think maybe the pictures served to verify which men had been peacefully
enjoying their dinner at the café before they were attacked. That is the best explanation we could come up
with.
As I was never in any danger or under any suspicion, it was
an interesting look into the Georgian police and life in Georgia. My friend’s neighbor works at that café, and
her former host mom is a criminal investigator.
We assume that the police knew where to find us from one of those
sources, and the fact that my friend stands out anywhere in Georgia, since
the cops could have also just asked around for the foreigners and found
us. They did not write anything down,
ask for copies of my pictures, or even ask our names. Still, they were investigating.
The next morning we headed off to meet our friends in
Sighnaghi. While waiting for a few of
them, we walked around on streets that looked like they belonged in Western
Europe and not in Georgia.
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| This felt wrong |
The renovated parts of town are very pretty
but felt decidedly un-Georgian, so when we found a building where you could see
the beautiful blue sky through the remains of the building, we climbed in to
make ourselves feel better.
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| This feels right, and no, that was not the way the roof was designed |
Then some of
our friends arrived and we headed on to the highlight of the day: Pancho
Villa. I stuffed myself with delicious
Mexican hot chocolate, nachos, chips, salsa, and guacamole. It was a little bit of heaven.
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| Mexican chocolate in a tiny cup and the prettiest sangria I've ever seen |
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| guacamole and salsa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
After stuffing ourselves, we walked around the ancient wall
a bit and climbed around on some short towers.
We also showed the latecomers the shiny, new parts of Sighnaghi and saw
a wedding party, which is not uncommon.
We met up with some friends who had arrived the night before and been
exploring most of the afternoon so we could all walk together to Bodbe
Monastery. I wasted some time climbing
down to a Holy Spring only to find that the real beauty of the place was the
church. It instantly became one of my
favorite churches in Georgia,
rivaling the Gergeti church in Kazbegi.
There were no other visitors in the church, which smelled of beeswax
like all good Orthodox churches should. Unlike most Georgian churches, which suffered more than one coat of
whitewashing under Stalin, the walls were covered in well-preserved (or
restored) paintings. They were not
simply icons but recognizable paintings from the Bible, which pleased me
greatly, both from their beauty and familiarity. I understood a bit better why medieval
churches were covered in such paintings, as they really did tell stories I
understood.
My friend and I were about
to leave when the nun said “St. Nino” and pointed us to a small chapel, which
just so happened to house St. Nino. The
grave was beautiful, with a big white marble slab on pillars over a traditional
silver saint grave (there are actual words that describe this, but I don’t
know/can’t remember them because I teach things like “It is a cat. It is black.”) The halo around her head had beautiful enamel
and gems. St. Nino is also THE saint in Georgia. Ok, ok, so St. George is the patron saint
(and no, that has nothing to do with the name) but Nino converted the Georgian
king to Christianity. Even though some
of the disciples had come to Georgia
and missionaries had been coming since, Nino was the one credited with making Georgia a
Christian nation (2nd or 3rd in the world, depending on
your facts and criteria). St. Nino's cross, a symbol of Georgia, has arms bent slightly downward to represent the grape vines she fastened
together to form a cross, tying them together with her hair. In other words, she’s pretty important in Georgia,
and I would have been very sad to miss seeing her grave.
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| grave at the monastery with St. Nino's cross on it |
The night ended with Georgian food, and an attempt to keep a
fire going despite its desire to keep us cold.
We then headed back to Gurjaani.
As it was not really tourist season, there were no taxis at 10pm, but we
haggled with some men who had a car (aided by a cop) to give us a lift home for
a reasonable amount (only triple what we had paid that morning). My Russian again came in handy, and I
discovered one of the men owned the Amsterdam,
which we had admired earlier that day for its pretty bike and pizza.
The man said the place served Dutch food….but
it’s a pizzeria. He did explain that the
name stems from his Dutch investor and contacts at Heineken
On Sunday, we got up and grabbed a marsh to Telavi, but not
before my friend’s host mom sent me home with my very own Borjomi bottle. Borjomi is the name of a beautiful national
park and resort city in the middle of Georgia, famed for its mineral
springs. Hence, there is a brand of
mineral water from the city called Borjomi.
However, the best use of Borjomi bottles is to store your family’s homemade
vodka/chacha. Her family does not have
much but was so nice and generous, like most Georgian families. My friend told me she usually gets a Borjomi
bottle of alcohol whenever she goes on a trip.
Telavi was not very exciting. It’s another city in Kakheti, and the place
where we could grab a marshrutka to Alaverdi, another monastery. The marshrutka dropped us off on the side of
the road, as the monastery is right off the road, in the middle of nowhere. We arrived just as the service ended, so we
enjoyed an almost-empty church. It was
much bigger but not nearly as pretty as the church in Bodbe. The place did grant me my 2nd
favorite view in Georgia:
the gorgeous snow-capped Caucasus. I took pictures but they can’t do it justice,
as always.
We did not stay long and were
waiting for a marshrutka back to Telavi when my friend suggested I stick out my
thumb. I had told her I wanted to try
hitchhiking at some point, and now seemed like a great time. Hitching is very safe and common in Georgia, but I
had never wanted to do it alone before.
The first car whizzed by full of people, but about a minute later a Land
Rover pulled over. Asking if they were
headed to Telavi, I got a “Where are you from?” in English. Answering, “America”,
the woman driving (a rare enough sight in Georgia) answered that she was in
fact an American citizen! We climbed
into the back of the Land Rover to meet Eka, the American, her sister, mother,
5-year old son, and 4-year old nephew.
They were headed to Tbilisi,
so offered to take me all the way, which was a double win. They also offered me and my friend bread and
cheese, and gave me a piece of chocolate after we dropped my friend off in
Telavi. I found out that Eka, Georgian
by birth, had married a Dane who lived in Berkeley. In order for her to get a Green Card, he had
become a US
citizen. She had then become a citizen
as well (and I’m pretty sure her son was, since he was born in the time she
lived in America)
in the 5 years they had lived there.
They lived in Berkeley, so listening to some of her experience in
America was a weird form of cultural exchange, as she told my about my own
country. In turn, I told her about some
of the places in Georgia
I had been and she had not. She and her
husband had decided to move back to Georgia to raise their son, and she
had been back only four days. Not only
did this make for a great experience hitchhiking, but it also was a reminder of
how small Georgia
and the world really is. I also got
several more beautiful views of the Caucasus. In short, this was an amazing weekend in
Kakheti, full of all the things I love about Georgia: adventures, expat friends,
wonderful Georgians, ancient places to climb on, good food, and meeting new
people.
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