Mingling with the REAL Caucasians
Tbilisi, Georgia (May 6)
After back-to-back overnight bus rides, an experience I really can't recommend, I am now in Tbilisi, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
The first bus, which left May 4, was from the Cappadoccia region of Turkey to the Black Sea port of Trabzon (formerly Trebizond). This was a fairly unremarkable ride, and I got a lot of sleep. The Black Sea coast of Turkey gets a lot more rain than the interior, and the landscape is lush. There are also lots of tea bushes, in some areas covering just about every square inch of ground that doesn't have a building on it. Trabzon is the best port in the eastern Black Sea, and apparently none of the ports in Georgia have cargo handling facilities nearly as good, so a lot of stuff meant for the Caucasian states ends up in Trabzon. This becomes of some relevance to me since it contributes to awful traffic all along the coastal road from Trabzon to Georgia.
I was able to buy a ticket to Tbilisi on a bus leaving at 1 pm (May 5) , which I figured should get to the border by 5 or so, and allowing 90 minutes for border formalities I expected to get a pretty good look at the western Georgia before night fell. But as readers may have surmised, it didn't quite turn out that way. First, the bus didn't leave until 4, and with the previously mentioned awful traffic we didn't get to the border until 8:30 at least. And then the combined border stops took over three hours.
The Turks are building a new road along the coast, as well as making a whole bunch of small harbors I assume are for resorts or something, so in addition to all the huge trucks with containers from the ships we had to dodge dump trucks full of building materials. The day was foggy, and I could never see very far up the coast since there were a series of headlands. The bus passengers were about 90% Georgians returning home after working in Turkey or western Europe, so the Turkish bus conductor didn't bother with the cologne-on-the-hands thing. The Georgians seemed to like the fact that I'd learned (some of) their alphabet, and one of them shepherded me through all the border formalities, which was nice.
White people are sometimes called "Caucasians" because in the late 1700s a Frenchman called the Comte de Gobineau decided that the perfect specimens of pale-skinned humanity were to be found in the Caucasus region. Maybe the locals have become uglier over the past few hundred years, or maybe Gobineau read a few too many racy French novels about the Ottoman sultan's frolics with his lovely Caucasian slavegirls, but I don't think the Georgians at least are any better-looking than any other bunch of people. In Turkey I had been told Georgians favored really gaudy gold and steel dental work, but I've seen precious little evidence of that either. It does look like Tbilisi has a bit of a heroin problem though, or maybe a really high indidence of diabetes combined with a casual attitude to litter, since I came across at least a half-dozen discarded syringes during my walk from the bus station to my hotel. During the same walk I came across two portraits of Stalin, who grew up about 30 miles from here.
Even with the needles and Stalin pictures, Tbilisi is an attractive city surrounded by wooded mountains, most of which have nice-looking churches on top of them. Today is St. George's day (on the Julian calendar, which the Georgians still use for some liturgical purposes), so a lot of people were visiting the churches, or having glasses of Georgian wine at sidewalk cafes afterward.
Tomorrow: Stalin's boyhood home.
After back-to-back overnight bus rides, an experience I really can't recommend, I am now in Tbilisi, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
The first bus, which left May 4, was from the Cappadoccia region of Turkey to the Black Sea port of Trabzon (formerly Trebizond). This was a fairly unremarkable ride, and I got a lot of sleep. The Black Sea coast of Turkey gets a lot more rain than the interior, and the landscape is lush. There are also lots of tea bushes, in some areas covering just about every square inch of ground that doesn't have a building on it. Trabzon is the best port in the eastern Black Sea, and apparently none of the ports in Georgia have cargo handling facilities nearly as good, so a lot of stuff meant for the Caucasian states ends up in Trabzon. This becomes of some relevance to me since it contributes to awful traffic all along the coastal road from Trabzon to Georgia.
I was able to buy a ticket to Tbilisi on a bus leaving at 1 pm (May 5) , which I figured should get to the border by 5 or so, and allowing 90 minutes for border formalities I expected to get a pretty good look at the western Georgia before night fell. But as readers may have surmised, it didn't quite turn out that way. First, the bus didn't leave until 4, and with the previously mentioned awful traffic we didn't get to the border until 8:30 at least. And then the combined border stops took over three hours.
The Turks are building a new road along the coast, as well as making a whole bunch of small harbors I assume are for resorts or something, so in addition to all the huge trucks with containers from the ships we had to dodge dump trucks full of building materials. The day was foggy, and I could never see very far up the coast since there were a series of headlands. The bus passengers were about 90% Georgians returning home after working in Turkey or western Europe, so the Turkish bus conductor didn't bother with the cologne-on-the-hands thing. The Georgians seemed to like the fact that I'd learned (some of) their alphabet, and one of them shepherded me through all the border formalities, which was nice.
White people are sometimes called "Caucasians" because in the late 1700s a Frenchman called the Comte de Gobineau decided that the perfect specimens of pale-skinned humanity were to be found in the Caucasus region. Maybe the locals have become uglier over the past few hundred years, or maybe Gobineau read a few too many racy French novels about the Ottoman sultan's frolics with his lovely Caucasian slavegirls, but I don't think the Georgians at least are any better-looking than any other bunch of people. In Turkey I had been told Georgians favored really gaudy gold and steel dental work, but I've seen precious little evidence of that either. It does look like Tbilisi has a bit of a heroin problem though, or maybe a really high indidence of diabetes combined with a casual attitude to litter, since I came across at least a half-dozen discarded syringes during my walk from the bus station to my hotel. During the same walk I came across two portraits of Stalin, who grew up about 30 miles from here.
Even with the needles and Stalin pictures, Tbilisi is an attractive city surrounded by wooded mountains, most of which have nice-looking churches on top of them. Today is St. George's day (on the Julian calendar, which the Georgians still use for some liturgical purposes), so a lot of people were visiting the churches, or having glasses of Georgian wine at sidewalk cafes afterward.
Tomorrow: Stalin's boyhood home.
posted by jeros | 1:03 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home