I spent last week as a volunteer election observer, seconded by the US government to the election observation mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It was a busy, exhausting and really great week. (By the way, I was officially on vacation from UNV and my volunteer work with OSCE was completely unconnected to my work with UNV.)
Most of the short-term observers arrived very early Saturday morning – airspace is less expensive in the middle of the night, so many flights arrive and depart in the capital Tbilisi at hours that I would prefer to think don’t exist. We landed about 4:00 am. After passport control, customs, collecting luggage, checking in with OSCE and finding the right chartered bus for my hotel, it was nearly 7 when I finally collapsed in bed. I slept a few hours, just enough to get me through the only full free day of the week.
My roommate in the hotel was an adorable young woman from Slovenia, Patricija. She and two of her colleagues from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Monika and Marko) made up the entire Slovenian delegation to the mission. They were all some of the nicest people I’ve met in a long time, and I happily spent much of my free time with them during the week. Patricija is a tiny thing, energetic and peppy – kind of like a perky toy poodle. I enjoyed her enthusiasm and optimisitic attitude as much as anything else in Georgia!
But Georgia itself was also really great. Everyone talks about the hospitality and friendliness of Georgians, and I certainly encountered nothing to challenge that legend. I had heard that not many people speak Russian anymore, so I’d been nervous I wouldn’t be able to communicate much with folks. It’s true not so many young people speak Russian these days, but pretty much everyone over 30 I encountered spoke Russian. Their accents were another story though! I took a short guided tour of one ancient church, conducted in Russian, and frankly couldn’t understand 90% of what the guide said. But she was a nice lady!
Saturday the Slovenians kindly adopted me into their group and we all agreed that the first place to visit was the ancient city of Mtskheta, the capital of the Georgian kingdom from the 3rd century BCE to the 5th century CE. We were so anxious to get on the road and do some sightseeing that we hailed the first taxi we saw, made him an offer for a half day of driving, and hopped in. Only after we settled in for the drive outside of Tbilisi did we start to take notice of what exactly we’d gotten in to. Monika was reading her guidebook and asked me to explain one phrase to her – it read something like this: “There are many private taxis, they are safe. But beware of beat-up cars.” I simply looked around and indicated the car we were in to explain the “beat-up” phrase. A couple times during the day, the driver couldn’t get the car started up and we had to push the car while he tried to pop the clutch to get it going. It became quite a joke for us, which of course was much funnier after we were safely back in Tbilisi, having cut short our plans for touring the nearby countryside after just two sites rather than risk getting stranded somewhere.
But those two sites were some of the most famous one near Tbilisi – the ancient capital with its beautiful Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, dating from the 11 century, and the nearby Jvari monastery, dating from the 6th century. Perched on a hilltop, Jvari offers a breathtaking view of Mtskheta and the surrounding hills and valleys. Just gorgeous.
Saturday evening we investigated the famous sulphur baths in Old Town Tbilisi. We visited three or four of them to compare and get the full scoop, planning to come back later in the week. Patricija and I went to one Tuesday night for a truly fantastic experience. The natural spring pours forth water at 50 degrees Celsius (122F), and in the small pools where you soak it is about 42-43C (107-109F). The tiled room is steamy, and the water feels absolutely great. We opted for the massage, which isn’t so much a muscle massage as it is a good thorough scrub down with a special woven hand mitt. You lay on a marble table, and the massuese rubs off so much dead skin you think you’re going to be just bare bones – but it feels great! My skin was soooo soft and smooth afterwards. We soaked, steamed, got rubbed down, soaked again – all in all, we spent an hour there and it was far from enough. We would have happily stayed several more hours.
Sunday the four of us decided to head out early to visit the town of Gori, about 80 km (50 miles) from Tbilisi. Why would we go to this sleepy town of under 47,000 people? It’s the birthplace of world-famous dictator Josef Stalin, and they’ve got a museum to him there. Too bizarre to pass up.
There’s not much I can add to Carpetblogger’s amusing post about the place. The museum is Soviet-style humonstrous, with cavernous halls. Among the many things I couldn’t quite get about the place was what the hell is actually in that huge building? The exhibitions we saw could not have accounted for even half of the space that had to be in there, judging from the outside. Did we miss the good stuff? And by that I mean did we miss the stuff that actually mentioned something about the fact that the subject of the museum was responsible for the death of millions of his citizens? I’m not asking for an analysis, even less a critique of him or his life. But I think what was most offensive about the place was the complete and total absence of any mention whatsoever that he might have done something a little bit bad in his life. I suppose I have to acknowledge that at least they didn’t say he was a good guy either. It was a rather mundane museum – facts, figures, photos, newspaper clippings, office furniture, family photos. You could almost forget the guy was a monster. The closest the guide came to mentioning anything approaching critical, and I’m sure it was more on account of a poor English translation someone gave her of the official tour, was when she pointed to a photo of Stalin casting a ballot and she said “And this is the first democractic election when Stalin elected himself.” I wanted to ask if they counted any of the other ballots cast in that election, or if it the one was enough to call it. I’d like to think it wasn’t just a poor translation but rather someone’s subtle way to sneak something more than the mundane facts into the tour.
I did learn a thing or two – Stalin was married twice and had a son. His second wife is actually still alive and lives in the US. They have a photo of his grandchildren visiting the museum.
They have Stalin’s personal railway car next to the museum, which is the length of two normal railway cars. It was relatively modest inside. The guide said Stalin didn’t like to fly and prefered to travel by rail as much as possible.
They also have the two-room house were Stalin was born and lived the first four years of his life. It looks to have been separated from whatever other construction it used to be part of, and the two rooms stand awkwardly in front of the musuem, under a stone and glass canopy. Stalin and his parents lived in just one of the rooms, which they rented from the people who lived in the other one. It was really small; hard to imagine a family living only in that tiny space.
In the end, I wondered if there might be something to the museum’s non-analytical take on Stalin’s life and reign. After all, everybody else only talks about the crappy stuff he did – but who knew he had a son and that his grandkids are still alive and kickin? I asked our driver what Georgians thought about Stalin. He said there are definitely people who hate him, mostly those who were repressed (go figure!). On the other hand, many Georgians see him as the great leader who defeated facsism and united a huge percentage of the world, and those Georgians are proud that Stalin was Georgian. Our driver also stated proudly that Stalin always made his first toast to Georgia – “He never forgot his motherland,” he said. I wonder if he remembered the ones he shipped off to Siberia?
And toasting in Georgia is a topic worthy of an entire blog post in and of itself, but that will have to wait for another day. It’s late, I’m tired, and the Georgian stomach bug that kindly accompanied me home hasn’t quite gotten the hint yet that it’s time to get packing. More later.
Anka in Kyiv 