July 15, 2010

Bill

Sandi

Goodness time does fly! Particularly when we have relatives from the US visiting and then we take off for a holiday weekend. I will try to recount. Sandi, Ron’s sister and her husband, Bill arrived on July 2 in the wee hours of the morning. We all went back to bed, then Ron headed out to work. The rest of us started with a slow morning then met Ron in Old Town for lunch. We walked around Old Town to the Turkish baths, the botanical gardens then moseyed over to the Marriot for cold fresh lemonade and Ron headed out to the embassy for a command performance at a reception the ambassador was having for other VIPs. We went out for authentic Georgian cuisine that evening when Ron returned.

Signahi town wall

On Saturday we got up and Gia drove us to Sighnaghi. We stopped along the way to look at another Russian jeep that Ron is thinking about buying. Sighnaghi is a lovely little town about two hours east of Tbilisi. It has been lovingly restored and it becoming a tourist spot in Georgia. We started out at the Pheasant’s Tears Gallery. Ron had met the owner at the reception on Friday night. John Wurdeman is an American who has lived here for about 13 years after he finished his master’s of fine arts degree at a Russian university. John is a real entrepreneur. In addition to his art gallery, he owns a vineyard and producers great organic wines that were recently recognized by one of the 300 wine professionals in the world. So we had a wine tasting and bought some wine. Fortunately I found out that he sells it at the grocery store where I shop. He also has a room with wonderful regional carpets that he sells. I was impressed with his wares!

From here we wandered through the town, having lunch in a local café and perusing crafts in the town center park. I bought the classic shepherds hat made from sheep skin. These are the hats worn by men who stand by the edge of the road when they want to sell a sheep. They dress the sheep then and there from what we have been told. Who needs signage when you can simply don your sheep’s hat? We visited the museum there which has finds going back several millennia from archeological digs in Georgia. Evidence of wine making from the earliest finds proves that wine has been a vital part of their culture forever!

Lisi Lake at sunset

That night we went to an AM CHAM/US Embassy sponsored picnic at Lisi Lake up the road from us about a mile or so. There was very loud music, and some great food. I rarely eat hamburgers but had one and it was delicious.

Uplistsike

On Sunday we drove to Gori, an hour west of TBS. Just outside of Gori is an ancient cave city, Uplistsikhe. I will call this place Up for short if you don’t mind. It was on the Silk Road oute and was a trading center by at least the 5th century BC. Later it became more isolated and was inhabited by monks until it was destroyed in the 13th century. The ruins include a theater with an orchestra pit, bread ovens, a water system that brought water through a system of ceramic pipes from 5-6 km away, wine storage room, underground prison, pharmacy, a church and a place for the blood of sacrificed animals, another church built in the 8th-9th centuries that survived the onslaught of Mongols although 5,000 monks were slaughtered, a market, and a secret escape tunnel 41 meters long that ran down to the river. We had a guide which helped to understand what the different caves and other features were. It was quite hot so we made this our first stop although it was the furthest point in our trip.

We worked our way back to Gori and visited the Stalin Museum. Strange but true, the residents of Gori are proud of their home town boy. The museum was built in1957, the year after Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and his crimes. We had a tour guide here also and no mention was made of his crimes or gulags or the Ukrainian famine. Gia took us to a Georgian restaurant where Sandi and Bill got to sample more Georgian culinary items.

Church in Mtskheta

We headed back to TBS and stopped at Mtskheta, the heart of Georgia’s spiritual identity. Inhabited for over 3,000 years, the site was the center of a pagan cult adopted in the 4th century by the king. There are traces of older Hittite and even Sumerian cults. From the 4th century BC until the 5th century AD this was the capital of Iveria, the scene of the royal family’s conversion to Christianity and the continued seat of the Georgian church until the 12th century. We visited two churches here, one that sits high on a hilltop over looking the two rivers that converge here. By now it was very hot. We have been having a heat wave with temps at 100+ daily and no rain. We came home and ate at the house.

On Monday we took it easy as Sandi and Bill had to get up at 1:30 a.m. to catch a flight to Prague and thought running around town would not be such a great idea. I went to work at TSU for a couple of hours. We loved having our first guests and look forward to more. James Wall, my childhood friend will come for a visit in early September.