Trip to Svaneti - part 1

We have less than two weeks left in Georgia, and the past month has flown by.  I have resisted making a bucket list for the end of our tour because, well, stressful.  Who needs that kind of pressure?  With three little ones at home, I'm pretty satisfied with the traveling we have done around the country and beyond.  Two jaunts to Batumi, a day trip to David Gareja monastery, Gori and Uplistsikhe, Gudauri, Bakuriani, Yerevan.  My favorite experiences of our tour here, actually, have been the trips that weren't in the guide book: Nunisi (twice, we just yesterday returned got back from a week there, more on that soon) and Samtavro convent, which I have visited a number of times since February.

In any case, the towers of Svaneti are considered a must-see.  It's the highest inhabited region in the Europe and is nestled among Georgia's highest peaks. In addition to Georgian, its people speak Svan, an ancient, unwritten language that has been designated by UNESCO as "endangered."

It's an 8-hour drive each way, and we only had a three-day weekend to work with, so we opted to spend our one sightseeing day in Mestia.

The last three hours of the drive, the stretch from Zugdidi to Mestia, was touted by our guide book as the most dangerous road in Georgia.  As such, it is peppered with memorial shrines for those who have died in car accidents.

Some of the shrines are simple, with just enough room for a glass of cha cha (local grape vodka) so that visitors can toast to the departed.

Some are a little fancier - with headstones and benches 

There were a couple of very elaborate ones, with roofs to shield visitors from the elements.

The drive was beautiful.

The mountain air was wonderful.  There were tons of these bushes of what I believe, based on their intoxicating scent, to be giant yellow honeysuckles.

As we neared Mestia we began to see the square-topped defensive towers Svaneti is famous for.



These towers, 25 meters high and each 900 to 1300 years old (!!), were built by families to protect themselves from marauders and from blood feuds between locals.  As far as I know, all are still privately owned.  You can see some diagrams of the inside of these towers here.

The road wound through mountain passes, treacherously close to the cliff in spots, but nonetheless well-maintained.  We were surprised, then, that our GPS did not seem to recognize the road as the most expedient way to get to Mestia.  It kept trying to get us to make a u-turn and drive back the way we came. I snapped this picture of the GPS just a mile or so out from our destination - note how close we were, and the estimated time of arrival ... it was about 6:30 p.m. when I took the photo.

That's about enough photos for one post, I think.  Stay tuned for pictures of Mestia and an account of the rest of the trip.

Mom

About a week after my last blog post, my mother died.  She had cancer.

I don't have any eloquent words about cancer and what it means or doesn't mean.  I only have faith that my mother is with God, looking out for her children and grandchildren as she did while she was on earth.

We miss her.

ХРИСТОС ВОСКРЕСЕ!

Pascha is here again.  We celebrated as we always do - with lots of church during Holy Week, the baking of kulich, dyeing of eggs, taking the kids to church at midnight, Easter baskets and our annual Pascha party.  I did not do a great job of getting photos of most of these events this year, but here is what I have.

Cooling kulich in "vintage" coffee cans and new Moscow-purchased specialty pans.

Bleary-eyed kiddos getting ready to head to church at midnight.

Breaking the fast with kulich, paskha, prosciutto and cheese after church.

Morning Easter baskets.

Staycation, continued

Our staycation is long since over, but I still have some photos to post. 

We spent a few mornings exploring parts of the town we hadn't seen yet.  On my list was this church, that sits on a ridge to the south above the Old Town. 

We didn't know what it was called, nor how to get there, but we were able to use our GPS to find it when we were in the vicinity.  Turned out it is a small monastery, and there was a service going on. I did not take photos inside the church, which was lovely.

The view was fantastic.

We next went to the Metekhi Church, which stands on a cliff on the left bank of the Mtkvari River.

The statue of King Vakhtang Gorgasali in front of the church is very often photographed from the north, but the sun was in the wrong place at the time we were there, so here he is from the back.



Tbilisi really is a beautiful city.

 

It was a very windy day - check out the water fountain.

After all that touring, we were hungry.  We went down to the Turkish restaurant row in the Marjanishvili district and checked out the Ankara cafeteria.  The food was great, with lots of Lenten options (and some really yummy looking meat dishes that we will check out after Pascha).

Kid birthday, Georgian-style

Last Thursday, when I picked the girls up from school, one of the teachers handed me an invitation to a classmate's birthday party.  For the next evening.  Starting at 8 p.m.

Yes, 8 p.m.

I had heard of these late-night kid birthday parties before, for they are the stuff of legend around the Embassy.

"Can you believe it?  My kids are in bed at 8 p.m.!"

"My daughter's Georgian classmate doesn't go to bed until midnight."

Etc.

I did not want to go.  J didn't want to go either.  I think I've mentioned justafewtimes how sick this house has been over the last few months. We are tired, people.  I'd been getting to bed before 9 myself most nights lately. 

But the girls were dying to go and I figured it would be good for them to socialize with their classmates outside of school.  So we went, and they had a blast.



There were princesses.

And Hello Kitty and clowns and dancing.

And bubbles.

And Roman candles - shooting out of the cake, and later out of the dance floor!

We closed the place down (at 10 p.m.). The kids obliged by sleeping in an extra hour until 8:30 the next morning.

I should note that this was not a typical Georgian birthday party - it was a typical wealthy Georgian birthday party.  The mother of the birthday girl (who made her entrance in a fur shrug and ball-gown tutu, though sadly I missed that photo opportunity) was wearing Christian Louboutin platform heels.

This is one of the odd things that Foreign Service kids encounter overseas in developing countries.  Many of the locals who can afford private school tend to be very wealthy.  This means that, as the kids get older, it is likely that they will have classmates who have personal drivers, designer clothing, extravagant allowances, and often a minimum of parental supervision.  I went to school with kids like that in junior high school in Tel Aviv, and my siblings encountered the same in junior and high school in Tashkent and Kyiv.

As I pare down for the move and try to get my kids into the mood to do the same, I'm finding that there are lessons both in their classmates who "have everything," and in the gypsy kids on the street who have nothing.