Georgia/Armenia Travel Journal

This is still very incomplete, but so far, this is what I have from my Georgia/Armenia travel journals. Just for curiosity's sake.

also: a marshrutka is a minivan type dealie

November 18th

    Airbus A 330-300 named Boris Pasternak. Flight attendant Marina. On the screen one long shot of the goings-on, a la Bela Tarr. Watching ourselves taxi, taxi, take off. Nose ache. More were-creatures need to exist, we said as we boarded. Adam as a were-octopus. Sinus pressure slowly going away. Still in denial, but we’ve got almost 8 hours left. Estimated arrival time 12:49: twenty-four minutes late. At the gate read Svejk out loud. Both brought a copy –– superfluous, but worthwhile. Language confusion. When do I speak what to whom? Don’t want the accent to appear, always an annoyance.

     They always give you drinks first, I wonder why, and why the financial newspapers everywhere are always that yellowing pink color, like one of those blank disappointing sunrises. A little over nine and a half years later, hello, I don’t know what else to say, really, it’s been a while, old city, with that Neglinka river trapped under the Kremlin. Just be good to us now. What a weird thing, fate: how could I have ever imagined or known the way this would happen. Let us not lose ourselves in theory; let us lose ourselves unabashedly in coincidence, impulse and chance. I will be forever bound to you, A, as I am forever bound to this city we are approaching, as I am bound to the city we left on this plane. I don’t mind. These words sound much grander than what they mean; grander, but not nearly dear enough. These bonds we all have with things, people, places –– they are the inevitabilities of life; we just have to grow more aware of them so we may tend to them and care for them and rear them into something we do not despise.

November 20th - 21st

     In Yerevan. Almost got swindled with the taxi, but got away. All men smoke, wear black, generally appear in pairs or groups. They look suspicious to me, I to them. 
    They seem to always be conspiring. Even if that is much too sweeping a generalization, the second we set foot in the market, a monger was handing us samples of various things stuffed with nuts and covered in honey or some sugar syrup. His pride was the tomato, though he also had some nut-stuffed eggplant.

         At the train station finally getting tickets for Tbilisi. The lady at the window makes sure we want to be in the luxury train car. She keeps repeating Adam’s name. Apuzzo. Apuzzo-Mapuzzo. Apuzzo, Adam. Adam, she says, nice name. Asks why we’re laughing. So, she says, after I give her my US passport instead of the Russian one, where is better, the USA or Russia? And I say probably US, but hey, I only spent ten hours in Moscow in the past ten years. 

      The train station, as we find out later has no bathrooms. It actually has extremely little of anything: it’s mostly empty, one large long hall with a few doors on the sides that lead to large empty rooms –– the ticketing windows are in one such room. Overall, Armenian women wear a lot of makeup. 

no comment

      The train compartment is indeed quite nice. A dances around while eating a “glazed curd,” a favorite snack of ours that takes me back to my childhood. Literal translation is “glazed little cheese,” but the wrapper says “glazed curd,” which I find funny because of its homonym.

      My passports create some confusion among both the Armenian and the Georgian border patrolmen. At the Georgian border they make me get off the train even, because I might have to pay for a visa. I stand in the cold for a few minutes, and the officer makes small talk while simultaneously conversing with his fellow border patrolmen through the window of their booth. I am sent back to the train uncharged. He even promises to give back the passports. While the customs officers unravel people’s luggage, conversations about food and wine, mostly Georgian wine (home-made at that) can be heard in the hall in three languages at once. You can bring four liters across the border, apparently. Good to know?

November 21st - 22nd

Battling a medium khachapuri, Ethiopian-style

     After wandering around Tbilisi for some time, we find Dodo’s at 38 Mardjanishvili. For 25 lari each we get an unnecessarily big room; it’s a bit pricey, but at least there’s heat and hot water. We set out in search of food. A wants khachapuri. We go to a place near Dodo’s where A gets a medium Adjarian khachapuri (pictured), and it is too huge for him.  Apart from an expected “small”, other sizes on the menu included a “large” and a “titanic”.

    
    Walking to the other bank across the Voronzov bridge. Market on both sides of the bridge and off it, on the adjacent streets. Everything imaginable is there, though no bagpipes. More drinking horns than I could count. Two elderly vendors, who seem to have been imbibing wine or chacha since morning, ask me where I’m from, my name and such... They give me Marriott hotel slippers as a gift –– two pairs, then ask for my last name, decide it’s Jewish, which I confirm –– then give me a big tome in Hebrew. It is falling apart, too. They think I’m dark. Then they ask where A is from. I say New York, America. They ask what his ethnicity is, don’t quite wait for an answer, which is hard for me to provide anyway, especially in Russian. One of the men turns to the other and says “Oh, come on, can’t you see? He’s black! He’s Ethiopian!” 

I laugh, make something up, and we keep walking. 

photo credit: A. Apuzzo

     We go to bed early and sleep for a long time because our room is very dark. A seems to fall asleep immediately, but I can’t, and so I lie in my bed afraid to move because the bed is exceptionally creaky. I lie there staring into the ceiling or at the wall that has glow-in-the-dark stars and planets stuck to it; they are bright because of how dark the room is. The thick wooden blinds are solid and let in no light. Repeatedly, I hear A turn, the bed creak, A let out a single snore and fall silent. Turn, creak, snore, quiet. Eventually, I too fall asleep. I wake up when my aunt calls. It is about 9 am. A is still asleep. In a couple of hours I wake him up, and he doesn’t realize how late it is because in our room, it may well be nighttime, still. My watch is broken. 
     We spend the whole day wandering around Tbilisi, walk up to the fortress even. The only annoyance is the persistent smell of gasoline that permeates the air around all the big roads. There are, in general, very few stop lights and crossing the streets, especially the big highways that we frequently end up on or near by accident (particularly frequently when we go across the river) is difficult and dangerous. We usually wait for elderly women to start crossing and run for it. There are some underground crosswalks, but at night some are simply frightening as we find out towards the end of our first day’s walk when both of us feel quite uneasy in a tunnel in a rather empty part of town (empty except for the cars, of course). Our second day in Tbilisi ends with a long search for blackcurrant-filled glazed curds. We find none and settle for the regular kind.

November 23rd-24th

photo credit: A. Apuzzo

     On St. George’s day A wakes up sick. We try to go to church, but the nearest one to us is a Russian one, and the one on Rustaveli is extremely crowded. A says he might have a fever, is delirious. We buy some “mandarinchiki” and go to Didube, where we get into a marshrutka to Kutaisi. We get the worst seats. At a pit stop, I buy “anniversary crackers,” which remind me of being a kid. They are quite good. In Kutaisi, Nato, my grandmother’s cousin’s daughter, and her husband meet us and take us in their car to Tqibuli, which is unexpected. 
Tqibuli is beautiful.

I never quite imagined it to be as high up in the mountains. 
    Nato’s family has its own house in the upper part of town, which really looks more like a village: cattle everywhere, people chopping wood, etc. A still feels unwell and needs to go to sleep. Nato puts out a whole feast, but we are not actually hungry. We eat as much as we possibly can, drink some homemade wine and strawberry kompot, and when I get the chance, I ask if it might be okay to go to bed. It is 8:30 pm.

Gelati

   We are woken by a raspy rooster, and Nato serves us a plentiful breakfast. We go out and walk around for a while, then come back, and all of us get ready to go to Gelati and Motsameta.

November 27th

    The truth is, this linear narrative bores me to death. There is no reason for its existence. I could list all the encounters, episodes, people, like the conductor of the one-car train we take from Tqibuli to Kutaisi, who is incredibly friendly and kind and puts on a recording of an Ossetian dance on the TV once we are near our destination. Or I can mention the Armenian from Tbilisi who serves us in what seems like the only functioning café in Kazbegi. He is also friendly and welcoming and has a swastika tattooed on his hand. We wonder if he is going to poison us, but it seems that we are safe.

November 28th

 

     The thing is, I was looking for a kind of clarity, yet I am now more confused than ever before. I hardly know what clarity it is that I sought in the first place. What did I expect, want, need? How could I possibly expect to get it? Or was I simply going for the sake of going? There are questions I must have asked myself dozens of times. It makes no difference whether there are answers to them or not, whether I know either way. I feel quite frozen. Some undulating underside awakens occasionally and I wonder at it, though often I fear I have lost the ability to perceive, and so I see only –– like a portal, I allow entry as freely as I encourage leave. Perhaps, I was looking, even hoping maybe  –– for acquittal. Universal, sweeping, grandiose, release. An amnesty of the senses. 

    Sacks full of I don’t know what in the back of the marshrutka that will take us back to Yerevan, and so we will end, among these bags, our journey. Perhaps, among the contents are things I love, perhaps not, let us not attach a sentimental value to things simply because they are unknown; are to remain so, too. It isn’t that I feel guilt –– that would make little sense –– I feel something closer to remorse, or even defeat. I must have, I suppose, returned in my head to New York, where somehow, despite all the good I am surrounded by, I live under what seems like a perpetual threat of impending chagrin.

*** 

In the uncovering, the corpse

perceives its world quite differently

from the way I’ve learned in time

of separation. I haven’t touched

the ground the way a dead digit

can, I haven’t lain on the other

side of the grass to see its roots grow

longer. In the dreams, nothing

belongs to me.

As we have burned, we will

for a little while. With cold hands

we hold flame away from our faces,

bury it in a sand too shallow

to hide our feet.  As we have burned

the wrists, we will burn the knees.

Our mouths hum well by the sea.