Due to the elections on Monday, we had a 3 day weekend. A bunch of TLGers took the opportunity to get some traveling in, and for a few of us, the destination was Kazbegi.
We left Friday for Tbilisi. As I was walking to the main road in my village to grab a marshrutka to the city, we saw a bunch of police cars driving through town, and some people gathered at the school. One of my brother's friends told him that the President was on his way, and he would be stopping in Badiauri! The president's doing some last minute campaigning in my little village, and I miss it. What luck.
In Tbilisi, we went to a concert of the International Symposium of Polyphony. Georgia is famous for its polyphonic music. If you want someone to explain this concept to you, ask a musicologist. If you want to hear what I mean, consult YouTube. You can find plenty of great Georgian music there. The symposium was interesting. Most of the groups were really good. The Australian Georgian music group decided it would be wise to remix a traditional Georgian song by randomly adding in a verse from Wannabe by the Spice Girls. I'm sure you can imagine how bad of a decision that was.
On Saturday morning we grabbed a marshrutka to Kazbegi. Kazbegi (technically Stepantsminda) is a small town famous for the Tsminda Sameba Church perched high on a hilltop next to the snow-peaked Mount Kazbek. The ride took about 3 hours, and when we arrived we went into the nearest restaurant for some tea, and found out they were also renting out rooms upstairs for a decent price. We booked a room and headed out for a hike.
We headed up to the Tsminda Sameba Church. It was quite a hike for a girl who's main source of physical activity in the past few weeks has been lifting bread and cheese from her plate to her mouth and fending off offers of chocolate and coca-cola. But we made it to the top, and it was gorgeous. To get into the church women had to wear skirts and scarves over their heads. Luckily they provide both. I've heard that in Georgia, a lot of girls find their future husbands in church. So I was a little disappointed that I didn't get asked on any dates when I walked in with a frumpy blue skirt pulled on over my jeans, with my tennis shoes sticking out and a bright yellow scarf over my head. Maybe next time. I couldn't take pictures of the inside of the church, but it was very beautiful. Made of stone, with a dusty beam of light coming in through the windows, and paintings on the walls. A cute little baby was in there getting baptized at the time.
One of the guys in our group is quite the tea drinker. So after visiting the church, we walked over to a nice spot on the hill, where he proceeded to start a fire, whip out a pot, some water, some tea leaves, and a few cups, and brew some tea for us, which we sipped while gazing at Mt. Kazbek in the distance and discussing the similarities between Georgia and Middle Earth.
After the walk down, we grabbed some supper at one of the restaurants in town. Then we headed back to the hotel to drink the giant plastic bottle full of homemade wine that my friend had brought, so that those not lucky enough to be placed in the Kakheti region, would at least be able to try the wine. We sat out on the porch and toasted everything we could think of, because we're in Georgia, and that's just what you do. The church was lit up at night, and the moon lit up the snow of Mt. Kazbeg in the distance. It was a beautiful night, if not a little chilly. Thankfully, Rudolph the guy that runs the hotel and restaurant (in our Middle Earth scenario, he was Gollum, if that gives you an idea of his personality) brought us some fleece blankets. After our supply of vino ran low, we went inside, bought one more bottle of wine, and called it a night.
The next morning, we went down for the breakfast that was included in our stay. Gollum, who was well aware of the wine hangovers we had, decided to blast Middle Eastern techno music in the restaurant at 10:00 a.m. while we ate our eggs. Great start of a day.
We decided to hike up to see a different church on the hill opposite Tsminda Sameba. When we got there, we had a little tea party with the tea and cookies (or bescuits, if you're from New Zealand) that we had bought earlier from the Google Market. (What is Google Market you ask? A tiny market with the google logo on it's sign, that is bound to get sued at some point in its future). It was a perfect day to just lay in the sun on a hillside and take a nap. So that's exactly what we did.
We caught a marshrutka back to Tbilisi in the afternoon, and checked into a hostel. After having been in the back of a poorly ventilated, hot marshrutka driving down windy dirt roads and getting bumped and jostled for 3 hours, I was feeling like 10 kinds of crap, so my night ended there.
On Monday we just chilled in the city. We were hoping to see some excitement going on with the elections, but it was quite uneventful, so we walked around the city, then grabbed a marshrutka home.
No comments:
Post a Comment