Today

Today has been a typical day in my time as a tourist in Georgia:

It starts with breakfast on the deck here at the guesthouse, which has been 'decked out' with dried flowers and corn, garlic braids, pottery, and other things to provide the full domestic effect. The interesting aspect of this type of house is that the interior courtyard facade is the kind that is considered traditional, and is mostly (not always) viewed from either within or from a lane. I haven't tired from looking at it, it being an L-shape, me sitting at breakfast along one of the sides.

Breakfast here makes me happy. I hear the dog lap up water in the courtyard below, and a light wind rustle through the chestnut tree. A cat purrs in the distance. The husband of the house returns with puri, warm Georgian bread. It is a shotis puri, and in the country a round oven, open from above, bakes these along the inner walls, giving it its round form. Today I am treated with tangerine jam and a wild small-plum jam. Plums, among other foodstuffs, are very typical here, and tomorrow I will probably buy some tkemali, a sour plum sauce, otherwise known as Georgian ketchup. There is also a glass blue bowl with yoghurt with small cherries, little plates of cheese and butter, a big cup of coffee, and a basket of fruit. It's really been an excellent way to start the day.

Accompanying me are usually people who speak Russian and no English. I have met many people of this sort here. The vast lot are smokers from Poland, and occassionally some from Latvia, France and Moscow. I hear Germans and Americans, and a few Danes. Some ask me if Georgia is well-known as a place to visit. I respond saying unfortunately not. Georgia certainly has all things required for its tourism industry to ferment; it simply needs more tourists. As far as I can see, nothing is to capacity, but my hostess says that this year has been atypical.

After my morning ritual I walk out to Chubinasvili kucha (street), named after my hostess' husband's father, and down Marjanisvili kucha. A beautiful, made-up young woman with high heels etc.  pauses by the Russian Orthodox church, turns towards it, and makes the sign of the cross. She could be on the front cover of a fashion magazine but if anything she wants to attract something else in her life. Georgia is fundamentally Christian. Most cars have an icon as a constant companion. Monasteries exist ad infinitum here. And tonight at dinner at an upscale restaurant, while a supra (Georgian feast) is being enjoyed, at another table a group of three women, one in black habit, stands and offers thanks for nourishment.

At Marjanishvili Moedani (Square) I catch the metro. There is always a uniformed guard at each metro station. Such guards or officers are in expected places, such as directing traffic or unmuddling an accident, and sometimes they are randomly in the middle of seemingly nowhere by the highway. The metro is similar to the one in Moscow in that one seems to go down 7 leagues, but the similarity stops there. There is no art inside, just advertisements. One in particular is for something called 'Express Pay' - and throughout the city are ATM-like machines where one can do transactional banking and, um, pay bills in particular. For to fill the state coffers and end corruption, the government is making a valiant leap with the help of technology. It's a bit of a 'smart bribe' - the more you use it, the more bonus points you get for free public transportation. I take the metro for two stops, and there is usually a sales pitch or an act of poverty for one stop. There was one boy, about 10, who handed out tarot cards. Many passengers rejected having these cards forced onto them.

I get off at Freedom, or Liberty Square. The metro stop is at the south end of the Rustaveli, a boulevard that seems like a Haussman boulevard in Paris, in that just adjacent are some very mean streets. It is very wide and hosts top institutions. Many of the finer buildings are on one side, and what better way to keep people apart than put a six-lane highway between 2 sides of a street, and not a single crosswalk. There are underground crossings but these are a kilometer apart. One if these by chance brought my into the arms of the English bookstore recommended by Miss LPG. And here I exchange lari (< lira) for a pound of books.

Today's tour went to David Gareji, truly a monastery that went out of the way to carve its own path. They couldn't get to the moon to get away from it all, and this was the next best location. The monastery steps into Azerbaijan a bit, and there were a couple of guards there to make sure we walked back into Georgia.

At the end of the day, I treated myself to a taxi ride, otherwise known as a Georgian language lesson. Navigated with success by being able to say words effortlessly memorized from my cheat sheet minutes prior: pirveli, pirdapir, mokthke kucha, marts hniv (first, straight, fourth street, left). My polyglotic thrills!