I'm back

Dear Loyal and mostly Patient readers,
I am back. Yes there was a long delay, such is life I suppose. In stead of going on about why I have not been in touch let me just jump back in.

And much like my first entry allow for the briefest of sum ups so that we all don’t end up bored and that you do gleam so understanding of what has been a foot.

Last entry was right after Christmas and the 28th I went to Georgia –the country. Georgia is a Christian country, and they never stop letting you know that. The landscape is covered in crosses. Sometimes while traveling you cross the border into a new country and you hardly notice, or it takes a while as border cities and port towns are not typically authentic. Entering Georgia was not like that, not for me, and not coming from Azerbaijan a largely secular Muslim country with fairly strict gender roles. The language and alphabet in Georgia is unique to Georgia the script looks like something between Arabic and Cyrillic –at least to me. Pigs are a much more prominent animal in Georgia than Azerbaijan (Muslims don’t typically eat pork, so there aren’t pigs about). Those were a few of the first things I noticed, second was a more relaxed gender role, men and women sat and worked next to each other on the road- not something you would typically see here.

While I was there I went to a Stalin Museum in his birth town of Gori. I walked through the house he was born in (they had the original furnishings) and noticed something immediately. I recognized multiple pieces of furniture, the tea set, the bed and the hope chest. I asked the guide if these were typical pieces for Georgia now days. She looked confused for a second and said no, this is from the beginning of 1900s. I laughed. I explained to her that at least half the things in that room were currently in my room in Azerbaijan.

I was in T’bilisi and Gudauri (a mountain city) too. I had a great time and highly recommend going to anyone. T’bilisi reminded me a lot of Prague. A city full of history. A river runs through the middle with churches high on the cliffs that border the city. The churches are lit from beneath to add to the beauty of the view.

One thing I did in T’bilisi that I would like to do again in Baku is visit the Turkish baths. Terah and I went. Terah and I don’t speak Russian or Georgian. We got the address from some girls that had gone the day before, we told that there were four bath houses there go in one, and the price for a bath and massage (about 10 bucks). We were stoked. So we got there and immediately were uncertain. Where we live in Azerbaijan, men and women don’t ask each other where the toilet is, so would we be in the same place as men? Would we ask men how to get there? We didn’t see any women for a few minutes and our confidence was waning. Then a young woman walked by we immediately asked her if these bathes were for women and could we go in. Of course, you should remember that Me and Terah don’t speak Georgian or Russian. So Terah and I pantomimed baths and got a yes and then Terah asked if women could go in largely by point to our hair.
This woman became our bath Sherpa she took us in asked if there were baths available. The answer was no. She took us to another asked the questions again. The answer was no. This happened 3-5 times and time was running out, as was our patience but she seemed determined. Around the time that we were ready to give up a woman that had said no came out and said yes. We went in got a drastically reduced price (about 2 bucks) and sat down. Our sherpa sat down too. She was waiting with us. This kind woman that had stuck by us, and we couldn’t say anything to but yes no and thank you. Turns out she was going to take a bath with us. And it also turns out you need to bring a lot of stuff with you when you go. Like a towel, clothes to change into, shampoo, like everything. We in turn had nothing with us. We tried to give up and our sherpa said no, so we sat down. A bit confused, should we really be told by this woman not to quit, well in the end we were and we stayed.
We entered this room and we were pretty sure at this point we were to get naked. And let me tell you that even if you are –let’s say 85% sure that you are supposed to get naked; walking into a room naked, when you aren’t supposed would be very awkward. Walking into a room naked when you can’t explain yourself and you aren’t sure if there are other people in the next room- very awkward indeed. So we kept trying to take clues from our sherpa, which amounted to us watching a woman we picked up on the street undress! We did in fact dis-robe. We entered the next room and found it to be just us. We bathed had fun and relaxed for about an hour.
Afterward we ‘talked’ to our sherpa about where we were from- she asked this by gesturing a big circle and pointing at random points and then using question hands. Terah explained she is a teacher by acting like she was teaching me. In the end we parted ways with our Sherpa and went in a taxi to meet our friends, and couldn’t wait to tell them of our adventure. What we were unaware of upon getting in the car, the adventure was far from over. The taxi driver seemed to lack even basic knowledge of the town. He stopped no less than 7 times to ask directions. We called three people to explain the way. We handed him a map. And we had to give him landmarks along the way. He of course didn’t speak English and we still didn’t speak Georgian or Russian. Finally we made it to the street where we were staying, and out of habit Terah yelled out to slow down in Azeri and the man turned to us exasperated, and said You speak Turkish I am Turkish, we told him we lived in Azerbaijan and told him to stop we were finally there, an hour later on a 15 minute drive we finally found out we could communicate the whole time 1 minute from the end of the ride.

This feeling was echoed on the train ride home. Ash Higgs and I were splitting a sleeping car from Georgia with an unknown person. This is typically a roll of the dice you never know who will enter the car, what languages they will or will not speak. If they will want to speak to you regardless of no common languages. If they snore or smell, you know nothing about them, which is why we call them “a random.” Our random boarded and sat down next to me. It was clear that he did not speak English or Azeri and none of us spoke Russian or Georgian so that was going to be it. The three of us had resigned to drink the drinks we had brought to ease us to sleep for the 14 hour ride. As Ash struggled with my Swiss Army Knife opener. The random Georgian guy made it clear that we should stop. He reached into his bag and pulled out four cups and a plastic bottle. He poured us each some and we toasted and drank it. It was not the best tasting thing I ever had nor the worst. Higgins examined the bottled and reported back that there was no Latin script on it- so we were at a loss. But the random Georgian guy made it clear to use through facial gestures that what was in the bottle was not what the bottle was labeled. Ah hah! It was home made wine. Our random Georgian, was the holy grail of randoms he was the “Good ride and Good story” random that you meet in travels.
Why the “holy grail” you ask? Well plenty of people are pleasant enough on the train, but this usually means they go to sleep, they don’t smell or snore. And of course there are the people that are good story people, but they often include some amount of unpleasantness that has to be endured by you in the present to get to the point that some time in the future they can become part of a funny antic dote. But the random person met traveling that makes for a good ride and a good story, well that is just rare!
This guy split his drinks, which got a lot better, and his food with us. He showed us pictures of where he makes his wine. He brought in several of his friends who also had things to share. Long story short, because of this random guy Higgins Ash and I ended the evening having drunk homemade Georgian wine with Georgians, Russians and Azeris out of ceremonial drinking horns. Hands down the best train ride I’ve had here, and by far the best sleep!

I’ll update on my first visit from America next time!!