This post is part of a series of photos taken during my recent trip to Georgia. Today’s post will focus on my first day in Telavi, the largest city in Khakheti, the wine region of Georgia. Back in the winter/spring of 2005, I finished my final four months of Peace Corps service in this town of roughly 22,000. It’s only two hours away from Tbilisi, the country’s capital. And what a great place it is! Enjoy the tour. My really good Georgian friend, Nino Bukurauli, will serve as our guide!
This is actually the entrance to Nino’s home in Telavi. She lives in Tbilisi with her new husband now. But her mother still lives here and they use the second floor of their home as a hotel for tourists (more on this in a later post.) Nino was my next door neighbor in a different building back in the spring of 2005 when I was teaching English in an American Embassy sponsored library. Notice thoseawesomegrape vines hanging from above!
This is her daughter (shoot me for I forgot her name!!). She’s nine now, but she was four when I saw her last.
Like many Georgians, Nino actually has traveled abroad for better employment opportunities. While most Georgians travel north to Russia for work, Nino was lucky enough to get visas (a very difficult task for most people in the world not from an industrialized nation) to work in England, Italy and Greece. Fluent in English, Nino is very proud of her Georgian roots and is very western-oriented. She has nothing against Russia, as is the case with most everyday Georgians. But she clearly sees her country in the family of the European Union community. However, as you will learn in this post and later ones, she is equally critical of her country’s shortcomings and can go into great depth about them!
The girl to the left of me is also named, Nino. (Yes there are MANY Nino’s in Georgia as there are Giorgis, Ekas and so on). Nino lived on the second floor of my building. Each day she and I would talk about Georgia and life in general.It did wonders for my Georgian language skills! She works as a manager in a bank in Telavi and is now married. Her mother also worked in Greece during my time in Georgia. Its a common story with so many Georgians. Even though the country is getting better economically and politically, many Georgians don’t feel these improvements in their pocketbooks.
Between the tenth andtwelfthcenturies, Telavi was the capital of the Kingdom of Khaketi. You will find many fortified buildings around the city as this construction served as protection against invaders that Georgians have fought throughout their long history. Notice the fortified castle in the background, for example. There is actually a school behind it, where Nino’s daughter attends.
These women were sitting when we walked by them. More than happy to pose for photos, they did have one request that they wanted Nino to tell me:
“Please tell him to tell everyone in America that we live in poverty,” said the woman in the middle. “That’s why we have to sell these sunflower seeds.” We all burst out in laugher!
Five years ago, I attended a concert in this building. Its quite and it was considered a cultural gem of the town. Now its a bank. Prior to the bank buying this building, there were strong protests from locals demanding that the bank find a less, historically important place to house their business. “Why did they have to choose this building,” Nino said still annoyed by the transaction. “There are other places. They don’t need all of this space. Look at it! They aren’t even using all of it, I bet. For what do they need such large space!”
Stacks of wood is something you will rarely, if ever, see in Tbilisi. People in the regions still rely on wood to heat their homes during the winter. As early as August, people buy enough wood to last the winter months. How it works is that people pay someone who brings chucks of wood from forests. It’s then up to the buyer to cut the wood themselves. And most do. I, on the other hand, always paid someone to cut mine. As you can see, some of the ladies did not want to be photographed atop their small, wooden hills! One good note is that water services have improved in the past five years. Many buildings had facets in the backyards for people to fetch water to their flats via buckets as the piping was so poor that water did not make it to residents. Twice a week, I loaded a huge plastic can in my kitchen with water from a facet in the back of my building. Each day I heated water on my kerosine stove and took bucket baths (I did this for two years!) Now residents, in my old building for example, get water flowing into their sinks. But they still rely on wood to keep warm when the snow falls. Perhaps in due time, these same people will be able to turn on the heat with the turn of their fingers as they do their water. Let’s see!
We are walking to see some of Nino’s friends.
The lady in the back of Nino is one of her good friends in Telavi. She actually asks if we want to tour the outside.
Anotherarchitectural fixture you’ll find around Georgia are the narrow, iron, twisting stairwells. They must not have been many over-weight Georgians back in the day because I can’t see any weighing 300 pounds (136 kilos) making their way down these steps!
Notice the ridged walls and the bold stones with which they are built. What you are looking at is hundreds of years of history. Behind these walls lived Georgian royalty according to Nino’s neighbor. “I live right next to where kings and queens once lived,” she added with pride.
This is another angle of the yard. More wood stacked for the upcoming winter months.
The neighbor’s daughter and her newborn baby.
We ended the day at Nino’s home with my good friend David and his brother Paata. We were great friends when I was here five years ago (and still are as we chat on FB often). Whenever I return to Georgia, we always meet. He actually gave me a piece of interesting history about Georgia’s most famous citizen.
To the right is Paata Aliashvili (without cap), they are twins if you haven’t noticed! The wine we are drinking is called Kinzmarauli, a semi-sweet red. The twins say it was a favorite of Stalin’s. Though if you do google searches, Mukuzani, a red dry wine is also mentioned along with several other reds as Stalin’s preferred wine of choice. Whether it’s true or not, the Kinzmarauli is very tasty if you like semi-sweet reds.
We certainly didn’t toast to Stalin. But there’s one thing you have to give the man credit for: If it’s true that Kinzmarauli was one of Stalin’s favorites, he certainly had great taste!
My next post will take you back some several hundred years when Georgians and Russians actually had good relations. If you wish to call it that.
Stay tuned!
