With the guys: Shonzo, me, Meskho, Irakli, Giorgi

I’m off to Europe for a few weeks, so here are some recent pictures of a few get-togethers with some friends, and the Christmas lights in Tbilisi.  Droebit!

Khatuna & Dato at Buffet.

At Ufuk's Christmas Gluhwein party: Khatuna, me, Lisa, Neli

Khatuna at Le Marais

The little Christkindl markt near Rustaveli.

Rustaveli.

Another little markt and the tree in front of the parliament.

Tavisuplebis Moedani, with the Town Hall in the background.

Penguins and geese.

Old Georgian houses on Pushkin street.

Another old Georgian house.

Pushkin Street. With angel.

Dancing sculpture down by Shardeni.

Another sculpture.

Eating ice-cream at Luca Polari's.

The 7th century "Tamada" on Shardeni.

Here’s the one on a string quartet concert a few weeks ago:

In one of their infrequent appearances of late, the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theater String Quartet last week presented three perennial chamber music favorites. The Mozart (mistakenly advertised as #4 in E minor; it was actually #17 “Hunt” in B flat major, the confusion arising probably because it is the fourth in a set of six pieces) is the most popular of his Haydn quartets, collectively generally considered the pinnacle of string quartet writing; while Beethoven’s youthful #6 retains the lightness and poise of the earlier classical tradition. Shostakovich’s 8th, too, is his most popular quartet, performed more than his other fourteen put together – and one of the few chamber pieces composed after the Second World War that can be said to be popular at all.

Here’s the rest.

Here’s another on a souped-up version of Gogol’s Overcoat:

In one of the final performances of this year’s Tbilisi International Festival of Theater (www.tbilisiinternational.ge), the Gecko Company provided an energetic and highly idiosyncratic adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s enduring short story. The piece is a favorite challenge with ambitious theater companies, and Gecko presented an exhilarating, visionary adaptation.

Here’s the rest.

And my first review of a Georgian opera:

Last Saturday’s performance of “Abesalom & Eteri” provided another welcome opportunity to catch what is probably the best opera in the Georgian repertoire. Justly praised for its adept fusion of Georgian folk music and Western operatic tradition, it is also one of Paliashvili’s best-loved and most performed pieces. The Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theater rose once again to the occasion, providing an excellent all-round performance.

Here’s the rest.

The building housing the 1956 70cm meniscus telescope.

We arrived at the observatory as the sun was starting to set behind the mountains, so we dropped off our stuff and walked around the premises.  There were a few clouds floating by, but it promised to be a lovely clear night.  We had arranged to meet our host around 9:30, after nightfall, so we spent an hour or so walking around, taking a few pictures, and checking the place out.

Observatory.

The site was relatively large, with a hotel, office buildings, apartment blocks, and at least half a dozen buildings of various size housing the telescopes.

Two of the observatory's domes.

The largest dome.

This, the largest dome, appeared not to house a functioning telescope; it wasn’t included on our tour, and looking in the windows downstairs revealed a chaos of building materials, fragments of tiles, and a general air of disuse.  Perhaps that was just the back entrance, though; it’s connected to a rather large building on the other side not visible in this picture that possibly constitutes the entrance and offices.  I also read somewhere that one of the main functions of the observatory is observation of the sun, so perhaps it’s only open during the day.

One of the smaller ones.

The view from our apartment.

As I mentioned in the previous post, we ended up staying at one of the astronomer’s apartment.  He lived next door, and if I understood correctly the flat we stayed in was usually occupied by his wife, who was now in Tbilisi.  A pleasant enough place: it was in one of the handful of 6 or 7 storied concrete Soviet blocks scattered around the complex, each flat equipped with a small iron-railinged balcony from which washing was hanging to dry.  Ours was on the second floor.

Checking out Andromeda on the Double Astrograph telescope.

This was the best part of the visit.  Shota, the astronomer working here that night, was a stout, friendly fellow who enthusiastically interrupted his research to show us the telescope, explain his research to us, show us pictures on his computer, and train the instrument on objects for us to see.  He looked at us with large eyes behind thick glasses, eager for us to understand, as he rapidly sketched diagrams on his notebooks: this is how the huge CCD cameras attached to the telescopes work; this is how we use the telescope to do our research; this is why we can’t see Venus now.

Shota showing us his research.

His work at the moment, as far as I could understand it, was to take time-lapse pictures to reveal “fragments” in orbit around the Earth, pieces of space junk that might constitute a threat to the multiplicity of satellites.  He brought up a picture on the computer of the night sky, stars blurred into dashes, with occasional points of fixed light.  These were the fragments in orbit, those not stretched into dashes by the earth’s rotation.  It’s apparently part of a constant international effort monitoring debris in order to protect operational satellites.

Shota's research, identifying "fragments" amidst the stars stretched by the long exposure.

Andromeda. Even this was so bright the sensitive CCDs record simply a blaze at the center of the galaxy.

Here are a couple samples of the pictures the telescope has taken.

We also got a beautiful view of Jupiter and three of its moons.

With a dangling remote control he turned the telescope towards Jupiter and then Andromeda.  He couldn’t take a picture of Jupiter, since the CCDs were so sensitive that something so close and bright would dazzle the camera and appear simply as a blaze of white; and even Andromeda wasn’t very well-defined.  But the image of Jupiter in the eye-piece was beautiful: a large, faintly-blushing, perfectly circular orb, the bands of color discernible but muted; and three tiny moons in orbit around it.  ”If you wait about an hour you can watch another moon appear from behind the planet,” he said eagerly.

The Double Astrograph.

The 1937 Zeiss 40cm refractor telescope.

The guy who was showing us around, taking us from building to building, finally took us here, to his instrument.  It’s an old refractor telescope, which was, he told us, the most powerful in Europe for a long time.  He told a story about how Hitler had had a similar telescope at Berghof, which the Soviets brought to Leningrad after the war—this was the most powerful refractor, but it was sitting broken in Leningrad, so this one remained as the best functioning instrument.  He also said that a similar thing had happened among the minor leagues: Mussolini had a telescope identical to Hitler’s, which was taken to Yugoslavia after the war by Tito.  I wasn’t able to clarify it’s relation to this telescope.

Checking out Jupiter.

It’s a large, long instrument, so long that, depending on how vertically one aims it, one has to raise or lower the circular floor so that one can comfortably reach the eye-piece.  Our host was adept at manipulating the various controls: first hauling the telescope roughly into place and swiveling the dome to allow a clear view, then adjusting the height of the floor, focusing, etc.  I can’t imagine it’s used for much research; it’s old and the images it presented weren’t of the best quality.  Our guide regretted there wasn’t a moon that night, since it was an ideal object for that telescope.

The museum.

At the end of our tour our host showed us the museum, two reconstructed offices of the founders of the observatory and this larger room with models of telescopes and information about the observatory’s history.  After talking to him for a while, Khatuna and I left at around midnight, and slowly walked back to the apartment, stopping about half-way to gaze up at the night sky.  It was the first time in many years that I’d seen such a beautiful, clear, dark sky, with the Milky Way streaking prominently across the middle.  Together we saw at least four meteors, with a few disputed ones or those which only one of us saw.  As Orion was gradually climbing over the mountain, we made our way back to our flat, and went to bed.

Our apartment.

Our place for the night was pleasant enough; small, comfortable, deliciously quiet, with all the necessities.  There were a number of books on shelves along the wall, all in Russian or Georgian; a map of the Georgian SSR on another wall; a small corner devoted to icons with a few of those long, narrow, yellow candles one sees in Georgian churches.  In the kitchen there was one of those small coils of metal connected to a plug, which provided the hot water for tea or coffee.  We were pretty exhausted, so we fell into our beds and fell asleep almost immediately.

The valley in the morning, from our balcony.

In the morning we got up and took a last brief tour of the site before catching the 10:30 cable car back down to the village.

The cable-car station.

A great trip!

Abastumani, the spa town just below the observatory.

Last weekend Khatuna and I went back to Samtskhe-Javakheti to visit the national observatory near the spa town of Abastumani.  I’d intended to go the weekend before, but a large conference meant that it would be closed to visitors.  When I called I was told it’d be closed, but the following week they’d be open once again, and we could visit whenever we wanted.  However, I wasn’t sure we’d understood one another fully—he spoke no English, and my Georgian is still rudimentary—so I wrote an email to the address indicated on the English page of their website, and had Khatuna call too.  This still left a little uncertainty, for the person she spoke to wasn’t entirely helpful:

“We’d like to visit the observatory next week, and we were wondering if you’d be open Saturday night.”

“Well, that depends.”

“Depends?  On what?”

“Well, it depends on what you want to see, naturally.”

“It says on your website that you give ‘Night Tours’; perhaps a tour of the facilities and the telescopes.”

“Night Tour?  I haven’t heard of any night tours.  You have to tell me what you want to do here…”

“I see.  It also says that you have a hotel on the site; are any rooms available?  And how much do they cost?”

“It depends…”

And so on it went.  And I never did get an answer to my email.

Although the outside was quite attractive, the actual baths had seen better days...

On Friday Khatuna called once again, to confirm our arrival, and everything seemed set.  We met at Didube at 8:45, found our marshrutka, and we soon found ourselves back in Akhaltsikhe.  From here we took a taxi to Abastumani, about a fifteen minute ride.  The driver was, as are many taxi drivers and most marshrutka drivers, savagely careless; on this occasion he sped along the lanes and tried to overtake another car on a blind corner when another car approached in the other lane, honking in exasperation.  He couldn’t decided whether to step on it and finish his overtaking maneuver, or retreat; after a brief lurch forward, with the oncoming car 30 meters away and honking angrily, he changed his mind and slunk back behind the car in our lane.  Khatuna upbraided him roundly and he drove more slowly from then on.  A savage species, these drivers in Georgia.

Khatuna.

We went first directly to the observatory, four and a half kilometers up the mountain from the pleasant little village of Abastumani.  The driver dropped us at the gate, and we approached the group of 5 men squatting by the booth by the gate, or sitting on the sidewalk nearby.  Khatuna informed them who we were, and that we were expected.  The men looked at one another warily, and finally one spoke up.  It turned out he had no idea who we were, and wondered what we wanted.  She explained again our request, and our conversation with various people on previous occasions; he smiled incredulously and asked to whom we had spoken; he had never heard of any night tours.  With a touch of exasperation Khatuna phoned the number we had used before, and gave him the phone.  He talked briefly to someone he apparently knew, and rousing himself walked us to one of the nearby buildings and took us to his office.  We talked for a while, and finally agreed that we would stay in his flat (for 30 lari; the hotel, it seemed, was fully booked by a school group…taking the night tour), and that we could come back around nine when it became sufficiently dark.  The cable car was returning to the village below in a few minutes, so we decided to go down, have lunch and check out the town.

The town.

After a decent lunch in what appeared to be the only restaurant in town, we set out to explore the place.  Quite pleasant, if small and sleepy, and with the usual appearance of neglect.  It had an unusual number of attractive tsarist-era buildings, constructed presumably when it’s waters and the wonderful mountain air attracted a more fashionable clientele.  There is, I think, still a sanatorium in the neighbourhood, which we glimpsed from the cable-car, a large, dignified, white building surrounded by the pine forest that covers the whole area.

The town.

We stopped at a the entrance to what was obviously a hotel, large than all the houses in the town and each of its four floors honeycombed with little balconies, most of them filled with firewood or broken furniture or building materials.  We were told that there was indeed an abano (hot spring baths), just down the road; and yes, it was open.  So we followed the road through the trees, on side lined with old wooden houses where a small group of women dressed in black talked quietly while hanging up their laundry; two or three young children scampered about and stopped as we passed, looking up at us wide eyed, their toys forgotten for the moment; and an older man, hunched over on the railing of a balcony, watched us as he smoked.

The town church.

The baths turned out to be a disappointment; the actual building was, from the outside at least, quite pretty, although one of its two wings had been left to decay, the paint and plaster crumbling off, and virtually every window broken.  The front door was open, but hanging over it was a large sign indicating that the baths were closed.  We walked in anyway, rather tentatively, and were met by a tall man of about 35, with several days’ growth of beard and an awkward limp.  Yes, of course the baths are open, follow me…  He led us to the hallway in the wing that was still functioning, with private rooms on either side, most of which appeared to be empty, and in a dismal state of neglect: dark and grimy, broken tiles littering the floor, large patches of plaster missing from the walls, exposing the iron bars deep in the concrete, the corners filthy.  The water however seemed ok; it was running water, and aside from clusters of old leaves at the bottom of the pools the water seemed clean enough.  We debated briefly, but eventually the lack of towels decided it for us.  So we left and turned back towards the cable-car, which would take us back up to the observatory at 6:30.

The town's public library.

Near the center of the town we passed another interesting, eccentric old wooden house, with a large enclosed balcony on the first floor.  I slowly made out the letters of a sign posted underneath its windows, and discovered that it was the town’s public library.  It was still early–we had a couple hours before the cable car left—so we went to have a look.  It was quite remarkable: a well-arranged, large sitting room with books and magazines lining the walls, posters with pictures commemorating various local people and Georgian literary figures, all painstakingly put together and carefully hand-written.

A dedication to Elene Machabeli, a descendant of the Bagrationi family and wife of the founder of the observatory.

Presently an elderly woman noticed us, and came inside from the balcony where she had been reading to welcome us.  She proudly showed us around—it was obvious that the whole place was entirely her own project—enumerating their resources and explaining to whom the various posters were dedicated.  Pleasant and friendly, and pleased to have guests, perhaps especially foreigners, expressing interest in her little fiefdom, there was also an air of self-satisfaction about her, a pride in her position that separated her from the townsfolk (most of whom were probably farmers) who probably rarely visited her.  And indeed the place was quite impressive, with a substantial collection: two large rooms in the back packed with shelves, all neatly arranged alphabetically and into subjects.  On one side a low set of shelves was covered with magazines, all of which must have been at least ten years old—many of them had a small Soviet insignia on one corner of the cover, and the two or three that I leafed through had what looked like articles on Lenin, even the one called “Georgian Woman.”

A surprisingly large collection, with around twenty well-stocked shelves.

Unfortunately, no English books.  It’s amusing to browse the old Soviet period books in English one occasionally finds at stalls on the streets in Tbilisi; an old Hemingway published in Leningrad in 1978, or books about England or France.  I once came across a book about London published in the 1960s, surveying life in that capital with that heavy-handed ideological slant, with its slogans and simplifications, that still amazes me.  She did, however, have an extensive selection of translated literature, mostly French, English and German.  Browsing the shelves the feeling again came to me that she probably had little to do, in general; most of the books were covered in a thin, undisturbed layer of dust, and cobwebs stretched contentedly in the shelves.  I wondered where all the books came from; I couldn’t imagine that the government had provided them all, as she claimed when I asked her—no other town of comparable size that I’d visited had such a collection.  Perhaps it had been stocked at least in part by well-to-do visitors to the town in better days.  Which reminds me that she told us that the well-known Georgian poet Lado Asatiani had been a visitor.  I don’t remember exactly what his illness was (probably tuberculosis), but he came to a sanatorium here when he was around 25 but promptly died.

The librarian showing us around. And to one side...

I noticed the picture of Stalin on one of the shelves, and asked her about him.  She was effusive in his praise—she loved him, she honoured him; he had defeated fascism and made the Soviet Union a global power; a great man.  I didn’t have the opportunity to talk much with her about him, but it was interesting nonetheless.

...Stalin!

Once outside, we saw two minibuses parked by the side of the road, with school-children loitering about.  Khatuna approached one of the adults and asked if they were the group going to the observatory, and got us a ride up, still almost two hours before the cable-car left.

The market in Gori, on the way to Uplistsikhe.

Last Wednesday was Mtskhetoba, a national holiday, so Khatuna had the day free and we decided to visit Uplistsikhe just outside Gori.  We took a public taxi with two other people and arrived at the bus station/bazaar in Gori around 12:30, where we did a bit of quick shopping for our planned mtsvadi dinner.  

In the butcher's corner in the market. Here we got some veal for our mtsvadi dinner.

After walking around for a while we found some nice-looking veal for our mtsvadi, as well as a set of shampurebi (skewers) that we’d been looking for for a while.  This picture is from the butcher’s section of the market, where all sorts of livestock detritus is scattered on table-tops or dangling from meat-

The bazaar.

hooks.  The smaller-scale butchery is all done in the market: tree-trunks serve as the platforms on which legs are hacked to size; ribs are chopped with large axes, and heads are meticulously stripped of any sellable flesh.  The people working there are friendly and helpful; the guy who sold us our veal happily cut our onions for us, while his partner laughed as his friend’s eyes watered and told me to take a picture of him weeping over our onions.  When I asked in hesitant Georgian at a nearby shop for a small portion of salt—perhaps half a cup—the young man poured the salt into a bag and with friendly but firm earnestness refused to accept any money.

Filming the new movie in Gori.

Once we had all our stuff, we headed out to Uplistsikhe, a few kilometers from town.  As we were about to cross the bridge, flanked with tanks and military vehicles, we were waved to a stop and had to wait about ten minutes.  A guy standing next to me told me it was filming for the American film about the August war; I checked it out and found that it’s being directed by Die Hard 2 director Renny Harlin and starring Andy Garcia as Saakashvili!  Should be interesting.  Here are some pictures.

The back entrance of the cave complex.

We spent a couple hours wandering around the site and then left to prepare our dinner; here are some of the pictures.

Inside the stairway of the back door.

Khatuna in front of the principal remaining edifices.

From the Lonely Planet guide: “Uplistsikhe is one of the oldest places of settlement in the Caucasus.  It was founded in the late Bronze Age, around 1000 BC, but developed mainly from the 6th century BC to the 1st century AD.  This was one of the principal political and religious centres of pre-Christian Kartli, with temples dedicated principally to the sun goddess.  Archeological findings from the 4th to 6th centuries AD speak of an ongoing struggle between Christians and adherents of the old religion.”(76)

Note the ruined settlements down below.

"Known as the Theater, this is probably a temple from the 1st or 2nd century CE, where religious mystery plays may have been performed. Note the ceiling with octagonal designs similar to Caracalla's Baths in Rome." (LP)

The view from the Theater.

At the end of his section on Uplistsikhe, Roger Rosen relieves himself of a somewhat bizarre poetic-moral reverie: “Uplistsikhe is one of those eerie places that confirm so eloquently the Old Testament injunction against vanity.  Looking over all the burrows in the soft stone and feeling the wind erode the structures even as you stand there, you can’t help but be spooked by all this troglodytic ambition and what remains of it.”(162)  I can’t help pursuing this tangent: Vanity?  Ambition?  The vanity of  troglodytic ambition?  There may well have been a degree of pride in the vast town carved out of the stone—and quite right, too—but I didn’t get any Ozymandian vibes while communing with the caves.  Especially considering the fate that overtook it (those damn Mongols again), some ingenuity in constructing one’s settlement in the very stone of the mountains seems less like vanity than a mixture of shrewd opportunism (the stone is quite soft) and a sort of wary, far-sighted prudence; and its destruction less an eloquent confirmation of Bronze Age sanctimoniousness than simply another instance of the depredations of the Mongols.  Perhaps the fact that Uplistsikhe was being built around the time the Jews were compiling their Book provided Rosen with an irresistible but facile temptation to moralize.  But really, in my opinion, Leviticus and Deuteronomy hardly provide an edifying contrast to whatever pagan excesses might have been perpetrated in Uplistsikhe, let alone in the greatly superior Hellenistic culture to whose decline it contributed.  If one must sacrifice creatures, it might as well be to the sun—the warm, life-giving sun!  the sun which, as it emerged wan and pale from the pitiless Polish winter, made Primo Levi understand how people could worship it—rather than, as Richard Dawkins polemically puts it, to “a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”  So.  Back to the pictures.

The 10th century Uplistsulis Eklesia (Prince's Church), built over a pagan temple.

Checking my Lonely Planet guide.

The marani next to Tamaris Darbazi..

"Tamaris Darbazi", the Hall of Queen Tamar.

Khatuna.

The Uplistsulis Eklesia and pagan temple underneath. Palimpsestic architecture. Like it.

More caves.

A ceremonial chamber at the top of the complex.

The Mtkvari valley.

The view from the top of the complex.

Preparing our dinner a few minutes' walk from the entrance to Uplistsikhe.

I've become pretty expert at preparing fires for mtsvadi.

The Mtkvari at twilight.

A great day.

Khatuna at the gates of the park.

Across the river from the center of town is the Borjomi Mineral Water Park, a lovely stretch of forrest following the valley along the Borjomula river.

The park.

The park has recently been attractively renovated, with a number of themed playgrounds, a cinema, and a few amusement-park syle attractions.

The pavilion housing the mineral water taps.

There are a number of springs here too; this one is the warm water Borjomi spring, apparently one of the most health-giving waters.  A short walk away, by the river, is the cold water Borjomi spring, sour and salty and with a tang of sulphur.

Khatuna tasting the warm Borjomi mineral water.

Khatuna wasn't impressed...

Warm and salty and somehow sulfurous.

The path along the Borjomula.

The Borjomula.

Khatuna filling our water bottle at another spring by the river. This one was clean, clear fresh water, without the mineral taste of the Borjomi waters.

The last bridge before the clearing.

The thermal pool three kilometers from the entrance of the park.

About three kilometers from the entrance of the park there’s a lovely clearing in the forest where there’s a thermal pool fed by a deep, warm spring.  After the brisk hike in the chilly mountain air we were rather pooped, and the soak in the warm, earthy-smelling water was deliciously refreshing.

Khatuna by the pool.

Fantastic!

Khatuna.

The pool.

The Borjomi train station.

Friday morning we took a marshrutka to Borjomi, and decided to spend the day here.  Quite a lovely town; an old spa resort that was fashionable in the late 1800′s, early 1900′s after the mineral water springs were discovered by some Russian officers.  Now it’s popular in the summer with tourists and in the winter due to its proximity to Bakuriani, one of two ski resorts in Georgia.  The main road stretches between the river and the mountains, with shops on one side and a pleasant strip of park overlooking the river on the other.  On the other side of the river is the Borjomi Mineral Water Park.

Borjomi.

Khatuna

Frescoes from the church on the promenade.

Frescoes from the church on the promenade.

Frescoes from the church on the promenade.

Frescoes from the church on the promenade.

Frescoes from the church on the promenade.

At the mtsvadi restaurant in Akhaldaba.

We arrived in Borjomi around one, and looked around for a place to have lunch.  A friendly young man at the information center in the park just off Rustaveli told us the best place to have mtsvadi was a little village a few kilometers away called Akhaldaba, so we made our way there and had a great lunch.  The restaurant had a series of balconies projecting over a little brook, and served great food.

Mtsvadi lunch...

Climbing up the hill overlooking the river in Akhaldaba.

After lunch, we climbed the hill on the other side of the road from the restaurant.  It rose up steeply between the road and the river below, offering beautiful views of the valley.

Khatuna on the hilltop.

The Mtkvari winding through the mountains from Borjomi.

The mountains of Samtskhe-Javakheti, near Akhaldaba.

Khertvisi Fortress, on the way to Vardzia.

Starting to fall behind with posts, so I’ll just post the pictures from my trip last week.  Perhaps I’ll update them later.

Khertvisi.

Walking up the hill to the entrance to the caves.

Vardzia.

Vardzia.

Vardzia.

Vardzia.

At the entrance of the Church of the Assumption.

Vardzia.

Vardzia.

Vardzia.

Vardzia.

Vardzia.

The view over the valley.

A small chapel hewed out of the stone behind the Church of the Assumption.

One of the passages carved out of the rock.

Frescos on the outside of the Church of the Assumption.

Vardzia.

Khatuna.

One of the several maranis (wine cellars).

Vardzia.

Vardzia.

Vardzia.

Sapara Monastary.

On our way to Vardzia we took a detour to the Sapara monastery in the mountains south-east of Akhaltsikhe.  It’s tucked between beautifully wooded ridges of the mountain that descend around it, hiding it from view until a kilometer or so away.  Most of the road was rather rough, and our taxi driver, a tough-looking fellow of around 35, had to drive slowly most of the way as we lurched over the uneven stone and miniature valleys carved in the soil by the rain.  

Khatuna and our driver (on the right) entering the monastary.

There’s been a monastery here since around the 9th century, though most of the buildings date from the late 13th, early 14th centuries.  This church, St. Saba’s (the largest church of the site), was built around that time.  The story goes that the ruler of Samtskhe, Sargis I, abdicated in favour of his son Beka, cropped his hair, took vows as a monk, and changed his name to Saba late in the 13th century.  His son then built the church in honour of the saint whose name his father had taken.

Entrance to St. Saba's church.

At this time most of Georgia was under Mongol rule, but because of a knack the Jakeli family had of staying on good terms with the Mongol Khan, Samtskhe flourished as an independent duchy.  Their seat was a fortress just up the hill from the monastery, ruins of which are visible from below.

The main church in this picture is St. Saba’s; the structure to the right is a smaller, older church dedicated to Mary’s Assumption. Rosen’s Georgia has the following anecdote: “Note the head of a bull on the top left side of the entrance from the porch.  Legend has it that at the time of the building of the church a bull helped to haul stones from the mountain to the site.  Just as the work was finished the bull was killed and eaten by a bear.  The builder commemorated the helpful bull by placing its effigy as the last stone set in the completed church.”(286)  I didn’t see any effigies of bulls on this older structure, about which Rosen appears to be writing; but I did see a little relief  of a bull-like creature on the rear wall of St. Saba’s, visible from a little terrace jutting out on a narrow promontory behind the church overlooking the

Fresco on the exterior wall.

valley.  It’s recognizably bull-like, if fanciful, like a creature from Where the Wild Things Are.  It’s high up just under the eaves on the left side.

This is the entrance from the porticoed side of the church.  It’s covered in frescoes and reliefs, in remarkably good condition considering that they’re outside and that the varied depredations of Mongols, Turks, and Persians haven’t destroyed them.

One of the four seraphs in the vaults of the portico.

This portico was quite beautiful; intricate reliefs decorate all the architectural surfaces, and frescoes adorn the walls.  Here again, on the left, one can see the sculpted patterns that to me resemble celtic art—the elaborate interweaving patterns of Irish illuminated manuscripts and celtic crosses.  It also frames the windows and covers other little decorative touches around the church.  The influence of Nino and her vines?

Decorations around the windows.

More decoration.

Fresco inside St. Saba.

Fresco above the altar.

St. Saba.

The buildings flanking St. Saba’s here are, I think, the bell-tower to the right, and the 10th-century Dormition Church on the left, which used to house a famous 11th-century stone iconostasis.  The reliefs have been removed from the church, however; three are in the Fine Arts Museum in Tbilisi and two are in the museum in Akhaltsikhe.

The view from Sapara.

Sapara from the road.

After walking around for a while, we got back in the taxi and headed back to Akhaltsikhe to take the road to Vardzia.

The bus station in Akhaltsikhe.

Last Wednesday Khatuna and I took the nine o’clock marshrutka to Akhatsikhe in the southern region of Samtskhe-Javakheti for a brief visit, mainly to check out Vardzia and a few other places I’d wanted to see.  I’d been here once before, on a visa run early in the year (taking another marshrutka to Vale and then a taxi to the Turkish border; now the Georgian government has changed the regulations, and certain visitors—including those from the EU–can remain in the country for 360 days on a single entry visa), but only had time to have a quick look around.  We arrived early in the afternoon, and got a taxi to our hotel, the Hotel Rio.  On the web it’s advertised as a relatively cheap but well-run place a kilometer or so from the center of town—with a swimming pool!  I had Khatuna call them to see if they had vacancies and whether the pool were in working order, and we were assured that it was.  Naturally, when we got to the hotel, we were told that it was not in fact operational; I mentioned that last night someone had told us it was, to which the concierge replied that they had had to suddenly drain the pool that morning…  Well well, that’s life.

Akhaltsikhe from a hillside nearby, on the way to Sapara.

The center of town is a tolerably pleasant place, a central plaza formed by the forking of a street into the two main thoroughfares through the town.  In the middle of the triangular space lies a gleaming new church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, with a statue or two of a Georgian sort of alter-ego of Mary, St. Nino.  People have a noticeably more Middle-Eastern appearance here—Akhaltsikhe has a large Armenian population—and in fact about half the people were speaking Armenian, with usually the children speaking Georgian to one another.  Not a great deal in the way of food to be had: a number of cafe-fronts on the main streets had the appearance of having been closed for years, and we didn’t really see any restaurants.  We stopped at a cellar beisl of sorts, rather dark and and with that musty, sticky atmosphere of stale beer, old cigarette smoke, and oily fried food. But the family running the place were friendly and bustled about to make us comfortable.

Part of the castle in Akhaltsikhe.

After our late lunch we walked around town, heading towards the Rabati, or old town, where most of the sights of interest are to be found.  For some reason, a large banner over the entrance to the old town is emblazoned with the slogan “A Symbol of Tolerance”, and we couldn’t figure out why the Rabati was advertising itself as such; it had changed hands several times—first Georgian, then Persian, the Georgian again, then Turkish, possibly Armenian at some point, and then finally Georgian again, but this doesn’t in itself explain the reference to tolerance.  It is interesting, in any case, to see a large castle perched on top of a hill overlooking the valley below that wouldn’t look out of place anywhere in Europe, but with the to me incongruous oriental touch of a mosque rising out of it, flanked by a rather stubby minaret.

Inside the castle, in front of the mosque.

The mosque is now part of the museum and houses a collection of old fragments of local buildings, most of them with inscriptions in ancient Georgian lettering.  Scattered around the grounds are other blocks and sculptures and friezes and reliefs, relics of a more vibrant time.  Behind the mosque is a madrass which I seem to remember hearing or reading was later used as a stable.  But I might have imagined it.  On a rising crag of stone to one side of the center of the castle, led to by a winding path lined with wild mint, sits another portion of the fortress which was locked.

In the Ivane Javakhishvili Samtskhe-Javakheti History Museum.

The museum itself, in an adjacent building, has a collection of ancient artifacts of variable interest; jewelry and pottery from the Bronze Age up to 19th century manuscripts, clothing, and weaponry.  I asked about the 16th century manuscript of Rustaveli’s Knight in the Tiger Skin which my Lonely Planet guide says is here, but the guide, an elderly woman who looked rather annoyed to have been called out to open the museum for us (she generally stays in another building, and has to be summoned to open the doors), said she didn’t know anything about any such exhibit, and wouldn’t elaborate.  Nothing, as far as I could see, from the period of Turkish occupation, however.

The gate of a house near the castle. Note the medallion near the top of...

After checking out the castle and the museum, we walked around the area, looking for other sites of interest mentioned in my guide book—the old Turkish baths, a synagogue, a Catholic church.  On the way we passed this gate of a house, and I was amused to see this medallion of stalin fixed to the middle of it.

...Stalin!

Stalin’s grandson is occasionally in the news, most recently because of his lawsuit against the newspaper Novaya Gazeta for supposedly “besmirching his family’s reputation” by calling his grandfather a “bloodthirsty cannibal.”  I’m not sure if it’s the same guy, or simply a forgery, but an art gallery here in Tbilisi, on Erekle II near Shardeni claims to have a painting or two of Stalin’s grandson, both of which were pretty poor.  As far as I know he lives in Georgia, probably somewhere in Tbilisi.  An interesting subject to interview?

The old Turkish baths near the castle.

The old abano is a short walk from the castle, and sadly rather unimpressive.  It’s decaying and appears as though parts of it have been cannibalized for building stone. It has obviously been a long time since it housed anything like a functioning bath; peeking through the loosely chained doors I saw that it was filled with firewood, serving as someone’s private firewood storage house.

The bazaar in Akhaltsikhe.

Just off Kostava is the bazaar, full of fresh produce, clothing of various shades of black from Turkey and a multiplicity of knick-knacks from China.  We bought some delicious pickles which we ate as we wandered around.

Hotel Rio.

Inside the Hotel.

A pleasant place, really; it’s a couple of kilometers from the bus station on the way into town, on the other side of the river.  New and clean, the rooms all leading off from this large central space.  The staff are friendly and helpful, and there’s free wireless internet; the rooms are large and comfortable, and it’s quiet.  The young-ish concierge, who had told us regretfully that the pool wasn’t available, drove us into town on a couple of occasions in a friendly sort of expiation.

Ruins of a castle on the way from Akhaltsikhe to Borjomi.

I think this picture was on the way from Akhaltsikhe to Borjomi, though the next day, Thursday, we went to Sapara and Vardzia.