New Years in Georgia

I know this is a long time coming but I'm finally getting around to writing a little bit about our New Year's adventure in Georgia. Mike and I left Ganja on the 30th of December. We were still uncertain as to how we would reach Georgia but we had been assured by several Peace Corps volunteers that getting to Georgia was no problem.
At the Ganja bus station we arrived just in time to hop on a minibus going to the last town in Azerbaijan before the border. We crammed into the back of the van with about 12 other Azeris and sat back and enjoyed one of the three movies that are shown in all long distance transportation vessels. It was a sketch comedy show that was taped in Baku I have no idea how many years ago. The show was amusing the first two times but after seeing it 10 times it is ceases to draw many laughs from me. But our fellow passengers found it to be hysterical. I imagine they hadn't been traveling around Azerbaijan as much as we had. We reached our destination, Qazax, in about two hours. Then we had to worry about getting to the border. After some finger pointing, waving and waiting at the curb one of the drivers arranged taxi transport to the border. We had read about come 'difficulties' with the Azerbaijani border patrol as far as letting us into Georgia without a bribe but we just hopped out of the taxi and walked up to the run-down border patrol buildings much to the amusement of the many soldiers who seemed to have little else to do but gawk at the strange foreigners and their large back packs. After our passport numbers were written down in a tattered notebook we were allowed to proceed and headed to the Georgian side and entered a nice modern building with an electronic passport scanner, turnstyle and even a bathroom!
We were assured by other Peace Corps Volunteers that once you crossed the border there would be plenty of busses and taxis to take you to Tbilisi, which is about 40 Km away. Once we left the border check there was nothing in sight so we started walking. It wasn’t too long before a taxi came by and the negotiations began. Luckily he was Azeri so we at least could understand some of what he was saying. After much haggling over price he finally agreed to take us. We arrived with little problem at the “Hotel Nika” which is a nice little place run by a woman who offers very cheap but comfortable rooms to Peace Corps Volunteers.
The first culture shock came when we were asking for our room. A woman who was working there asked us if we were boyfriend and girlfriend and we looked at each other and thinking ‘crap’ they’re not going to let us stay in the same room together”- as is the situation in Azerbaijan if you are not married! (see Christmas blog) Unable to lie quickly enough we said yes- and she broke into a smile and then showed us to our room. It was great- in Georgia nobody cares if you’re married or not!!!
We dropped our stuff in our room and then headed into the city. Not knowing the subway system we decided to explore on foot- which turned out to be a bit of a longer adventure than we anticipated. Eventually we came to the downtown area where the streets were brightly decorated for the Holidays. We wandered down the main street in awe of the architecture and festiveness. There was a completely different feel to the city and people. It was like a huge weight had been lifted off our shoulders. People did not stare at us or ask us questions. There was a huge variety in the clothes that young people wore. We even saw street musicians in an underpass who only did Dire Straits covers! We definitely felt like we were in Europe. The coolest thing we saw the first night was a musical fountain- even better than the one in Ganja (See post on Ganja) What was neat was that it was so cold that the water was forming ice all around the spickets and there was a group of three guys sliding to the music on the ice. The other more garish thing we saw was the three-storey Mc Donald’s.
We returned to the hotel and got ready for our trip to Gudauri, the only ski resort in the country. I was a little nervous because we were going to have to tackle the subway and the minibus system all at once. This would not be too bad if either of us spoke Georgian or even knew the alphabet. I had tried to learn the letters and had made little index cards with the alphabet on them. Georgia has its own unique language and alphabet different from any other languages in the world. The writing is in my opinion very beautiful- many soft rounded letters. On the maps we had the names of the stations- some in Georgian and some in Latin letters. So it actually wasn’t too difficult. The bus station, where we were to find our transport to Gudauri was a mad house!!! But it is amazing how easy it is to find the right bus. We just told people where we wanted to go and they pointed us in the right direction. We found our minibus in no time and even met a guy also traveling to Gudauri who had lived in the U.S. for a while so he helped us out and told us a lot about Georgia.
The ride up to Gudauri was interesting. Amazing how nice the roads were! Georgia is working very hard at developing its tourism industry and has started by improving its infrastructure. Although the GDP of Georgia is significantly lower than in Azerbaijan the roads are much better, the cities are cleaner and there seems to be less abject poverty. The villages we passed however did look quite similar to Azerbaijan.
The other major differences, which is indicative of the different predominant religion, that in Georgia instead of herds of sheep everywhere, there were herds of PIGS!! They were so cute and some were very, very hairy.
We traveled narrow winding roads into the foothills of the Greater Caucuses mountains, and after about 2 hours we finally reached our destination. Gudauri ski ‘resort’ was definitely a work in progress. It was clear from all the construction going on that their were big plans for the place. There were several buildings that had clearly been built in the 70’s and our little ‘Sno House’ bungalow was one of them. It was only about 1:00 so he rushed about getting settled in with the hopes of getting a few hours of skiing in.
Finding rentals was a bit more challenging than expected so by the time we got all suited up it was already 3:00 and their were no ½ day tickets. So we decided to head back in and be sure to be out all the earlier the next day.
Our lodging was a little space pod like house where the proprietor spoke no English but Russian and Spanish so communication was interesting. Luckily both Mike and I know some emergency Spanish but it turned out that the cook was Azeri so we could talk with her. The irony of the situation though was that we were so excited to come to Georgia to I hate to say it but ‘get away ‘ from Azeri cooking. Both Mike and I had been living with host families for 6 months and we were aching for something a little more compatible with out palates. And we come to Georgia and we can’t escape the food!!!
At dinner we met another couple he was from Holland and she was American but of Turkish heritage who were working in the NGO world in Tbilisi and they invited Mike and I to join them in their New Years celebration activities.
We had a very fun and interesting evening, with a few fire works and a new disco. It was definitely a memorable evening!

The next morning we got up early to be the first on the slopes. When we got up to the second lift we found it hadn’t opened yet, even though it was 10:00 I guess people weren’t too excited about skiing after the night’s jovialities. We finally made it to the summit where we were out of the cloud cover and had an amazing undercast. And also great views of what we were about to ski down. Essentially the top part of the mountain had only one groomed trail down the back side and the front face was basically a free for all. You get down anyway you can. There was disturbingly little snow in spots so I was a little nervous on my first run of the season. And being a corduroy skier, the unforgiving wind-packed powder and ungroomed conditions proved a bit daunting. But we made it down, only after taking the photo up at the top!

We made it down with little grace but all of our limbs. We were just so excited to be outside in the snow that we didn’t care about the conditions. We tried the groomed travel several times and then Mike, having skied mostly in Colorado tried to show me how to powder ski, which basically turned into face plant lessons but we had fun anyway.

The next day involved much of the same. The area is known for its heli-skiing and we saw snowboarders trekking to another peak nearby and watched their descent. It was amazing!!! We also got a big kick out of the unique menu item at the slope-side restaurant. I really hope it was a typo!
In two days we had MORE than exhausted the skiing opportunities there. But provided that global warming doesn’t take away all the snow, this place has great potential to be a wonderful little ski town.







Back in Tbilisi we tackled the sights of the capital city. There are hundreds of beautiful old Churches and also an enormous new one- recently finished and is the largest in the Caucuses. We hiked up to the fortress above the city and over to the huge metal woman overlooking the city. In the evening we hiked up to the big cathedral which was beautifully lit that evening.
The next day wee stumbled upon a Max Ernst exhibit and then ate dinner at one of the famous restaurants overlooking the river. Unfortunately I ended up with a fever and did not enjoy the food or the atmosphere as much as I wanted to. Later we found an art gallery in the basement of the Marriot hotel which exhibited several modern Georgian artists. As they were close to closing we got a personal tour by the two employees there.
FABULOUS!! I had forgotten how much I enjoyed looking at ‘real’ art. Unfortunately there is very little in Azerbaijan. There are a few small galleries in Baku but there does not seem to be a thriving art community at all.

The next day found us facing our greatest challenge of the whole excursion- getting back to Azerbaijan. We first went to the southern bus station where our guidebook indicated that there would be busses to Azerbaijan. This turned out NOT to be the case. Then we went back to the central station to try our luck there. Again- nothing. We asked several people each one pointing us in the opposite direction. We found a bus with Azeri license plates and Azer-looking people but the bus was not returning to Azerbaijan. Finally after two hours wandering around we bit the bullet and negotiated a taxi to the border where we were ‘positive’ that we could find a way back to Ganja.
We just found it so amusing how difficult it was to get back to Azerbaijan! As if someone was trying to tell us something!

20 dollars poorer we arrived at the border and went through the whole process in reverse and quickly found a mini-bus going to Baku that grossly over-charged us for a ride to Ganja. Cozily packed in with 15 other Azeris we bumped back to Ganja and sadly to our challenging and frustrating work in Azerbaijan.