Bloody Iranians. Rejected for a visa three times - tried to pay the requisite bribes and that still didn't work. Don't know why they hate me. Anyway that was a couple of weeks ago and after much swearing and stomping of my size threes I decided to take the hint and accept that I wasn't getting into Iran. I am over it. But hey all the sympathy I had for their isolation and plight is gone - stuff em.
Anyway back to the Caucuses. Georgia rocks.
Only totally humiliated myself once.....You'd have thought by now that I would have learnt to avoid shortcuts, but no. Went up to one of the major landmarks in Tbilisi - Mother Georgia - she stands on a big hill (quite an attractive lady for a 20m white aluminium statue) in one hand she has a wine goblet to welcome her guests and in the other she has a sword to fight off her enemies - she pretty much sums up Georgia - welcoming to guests but don't cross her.... (postscript from Nov 2008, well actually the Russians managed to cross georgia and win, so my foreign policy analysis from 2007 wasn't very good!)
Anyway after climbing up all the way there i didn't fancy going back the way I came. So a shortcut seemed like a bright idea. Climbed down a fairly steep hill for about 100m and then got to a top of a church and couldn't get down any further except via a 10m rock face - I'm not known for my rock climbing skills. (un)luckily about 15 people were standing outside the church and could see my predicament and sent up a couple of youngsters to show me how to climb down - this produced great amusement - then the people in the church abandoned their service to see what the commotion was outside - priest included - and came out to watch. I'm a bloody idiot.
The roads are bloody awful - like one large pothole occasionally broken up by a small bit of bitumen, just enough to make you realise how bad the roads are.
Saw some very cool old churches, including some in caves on the Azeri border, and also went to see Gori - Stalin's birthplace. Interesting. Especially the english tour that they were giving the Germans - the guide spent most of the tour talking about how Stalin crushed the German's in WWII .....I had to try to stop giggling.
The poor Georgians haven't quite "got" capitalism. Each town you pass through (slowly, very slowly) has it's own roadside vendors, first town was selling tomatoes, next place sells cucumbers, next place sells bread - so by the time you've got half way accross the country you'd be able to make a sandwich. And, they were competing on price, how dumb is that, driving cucumber seller down to the lowest price isn't going to result in a booming local, nor an easy to make sandwich.
Armenia
I thought Georgia would be hard to beat for friendliness and stuff to see but Armenia topped it. First night in I went to the Opera (as you do) - couldn't understand any of it but it was cool and I thought it was some shakespeare thing, I was betting on Othello - actually it some local play about some important King - but hey it seemed a bit like Othello to me.
While at the Opera a girl (Anna) of about 25 tripped over my feet, I apologised alot, and she was just staring at me - when she finally worked out that i was speaking English she happily chatted away to me - turns out i was the first native English speaker she'd ever run into. Anna invited me to visit her workplace - she worked at the local Armenian equivalent of the Vatican - the Armenians were the first Christian Country and are some form of Orthodox.
So popped out to see her, involved getting badly lost, a share taxi and a mini bus but eventually made it out there and tracked down were Anna worked. I got taken on a tour of the various churchy bits by some novice priests (monks? - guys in brown robes) and met the 2IC of the Armenian Orthodox Church - they clearly don't get many visitors. The highlight was being taken into the private collection, my lonely planet said it exisited but it was really hard to get into unless you were some foreign dignatory (or in my case a scruffy looking Aussie) - they had religious icons from all over the world including a bit of the original crucifix (it was about 5cm long and looked really old - wasn't able to authenticate it).
At the end of my religious experience my trusty gorup of guides (by now I had about 7 people taking me around) started asking about Australia, church and asked about my local church. I admitted, stupidly, that I wasn't religious. The the conversation turned to baptisms - I (stupidly, this is becoming a theme...) said that "No, not baptised", at which point the 2IC of the Church and my 6 other guides just looked shocked and then starting looking at the pond (which was half frozen) as if to say, "well, lets baptise this heathen". I must of looked a little wary because they didn't push it.
The rest of this Blog should have the following tales in it:
- mad Armenian party for my taxi drivers uncles 75th birthday out in the wilds of rural armenia.
- Ski Lifts in Armenia (who'd of thought?)
- a roaring argument with taxi drivers in Prague (when will taxi drivers learn not to cross me)
- an intense dislike of one former Yugoslavian country - grrrr.
- The accidental trip to croatia, which turned out to be excellent.
And another bunch that i should write about at some point.
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