Day 2 — Narikala Fortress and Georgian Food
It’s pouring with rain to start my second day, I guess this is why I got those cheap flights here.
Behind old Tbilisi the mountains rise precipitously and I catch glimpses of the forbidding looking fortress of ‘Narikala’ and head up to take a look. Google maps tells me the fortress is only 350 meters from my hostel, but most of that distance is up hills so steep I could have brought crampons. I make better time hiking up the hills than the cars which are sliding down the wet cobblestones in the rain. Had no idea tires have such poor grip on cobblestone. I’m getting used to watching a routine of … car slides backwards down cobblestone…driver guns the accelerator until tires finally catch…car goes up hill a couple meters…car starts sliding backwards again. I whip out my phone and take a quick video. The driver gives me a dirty look, not impressed that I’m filming his struggles.
Outside the weathered entrance to the fortress, I’m approached by an equally weathered pensioner selling knock off cheetos from a garbage bag. Most of the poorer people begging and selling things on the street here look very old, Georgia’s old-age pension isn’t adequate enough for many. The man can’t be having a good business day, there is barely anyone visiting the fortress in the pouring rain on a weekday. When I go back down later he looks even more dejected and soaked from the rain asking me directly in English if I have a spare cigarette.
There isn’t much up here. Most of the fortress walls are crumbling and were first built by Arab emirs in the 8th century C.E. Where the Emir’s palace was there is now the new looking church of St Nicholas (Santa Claus’s church). A priest is one of the only people beside me strolling around the grounds and I wonder if the church is open but when I try its doors they are locked tight. I see another intricately carved Khachkar (memorial stone) with a carving of Jesus both walking on water and trampling a man and serpent within the water while his halo-fringed disciples look on.
I walk along the walls and am followed by a sweet stray dog with beggar eyes. The higher I go the less stairs there are and I have to scramble over the wet rocks. I make it to the highest point where a huge cross has been raised. From here there are awesome 360 views of the city and the tree filled park in the valley on the other side of the mountain. The rain and wind are really falling hard now and getting down is more difficult than going up. I have to slide down the wet rocky wall and then jump to a ledge underneath. I hope when I jump I don’t have too much momentum or slip and fall the hundreds of meters down into the valley.
Outside of the fortress again I walk along a path that rings around the walls and leads to the ‘Mother of Georgia’. The ‘Mother of Georgia’ is this gigantic statue that looks like a Greek goddess anda bit like a slightly smaller Statue of Liberty only white not rusted copper. It was built in 1958 on Tbilisi’s fifteen-hundredth anniversary. In one hand she has a sword the other a bowl of wine, ‘either party with me or I’ll kill you’.
It’s busy and more touristy around the ‘Mother of Georgia’ since this is where the cable car coming up from the city stops. There are vendors selling all sorts of souvenirs, from small saint icons to plastic bottles of wine and ‘churchkhela’ — a candle shaped treat of nuts, fruit and flower. Apparently ‘churchkhela’ was the fast food of Georgian warriors for its high nutrition and calorie content, it’s like a fruity-nutty jerky or ‘pemmican’. I’m most excited when I see a vendor selling ‘Sahlep’ the Turkish Ottoman milky drink of ground orchid tubers. I first had the drink when I was on a date in Bosnia and have loved it ever since and ask every Turkish restaurant I pass back home if they have it or not. I consider my daily chocolate milks as a teenager to be my gateway drug to Sahlep. The Sahlep vendor doesn’t have a posted price though (Let’s charge the Tourist double!) so I change my mind about buying…
Back in the City
I pass on taking the cable car and find a walking path back down to the city.
Most of Tbilisi’s government buildings, museums and galleries are concentrated on a section of Rustaveli avenue and I want to check out the Georgian National museum.
In my rambles, I’m really starting to appreciate the graffiti I see all over the city. Of course I can only appreciate the graffiti in English, and wonder what I’m missing that’s written in Georgian.
Some graffiti favourites I see are…
“Live Free Die Strong”
Stenciled Ukrainian Flags Everywhere with a “Fuck Putin” beside it.
Neaderthal couple posing for a selfie
“Art is Dead, Go Home”
“Your local MILF ___”
“I Hate Love, I Love Hate” someone has written beside it “Same Bro”
“We Need EU”
“A pawns only purpose is suicide”
“Utah Ether” (????????)
I’m slightly disappointed with the Georgian National Museum because I either miss it or they don’t have a section covering Medieval Georgia (roughly 300 -1500 C.E.). The museum covers ancient Georgia and the near-mythical land of Colchis (the land of Jason’s Golden Fleece) and it has an awesome and informative exhibit of 20th century Georgia and a Soviet Exhibit. But I can’t find the Medieval period which covers the bulk of their history. I’m starting to hear a couple Georgians mention ‘David the Builder’ (one of those Medieval Kings) and want to know more about him. I must have missed something, I double check the floors but find nothing…
Across the street from the museum is the Georgian Parliament. It’s a solid concrete and granite structure with massive square pillars. It looks very Soviet, very mid-20th century totalitarian. It was built not long after the Bolsheviks re-invaded Georgia by the ‘Georgian Socialist Soviet Republic’ in the mid-1920’s. Above the pillars of the parliament is a massive gable with a circular motif surrounded by olive leaves. The circular motif looks suspiciously blank and I imagine that a sickle and hammer probably used to be in the center of it. The more anti-Russian/anti-Soviet/anti-Communist of the former Soviet republics, the more difficult it is to find the sickle and hammer etched on old buildings. In Russia when I was there in 2008 I saw the Sickle and Hammer everywhere most prominently as a crown atop of Moscow State University. East Germany — Nothing (I think they have a law against it), Estonia and Latvia — Nothing. Moldova And Ukraine in 2017 appropriately was divided, no Hammer and sickle on any buildings in Kyiv, just found them on old war memorials. Transnistria actually felt like I went back in time to the Soviet Union.
Down the street from the parliament I do see a couple statues with obvious Socialist Realism vibes. High up on a building a proletariat-looking man is wearing puttees and a miner helmet and is proudly holding a pike. He looks ready to break the party’s coal quota for the 5-year plan.
The best piece of Socialist Realism I see is a huge stone mural on top of a building that now is a bank. In the bottom left corner of the mural electrical transformers with lines reach up to a sun with Georgian writing in the middle of it. Three workers in overalls hold up the sun with a grape vine while a shirtless Prometheus-like figure carries a torch away from the sun. I love it, and it makes me think maybe the mural was made in reference to Lenin’s famous statement…
“Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country”.
Food
Georgia as a place known for good food first came into my mind when I was in Russia back in 2008. Anytime I asked a Russian where was a good place to eat the caveat was added “but you must try Georgian Food”. I eventually did try Georgian food in Moscow at some restaurant on the Moskva river. They had some weird scam where they would bring fruit to the table you didn’t order and if you ate any of it they would charge you for the whole thing… Besides this sneaky little scam, when I actually got down to eating Georgian food, I thought it was delicious. I remember specifically eating Khachapuri — the traditional Georgian bread shaped like a boat with Egg and cheese in the middle.
I asked one of the Swiss guys at my hostel who had been in country for a longtime where he recommended I should eat Georgian food and he tells me to go to ‘Pasanauri’ (I go to one at the other side of town but later find out it is a chain with a restaurant closer to my Hostel in Old Tbilisi).
The Pasanauri interior has a cozy log cabin feel and is packed with people yammering away in Georgian which I take as a good sign. I discover that Khachapuri isn’t just the boat shaped bread with egg and cheese in the middle, this is only the ‘Adjarian’ type of Khachapuri. There are many different Khachapuri varieties from ‘Gurian’ — which is chopped boiled eggs inside bread shaped like a crescent calzone to ‘Khabizgini’ that has a potato and cheese filling. I opt for Imeretian khachapuri (the Georgian Pizza) and get it along with Adjarian to compare. The Imeretian comes out looking beautiful, a flat circular bread with slightly scorched cheese on top. I take a bite and there’s a wonderfully tasty salty cheese inside that reminds me of sheep or goat cheese back home but is actually ‘Sulguni’ a cow cheese from the Svaneti and Samegrelo regions of Georgia. I actually prefer the cheesy Imeretian Khachapuri over the Adjarian eggy boat khachapuri that I first tried all those years ago in Moscow.
I also have ‘Kharcho’ , a beefy Georgian soup/stew with lovely fresh coriander chopped into it.
I wash all this delicious food down with a crisp and clear Natakhtari (named after the village where it’s brewed) draught beer. Now fully satisfied with my Georgian feast I waddle back to my hostel.
