It has been ages since my last blog post, but I have decided to once again continue writing up my ideas, my observations and my unasked-for opinions, and trust them to the internet. It has been said that the internet never forgets. I don’t know about that but never is an awfully long time.
Since my last entry, I have left Georgia and spent about a year in neighbouring Armenia where I volunteered to teach the Armenian people English. The Armenian people said sure, when do you want to start? So I got down to it and had a lovely time in the process.
Since then the pandemic has much abated and I have started to move again. Currently, I live in Varna, a town in Bulgaria on the Black Sea coast, where I have taken a room in a nice hostel with friendly people and a deaf dog. Unfortunately, I left my notebooks somewhere with friends, so I’ll just have to trust on my unreliable memory and some fragments that I had stored left and right on my decrepit laptop.
So I’ll start with some notes on Georgia before moving on to Armenia.
Georgia has a long history going back all the way to references in Greek mythology where the country is mentioned as Colchis, the land of the golden fleece. This fleece was what the Greek hero Jason and his glorious Argonauts were after. It was in the possession of King Aeëtes, the legendary founder of Colchis, who kept it hidden in a grove. Jason and his fellow Argonauts sailed to Colchis and cunningly won the favour of the king’s daughter, Medea, to steal the fleece. They then sailed back across the Black Sea to Greece. Jason and Medea got married and the fleece was used to keep the dog warm during the cold winter days. I haven’t read the whole story. It is spectacularly complicated.
Pliny the Elder also wrote about Colchis as a region that was known to be rich in gold. The idea of a golden fleece is thought to originate from the wool of a sheep which was used by the ancient natives of Colchis for filtering gold dust from mountain streams. Pliny the Elder, incidentally, wrote the first encyclopedia which was as hugely informative as it was inaccurate. It was the primitive first edition of Wikipedia cobbled together by this Roman know-it-all and his assistants. Some of the stuff he wrote is crazier than apeshit. Seriously… Pliny the Elder also died in a most unusual way when he got himself killed by a volcano.
Another fascinating aspect of Georgian history goes even further back in time. I am referring here to its reputation as the birthplace of wine. Archaeologists found here the oldest evidence of winemaking dating back to 8000 years ago, which was well before the Egyptians built their pyramids. Interestingly, not far south of Georgia is Mount Ararat where according to the biblical narrative the Ark of Noah came to a rest after the flood waters receded. Noah was famously the first drunk. Genesis 9:21 states: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. A rather scandalous affair if you ask me. Walking around naked in your own tent. Thou shalt not…. Genesis twenty-mumble thirty-mumble….
Here is a picture of Noah coming down Mount Ararat.
With his family and a gazillion animals. This painting is done by Hovhannes Aivazovsky, but unfortunately on a hazy day. It would have been interesting to see the lions who supposedly march somewhere in that crowd. You can see this painting in the National Museum in Yerevan.
Wine in present-day Georgia is very cheap, especially the large plastic bottles of Rkatsiteli, a white wine that seems to vary wildly in taste and colour. Sometimes it is fruity and very light, almost colourless, and at other times it is dark with a taste that is almost akin to sherry. I suspect that Rkatsiteli means something like put together leftovers in Georgian.
This brings me to Kartuli, the language spoken by most Georgians. Kartuli is not related to any other known language. Georgia itself is known as ‘Sakartvelo’ meaning the land of the Kartvelians.
So far, I haven’t made any attempts to learn Kartuli. It is rather intimidating: it has 7 different noun cases and because of that, every word seems to have an unreasonable number of consonants. When I was reading about the language, I found, quite surprisingly, a Wikipedia site on Georgian profanities.
For example shen q’verebs venatsvale! ( შენ ყვერებს ვენაცვალე!) literally means “I adore your balls”. According to the author of this article, it is often used as an expression of admiration from a parent to a son. I would advise extreme caution in using this expression.
During the Covid crisis, I read An American Tragedy, a classic by American author Theodore Dreiser. It’s about this guy who kills his wife while on a boating trip on a lake in America. It’s all quite tragic as could be expected from the title. After I had finished his novel I found out that Dreiser had travelled in Asia in 1927 and, among other cities, had visited Tbilisi, or Teflis as it was known back then.
He wrote:
Our porter found a wretched old automobile, the fat driver started the engine and we had to bargain with him above the deafening clatter. He asked five roubles to the Hotel Orient. We had to accept and rattled along the streets to the hotel. When it came to paying him he asked 7, saying that he charged two roubles for the baggage. We refused to pay it. He bellowed, although the engine was not going. We referred the case to the hotel man, and finally he accepted the five roubles.
Taxi drivers will always be taxi drivers.
I also read Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned. This has nothing to do with Georgia.
Wikipedia has some good info on his wife Zelda Fitzgerald, who was the inspiration for some of his female characters. She was a writer too. Here is a recipe of hers: See if there is any bacon, and if there is, ask the cook which pan to fry it in. Then ask if there are any eggs and if so try and persuade the cook to poach two of them. It is better not to attempt toast, as it burns very easily.
Here is another of her quotes: All I want to be is very young always and very irresponsible and to feel that my life is my own to live and be happy and die in my own way to please myself.
Don’t we all?
Peter on the move 