18/09/2009

Goodbye Borjomi, Goodbye mi friend!

This is the end. As always there is an end. So from my side this end was yesterday. Yesterday I went away from Borjomi, in the fronteer I had to pay 20 dollars. Fucking capitalismus! So in that boarder, instead of have also the prices in the currencies of the boarder too there is only in dollars?? puag. Anyway, I give 40 lari, where I could have give 25, because I had the two options of money. But no, as always I don't think. The bank man looked at me nice, because he would not give me any lari back or equivallent for the extra money I'm sure I payed. So after running in the rain twice, because of having to put visa to say goodbye to Georgia and visa to say hello to Turkey, thinking on when I cross my beloved bridge over the Rhin between Germany and France like nothing and here with nationalists flags of the same colour and tall metal fences, we entered the new country. I changed churches for moschees in the landscape, but the flag was still present every where.

Why do we need flags to know where we are? I know I'm in the world, the rest I don't care. Then from 9 in Borjomi till 7 in Istanbul I only heared Bony M and Greek traditional music. So please, Greek people, stay away from me for a while or I'll bite you, jejeje. I ended quite far from the center, but I didn't wanted to take a taxi, I found a shopping center where only the guard was open and let me get some money from cash withdrawal. Then a man with a bus, who only speaked turkis said he take me to the metro station but he stopped at the end of street, making endless questions that I could not responde. So I apologized, went out and found a woman with her dog. He resulted to be another spelled sepharad descendant. And I ended in a taxi to the Sultanhamet neighbourghood.

01/09/2009

The agressivity of the Marschrutka drivers




We went in the morning to the botanical garden, which has a nice waterfall. It looked to me like beeing in Italy again and they even had Pinsapos, an special tree from Spain. Then we went to a big lake to have some bath, where Stefania was kind of disturbed by a young guy which first words where: I don't like piercings in the girls (who asked you for opinion, turd?)And we saw what I would like to call the "Religion-stargate cube". A massive cube telling the religious story of georgian on the top of a hill (or that seemed to me, but I didn't research more about it), which could be the christian version of the famous interconnect portal of the Stargate film. Then when comming back to our "homestay". A man came inside the Marschrutka, say something to the conductor and this got so angry that wanted to spell the man from his out by kicking his face when he was already laying half outside of the car, after the previous punching and neck-graving fight. We where all shocked, I thought, what can possibly say a man in 3 seconds that leads to this gratuite demostration of violence? coming back at the place, the hosters learned from our lonely planet book, that they could ask 30 lari to the next buch of tourists instead of 20, like they did to us. What they don't seemed to realize is that you need an improvement on your bed and sofa, not window, fool of ugly&scary dolls, not to mention there was almost no blanked room. But they where nice persons to stay at.

Queen Tamar-ta of Sakartvelo.

We got up really early, arround 6, well I sleep a couple of minutes more by Gio the ranger and Omart where destroyed, after having party with local shepperds the night before. But we had a long journey for us. We came up to the shepers place where they had a truck fool of goat cheese and there where like 10 dogs. Then we continued and ended at another shepher's house, where I was the only woman amoung 10 guys, except for the russian poster of britney spears hanging on the door. I though, yeah, somehow realistic that britney had the remote idea to cross this paramount through one day. Well we cook some of the mushroms delicatessen, the ones that are the most difficult to find in their opinion I guess and some fried cheese. But they just through all kind of rubish direct after their table on the front door, which for me was like to say. Come on, I know here up you cannot take a recycling track, but still some autos reach hear, why don't you just accumulate it somewhere together so that you don't have to see this shit every meal. But they seemed not to be disturbed from that views, even when the further views, where the ones of gorgeous mountains. We left and they gave me the rest of the mushrooms in a plastic bag, which whe had to hang from my bag even when it was pouring oil. Then I had to throw away my bag twice, to save some terrain level, so the mushrooms passed to a happier life in the middle of the meadows. We saw some frog eggs, that looked like tschurtschela to me (tschurtschela is something traditional here, basically nuts covered with some cooled grape juice like caramel). Some other shepherd gave the ranger a pair of homemade nunchaco. I wondered why possibly you need that in the middle of nowhere, maybe for beating "kung foo panda" And then we entered a place where the brown bears like to eat framboises, there where rests of their digestion every 10 meters. Also some archeological founds, about how the Georgians used to put the wine. In the museum we read that they re-used some burials for that, so I was wandered if that could be the case. Then I falled inside the river why crossing it with my big bag, so we had a bunch of laughts. I called myself queen tamar, cause that day it was really nice to see, how they where all concerned about what I should learn, like the names of trees and they gave me flowers, so I ended with a bunch of things in hand. Last but not the least, I saw my first live viper. I like snakes, but seeing how difficult was to differencite her from the stone, made me thing I should mind my steps more next time I trek around. We ended pushing the car, till the petrol station. They wanted me to stay seat in the auto, cause as a woman I should not do such an effort. But I gained the sex battle, jumped out of the car and share a funny moment of running after a lada niva.