Ali and Nino and Ted and Alice

“Of all creatures that can feel and think,

we women are the worst-treated things alive”

                                                   
A cool wet morning, and well-welcomed as such. I had saved the remains of yesterday's lunch, dumped the leftover pelmeni into the center of the khachapuri ring, and fashioned a sort of Frankenpuri breakfast. Offensively salty and greasy. An obscene meal of dough-scrap, and well-welcomed as such! I ate it with my fingers like a starving Argonaut.

The recipe is available for a price. I figured I'd tell the restaurant what I had done after first stopping by the bodega to return the leftover needle and thread. I had no use for twelve needles and 79/80th of a spool, so I decided to bring it back so she could resell them to someone else. We also wanted to stop by and get some walking snacks for our planned assault on the city.

The shower in this place was the best we'd had on the trip, I am compelled to note! Gone are the days of doorless, too-cold, too-hot, and peeping actress photos. Here was paradise! But it was time to get out and get our Batumi on. The schedule called for: Medea statue, seaside, Ali and Nino statue, and free time after lunch. My primary goal was to find a really great magnet.

Got the needle and thread ready, escaped the maximum-security courtyard, and we were back in the street. The sky was a steely grey but promised to clear.

                                               

I hadn't shared my grossfast with Sara, so she stopped by a bakery while I popped into the bodega to return the thread. I walked in and placed it on the counter, and the confusion of the clerk was memorable. I had the wrong place. It was, from her perspective as if a seagull had walked in and let a spatula fall out of its beak. Just some random senseless act by an insensate animal. I sheepishly collected the items and hurried out.

Found the original place and returned the items. It was the same lady as yesterday. When I produced the items she'd sold me, she looked at me like I was going to complain, but I pointed to my pizza patch, and I was like, "Finished! I do! I not use more. I done. Thank!"

She took the stuff back, and I left. Sara was still inside loading up on nuts and pretzels, and she said when I walked out, the lady and her friend cracked up laughing, holding one another and slapping their legs.

I think this whole situation is as funny as they did.

                                                          

We headed Medea-ward passing some unusual casino castles on the way. We'd heard Batumi referred to as Las Vegas by the Sea, but this was the first signs we'd seen of it. Charming old mansions designed to separate you from your money and your senses. But very pretty.

Parks and cafes and sleepy dogs and ladies in headscarves sweeping the streets. We found Medea at the top of an enormously tall column, a dark figure raising the fleece high in the air. She was almost like Perseus with the Gorgon's head, but it was a fluffy textile. A nice centerpiece in a charming little plaza, though something about it made it feel a little like a Macy's ad.

Nearby, I was tracking a little street kitty to photograph her, and she jumped up on my thigh. She was very sweet and I put my camera away and was able to pet her frail little body a little. I stood up slowly, so she could use my leg as a platform to jump down from, but she dug in. I soon saw why. Three street dogs were circling.

These guys were medium-sized mutts, not too rough-seeming but certainly activated by the cat. Street dogs that have enough strength to beg are good with people, and though they were definitely focused on the cat there was no sense they were going to attack me to get her.

It was more like bully kids waiting for an oblivious adult to stop talking to their target, nodding their heads and punching their palms in the background.

I set the cat down next to a car, so she could get under it, and intended to wave the dogs away, but the minute the cat was off me, they swarmed the car.

                                                       

Cats are fast and smart, though, so she led them a merry chase. They weren't very organized as a team, so though our hearts were pounding in fear, we saw the clever baby escape and leave the dogs sniffing around a car she was no longer under.

Quite an adventure. I was genuinely terrified we would see animal violence and that I would have been responsible in some way for the death of that kitten. But, she got away. As ever, I keep with me that quote from Watership Down:

"All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand enemies. And when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you; digger, listener, runner, Prince with the swift warning. Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed."

The dramatic pause between "they will kill you" and "but first they must catch you," has the most powerfully universal beauty in all recorded literature.

We moved on like black rabbits and found nearby a statue of Neptune with porny mermaids writhing around it, clutching their breasts and spreading their thighs. It may as well have been a fountain of jizz. We looked in vain for the "Donated by the estate of Larry Flynt" plaque but found it not.

Closer to the shore, we fell in love with some colorful public housing.

                                                    

Dodged the traffic at a busy roundabout, and I got a cute picture of a cyclist smoking a cigarette while he taxied two old ladies in matching pink ponchos. I loved the progression of color and the whole cute scene of them motoring along the red bike path.

We made our way to a charming boardwalk tastefully lined with souvenir kiosks (not too many!) and ice cream carts (not enough!) and a rocky little path to the dark, dark, sea. It was chilly, but men and women wore their bathing suits and splashed around or basked on flat stones.

It felt like a Caucasian Coney Island.

There was a cute pair of enormous bronze Turkish slippers you could put your feet in for photo-ops and... there there were: Ali and Nino! They held one another nearby, slotted together like beans and cornbread, like corned beef and cabbage, like liver and onions. They weren't moving, and we thought they were supposed to. Maybe it was a once-a-day thing? No sign. We decided to look it up later.

I poked around on the magnet side of the world. The boardwalk was buzzing by now, and we were running around soaking it in and trying to capture some of it. A tugboat was moving slowly in the blue, and I waited patiently for it to come into frame. I wanted to snap it between a post and a weird painted cement structure. The moment it passed the post, a random dude walked into the shot and fucked it up.

I cussed out loud about it just as Sara was walking up, and it justifiably bothered her. Nice day, kind people walking around enjoying themselves, and here was some creep filling the air with frightful oaths and betraying the presence of a kind of internal privilege-based rage. It's something I need to get a hold on, this random vocalization of minor disappointments. There's a line of three people at the coffee shop, fuck! Some asshole got in my shot, injustice!

It's something my father does. At convenience stores or whatever. Walking in with him as a kid, if someone looked funny to him, he'd say stuff out loud like, "Looks like this guy's face was on fire and his mom put it out with a rake." It was mortifying.

It comes out when I feel like I've been "cheated."

We shared a tense kind of lunch and agreed to spend the next couple of hours doing our own thing.   

                                             

I used mine to feed stray cats. I had taken half of my lunch with me for just this purpose. In my search, I fed a few in pretty bad shape. Skin problems, blind. Beyond the scraps, all I could do was bear witness to their suffering. There wasn't enough leftover bbq in the world to help even a segment of them.

A man with swastikas tattooed on his shoulders struggled to hang an enormous plush bee on a hook at the shooting gallery.

Fairy statues and row upon row of retired old men playing backgammon and card games fountainside. A gorgeous blue path led to yet another beach where you could rent umbrellas and rafts. A postcard town. There was an interesting ferry that buzzes between Sochi and Batumi, but it's only for people with Russian or Georgian passports. I thought that was fascinating.

Back home I did some reading but no more sewing. Sara came home, and we were ok. We made plans for dinner. She had researched a place called The Old Ship, which seemed like an hilarious and perfect place for a final, cheesy dinner in a funny old fish-town.

We napped, and when we awoke, it was time to go back out. Our google search for "When do Ali and Nino move?" was met with zero results. There was the suggestion that they are always moving and that asking that question was the same as "How many games are in the Super Bowl?" A blog from a few years ago said 7pm, so we made that time our target.

                                                         

We broke out of Alcatraz and made our way boardwalkward as the sun set on a cool evening. No ponchos necessary. We walked along the beach noticing the street lights were topped with little Argo-shaped designs. Cute. A stubby little stadium housed beach volleyball, and we watched some women play. A father and son sat on motorbikes and watched as well, frozen in appreciation, a tableau vivant from a heteronormative passion play.

We got gelato. I ordered the fig flavor and the gelista made a face like, "maybe not the fig tonight," so I pivoted to the pistachio. It was nutty and good. We were happy and activated watching the city transform into a salt-aired twilight, families from all over the world maxing out their vacations. Men threw glowing propellers in the air, and we watched them drift down to be thrown again.

A man in an enormous bear costume held children aloft in his tremendous paws, easily ten feet tall was this costume. A drunken couple took turns letting it embrace them. A Ferris wheel blinked. Ali and Nino, when we reached them, were motionless.

Out of order. For a moment, we thought they may have been slowly moving, maybe... but it was St. Nino's Fire, an illusion summoned by hope. They was just busted. To make up for it, we stood apart from one another at either end of the fence surrounding them and approached one another slowly. When we reached one another, we pressed our bodies together like them.

We were like Ali and Nino, apart this morning from our fight but together now. Like liver and onions. They may have been out of order, but not us!

I bought a magnet of the statues standing in a suitcase.



Next to the Old Ship was a restaurant called The New Ship. For whatever whimsical reason, we changed tack and went to the new one. Open-air seating with a waitstaff dressed like someone drawing Popeye from memory. An old lounge singer belted out Georgian ballads on a too-loud PA system. He made angry faces when I applauded. "I am not singing for YOU!"

We ate a selection of high-sodium cheeses and shared a plate of grilled pork and a Caesar salad while he sang. Across the park at the Old Ship, a rival singer turned up his volume, and it was ON. The two of them fought for the crown of Unintelligible Shout-Singing supremacy. They were like the Anti-matter Ali and Nino.

The Old Ship/New Ship lounge-singer battle has to become a subplot in something someday soon.

We walked home in the beachlight dark. The moon made a ghost-road on the sea, but we took the path we knew. One day we'll be tempted by the other.

In the morning, we would fly Medea's golden dragon back to Tbilisi.

Golden Fleece on The Black Sea

"Most of the people buying the Soviet paraphernalia were Americans and West Europeans. The lesson could not have been clearer: while the symbol of one mass murder fills us with horror, the symbol of another mass murder makes us laugh."



A dawnlight farewell to Sophia Loren (and the mysterious photo of Peter O' Toole near the air-conditioning unit) and a planned detour; our bags were packed for the seaside town of Batumi. The plan was to take an early taxi to the vagsal, snag a vag, and ride in style to the inky shores of The Black Sea.

Despite the constant struggles with taxis otherwise, we had at last mastered how to get to train stations. Sara noted that the "chugga chugga" sound was key. I had been focused on the "choo choo," but I was coming off like a "quittin' time!" whistle or an asthmatic. Preceding the choo choo with a chugga chugga worked 100% of the time. And, thus, our early-morning ride was drama-free. And familiar. We had previously been in the Tbilisi vagsal, having arrived there on the midnight train from Ganja. 

We had intended to take the ten-fifteen, but we happened to be there on time for the earlier train, so Sara ran upstairs for hard-boiled eggs, I got us the tickets, and moments later we were off. It could not have been less like that hilariously grim Ganja train. Quiet, smooth ride during which I napped, enjoyed more of Bread and Ashes and, crucially, again reached that place of productive peace while writing.

It was almost like that morning in Sheki. It felt so good, like I was fulfilling my purpose, completely non-physical. Six hours melted away like mountain mist.

The first glimpses of the sea as we pulled into Batumi were very beautiful. We had completed one fantasy goal, to travel from the shores of the Caspian to the shores of the Black. From sea to shining sea.



Batumi, if it's known, is known in popular culture for several things, chief of which is the statue of Ali and Nino, a pair of slotted metal figures who start apart but slowly approach one another on a moving platform and "embrace" as their slots merge. It's a beautiful concept and well executed. We were keen to see it, having enjoyed several videos months before the trip.

As well, Batumi claims to be geographically close to the place in classical mythology the Greeks called Colchis, which is where Jason went to get the Golden Fleece. I mentioned this to Joe back in Tbilisi, and he was dismissive. "It is not true!" he said, "It is not the place!" And it probably isn't, BUT, it's the narrative Batumi pushes: Jason and the Argonauts slept here.

It's an affordable seaside resort for folks from Georgia, Russia, Iran, etc. Poland, of course. Our cab (tourist town, so no problem!) took us along a nice little coastal road past weird, weird buildings and into the busy little urban area where our apartment was waiting. Bakeries and boutiques lined the avenue.

Our host met us at the gate and took us past some crazy-high security (gate! another gate! electronic lock! auto-locking door! motion detectors!) into a skinny elevator and up to our little room. It had a marvelous balcony with a cute view of the charmingly sloppy lived-in looking Spring Break town. The air was rain-gravid, heavy and cool.

There was a clothesline, which promised laundry. Sara found the bouncer who ran the place and he showed us they indeed had a washing machine! Glory! Tbilisi does all of its washing in the Mt'k'vari River, and three days there had bestank my shirts. Into the laundry chute, flyboy.

While our shirts and socks were serviced, we poked around on a map and discovered we were quite near a statue of Medea.



She was, of course, the wizard who helped Jason steal the fleece from her dad, chopped up her own brother and wrapped Jason's fiance up in a flaming poncho, et-vengeance-cetera. Sweet butter. Hung the laundry on the line, like people!, and went out for a bite and to poke around a little bit. Maybe we would find the statue.

Over the last few years, there's been a lot of investment in Batumi, and it's not far from Sochi (where the Winter Olympics were in 2014), so its profile has picked up, so there are a lot of bizarre buildings under construction. One looked like a nutty gumball machine, one was a skyscraper with a ferris wheel built into it. All manner of karaoke bars clustered around their bases like remora.

We ended up at a kind of Russian comfort-food place, almost a milk bar, where we loaded up on pelmeni and khachapuri. Sara drank an Argo beer! More myth marketing. They had a cute little anchor logo on the label.

Afterward, it started to rain, but we liked it, because it had been so hot in Baku and so warm in Tbilisi, but then we stopped liking it, so Sara bought a poncho. But not one of Medea's flaming ones. We passed a park advertising some sort of big-deal international chess tournament. It all gave the sense of an active little town with plenty of leisure and art and activity. Kind of like a culture-rich Daytona Beach.

We found a little coffee place but not the statue. We figured out where the action was, but I was getting pretty soaked so I headed back. There was a project I wanted to work on.



For some time, I've been carrying around a patch with an image of a slice of pizza being stabbed with a switchblade. What does it mean? Why do I have it? Why did I want to sew it onto my day-bag? I just did. A rainy day in a seaside resort seemed like the ideal time to try it out.

So, Sara and I walked into a sort of Georgian bodega and I asked to buy needle and thread. The well-meaning lady had no idea what I was saying, so I kind of pinched my thumb and forefinger together and made my hand move like a drunken goldfish.

She got it! Pushed aside some onions and gummi colas and tape measures to reveal a little envelope with about twelve sewing needles. I made encouraging noises, and she handed it over. I only needed one, but it was too complicated to explain.

She went back to the register, but I still had to have thread, so I was like, "Thread?" but she didn't get it. So, I made a Chef Boy-R-Dee gesture and mimed a long string of thread being pulled through the air.

She got it! Pushed aside some leeks and gardening gloves and snack cakes to reveal a huge plastic clutch with spools of thread in a dozen colors. It was too difficult to explain that I only needed one, but I tried pointing at just the black spool.

She rolled her eyes and broke up the set. The twelve needles and the industrial supply of dark thread came to about forty-one cents.

Dodged the drops, made it home, and sat by the window sewing. I made every mistake possible, had to relearn the basic mechanics of sewing, and did everything wrong but sew the messenger bag to my shorts.

Got the job done, though. It's sloppy and ridiculous, but so is the patch.

                                                 

Our clothes were dry on the line by now and the rain had stopped. Sara had gone out exploring and poncho-testing while I was being a punk-domestic, and when she came back I showed her my handiwork, she was very encouraging, told me what she had seen, and we cleaned up for dinner.

She had researched a cute little art-diner set up in an old house. Eclectic mismatched furniture and shabby-chic benches. We were served salmon by a dancer and wine by a Spaniard. It was a good night to recline, eat a slow meal and talk about our hopes for when we got back home. I made the mistake of letting work-thoughts enter the conversation. Gauche!

This may have caused the dancer to "read" me as a corporate creep and not a fellow artist, because he got kind of.. mean. I sensed a kind of.. oppositional energy. He was like, "How do you like Georgian cuisine?" and I was like, "Haha, we sure love khinkali," and he threw shade. "God," he said, "not khinkali." We left under a cloud of His Disdain. I think he felt sorry for Sara and not at all impressed by my pizza patch. If only he'd known I was a cool DIY tailor.



Wet walk home, the rain had started again. Red lights lit the foggy window of a bakery. A sidewalk panel came loose like in a cartoon graveyard and water poured into my shoe. Soaked sock! The stormy clouds chased, everyone from the place, and my fingers slipped on the keypad as I tried to get through the retina-scan required to get us into this over-secure apartment.

Upstairs we dried off, did some reading and planned our assault on Medea in the morning. I wasn't going to miss her. Those fleece seemed pretty warm.

City of Inspiration, Cape of Rifles

“I love enemies, though not in the Christian way. They amuse me, excite my blood. Being always on one’s guard, catching every glance, the significance of every word, guessing at intentions, frustrating their plots, pretending to be tricked, and suddenly, with a shove, upturning the whole enormous and arduously built edifice of their cunning and schemes—that’s what I call life.”
                                                   
                                                        

Another early morning, too early for the cafes, which meant we had to "drink" that powdered "coffee" men call Nescafe. It seemed a good way to celebrate the end of  my jock itch. The night previous, I lay on my back with my legs up, Sara powdered me like a baby insect, and that was the end of it. Cheers!

I had, however, a new complaint. My head still hurt from the chacha. It was what the Georgians call a "nabakhusevi," which sounds like the name of a Babylonian king, but means "hangover."

The photograph of Sofia Loren watched me shower, we dressed quickly, then made our way breakfastward. The cheesy pizzas they call khachapuri was going to complete the cycle of recovery.

It's a marvelous thing, this khachapuri. Dough with cheese in the middle, often a baked egg, frequently a pat of butter on top of that. Medieval and delicious. Perfect nabakhusevi food.

There's a general, magical sense that the economy here is opening up and that everything is possible, that empires can be built by the first people to figure out some "basic" things. There's the sense that a teenager from California could become a highly compensated business consultant by making some privileged "Western" observations.

Of course, I'm speaking strictly of ways to cater to obnoxious tourists. For example, the only reason we chose the breakfast place we were going to was it was the single restaurant in the entire city that used "brunch" as a keyword on their social media. 

                                          

Nice, long walk across that Dry Bridge again and through that marvelous market. Vendors were just then laying out their bolts on their blankets.

Note! The Dry Bridge is so-called on account if it being over a road and not a river. Noted!

Fun little ramble through quiet neighborhoods with those distinctive Georgian balconies, fascinating buttressed outcroppings that jut colorfully out of buildings. A women dropped ground beef from one to feed hungry kittens. It fell with an appetizing splat in the road and they came up mewing, forgetting their private battles.

A lively, lived-in seeming park featured some miraculously strange sculptures. One in particular captivated us, a Soviet-era statue of a bare-breasted woman dropping rifles and swords out of her cast-off cape. It was, of course, next to the children's climbing structures. Here, children, Mother Rifle is here to nurse and protect you.

The weapon-filled cape formed a kind of canopy you could shelter under from the rain. There was no plaque or explanation. She was absolutely fascinating with a marvelous profile. The pictures did not do it justice. It may have been the powdered coffee, but I found myself feeling like it was one of the most significantly beautiful pieces of martial art I've seen.

Different from the abstract emotions of the Vigeland Park sculptures in Oslo, I had a deep response to it. The picture doesn't do it justice.

                                                         

Past the museum and down Rustaveli Street, past grand buildings and busy plazas. Past women selling seeds and men offering their taxis as tour buses. Past fountains and malls. Down to a subterranean walkway emerging at a soaring column of St. George clad in gold slaying a golden worm with a golden lance.

Another turn and there we were at the only hashtag-brunch place in Tbilisi. They served the khachapuri up hot, and we tore it apart, washing it down with a lavender tea. Thus fortified, we explored anew, winding our way to Prospero's Books, a delightful bookseller with a courtyard and a cafe. An excellent section on "regional interest" seemed made just for me. There was even a display of Bread and Ashes, the book I was currently reading!

I bought a tiny history of Georgia and a novel by Lermantov.

I fell in love with a tiny painting in a streetside flea market but I married an iced coffee at a chain place I trusted. We drank up and hauled our bread and ashes to the metro. Sara and I repeated the conversation Joe and I had the previous day.  It's deep but not as deep as Kyiv! I know! I would have thought it deep otherwise, had I not been to Kyiv! Me too!

                                                           

At the Marjanishvili station, we detrained and cobblestoned our way through a commercial district lined with shops and malls, a heavily billboarded and advertisement encrusted Anyeurope which soon melted into the more distinct jutting-balcony Tbilisi and soon further led to quiet avenues with large worn-seeming apartment buildings with gorgeous deco facades and curly concrete details.

Our destination was Fabrika, a hostel and art center put together by someone with vision and money. It was the most Berlin-like area we'd seen. A block-sized compound with rooms in the front and cafes and yoga spaces in the back. I have to imagine it's the place you would make an immediate beeline for if you were a young artist or adventurer come to check the city out.

We were there to meet with Joe, who had offered to give us a tour of the Old City and share with us some secret hallways and passages. He arrived shortly, along with another outlander. Australian, of course. Aren't they all?

Unlike Khinalug John from the previous week who delighted in showing off cellphone pics of bilbies and quokkas, Tom was super chill after having spent the previous six months in Portugal and Spain. Affable and stoned, he proved a fine companion for our tour.

Joe's eyes flashed and his bright smile shone through his deep black beard. His thick ebony curls bounced merrily as he threw his head back in raucous laughter, and we were off.



Corkscrewing canyons of merchant's mansions, charming courtyards and "Italian gardens" showed the real Tbilisi. Children played while their nursemaids knit, men tore at walls with crowbars and painted walls with rollers dripping white. Men smoothed stone with grinding machines. Women hurried to market.

Joe wove tales as we wandered. Here, he said, was once a single home, built by a powerful merchant to show off his wealth. Here, he said, was once a park where lovers met in licentious liaison. How the leaves did rustle. How the branches did shake. Torn collars and greased lips. And here, here (here here here) was a muse of Edvard Munch murdered by her lover. Her grave lies not many yards distant!

I took great inspiration from this particular story. Her name was Dagny Juel, and she was an artist's model and Bohemian who married as she liked and posed for artists as she liked and slept with who she liked. A glamorous, independent spirit who swung with the wrong swinger. He got jealous and did her in.

You can't get any more Merchant and Ivory than that. It feels like "Munch's Muse" would get greenlit as a period biopic in any respectable Hollywood production house. I'm dying to write it. The tale seemed to fall out of Joe's cape like a rainstorm of rifles and into my mind.



We ducked into a construction site and marveled at a dark little hallway decorated with the ancient canvas of a clipper ship on a tormented sea. A spiraling staircase led up, up (up). At a little shop, we tried churchkela, a Georgian treat that looks exactly like a wax candle but tastes only mostly like a wax candle.

I hummed "Tequila" to myself but replaced the title with churchkela. A private laugh for a public gentleman. Tom stepped on a pop top and busted his flip flop, so we rested while he bought himself some new shoes. When he returned, well-shod and half-shy, Joe's coal black eyes shone like onyx from an ancient mine. His thick ebony curls bounced merrily as he threw his head back in raucous laughter, and we were off. 

Off, off off to the Old City with its twisting streets and comfortable rugs. A pair of gypsy boys danced in the street, the oldest couldn't have been five, the youngest barely three, but they charmed and roared to the crowd's great delight. The baby danced with the ecstatic intensity of Anthony Quinn on some faraway beach. I offered him coins, and he expertly held them and grabbed for more with a practiced pinching gesture that frightened me.



Ancient places of worship and wine fermented in clay pots deep beneath the earth, down where the dwarven lords live in halls of stone. Brass pheasants wept over hot springs, blue-tiled bathhouses rose above them, and above the blue-tiled bathhouses rose a fortress. There's always a higher point in Tbilisi, each view offers an elevated glimpse of the last. You can climb and climb forever, quite naturally, almost unknowingly, and find yourself dazzled by the miniature nature of what, moments ago, seemed enormous.

Joe encouraged us to try "lemonade," a sweet, crisp refreshment made of grapes (and not lemons). I also tried some fresh-squeezed pomegranate. Tart and cleansing.

At a waterfall, not three yards from where a gypsy held a peacock captive by its ivory feet, we made our farewells. Joe and Tom had a castle to storm, but our hearts counseled rest. Embraces and pledges. Oaths and swearing. We headed back down. Climbing higher, yet higher, Joe's thick ebony curls bounced merrily as he threw his head back in raucous laughter, and disappeared.

We wrestled mightily with a cab driver, fought with him like renegade angels until understanding could be reached, and we were home.




At home, we rested, read, and wrote. We uploaded our pictures and cheered for the Storm. They had won another game! Out once more now, down the strange street of touts and models. We landed at a Pakistani place. A light rain began to fall, and they put a tent around us. Like we mattered. Like we were princelings. Sara opined that had it been hot, we would have been fanned with fronds of palm.

It was a strange night. Large groups of Persians pinched and bullied the restaurant hosts. A man in a pointy beard put his hands around the neck of a smaller man holding a menu. He, the vampire, did not wish to be asked what he wanted. It was not pleasant to see.

We paid (it was almost nothing) and retired. Under the string lights, we could have been anyone. At home, we slept. The Persian vampires hunted and howled until late.

In the morning, we would take a train to the sea.

Thunder in Tbilisi, Lightning in Signagi

"Here is a bad Svan joke: A man from the lowlands asks a Svan if the road to Mestia is good. The Svan replies that there are two roads, good and bad. The one from which your car plunges into the Inguri never to be found is the bad one; the one from which your car plunges into the Inguri but your body is recovered is the good one."

                                     

Our room in Tbilisi was in, we soon discovered, an anomalous neighborhood. It was all dolled up with string lights and hookah bars and mini-skirted hostesses popping up out of wicker chairs to say "Hello, Georgian food!" Two party-blocks like nowhere else in the city, zoned to appeal to stag-dos and hen parties. It's the sort of strip usually found in Polish towns which have otherwise given up. A strange start for us, but Tbilisi is such that it breaks the rule about not getting a second chance at a first impression.

Our room was enormous and in a quirky old art-deco building with real charm. There was a strange 60s-Icons-of-Italian-Cinema theme to the decor, cute pictures of  Sophia Loren and one of Peter O'Toole for some reason. Dumped our bags off, and though very sleepy, we were energized by being in a new place and went out for a bite.

A few steps past the Eurotrash district, I was in terrible pain. Earlier this summer, I suffered from a fungal infection on my inner thigh. Red, fleshy, swollen fire in the joint crease. The doctor called it "jock itch," so that what it is, I reckon. Heat and sweat inflame it, and I reckon it came back. I'm glad it hadn't flared up in front of Sophia Loren.

So, there was the amusing situation of limping around in an ancient European city, grimacing on the cobblestones and trying to find a pharmacy. I hadn't packed my "crease cream" since it hasn't been a problem for a long time, and I thought it wouldn't come back. We headed for a storefront with a big green cross in front of it. At home that means a pot dispensary, but here it just meant medicine.

The pharmacist didn't speak English, and I didn't want to mime a crotch-fire, so I drew a foot instead with an arrow pointing between two of the toes. The ingredients in athlete's foot cream serve just as well. The picture worked. She laughed and got a tube of what I needed. Outside, Sara bargained with an old book seller and bought some weird old Soviet magazines.

                                                           

We stopped to eat at a touristy place at the entrance to The Dry Bridge, and we ordered way too many khinkali, which are those marvelous dumplings with the little button-handle on them. Super delicious, AND I got my adjika at last. Tasting it once more had been one of the prime incentives of the trip. And here it was. The smoky, spicy, savory taste defies easy description. I was very happy.

I used the restaurant's two-wallet to apply my crease cream, and that problem went away, and then I was even happier. We made our way to the Dry Bridge Market and were immediately (and pleasantly) overwhelmed by the magnificently organized chaos of the whole thing. It was like the flea markets of my youth, men and women with blankets with the contents of their kitchen drawers dumped out in a pile.

Tweezers, juice glasses, Donny Osmond records, brass shrimp, doilies, broken hammers, spy cameras, reel-to-reel tape players, hairless dolls, soviet kitsch. Total sensory overwhelm. We stumbled back to the room and crashed, fully intending to go back out for dinner, but... well the marshrutkas and the market, and the mountain of khinkali meant it was all zees.

At some point, around 2am, the sound of thunder woke us, a low roar of bass stumbling down from the surrounding hills.

                                                             

In the morning, I was scheduled to meet with Joe, a local boy who Meg had met on her previous trips. She e-troduced us, and he invited us to join he and his girlfriend on a trip to Signagi, a quiet little town in Eastern Georgia's wine country. Sara politely decided to try to spend at least one day without piling into a van and racing to yet another red-roofed UNESCO site, but I took the opportunity.

Sara and I agreed to meet again for dinner, and she went back to sleep.

Did some writing, packed my bag, and headed out to Rustaveli Square. Gorgeous, quiet little walk along the bank of the Mtkvari River, the city not quite ready to come to life. It was all so different from the perceived sterility of Baku. Here, the new and the old (and the once-new) seem to integrate in a much more natural way.

There was a kind of "Asiatic" wildness in Baku, but it seemed state-sponsored. Tbilisi, even in the friscalating dawnlight, had a low pulse of opportunity and potential. Like, anyone who wanted to could rise up and do as they liked. Make some money, or eat some figs and go back to sleep. No giant towers to tell you you're small. There was ONE goofy glass structure that stood out like a cocaine fingernail but it neither intimidated nor inspired. It looked like something that fell out from between a Capitalist giant's teeth.

Rustaveli Square was a fun little Metro roundabout presided over by a statue of the country's favorite poet. He was depicted in a jaunty, feathered cap and holding a book. Both here and in Baku, to this point, every statue showed a poet, author, or kindly landscaper. I had not seen a single dude on a horse or dude with a sword. It gave every impression the arts were, you know, appreciated here.

                                                            

I sat on a bench and people-watched. Slow beginnings at this hour. Old men in knit caps and immaculate white beards begged on the stairs. Old women sold hazelnuts and figs. A bookseller transformed the wall around a fountain into his storefront. Marvelous and inscrutable (to me) old books with magnificent covers. Oh, the possibilities within. A purple deer floating in a Cyrillic sea. A mountain with one blazing Georgian letter on a door in its side.

I read about Rustaveli on my phone. He was like Sir Francis Drake, but with poems instead of battleships. Hung out with Queen Tamar and wrote a courtly love epic called The Knight in the Tiger's Skin. As I was reading a debate over whether or not the title should be panther's skin or tiger's skin, Joe appeared.

Kind eyes and immediate warmth. We'd never met but felt like old friends. No pressure to be or do anything but relax and enjoy the day ahead. I asked him where a guy could get coffee in this city, and he helped me find a place. His girlfriend and cousin were on their way, so it worked out ok that the coffee place's opening hours were more suggestive than actual. This proved a theme throughout. The time a place "opens" meant the time one of the employees got there to set up for the morning.

Coffee in hand, we met up with the girls, an affable pair of Russian cousins who spoke little English. Onto the subway, where Joe and I bonded over this conversation.

Me: This subway sure is deep.
Joe: Yes, though it is nothing compared to the metro in Kyiv.
Me: I know! It's so deep!
Joe: The deepest in the world! I was amazed!
Me: No, I was amazed!
Joe: I enjoyed Kyiv.
Me: Me too! 

We got to a little marshrutka holding pen and Joe took advantage of his native language skills to find one with space for four. It was a bit of a mess, and there was zero chance I would have successfully navigated it by myself. Additionally, there was a complication that would have only revealed itself later. As will soon be told, this marshrutka ride had a sting in its tail!

                                                     

Off we went. I read from Bread and Ashes, an absolutely marvelous travelogue about a British dude exploring the Caucasian mountains. It was the first thing I had brought to read on this trip that I loved unreservedly. Poetic and informative, loose, historical, and often very funny. Highly recommended. Joe nuzzled with Dacia, Yakira rated photos on her phone. It was about two hours to Signagi with little to report along the way. Low land, fertile-seeming. Orchards and sheep. A smooth (by comparison) ride.

Upon arrival, a woman who reminded me of the nyet-slinging train guide got out and entered a little woman-sized booth. Joe asked us to wait for a moment while he went over to it. I used a public restroom. It was 50 cents, I paid with a 5, and got an absurd handful of change in return.

The money here is called the Lari, which made me laugh on account of the rampant vowel switching 'round these parts. Ten other countries have the lira, but the a and i showed up in different order on Georgian Money Naming Day. I suppose it could have been "liar." In any case, five lari got me fifteen pounds of coins. When we were all assembled again, I spent them on the first magnet I could find.

Wonderful little cobblestone-lined town with charming elevations and shady parks. We made our way to a museum right away, since it featured the works of Pirosmani. He's the most famous and beloved Georgian "primitivist" whose bio reads like a mash-up of every suffering Belle-Epoque Frenchman you've ever heard of. The classic, unappreciated in life, died under the stairs, celebrated as a national hero after death scenario.

I enjoyed it, and there were some cool, weirdo weapons and skulls in there as well. The four of us explored at our own pace and responded to different works. The museum had a beautiful balcony commanding a view of a gorgeous mossy ruin of a church tower.

                                          

From a little observation deck/cafe, Joe took an hundred photos of Dacia for her Instagram. Yakira made comments on the poses, and I snapped the church tower. A pretty sad-seeming dude with a pair of binoculars came up to see if we wanted to give him money to use them. It was pretty heartbreaking. Joe and I were obviously using high-powered zoom lenses on our cameras, and it felt like someone trying to sell a windbreaker to someone in a greatcoat. You never know, you might want LESS protection from the cold.

I couldn't get the guy out of my mind. Like, he had a kind of wall-eyed dignity about him, and when we (kindly) turned him down he went off to pull weeds from a corner of the cafe. That particular gesture is what got me. Like.. "I have value, despite your not needing my binoculars." It was very moving to me that he still had that spark in him; it fired up all my empathy neurons.

We moved on to take a long walk along the still-existing wall fortifications surrounding the city. Marvelously preserved stone guard towers and defenses with views of the valley. Very fun to imagine Tamerlane's hordes approaching and our running to light a fire to warn the rest of the city. Exciting to think about firing and dodging arrows, heating and pouring hot oil onto armored heathens.

Nobody got hurt, and we retired to a natural spring to refill our water bottles.

                                           

Onward to lunch, back down the stony paths and past the women selling honey and the women selling walnut syrup, and the women selling watermelon rind syrup, and the women selling handmade socks. I bought a tiny plush donkey for Amber's daughter back home. It was made of mountain wool by a sweet old lady.  We tried to get into a famous place called The Pheasant's Tears, but they said they wouldn't have food for another day or so and wouldn't we prefer to eat somewhere else anyway?

So, we got mushrooms and cheese in a little courtyard and Joe took an hundred photos of Dacia on a swing and under a pear tree. We returned then to Pheasant's Tears for wine. That showed them! It was good, rich and earthy, fermented in a clay pot in the very earth! Loamy and deep red!

I also tried chacha, which is kind of like the bologna or head cheese of the wine world, a monstrous squeezing of grape stems and peels and seeds that gives you an icepick hangover without the luxury of making you drunk first. It's like something made in secret in a gulag toilet. The label should read: "All of the penalty with none of the reward!" 

But I kind of liked it in the way one salutes one's attempted assassin.

                                              
And then it was time to head back home. A long, pleasant afternoon in the extreme warmth of wine country was nearing its end. Culture and Cuisine! Photos and Pheasants! A wild scene awaited us back at marshutkastan. The booth woman had, several hours ago, been selling tickets in advance for the last rides out of town. As you know, reader, these things normally load on a first-come/first-serve basis, but the rules are different in Signagi. Joe had been tipped off, which is why he had gone a'boothin' several hours ago. So, we had a ticket.  Or did we?

The woman had TRIPLE-SOLD the last ride, and there was a huge crowd of people trying to force their way into an already packed mini-van. It probably held 15 people, and there were at least forty waiting to get in. And that was just the ones who had tickets. A Russian couple did not, and they were losing their got-danged minds. Joe translated in my ear while the woman in the couple unloaded on the driver.

"What the FUCK is this? You never said you had to buy tickets in advance! I have never heard of this shit ANYWHERE. We came to this piece of shit, backward country on a DARE, and boy did we get FUCKED. You're basically cavemen! You will never amount to SHIT if you continue to run things this way. It was a FUCKING MISTAKE to come to this stupid, stupid place!"

As you might imagine, the locals took offense. Georgian randos in the crowd were yelling back at her. There's a lot of tension, of course. Russia dominated this place for over seventy years (and with the exception of a two-year window after WWI, another seventy before that). They, Russians, kind of walk around the place like Americans used to everywhere else. A kind of haughty, "well isn't this cute. You know we could have it again if we wanted it. My grandfather owned your grandfather." kind of attitude.

It was tense. They were eventually encouraged to take a(n expensive) taxi back to Sochi or wherever.

                                       
                                              

The ticket lady did a funny thing and asked the driver to see if he could find any more seats in the van, "because you are long and can see better around corners." There were, of course, no more seats. The van drove off leaving us there.

But word soon circulated that two local vans had been convinced to make the trip, so not very long after the "last" one left, two more rolled up, and we were on our way.

It was a nice place, if you don't drink the chacha.

Back in Tbilisi, we made our good-buys with pledges of eternal friendship and the promise to meet again soon. I took the metro back and emerged to find the city a bustling wild place with all manner of kissing and commerce in the bright streets. It's kind of like a cold Spain, this place. Slow start to the days made up with wild action deep into the night!

I met up with Sara, who had had a wonderful day of  exploration and discovery. She seemed quite content, and we had an hilarious dinner at a Spongebob Squarepants-themed restaurant run by an Iranian family. We ate our krabby patties while the owners son, Faroud, showed us how his Minecraft world was progressing.

Some things are the same all over the world.

The Midnight Train to Georgia Left at Five AM

"Er geht auf dem Mitternachtszug nach Georgia. Oh ja. Oh er sagte er wird wieder zu finden ein einfacher Ort und Zeit."

                                            
We sat on the dark platform waiting for the train. Behind us, a couple of station agents cracked one another up; their laughter was like a library sound-effects record. When we arrived, one of them had pointed to a blank wall. He meant that was the direction our train would be going, but it was hard to understand. He just kept pointing to the wall until we left him.

Outside, a few stray dogs came up to sleep at our feet, pretending for a few moments we were their family. Had they ever had one? We had no food to give them, but we fed them our momentary companionship. For an hour, we were a pack.

The train was late. A few members of the young mustache set were scattered about, waiting for the same ride as we. A sad little coal carrier came and went, almost silently. And then... whistles like in a WWI trench movie, and a scramble across the tracks to the approaching Tbilisi-bound train. The text on our ticket was an almost-impenetrable slab of Cyrillic code, but we eventually found the right car.

Inside, it was dark and cold. Bare feet stuck out under sheets on top of short slabs. Morgue imagery. A stout woman whispered to us that we should first mushky and then brushky. We were like, "ummm," and she was like, "MUSHKY and BRUSHKY!" Some of the bodies moved. She was waking them, which meant we were waking them.

She waved us deeper into the car. My backpack came very close to turning the spigot on a samovar, which would have been a scalding disaster. The WWI whistles went off again, and the train was moving. We walked past the bodies, careful not to tickle the feet. There was only a dim red glow to lead us.

Someone was in our beds. Someone's been sleeping in our beds. A couple of Russian bears, and we a worn-out pair of Goldilocks'. Found a couple of seats and tried to sleep sitting up. Like people!

                                                     
My reading plan for the trip had been to read an Azerbaijan book in that country, a Georgia book in that country, and a train book on the train. The one I brought was a memoir about a guy who got on the wrong train during an attempt to ride the Trans-Siberian Express. Set in glasnost-era Russia, it wasted a pretty good premise with some dodgy writing, but I achieved my goal, a train book on a train.

I read the whole damn thing by the glow of the WC sign while Sara dozed. As it got lighter outside the morgue-people began to stir and become more human. It also got bright enough for Sara to figure out how to orangutan herself up to a kind of upper-deck bunk and catch some better sleep. Up she climbed, a scrappy little scrambler.

But no sooner had she begun to enjoy it, than the train lady came flapping up to tell everyone to look sharp, we were approaching the border. It had all the energy of "Look busy, the boss is coming." She could tell we had no idea what she was saying, so she just yelled "Nyet!" at us. She nyetted Sara out of her bunk and nyetted my bag under the a little table. She nyetted our passports out and our customs forms filled.

The train stopped, and a gang of dudes in those over-sized Moscow-military-parade hats got on and gathered up everyone's papers. On the wall of the border station where we were waiting, there was an inspiring quote from Heydar Aliyev. It was the last time we would be seeing his name for a while. See you leydar, Heydar.

Eventually, the guards got to us, and Nyetty Furtado flapped us over to a little table where a dude had one of those spy briefcases with a computer and a camera in it. He ran a check on us each in turn and wished us a fine farewell. "I hope," he said, "you enjoyed your time Azerbaijan."

We had.

                                         

After a very long time, everyone had been vetted. I was able to see the bunk thieves were Ukrainian, and I figured those gentle people have been through enough, so we didn't hassle them for bunk-jacking. In addition, once the train started up again, we saw them buy tea from the samovar, and it let us know tea was for sale. So, we forgave them everything.

It was, however, unclear if we were supposed to provide our own vessel for the tea or if there were glasses. I went back there with an old water bottle to see if Nyettie would put tea in it, and when I offered it to her and said, "tea? chai? um... tea?" she threw her hands in the air and was like "Bozhe moi!" She pulled some old glasses out from a cabinet and activated the samovar I had almost knocked over a few hours ago. I paid her with some of my last few crumpled manat.

I was terrified, of course, one of them might be torn and she would thresh and thrash me, but they passed her test. If they're so worried about these things being ripped, they ought to... la-manat them. Ahem, they ought to have them lamanat-ed. And, that is my favorite joke of the trip. Please save yourself the trouble, I shall have myself arrested.

Brought the tea back to Sara; I was a conquering hero. A caveperson back from the hunt with a sack of brontosaurus burgers. We drank it and warmed up. I needed to pee, but the bathroom had been locked for hours. I wondered if maybe that had been border related, but we were well across and locked it remained.

So, I had to ask.

                                          
Bathroom?

Huh?

Ah..... when will... ah... w..c?

HUH?

Toilet?

A crowd began to gather. Nobody spoke English. I turned to a helpful-seeming dude and mimed taking down my zipper and spraying the wall of the train. I made "ssss" sounds. He was like, "TWO-WALLET!!"

I was like, "Yes. Toolet. I want to go toolet." Nyetty was like, "Tool It!" and said, "Open now." So I headed back to where I thought it was and everyone started yelling, and I turned around, and they were like, "THAT tuplet is still locked. You want THIS tucklit." They indicated a door behind the samovar. So, I tried it, and sure enough.

So, I peed like a champion, and when I came out I held my fists up and said, "Hooray!" and everyone applauded. Then I went back to tell Sara where it was. But Nyetty got mad at her, because now we were at the Georgia side of the border, and it was time to show them our passports. They like the bathroom locked so people don't hide in there desperately trying to tape two halves of a torn manat together.

The difference between the Georgian guards and the Azeri was marked. These guys had crisp uniforms and body-cams and looked for all the world like the NYPD. Blue uniforms. Clean and mature-seeming. The process was much quicker.

                                                       

Sara was, by this time, exhausted, and a very kind Azeri woman gave up her bunk to let Sara crash in it. She had seen her trying to get comfortable and came over to offer up the sleeping space. She even covered her with her cardigan. It was the chai of human kindness.

I read my book and tried to stay out of Nyetty's way. She prowled the halls looking for violations, and collecting sheets and pillows. She yelled at one of the Ukrainians for putting his shoes on a bunk. I kept my feet under my seat and my head forward. Outside, marvelously ramshackle little stations blurred by, sheep grazed, and shepherds slept.

Eventually, we pulled into Tbilisi! We were here. Sara woke up and returned the cardigan. I grabbed our bags and when we detrained, Nyetty was there to bid us farewell! She incredibly friendly, saying things like "Bella! Bella!" and smiling like we'd all been friends and this had been some great team adventure. She was magnanimous as all hell. It was pretty funny. The whole time she had treated us like ill-behaved cats, borschting her jorts about how ignorant we were, and now she was going to miss us.

We grabbed a cab and marveled at the colorful mayhem of Tbilisi. At first glance, with it's faded elegance and stately grandeur and general sense of lived-in ness, it felt like New Orleans.

That impression deepened when the cab dropped us off at a coffee place across from where we were staying. We got some lattes and prepared for les bons temps to rouler, Georgia-style.

Bribery With the Devil's Coachman

"For the first time in weeks, I found myself in a house that appeared to be a deliberate act rather than some more or less dreadful accident."

The plan (ah, that naive concept of planning) was to be in Georgia the next morning. There were several ways to attempt this from Sheki. You can no north, higher into the mountains, and catch a bus somewhere called (variously), Gakh, Qak, or Xag. Or, you can dip back down to the interior, skirting a weird finger-lake that prevents you from making a straight line, change in Yevlak, and catch a night train in Ganja. 

The idea of a train with a known schedule was very appealing to us at this point as was the idea of a city called Ganja (we made many juvenile attempts to say Azerbaijani place names in a Jamaican accent), and thirdly, it seemed culturally necessary to say we had taken "The Midnight Train to Georgia." And, thus, after the cab dumped us out at the winter vagsul, I went in search of the Ganja-bound marshrutkas while Sara bargained at a little market for walnuts. 

The only van with "Ganja" written in it was an hilarious jalopy with light blue silly putty spackled over the rust holes and a badly cracked windshield. I assumed, perhaps, it stood as a sort of rustic advertisement for the trip. Kind of like how certain Southern restaurants in the US will put a tractor up on blocks and tape a "Come 'n git it!" sign to the hood. 

It was, however, the actual vehicle we would be taking.  Well, why not? Azerbaijan! Hey, you know what, if it Gakhs like a duck... 

                                           

Humorously, Sara had some difficulty at the marketplace, when her five-manatee note was perceived to have a tear in it. Like most paper bills, when you fold it, it's vulnerable to a tiny tear at the crease, and this was of GREAT CONCERN to the lavash and walnut vendors of the Sheki Winter Vagsul. The proprietor of one bottled watery called in the vendors of the other divers lavash and tea kiosks to say the Azerian equivalent of "can you believe this raggedy-ass bill Betsy Ross tried to pass off on me?"

I had encountered something similar in Vietnam, where a crumpled bill was rejected by several servers over several days. It became a game to see who would take it. What's the big deal. Is it that they're terrified of counterfeit manatees? Is it reverence? Unless the bill is ATM-fresh, it's treated like a toxic strip.

We had other bills that passed the test and were able to load up on water and grapes. The appointed hour arrived, and we embarked on the hell ride to Ganja.

                                                       

It was kind of a perfect storm. Busted van, potholed highways hidden from Heydar, and Ireet's nightmare: a young driver! He drove like Tamerlane's hordes were on his tail over roads paved by tanks. We were constantly thrown from our seats, our heads microns from the metal roof of the van. We switched lanes, played chicken with gas trucks, and slid all over the eagle's back.

We had already agreed this would be the last marshrutka trip we would take. Sara is strong and healthy, but her long, slender frame is made for strolling along snowy riverbanks where one whispers out the names of the latest gallery sensations or which dacha one will autumn in. And thus, she suffered. Even my own born-to-toil-in-the-bauxite-mines frame was bruised from the repeated impact-stress.

My only strategy for dealing with it was to use a sort of marshrutka akido and try to finish that bulky Goltz book. I figured doing a painful thing with my mind would counteract the body terror. And it worked. I somehow made it through, and just as the author ended up falling in love with Heydar Aliev at the end, I ended up kind of liking the book! It felt like a real accomplishment!  I thought back on several complicated, lengthy monster-tomes I've melted on these journeys. Middlemarch, Shardik.

Maybe one day I'll read The Recognitions on a freighter to Turkmenistan.

                                       

We saw a giant, golden gas station rising like a temple in the middle of No Where. Startling to see it gleaming like a trucker's fantasy in those sparse surroundings. Had we struck our skulls and dreamed it? By the roadside, a man grazed a hairy pig, the first I'd seen on this trip. He, the man, had a motorcycle with a side car. I spent a great deal of time imagining the pig in this sidecar wearing goggles and feeling the wind rustle his bristles.

Then I thought, "Well, rustle my bristles!" would be a marvelous exclamation to add to my growing list of Invented Conversational Ejaculations.

Once in Yevlak where, they say, a junkyard holds a statue of Lenin sliced in half, the roads got better. Old Heydar must have supervised this section, and our bones and ligaments had the opportunity to once again segregate themselves.

And though the roads had seen fewer military parades, the traffic was heavier, and Racin' Ruslan was not to be outraced. He gunned it like there was a stack of smooth, untorn bills just over the skyline. And thusly, we ran afoul of an Azeri speed trap. Pulled over by the highway patrol.

                                         

But damned if Racin' Ruslan didn't get out of it by bribing the officer with a child's coloring book. We were amazed.

It seemed like it went:

"Do you know how fast you were going?"

No. I am eager to unload this van of Yankee meat. You understand.

"I do, but still, I must ticket you for putting them at risk."

Everyone must do their job, this I understand. I must drive, and I must do my first job as well, which is being a good provider to my daughter. Do you have a daughter?

"Sniff! I do! I miss her so much, always I am out on the road giving tickets. Never have I time to spoil her, to see her grow into woman."

I have here a coloring book. Take it to her. Let her color while she is still a young girl.

"I will take it! I will take it to my daughter, and when I am on the road giving the tickets, I will think of her at home, a crayon in her chubby fist, her tongue in the corner of the mouth with the concentrating, making a beautiful picture for daddy. I take. Go, go in peace my friend."

Thank you, my friend, and like our daughters with the coloring, I will stay inside the lines.

                                                

Who knows what happened? It was probably just a random check for his marshrutka license, but the cop ended up with a coloring book, and it had every appearance of a cunning escape.

We eventually arrived in Ganja, mon! We didn't know we were there until Ruslan said "Ganja!" to us in a way that made those syllable translate to "get the fuck out." We found a taxi guy and were again amazed to discover that maps and addresses are useless in this culture. They really only seem to know what they know. You can only ever name hotels or restaurants or government buildings. The precision of an address and the visual of a map are as useless to getting you where you want to go as tryin' ta shove a flip flop in a vendin' machine.

Ya know what really rustles my bristles? When a tourist waves a flip flop at a Coke machine and expects a cold soda to drop out of it.

It's really like they mostly only take folks to Tofig's house and back.

                                          

He dropped us off near our apartment but not exactly. Sara was able to contact our host, and he arrived in an SUV to drive us the single block to where we would be staying. It was sweet. He was like, "You are from Seattle? I have been! I have eaten in the Spice Naydle! I have been to the coffee museum! I have seen the Bill Gates and the Boeing!"

He was very nice, and the apartment was in a marvelous old block-long building with crooked stairs and splashes of blue paint. We liked it very much, though it was, of course, only intended to be for about an eight-hour rest before the flight to the train station.

There were two cute little beds with Cars stickers for the boy bed and Princess stickers for the girl's bed. Way to be gender-normative, Azerbaijan! Fluidity is a lot to ask of a culture still recovering from Soviet and Armenian conflict. I'm sure the concept of "traditional order" is a comfort to them.

The Wi-Fi didn't work, so we went out in search of food and a signal. Made our way to a cute little park ringed with busy shops and restaurants.

                                                 

Ended up with a comical amount of rotisserie chicken and a giant pizza with hard-boiled egg and peperoncini toppings. It reminded us of those Boboli things they sold in supermarkets in the...90s?
The staff at the chicken place thought our presence there was hilarious. Ganja doesn't get a lot of tourists in what, I guess, is the off-season, and when it does, it's probably not this neighborhood.

They were nice. And we found a little tea place that was also nice. With nice wi-fi. We used it to try and get train tickets, but it didn't work right, so we decided the best thing to do would be to go to the train station right then, rather than risk trying to buy a ticket at 4am.

And so... we walked over to where a whole troop of orcs were smoking their long pipes, but ain't a one of 'em ever heard of the choo choo. We were super wiped out from lack of sleep and the torment of the marshrutka, so it took us a long time to remember to look in the guide book. By this time we were completely surrounded by men shouting at our driver their ideas of where we probably wanted to go.

We found something on the map (useless!) and just said a word under the picture of a train. Everyone repeated the word with a sound like 'Ahhh, this is what that wanted! We have done it! Back to the long pipes!"

                                                

Cab took off, and flipping through the book, we realized we had asked him to take us to some sort of Islamic shrine many miles out of town. I went into a kind of frustrated panic and tore through the grimy index looking for the one-page "useful phrase" section for the word "train." No luck!

I drew a train track and a little engine with smoke coming out and handed it to the driver at a stoplight. He made a sound like, "Cute. My daughter also likes to color. I never see her. She will be a woman soon, and I will miss it."

Thumbed harder through the book. Found it! Train station!! Poked the driver again to show him. The penny dropped. Or, as they say in Azerbaijan, the manatee dove into the sulfur bath.

We were let off at the train station. Where, again, there was an enormous building but only one little window. An old dude in a military-style uniform sat behind it slowly.... slowly....deliberately placing slips on paper between two other slips of paper.

"Hello," I oinked, "Tbilisi."

                                                      

He spoke no English and tried to close the window on my fingers. He made sounds that may have meant "try digital!" (Sara's guess) but we had tried that, and the digital, she no work. So I was like "Tbilisi?" and he got up and left.

We sat on a bench to plan our next move and Station Man came back with the cops. And us without a coloring book. A young officer spoke perfect English, however, and was very happy to help. I wrangled out the details while Sara went out in search of an ATM.

There was all sorts of trouble with the guy needed to know my "father name," which is, I think, the equivalent of a middle name. That's what I gave him anyway. Surname, Given Name, Father Name. You patriarchal for this one, Caucasus. I expected him to put a Cars sticker on my passport.

Sara came back justifiably flustered by the complete nonexistence of cash machines. And why, really, would you want there to be a cash machine around a train station that only takes cash? She found a machine that lets locals pay their energy bill, and a machine that lets you buy a lottery ticket with your bank card, but no, you know, bank.

BUT, the Young Officer came to the rescue one more time. He got a taxi driver to change American money for manat! Cuz had a fat roll of manatees in his jeans and was only too happy to help. Young Officer even looked up the current exchange rate on his flip phone!

                                           

And, thus, we had our tickets! Cabbed it back to the crash pad to crash. Diverted to a tremendous market where we got rid of the Torn Bill! Loaded up on water and chocolate. Such a candy aisle this place had.

Back home, the shower was either lava or ice with no "warm" setting, but we hadn't had hot water in a week, so we enjoyed the scalding. Then, a refreshing five hours of sleep, and it was time to walk out into the smoky Ganja night. 3am, don't you know.

Packs of stray dogs ruled at this hour, and we knew equal parts fear and amusement. We didn't want to get bit, of course, but it was surreal to see weird mismatched breeds Incredible Journeying around the park. We even saw a dachshund with an hysterical hot-dog shadow howling along with his mates.

Cabbies slept in sleeping bags in their front seats, and we tapped one awake. By now we knew very well how to tell him where to take us.

Tea in the Garden of Sheki Kahn

"If Georgian culture could survive the Persians, the Turks, the Arabs, the Mongols, and the Russians it could survive McDonald's...perhaps."

                                          
If nothing else, Sheki has a very talented muezzin. The call to prayer at 5am was incredibly beautiful. His voice rose and fell in soft waves, not so much piercing the dark but flowing into it, like ink into black water. Awaken. Awaken. Prayer is better than sleep. Prayer is better than sleep. Sara did not agree or did not hear. She slept while I tiptoed around the ridiculous Jenga tower they called an inn.

I wrote on the porch as the sun nudged the mountains, and the roosters crowed, and the wild turkeys rustled, and the birds tested their songs, and the mist slowly faded. The air was cool, and I wore my thick striped shirt and shivered under it. With my notes and a few pages torn from a book all spread out on the table, I felt there as happy as ever in my life. And I was aware of the happiness.

Writing in the quiet almost-dark was so peaceful and productive. I felt, in those two hours, completely myself and furiously content.

When I finished writing, I ate leftover dumplings with my fingers and went out in search of coffee to wash them down with. A fool's errand. There truly is no such thing in the Caucasus. It's either a thimbleful of Anatolian concrete (only available after 5pm) or a sarcastic ice cream sundae. Is this what you wanted? Is this the cahfy? Do you like?

I suppose there was that Starbucks in Baku. But this was Sheki. Forget it, Jake, it's Shekitown.

                                           

Nothing was really open except a few sweet shops. (Why?) There was a place promising espresso, but it was locked tighter than Topkapi. A convenience store called 24Mart must have meant it had twenty-four items for sale when it was open. It was closed. Some hilarious long-legged chickens gorked around in the cobblestones and some regular chickens ate from a spilled box of berries.

The city was very beautiful, just... closed. A little pipe had cracked underneath the street and water burbled up with a pleasant kind of murmur. It trickled down the rocky path and into a little stream lining the main road. Last year, I read a book in Slovenia called "Suffled How it Gush" and I kept saying that in my head when I would notice the little burbles.

Went back to Sara empty-handed. She was awake and she offered me a miracle. There is, she said, a hotel down the mountain where they have "Western coffee culture" and they are open and they would be happy to serve us. She had done some careful research on the subject. I encouraged her to dress as quickly as possible. We took a taxi to save time.

                                           
And true to whichever helpful wiki she had consulted, they had it. The staff knew exactly why we were there. It was an interesting place, sort of fancy in a retro "Fly Pan Am Jets" kind of way, with Ace-shaped archways and long banquettes with soft cushions. The air begged to be filled with hookah smoke, the tiles begged to have dice thrown on them. It was like one of those James Bond parodies with Dean Martin.

We drank our lattes and I forced myself through a few more pages of that Azerbaijan book, locked in a strange battle with the author. 500 over-sized and uber-stuffed pages is this thing. Will I regret the time I spent with it? Is it pride that drives me on? We settled the bill, which was only a few manatees (the currency is the Azeri manat, and we were at this point calling the bills "manatees") and took a turn around the lower town.

The usual busy sort of mix of old women carrying flat breads from one construction site to another, large groups of older men in the park playing psychic backgammon, and young men eating bread at construction sites. A few stray cats. We beat it back upstairs for more of that mountain air and for a chance to see the Palace of the Sheki Kahn before we had to marshrutka on out of there. We had an appointment in Ganja, and we meant to keep it.

We asked a taxi to take us to the Palace. He flashed a golden smile, sped up the hill, and dropped us off at something called "The Palace Hotel."

                                                         
We shrugged and paid. As we made our way toward the actual palace, we were confronted with a familiar sight, an old lady in an EBAY hat. Ireet! She was just turning the corner at that very moment! and very happy to see us again. She shared the adventure of how she'd found a mattress in a hostel in which she was the only lodger. It's a palace, she said, and where are you going now? An actual palace, we told her.

Have you eaten, I am heading to Gagarin restaurant, have you eaten, and where are you headed?

There was, of course, the implication that she would like to join us, but we told her we didn't have time to pause for breakfast but that she would enjoy Gagarin's as we had and that we were amazed to have seen her again, that it was fate, and that we wished her luck. She released us, and we fled to the safety of a marvelous old stone hotel with a courtyard and an angry housemaid who chased us out. It had also been in Sara's research wiki.

It's a town of strange and marvelous hotels, none of which anyone was staying in on account of the off-season.

I had seen a wall arrow advertising the location of the Khan's Palace, so we headed that way. The road was closed to traffic on account of it being repaved, but we braved the tar and the steamrollers and followed the arrows to a sort of busted-up suburb of stony hill homes with aluminum gates.

Someone had vandalized a stone lion in a most amusing way, makeup and eyebrows. It reminded me of a scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where Edmund draws on a statue with pencil. Oh, Edmund. Oh, Aslan.

Grapevines hugged the roofs and grapes of all colors lay in the dirt road. The approach to the Khan's Palace was a little... unorthodox.

                                              

At some point it began to feel ridiculous. We were tripping along broken pave stones through a weird warren of homes, but every now and again there would be a teasing little arrow, sometimes in English, sometimes in Azeri, promising the splendor of the Palace of Sheki Khan. And so we pushed on.

Some old men were setting up a tent for tea, and Sara drew their ire trying to photograph them. It made me laugh to think that Ireet's name was so close to "irate." I put that in the same category as "Suffled How it Gush," just a thing I kept repeating to myself.

We escaped the men and discovered, through a crumbling arch, a manicured lawn and... a pretty little building nicely restored and like something a Khan might live in. A samovar of tea suffled on a low stone wall, and a nice old woman offered us some. We said no thanks, and she ran off to get saucers and glasses. A younger woman came out to ask what we were doing there.

We came to see the Khan's Palace. Ah, and so you have, but this is the Khan's Winter Palace. It is much smaller and not so fully restored. But you are here. Will you come in? The actual palace is supposed to be an architectural marvel filled with treasure and treasures of design. But Sara had read about this one in the Coffee Wiki as well, and it made much more sense that this was what at the end of the hilarious dirt maze we had followed to get here.

The wrong palace! And no time to make the real one! Forget it, Jake, it's Shekitown. We had to see it through, so in we went. It was only a few manatees, in any case.

Inside, I sang Chaka Khan songs as I had long planned to do.

                                           

When we left, the old woman had set a table for tea. We very badly needed to get back to our room to pack to make our ride to Ganja, but there was something so pitiful about the situation our hearts were moved to try and have a few sips.

So, Sara sat for a while in the single chair provided, but the cups were empty and the old woman wasn't anywhere to be seen, so we thought about leaving (and we really needed to). But then we heard a grinding noise, and grandma was dragging a bench over for me to sit in.

So, I went over to take it from her, and she went back somewhere behind the palace. So, Sara and I sat at the table with our empty glasses and.... more time passed.... no tea.... no old woman.... and Mahmoud was going to give our stuff to Ireet to sell on Ebay if we weren't out of the room by noon

So, we tossed some coins down and made a break for it.

Racing through the dirt maze, slipping on the grapes, dodging the old men, sending our regards to the Joker lion, ruining the newly lain asphalt, ducking under the windows of Gagarin, splashing through the gush, and safely to our room.

We packed, bid farewell to this peaceful place and fled our crimes in a hired Mercedes. Our next stop would be a place called Ganja, our last stop in Azerbaijan before the train to Georgia. We desperately prayed the taxi wasn't taking us to the Winter Bus Station.