Having failed to buy Glastonbury tickets, Gareth and I decided that it was time to leave the country in high dudgeon. That same afternoon the bins were emptied, our bags packed, and we were on our way to Georgia. At the boarding gate there were several heated and pointless arguments between grumpy passengers and stern personnel; naturally, the airline being Wizz Air.
Onboard, the stewardesses became shirty and sharp in Georgian and Russian, telling off the passengers for being slow to embark ("I already told you five or six times to put your bag under your seat!”). I did notice that when I was admonished for having put my coat in the wrong place (on the coat hook), her English was in a slightly softer tone than the harsher languages of the Caucasus. Thirty minutes into the flight, the seatbelt sign went out with a ding and an important announcement: there were two rows of spare seats in 12 and 13, and if anyone would like to move there, they were at liberty to do so for a special Wizz price of €15. The same offer was made in a mixture of Georgian and English but, I noted, the fee for Georgians was €20.
As we flew east over the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania towards the Black Sea and the Turkish coast, passengers bustled along the cabin, greeting families and friends and leaning over seats to share snacks and stories. Everyone seemed to know each other, and by the end of the flight, we too had made friends with our neighbour; a shy Georgian who insisted that we finish her crisps, and made a face when we told her of our plan to visit Armenia too. I had been reading of the strained relations in the Caucasus region. Georgians and Armenians harbour a deep mutual distrust; as do the Armenians and their neighbours, the Azeris from Azerbaijan. The Turkish-Armenian border is closed, and there are several disputed territories in the region. Our seat-mate conceded, sighing, that if we absolutely must visit Armenia, we might as well go to Lake Sevan, the largest lake in the Caucasus. At the time we found her attitude interesting and slightly amusing; only later did I realise how sad it was that beautiful Armenia with her tortured history of genocide remains, except for a short border and cordial relations with Iran, largely alone and friendless in the region and beyond.
Soon we were off the plane ("Ladies and gentlemen, as you will see it is raining outside. Please get ready for it. Good luck!"), and at immigration I had completed my first ever conversation in Georgian - gamarjobat (hello), Sara (Sarah), and madloba (thank you). We were on our way into Kutaisi, Georgia's second-largest city.
When we arrived at our apartment, chosen specifically for its gaudy interior, we were not disappointed. In the bedroom, every wall was papered with what looked to be a Wetherspoon’s carpet. There were five large bunches of plastic grapes on the table, and in the kitchen, strings of artificial onions, garlic, peppers and sweetcorn hung next to a still life painting of a bowl of vegetables, also apparently plastic. These kitschy items broke up a wall optimistically decorated with coffee beans, coffee grinders, coffee cups, and the repeated word 'coffee'. There was neither cafetière nor coffee in the cupboard. In the morning I realised that the bottle of milk we’d bought in the curious supermarket late at night was kefir - fermented milk. Resignedly, I drank sharp instant coffee surrounded by ironic wallpaper.
In the morning we wandered through the market, piled high with fresh and vibrant fruits and vegetables. I soon realised why last night's supermarket had had not a single fresh item: with such bounty in the markets here, no one would buy fresh food from a grocery store. Next to the colourful produce were spices, pulses, salts, and sheets of fruit leather stacked up like Turkish carpets. Hanging neatly over wooden rods at the top of the sweet stalls were what looked like candles - churchkhela - strings of walnuts thickly coated with grape-juice caramel.
Like my other travel destinations, I decided to come to Georgia mostly for the cuisine. Georgia sits on the old Silk Road and has, over the millennia, absorbed influences from the Arab, Mongol, Eastern European and Middle Eastern worlds. Pomegranate molasses and walnut sauces join fresh mixed herby salads, warming meaty soups and beetrooty borschts, and hot bread filled with melty cheese and butter are served with each meal. I was especially excited about this latter dish - the regional cheesebreads known as khachapuri - having tasted it in a Georgian restaurant in Islington.
At our first lunch opportunity, we ordered a acharuli khachapuri - a boat-shaped loaf filled with a salty cheese and topped with butter and a raw egg yolk which is mixed into the hot cheese at the table. Knowing how filling khachapuri is, we added a simple caesar salad and nothing more.
The khachapuri, when it arrived, was much larger than its UK variation. The salad came with extra cheese, chicken, bacon, and mushrooms. It was enough food for four people and we'd only ordered two dishes. We were overwhelmed with cheese and unable to finish either dish.
We were keen to try as many local dishes as possible, so for the next few days, ironically, we tried not to order the dish that had brought me here: it was impossible to finish anything else if one also had to tackle a khachapuri, and we disliked waste. But the indomitable cheesebreads were hard to avoid. At one breakfast I managed to eat a third of a megruli khachapuri, stuffed with cheese, and more on top. At the next table two large men stolidly made their way through one acharuli khachapuri each, starting from the pointy end towards the egg centre and out the other side, silent and victorious. We weren't built for this amount of cheesing, we concluded.
The following day we were served an enormous imeruli khachapuri, with cheese only on the inside. A lighter version, but we still only managed half between us. I never imagined that I would be seeking meals with smaller or lighter khachapuri, or none at all, but they were so deliciously rich that one seemed to fill us up for days at at time, and there were too many other dishes to sample. Later, in Kazbegi, I ordered the high Caucasus variation, khabizgina khachapuri, stuffed with both cheese and mashed potato, which was a much lighter variation than its cheesier sisters. Only in Georgia are dishes lightened by the addition of potatoes.
One night in Gori, the birthplace of Stalin, we found a pleasant homely tavern with beer on tap. We ordered fresh, cheeseless bread, lamb borscht (beetroot soup with sour cream and parsley), and a chakapuli - an incredibly tasty stew of sour green cherry-plums, white wine, tarragon, coriander, parsley, and green peppers. Its complex fragrance was not dissimilar to a Vietnamese phở.
As well as good food, Gori also housed a very odd museum: a large marble hall dedicated to Stalin. Apart from brief mentions of the Gulag and his murderous regime, the museum was essentially a mausoleum venerating the dictator. His beaming face was embroidered onto carpets, pistols, dinnerware, and writing-sets, all leading to a central room where his death-mask lay in state, surrounded by a circular red carpet. It was very like the glorification of Hồ Chí Minh, whose polished waxed preserves lie in his mausoleum in Hà Nội. Uncle Hồ has an annual maintenance check, his embalmed corpse preserved by Russian specialists employing secret sauces developed in the Soviet Union's 'Lenin Lab'.
After Stalin’s death in 1953 he too was embalmed and placed on display next to the waxy remains of Vladimir Lenin. It took eight years before the despot’s atrocities were acknowledged and the process of ‘de-Stalinization’ could begin. He was removed from the mausoleum quietly and without ceremony, and now lies unobtrusively near the Kremlin wall, hidden amongst the trees.
Onboard, the stewardesses became shirty and sharp in Georgian and Russian, telling off the passengers for being slow to embark ("I already told you five or six times to put your bag under your seat!”). I did notice that when I was admonished for having put my coat in the wrong place (on the coat hook), her English was in a slightly softer tone than the harsher languages of the Caucasus. Thirty minutes into the flight, the seatbelt sign went out with a ding and an important announcement: there were two rows of spare seats in 12 and 13, and if anyone would like to move there, they were at liberty to do so for a special Wizz price of €15. The same offer was made in a mixture of Georgian and English but, I noted, the fee for Georgians was €20.
As we flew east over the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania towards the Black Sea and the Turkish coast, passengers bustled along the cabin, greeting families and friends and leaning over seats to share snacks and stories. Everyone seemed to know each other, and by the end of the flight, we too had made friends with our neighbour; a shy Georgian who insisted that we finish her crisps, and made a face when we told her of our plan to visit Armenia too. I had been reading of the strained relations in the Caucasus region. Georgians and Armenians harbour a deep mutual distrust; as do the Armenians and their neighbours, the Azeris from Azerbaijan. The Turkish-Armenian border is closed, and there are several disputed territories in the region. Our seat-mate conceded, sighing, that if we absolutely must visit Armenia, we might as well go to Lake Sevan, the largest lake in the Caucasus. At the time we found her attitude interesting and slightly amusing; only later did I realise how sad it was that beautiful Armenia with her tortured history of genocide remains, except for a short border and cordial relations with Iran, largely alone and friendless in the region and beyond.
Soon we were off the plane ("Ladies and gentlemen, as you will see it is raining outside. Please get ready for it. Good luck!"), and at immigration I had completed my first ever conversation in Georgian - gamarjobat (hello), Sara (Sarah), and madloba (thank you). We were on our way into Kutaisi, Georgia's second-largest city.
 |
| Kitsch galore |
When we arrived at our apartment, chosen specifically for its gaudy interior, we were not disappointed. In the bedroom, every wall was papered with what looked to be a Wetherspoon’s carpet. There were five large bunches of plastic grapes on the table, and in the kitchen, strings of artificial onions, garlic, peppers and sweetcorn hung next to a still life painting of a bowl of vegetables, also apparently plastic. These kitschy items broke up a wall optimistically decorated with coffee beans, coffee grinders, coffee cups, and the repeated word 'coffee'. There was neither cafetière nor coffee in the cupboard. In the morning I realised that the bottle of milk we’d bought in the curious supermarket late at night was kefir - fermented milk. Resignedly, I drank sharp instant coffee surrounded by ironic wallpaper.
 |
| Churchkhela |
In the morning we wandered through the market, piled high with fresh and vibrant fruits and vegetables. I soon realised why last night's supermarket had had not a single fresh item: with such bounty in the markets here, no one would buy fresh food from a grocery store. Next to the colourful produce were spices, pulses, salts, and sheets of fruit leather stacked up like Turkish carpets. Hanging neatly over wooden rods at the top of the sweet stalls were what looked like candles - churchkhela - strings of walnuts thickly coated with grape-juice caramel.
Like my other travel destinations, I decided to come to Georgia mostly for the cuisine. Georgia sits on the old Silk Road and has, over the millennia, absorbed influences from the Arab, Mongol, Eastern European and Middle Eastern worlds. Pomegranate molasses and walnut sauces join fresh mixed herby salads, warming meaty soups and beetrooty borschts, and hot bread filled with melty cheese and butter are served with each meal. I was especially excited about this latter dish - the regional cheesebreads known as khachapuri - having tasted it in a Georgian restaurant in Islington.
At our first lunch opportunity, we ordered a acharuli khachapuri - a boat-shaped loaf filled with a salty cheese and topped with butter and a raw egg yolk which is mixed into the hot cheese at the table. Knowing how filling khachapuri is, we added a simple caesar salad and nothing more.
The khachapuri, when it arrived, was much larger than its UK variation. The salad came with extra cheese, chicken, bacon, and mushrooms. It was enough food for four people and we'd only ordered two dishes. We were overwhelmed with cheese and unable to finish either dish.
 |
| Acharuli khachapuri. Photo by Yanina Bondarenko via Wikicommons |
We were keen to try as many local dishes as possible, so for the next few days, ironically, we tried not to order the dish that had brought me here: it was impossible to finish anything else if one also had to tackle a khachapuri, and we disliked waste. But the indomitable cheesebreads were hard to avoid. At one breakfast I managed to eat a third of a megruli khachapuri, stuffed with cheese, and more on top. At the next table two large men stolidly made their way through one acharuli khachapuri each, starting from the pointy end towards the egg centre and out the other side, silent and victorious. We weren't built for this amount of cheesing, we concluded.
The following day we were served an enormous imeruli khachapuri, with cheese only on the inside. A lighter version, but we still only managed half between us. I never imagined that I would be seeking meals with smaller or lighter khachapuri, or none at all, but they were so deliciously rich that one seemed to fill us up for days at at time, and there were too many other dishes to sample. Later, in Kazbegi, I ordered the high Caucasus variation, khabizgina khachapuri, stuffed with both cheese and mashed potato, which was a much lighter variation than its cheesier sisters. Only in Georgia are dishes lightened by the addition of potatoes.
 |
| Khabizgina khachapuri |
One night in Gori, the birthplace of Stalin, we found a pleasant homely tavern with beer on tap. We ordered fresh, cheeseless bread, lamb borscht (beetroot soup with sour cream and parsley), and a chakapuli - an incredibly tasty stew of sour green cherry-plums, white wine, tarragon, coriander, parsley, and green peppers. Its complex fragrance was not dissimilar to a Vietnamese phở.
As well as good food, Gori also housed a very odd museum: a large marble hall dedicated to Stalin. Apart from brief mentions of the Gulag and his murderous regime, the museum was essentially a mausoleum venerating the dictator. His beaming face was embroidered onto carpets, pistols, dinnerware, and writing-sets, all leading to a central room where his death-mask lay in state, surrounded by a circular red carpet. It was very like the glorification of Hồ Chí Minh, whose polished waxed preserves lie in his mausoleum in Hà Nội. Uncle Hồ has an annual maintenance check, his embalmed corpse preserved by Russian specialists employing secret sauces developed in the Soviet Union's 'Lenin Lab'.
 |
| Perfect for wiping your boots on |
______
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Or see more posts here: Get in the tuktuk, no time to explain
More on Georgia and Armenia:Male drivers on godless roads - Georgia
The slow train to Yerevan - Armenia
The Armenian Genocide - Armenia
Armenia: then and now - Armenia
The slow train to Yerevan - Armenia
The Armenian Genocide - Armenia
Armenia: then and now - Armenia
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