Lists

Things I have often had to say:
-"I don't speak Icelandic. But I do speak Danish, if that would help."
-"No, we don't have WiFi."
-"Yes, the showers are warm."
-"Thank you, for bringing the dog back from the middle of the road." (Though actually it's not our dog).
-"Yes, that is the phone I use." (See picture in a previous post).


Strange things I have said:
-"Sorry, I can't sell you that plate."
-"So, you're going to send the false teeth back in an old tea box?"
-"No, I don't know if you're allowed to camp on the beach."

Talents I never knew I had:
-I can carry sixteen pillows at once
-I can cook numerous meals with very few ingredients (though admittedly most of them were rather boring)

A strange fact:
-Sheep can, in fact, get over the cattle grids, making them completely useless

An infuriating fact:
-Two guides (there are often large groups staying) showed me pictures of northern lights that I'd missed. Each guide showed pictures from a different night

The cave city and contemporary transport

Near Gori there is the cave city, Uplistsikhe. Caves have been chipped out of the rock. Halls, houses, stores, wine cellars and temples are all to be found there. It is very hard to imagine people living there but for centuries it was one of the safest places around.

To get back to Gori we took a bus that was being driven right to the ground. Every part of it was somehow in disrepair: all the seats were ripped and some were bent, the door of the bus would not shut, there was a big gaping hole in the floor of the bus so you could see the road, the bus almost refused to go uphill and the whole time the bus sounded as though it were a cat being run over. 

This is not the sort of thing you would do on an ordinary package trip, and that's why I love going with the scouts! 

Defending Gori

Being the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, Gori was never going to be a cheerful place, but the sad story of a local scout did not exactly make the atmosphere any jollier.

Wandering through the Stalin museum was a very strange experience. Most of the writing was in Georgian and Russian but not English. Faded pictures and discoloured documents lined the walls of the dark museum, telling a story of false glory and hidden cruelty. One room was dedicated only to objects made in honour of Stalin.

The Georgians have very mixed feelings when it comes to Stalin and the Russians. In Gori it brings tourism and money, but the resentment is still there. The Georgian scout who was with us was very reluctant to follow us into the Stalin museum, and later when he showed us round the rest of Gori he told us about the Russian invasion of 2008.

He had been in Gori, which had been taken, at the time and had watched as bombs fell over the city. He told the story with deep sorrow in his eyes and took us to a monument dedicated to those who were killed.

Just above the monument there was a fortress overlooking the city. We climbed up to have a look. It was a very impressive view with the city below and the mountains all round it. After a little misunderstanding the leaders and the Georgian scout decided to ask the guards if we could sleep at the fortress. And to our big surprise they said yes.

It was amazing being able to pitch the tents on such an old, historical site. A once in a lifetime experience!

 

A shot of Russia

After the, supposed, glamour of Batumi we headed for Kolkheti national park near Poti. The plan was to rent kayaks for a few hours and then wander into the park to find a suitable place to stay the night. On arrival we realised that we would have to abandon these plans completely: The park was a swamp. We would not be able to walk more than two kilometers and there was nowhere we would be able to pitch our tents. As for the kayaks, they were apparently all broken.

A woman at the information center helped us find a lake in the area to walk to. The Golden Lake was used for the European water ski championships and we were not quite sure what to expect. And rightly so: on arrival we were surprised to see some very dilapidated buildings by the side of a small, dirty lake. A bridge that looked less than trustworthy stretched from one side of the narrow lake to the other. And on one bank there were some broken and rusty stands.

We explored for a bit, finding a beach and a Russian man running a shooting gallery. The leaders decided that we should all have a go with the guns and so we spent a good 45 minutes trying to shoot win a broken watch and a discoloured Buzz Lightyear figure. Unsuccessfully.

We searched for a long time before we found somewhere suitable to pitch our tents. With bushes and trees on almost all sides and a river on the last we had succeeded in getting away from the paths and the people. However, we did not get away from the mosquitoes and were bitten to death while trying to enjoy our bonfire.

My surroundings

Living in Iceland, even if it is for a short period, has showed me how very different life here is. Though Iceland has many connections to Denmark the similarities are few and far between.

The pace here is slower and there is a lot of make do and mend. The telephone at the school looks like this:

It works when it feels like it and the sound occasionally cuts out, but I love it!

The car I drive is also somewhat out of the ordinary:

Though I don't have a picture of it, the inside is also falling apart. Lots of handles and other plastic thingies are gone, and the car is full of miscellaneous objects, that may or may not be of use.

And finally, here is a picture of the house I live in:

More posts of this nature will follow.

An odd feeling

Today I received an e-mail with my Icelandic ID-number. After reading through the many warnings against staying in Iceland longer than three months, I got to the ID-number and paused.

The length and general system of the Icelandic ID-number resembled that of the Danish. However, in Denmark the ID-number ends with an even number for females and with an odd number for males. I therefore stumbled somewhat in my reading when I noticed that the last number of my Icelandic ID-number was odd.

Holey sheet!

The owner of the guest house I work at owns two guest houses. The one I work at I will refer to as the school because that's what it used to be (and also because I can't say Hrollaugstadir).

Usually people bring sleepingbags and so the beds only need a sheet. At the school we only have two washing machines and a very small room to dry them in. Not only do we have a lot of sheets that are constantly being washed (this is a never-ending job I can assure you) but the sheets also start to show a lot of wear and tear. I often find sheets with one or more holes in, just like this one:

A little note about how this blog will continue

I am very slow when it comes to writing blog posts, and I am nowhere near finished rambling on about my trip to Georgia. However things are happening here in Iceland too. Not at quite the same pace, but still fast enough for me now to have quite a build-up of future post topics.

I will, therefore, send out a little warning: this blog may get a little confusing! I'm going to continue writing posts about Georgia. However, at the same time I will also start writing about my experiences here. So I hope it does not get too confusing.

Gambles and shambles

Once back in Tbilisi we wasted little time before taking the train at 22:30 to Batumi, the city of tourists and gambling. The beds on the night train were too short, even for me, and the heat, noise and light were very uncomfortable. However the night on the train was definitely the best night's sleep I had on the entire trip.

On arrival at Batumi station we were surrounded by the usual crowd of dodgy taxi drivers wanting us to pick them. We went by mashutka, instead, because it was cheaper. However, for the first time the mashutka let us down: the driver took us to the wrong address but by the time we had worked out what was wrong he was gone. The mistake was honest enough, he took us to Kldiashvili Avenue instead of Kldiashvili Street, but it confused us a great deal.

The hostel itself was very strange. Outside there was a training ship and indoors the walls were decorated with old sailor uniforms and paintings of ships. The rest of Batumi proved to be just as bizarre. Everywhere you looked there were building sites, swanky hotels and casinos. The beach stretched a whopping 8 kilometers and had a walkway along the whole length of it. All this was in stark contrast to the first place we had been dropped off by the mashutka. Here the houses were very down at heel and there was nothing fancy about it at all.

One of the selling points for Batumi is the beach. The thing is, though, that the beach really isn't very good. There is no sand only large stones, and the water is far from suitable for swimming. There is a strong current and the stones will easily cut bare feet. Most of the others went in the water, just to be able to say that they had swum in the Black Sea, but I didn't see any point in drowning so early on during the trip.

The Caucasus mountains

After a few days in the Georgian capital Tbilisi we headed along the Georgian Military Highway to Kazbegi situated in the middle of the Caucasus mountains.

With four Georgian scouts to lead us we walked into the wilderness. Or so we hoped. It turned out that the route they took us along would mainly follow a road, which was a bit disappointing. Not long before we turned off the road we even walked through a pitch black tunnel where cars occasionally passed us. The Georgian scouts didn't seem to mind but it scared the living daylights out of the rest of us!

Once properly in the mountains and away from the road the path became very steep and the going got much harder. It was all worth it, though. The place where we set up camp was beautiful, save for the stray bits of rubbish that are found in even the remotest parts of Georgia.

The next morning we went back to Kazbegi and hiked up the mountain, without our rucksacks, to the Gergeti Trinity Chruch. The church is at the very top of the mountain, overlooking Kazbegi.

This time we camped nearer to civilisation, just one kilometer from Kazbegi. The following day was overcast but we shrugged it off as a bit of low cloud. We very soon realised that we were in for a good all-day downpour. We had walked for no more than a kilometer or two before the rain started. I quickly got soaked as I didn't have a proper raincoat with me. A car offered us a ride at one point, but only two of the Georgians accepted. The rest of us were already too wet to care. I was even enjoying myself. We walked until we got to the little tumbledown hut the others had been dropped at. We waited inside for the rain to lull and the pelted up the path and put the tents up. While the rain beat on the outside of the tent I lay in my sleeping bag, right until dinner. 

The next morning we took a mashutka (a minibus that usually has a specific destination but will in reality take you almost anywhere) back to Tbilisi.