30 December 2015

Signs of Something Big

Wednesday, on my way home from work, I stopped at my neighborhood's friendly tone for my customary purchase of two loaves of puri. I put my one lari coin down on the glass service window and confirmed visually and vocally that I wanted two loaves, each 50 tetri. An older gentleman, whom I believed I had not seen in the shop before, told me that I could get only one loaf for a lari. The younger baker, with whom I had exchanged a few Georgian and English words previously, came out from behind the toni to show me that they were baking loaves twice the size they normally bake. I let out an admiring "Whoa", dug into my pocket for another lari, and proudly carried off two loaves of bread the size of snow shoes. It was December 30.

On Tuesday, the day before, a colleague drove me home from work. We took the same road I take to get to one of the schools I have lessons in, a road a bit off the beaten path, I'd say, a good walk from the metro station, with a few shops that look like they sell goods in bulk. Tuesday night, however, both sides of this street were lined with tables with chunks of raw meat on top and men with black beards, leather jackets, and axes behind. Today, Gio, my host brother, took me back to ground zero on foot. There was still lots of really red meat but, curiously, no pools, or jars, of blood.  

Monday evening, walking home from the metro station, near Bingo Bridge, where old men and women sell fresh produce throughout the year, I unexpectedly passed a table of red meat with a calf's head sitting on top, eyes still in it. These are all Georgian signs that New Year's is coming.

I have always thought that New Year's comes too soon after Christmas to be a major celebration. Here in Georgia, though, where 84% of the population are Orthodox Christians (according to the CIA's World Factbook), New Year's comes before Christmas. After watching four or five continents celebrate Christmas December 25, Georgians are ready to celebrate come December 31.

Four years ago, on a wet December 30 made for tea-drinking, Cindy and I met Tiit and Lairi on Baker Street in London, and on December 31, the four of us stood in the middle of Waterloo Bridge with two bottles of sparkling wine and watched the fireworks from the London Eye. Sixteen years ago (when Walgreens was developing the photos I took with a cardboard camera), I 
stood in Senate Square in Helsinki and welcomed the twenty-first century eight hours before my friends and family in Illinois. I still vividly remember adults holding Roman candles, as long as rolls of wrapping paper, in their hands and a little too close to my head. Even more frightening were the teenagers on the streets holding bottles of beer and vodka. I grew up many, many years ago launching skinny rockets from a glass soda bottle in the middle of Queensway Road and staining the sidewalk in front of 2304 with charcoal snakes. 

Just as loud, glittering fireworks, exploding high in the sky, launch the New Year, so, too, does a smorgasbord of homemade dishes crammed lovingly onto the kitchen table by Gio's grandmother.



Up front, to the right of the bottle of Coke Zero, which is omnipresent the world over, is a cold plate of pkhali, that is, minced spinach with garlic (and sometimes pomegranate seeds or chopped walnuts, depending on the season). To the right of the juice carton is a cold plate of pickled sundry garden leaves and stems. They may have been flavoring a jar of pickled green tomatoes. (First okra in Kurdistan and now green tomatoes in the Republic of Georgia. I thought they both came from Mississippi.) 

Directly above the stems are pieces of churchkhela in a bowl, which is a string of walnuts dipped repeatedly in a grape paste. Reportedly, soldiers carried them into battlefields for quick bursts of energy. Just on the other side of the wire cage from a bottle of sparkling Georgian wine is some of the pizza Gio and I made from scratch earlier in the day. Above the pizza is pea salad with dill, just like the teachers in Estonia made. On the plate to the left (as well as behind the Coke bottle) is khachapuri, the Georgian cheese bread that children eat as they walk home from school with their mothers or grandparents.

On the plate back against the wall, shaped like diamonds, is the holiday favorite gozinaki, which is incredibly delicious for just being nuts, honey, and a bit of sugar rolled out. Next to the bottle of rose sparkling wine is, I believe, a bowl of satsivi, which is almost like an Indian sauce. Utskho suneli, translated as "blue fenugreek", is a uniquely Georgian spice in satsivi that I will no doubt have to introduce to Tapa, Estonia and Springfield, Illinois.

So, indeed, New Year's is something big in Georgia. New New Year's, that is. January 14 is Old New Year's, or Orthodox New Year's. (It's that Julian and Gregorian calendar thing come to life.) Let's hope there's more gozinaki and fewer calves' heads. 

01 December 2015

My Many Faces in Istanbul



street

Istanbul, my London
of the East, was just over two hours from Tbilisi by way of the unexpectedly refined Turkish Airlines. The somewhat Far East-themed Manesol Boutique hotel had a fantastic breakfast buffet that included figs and a lovely terrace at the end of our corridor that offered a peak at the Rustem Pasha Mosque. I think; mosques viewed upclose in the daylight and seen illuminated at night from afar seemed magically like different places.
mosque

bridge
dinner


returnhole
Istanbul, like London, moved. Its people walked resolvedly along Siraselviler Avenue, and its metro, trams, and buses appeared frequently from the Bosphorus Bridge in the northeast to Ataturk Airport in the southwest. I was unexpectedly smitten.

restaurant
hookah
wall

First row above: Rukiya's left eye; my Irish nose, not shaped quite good enough to be a Turkish one; and Rita's smiling face sans eyeglasses on a random park bench overlooking John F. Kennedy Avenue. 
Second row: Rita and I are under the enormous chandelier under the even more enormous dome of the cavernous Hagia Sophia.
Third row: (l) I am standing with my back to Asia, the Istanbul Strait, and the Bosphorus Bridge, right outside the Ortakoy mosque. (r) We are sitting at Murat Muhallebicisi in Karakoy, a cafe and bakery with kebabs, maybe with a 1920s look, and definitely with a creepy waiter.
Fourth row: I am getting my Turkish Oyster card at the funicular's Kabatas station.
Fifth row: (l) I was abandoned at the elegant Karakoy Lokantasi but only for as long as it took to smoke a fag on the nearby balcony. (m) When in Rome (or on Edgware Road in London).... (r) The screen, window, and wall are circa sixth century; I am circa the 1960s. 
Below:  Rita and I trying to record the powerful allure of Constantinople's waterfront and skyline.
waterfront.jpg