Westward Ho: Tbilisi to Chicago

Fortunately, in mid-June, just when the Tbilisi Transport Company fired up its ovens on buses and in metro stations, I headed north, way north, to the West.

The metro in Tbilisi moves fast enough between stations to prevent sweat from sliding down into my eyes - as long as I am sitting towards the back of the car and catching a draft from the street-sign-sized windows. The best spot, though, except for anemic and claustrophobic riders, is standing in front of a pair of doors because, as long as the train is moving, air is rushing in between the rubber molding at 45-to-50 kilometers per hour.

The metro stations are impermeable bunkers of thick body heat. My undershirts stick to my back by the time I tap my fare card and knee the turnstile. The only respite comes when trains approach the platforms and whip up a bit of the stale air.

The buses, though, are so hot I bet you can fry an egg on any seat. They move slower than the train and stop more often - for passengers as well as traffic. The only relatively comfortable seat is all the way in the back, on the driver's side, where a street-sign-sized window opens. I am tall enough that I can sit with my face right in front of the window to get a decent breeze when the bus is in motion. 

It was refreshing, then, to say the least, as Tbilisi heated up, to meander about northeastern Europe for three weeks where I 1) visited with a Korean university professor and two Latvian English teachers whom I hadn't seen since 2009, 2) attended a graduation ceremony at the Tapa high school I had taught at from 2006 to 2009, 3) saw one of my former students and her family whom I had missed when I passed through Helsinki in 2013, and 4) spent a week in northeastern Iceland with an American I had hired to replace me in Tapa. Along the way, I ate a mūka mielasts, walked through Patarei vangla and the Avinurme tünnilaat, got sun-burned on Hietarannan, and slept in a plastic pod on the coast of the Norwegian Sea. The temperature dropped from 74 degrees during the day in Tbilisi to 43 degrees at night in Thorshofn. 

Tbilisi > Riga: 2,891 miles via Air Baltic
It was a rather comfortable, pre-dawn flight back to the West, the EU, the euro zone, and Schengen. Walking the streets of central Riga around Bastejkalna parks, I kept thinking I was in a rich Scandinavian country. The four-hour flight wasn't long enough, though, for me to forget crossing Khizanishvili Street in Gldani one lane at a time.  

Riga > Tallinn: 192 miles via Lux Exp
Back in the day (or in present-day Georgia), the four-hour coach trip, albeit on a two-lane highway, would have taken just two hours. I think the driver went the speed limit, at best, the entire time. Yet he left a woman behind in Pärnu who had alighted to buy some snacks.
  
Tallinn > Helsinki: 52 miles on the Superstar
I successfully connected to the free wifi in the Tallinn terminal, wheeled about 30 kilos of luggage up to and down from the top deck of the ship, bought a single-ride ticket from a machine outside the Helsinki terminal, and took the #9 tram to my hotel across from the rautatiesema.

Helsinki > Reykjavik: 2,074 miles on Iceland Air
The Finnair bus to Vantaa left as scheduled, had free wifi, broadcasted the route on monitors with our current location noted, and posted estimated arrival times to each terminal.

Reykjavik > Thorshofn > Reykjavik: 785 miles

Reykjavik > Chicago: 4,756 miles on Iceland Air

In September 2015, my flight from Chicago to Tbilisi through Vienna was about 6,800 miles. This summer, my trip back to Chicago on planes, a coach, trains, and a ship was almost 11,000 miles.

American French Georgian French Toast

After the Orthodox New Year and Epiphany in January, I had begun the case for extending my six-month assignment with the Tbilisi Urban Area Development Program at World Vision Georgia into a nine-month gig to maintain continuity. The students started the school year with me, so why wouldn't they finish with me? Right? It took a five-page request with a letter of support to convince the Peace Corps.

In May, then, under unreachable blue skies instead of four low-hanging light bulbs, surrounded by timid fir trees instead of chipped walls of lackluster colors, in the school's neglected athletic field that bore flowering weeds for handmade head wreaths, my Wednesday afternoon class and I played bomba, balibuli, and es burti es burti, that is, in English, monkey in the middle, dodge ball, and spud, respectively. We also played a few innings of baseball and several rounds of G-rated spin the bottle and truth or dare on warped bleachers baring rusty nails.

My black dress shoes, clinical obesity, and AARP-qualifying age put me at a slight competitive disadvantage against 10-to-12 year olds, but I was more engaged (and, subsequently, breathing more heavily) than the P.E. teachers who came out with their classes and sat on a rock.

Spud - I had not heard it or seen it for more than 40 years, let alone played it. Did it come from Georgia? How did it get to Temka? I wondered exactly the same thing when, one evening, my host grandmother served "French toast", or, well, sliced bread dipped in egg yolks and fried on both sides. Should we be calling it "Georgian toast"? Back in 1998 in Tartu, Estonia, my host father fried sliced bread in the grease left in a pan sitting on top of the stove. (He also boiled day-old coffee for breakfast.)  

Who first lathered fried bread with butter and then poured corn syrup on it? Or, perhaps more importantly, why do we make fried bread so sweet? Does every American eat "French toast" for breakfast? The beauty of living in another culture is contemplating that neither we Americans nor French ever invented French toast but that we borrowed what existed and adapted it to our (sweet) tastes and resources (inexpensive high fructose corn syrup). 

Old Georgia on Film

Being o'er My Head

The Avlabari quarter is just across the river from Old Tbilisi. It's the next stop on the metro after Freedom Square, and its underground platform greets riders with a smell of rotten eggs (eeewww!) from the nearby sulfur baths (ooohhh). The approach to Old Tbilisi from Avlabari, walking down "Wine Rise" at a perilous 30 degree angle towards King Vakhtang, offers more money shots, both at night and during the day, than the tree-capped view coming down from the Dunkin' Donuts on Freedom Square. Avlabari is Tbilisi's La Rive Gauche, home to the glass-domed Presidential Palace, the gold-domed Holy Trinity Cathedral, and a mom-and-pop convenience store where I used English, Russian, and Georgian to purchase homemade red wine in a re-used, two-liter, plastic soda bottle that came from under the counter.

It's also noted for its wooden and wrought iron balconies, which I had fun taking pictures of one Sunday morning.

Now is the time for all good men