Wine, Stalin & Tbilisi



Tbilisi

I headed to Tbilisi from Armenia, folded into the back of a bumpy minibus. My seat was a crate of watermelons & a toddler napped on my rucksack. I took a battered taxi to the old town, but walked the final stretch after the fuel warning light blinked on the dashboard & it spluttered to a halt. Tbilisi’s old town was both dustily atmospheric and falling to bits. I cleansed myself in one of the city’s communal baths, pummeled by an old man with giant soapy hands and headed to Gori to confront Georgia’s elephant in the room.

Gori is Stalin’s hometown, an hour’s shared-taxi journey in a brand new BMW from Tbilisi, the road skimming close to the Ossetian border. Rigid lines of rusty-red shacks studded the slopes; A refugee camp thrown together following Georgia’s latest skirmish with Mother Russia.



Man of Steel

Stalin’s boyhood home has been incongruously preserved in the centre of town, enclosed by classical columns and shielding a museum that told a story but never the whole truth. There was a sharp focus on WW2 [USSR’s Great Patriotic War] and Stalin’s achievements. After that it presented a web of spin & doctored photographs. Five year plans and collectivizations without the famines and Siberian labour camps. I bought a chapbook of Stalin’s boyhood poetry & a bottle of undrinkable sweet red wine. From Gori I headed to the Eastern town of Sighnaghi, the new epicentre of Georgian victiculture. The whole industry is undergoing a reboot after a Russian export blockcade had derailed it following Geogia’s succession. Stalin’s sweet-tooth influence has been supplemented by international recognition, particularly among the reds. Each label is transcribed by the gorgeously curly Georgian alphabet. However, in some lines naiviety triumphs & I couldn’t resist a bottle of Sparking Wine.
 

Sighnaghi

Sighnaghi has been heavily restored and felt slightly staged, as if it had been scrubbed too hard. Close to the town was a stone chapel dedicated to the fourth century St Nino, where I submerged into the healing waters of a natural spring.

This incongruous mix of the ancient & the modern formed my overriding impression of Georgia; Early saints & modern bodegas; new BMWs & petrol-scrimping cabbies. Georgia is a beautiful & ancient country, shoving away from Soviet rule, but tearing away fragments as it does so. The overriding issue for Georgia is this; what can you do when your most famous son is Joseph Stalin?

Thrace & the Rhodopes

On the Eastern Thracian plain in modern day Bulgaria lies Plovdiv, a many-layered city spread across several hills & atop capricious plates. I stayed in the steep, cobbled old town which crumbles over the Soviet-designed modern centre. Visible underneath is a Roman city whose contours still define the modern street plan. A 1970s earthquake exposed a large amphitheatre and looking south from the top row of seats, the jagged Rhodope Mountains line the horizon, creating a natural border with Greece.

Deep within the Rhodope Mountains lies the Devil’s Throat, a cave complex where Orpheus descended into the underworld to rescue Eurydice only to look back and lose her forever. The mountain roads crawl up to modern ski resorts and dip down to dense wood-lined valleys. Scattered in the mountains are low-walled foundations and white stone burial chambers; remnants of the ancient land of the Thracians.

Plovdiv

I crisscrossed the valleys in a series of minibuses, bought Mursalski, an aphrodisiac tea & in the evenings, drank wine grown from Thracian vines. I stayed a night in Eliza’s Guesthouse in Trigrad, a village close to a roaring gorge and followed Orpheus’ footsteps into the underworld. Eliza cooked Rhodope Pie for me, a Bulgarian version of Tortilla Espanola, puffed with local potatoes and mountain herbs. She was in her fifties, a teacher, and her wrists were strung with red & white Martenitsa, awaiting the spring. We spoke about the Soviet era and her attitude was even-handed. Everyone had jobs & pensions but little freedom and the atmosphere was one of suspicion even in small villages. You had to constantly look over your shoulder.

Heading back to Plovdiv, I stopped off in the Rhodope foothills at the Monastery of Bachkovo. The monastic buildings are coloured with frescos & thick with incense, shielded by a perimeter of stone walls. My guidebook suggested an overnight stay was possible & I was intrigued. I’ve slept in caves & luxury Paradores, in castles and even a tent in my back garden in London, but never in a monastery.

“Do you speak English?” I asked a group of monks. No, they didn’t. “German?” they asked. I didn’t. “French?” Umm. I was given an interview with one of the Fathers in an oak-lined study. His French was far superior to mine but we found common ground and I left with a large iron key and a warning to be back by dusk when the monastery closes its doors to the outside world. I took the bus back to Plovdiv, buying bread and cheese & wine, hiding the bottle in my rucksack, unsure of Eastern Orthodox protocol regarding alcohol. It was red wine, at least.

The room was square & plain with polished wooden floors and a southern window onto the Rhodopes. I read Kapka Kassabova’s memoir of growing up in Soviet Bulgaria and ate a simple meal. The plumbing clunked a little but then settled down and quickly became noiseless. By late-evening the monastery was in complete darkness & the silence was total. There was nothing to do but go to bed. I was awoken by a cliché; a cockerel crowing from the monastery’s in-house menagerie. The best night’s sleep I’ve had since the children were born.

Rock in Vaduz

Vaduz is a neat village masquerading as a capital city and I stayed a night while hopping between Austria & Switzerland. Pricey business hotels lined the main street but cheaper accommodation lay just outside the centre and I was drawn in by a tall brick B&B sporting a wall of blinking flashbulbs. The manager of the pension was a little unwelcoming; “Rock band” he said glumly, and pointed to the floor.

Steps led down from the lobby to a door marked “DISCO BAR”. I asked for a top floor bedroom but still the percussion rattled my shutters. I couldn’t beat the noise so I joined it. Who knew Liechtenstein had an alternative rock scene? Well here it was, squashed loud & sweaty into the basement of my pension. Pierced Goths, tattooed metalheads and, incongruously, a smartly dressed 50 something couple were all shoehorned into this tight space.

A band, sounding like a Germanic Black Sabbath played forever. The singer wrapped himself around the microphone as the band ran through the usual rock clichés. They even had a stage-diver although there’s little danger in leaping from a foot high stage onto an empty dancefloor. After four unearned encores the band shuffled off. “Goodnight, Vaduz!” shouted the singer swaggering off in leather trousers and sunglasses. He headed directly over to the 50 somethings and gave them both a kiss, blowing his cool somewhat as they turned out to be his parents.

Catching the bus from Dilijan to Vanadzor

I bought my ticket and sat outside the small bus station in Dilijan. This pretty Armenian spa town quietly markets itself as Little Switzerland & is perched high in the green hills, far away from the dusty earthquake-battered capital, Yerevan. It was the final bus of the day and the sun was dipping into the horizon. It was also twenty minutes late and the driver, in a bid to recover time, accelerated past the terminal. I stood up, flapping my arms around. Two staff from the bus station came out, also flapping their arms & then disappeared back into the station. The bus turned a corner and left town. If I didn’t get to Vanadzor, I couldn’t get to Tbilisi in Georgia. If I couldn’t get to Tbilisi, I couldn’t get home to London. I was travel-stained & tired. So, I did what I always do in situations of utter hopelessness. I kicked my rucksack.

Concrete Beauty

But then the two bus station employees reappeared & ushered me into a mud-splattered minivan. We raced off in pursuit, running red lights and leaning on the horn to scatter the traffic.  Luckily our target was an old American school bus and we glimpsed its taillights a mile out of town, crawling up an incline in first gear. The minivan shunted past and drew to an abrupt stop in front of the startled driver. There followed a further series of arm signals until the bus door hissed open and I climbed the steps waving my ticket and pointing back to the town trying to explain the situation in the absence of shared language.

 

After this unlikely start, the bus inched up a narrow ridge riding above the beautiful villages belonging to the Molokans. Rejecting orthodoxy, the Molokans are an ultra-conservative group who face away from the modern world and live in steep green valley settlements like Fioletovo.

The bus crunched through the narrow passes with the valley spread out below; patterned by hayricks and smoking chimneys & populated by men on horseback and women in black headscarves. Lilac dusk dropped across the valley and as the light diminished and the senses readjusted, the tang of woodsmoke drifted into the bus and I slept the final miles into Vanadzor. This is how I will always remember Armenia; a beautiful journey made possible by a spontaneous act of kindness.