Bedoba: Your Lucky Day

Today Georgians have a special tradition. It’s the Day of Luck, or “Bedoba”. Whatever you do today is how you’ll spend the rest of the year—though often in a more symbolic day. It’s sort of like a more concrete set of resolutions: You make your resolutions, do them all today, and by luck they’ll stick goshdangit.

Georgians on this day tend to stuff themselves with sweets, especially gozinaki, a kind of walnut or hazelnut brittle. It doesn’t mean that you’ll be eating sweets for the rest of the year, but rather that the rest of your year will be sweet. Likewise, you should do some work today to have a productive year, spend time with your loved ones to have a loving year, and so on.

Last year for instance, my wife and I spent Bedoba in Munich with a 10-hour layover. As a couple of Christmas markets were still open, we spent the day sipping hot wine, eating sausages and schnitzel, and visiting T.K. Maxx for some cheap, decent quality clothes. Subsequently our year was full of wine drinking, Teo got sent to Germany twice on work, and we got a baby (not sure where that fits in).

Sipping on mulled wine in Munich, circa 2019

And that’s why today I’m writing this blog—I’m hoping this year will be productive. I’ve got lots of professional plans, from writing to music, not to mention raising a newborn baby, so my plate is pretty full. That means today I’ll be writing a blog, working on my upcoming Facetious Guide to Czechia, writing a bit on a short story, working on a song, practicing accordion, and last but not least take my baby to a Christmas market.

Last year's Tbilisi Christmas market (2018-2019)

Which leads me to another thing about Georgian culture. The brand of Orthodox Christianity here still uses the old Julian calendar, the same one we used to use until a pope changed it in the 1600s (Pope Gregory, hence the “Gregorian Calendar”). As the Julian calendar didn’t account for leap years, Christmas kept drifting off, and everyone realized it was going to eventually be a summertime festival rather than a winter solstice festival. So Pope Gregory added a day every four years (except on years with multiples of ten or something like that) and fixed it. By that time though, the One Catholic and Orthodox Faith had long since splintered in pretty solid and unfixable ways, so the Eastern Christians (Orthodox) still looked at this new calendar fairly skeptically. Eventually they’d add a leap day themselves to fix it, but not for another couple of hundred years, which meant the Orthodox liturgical calendar is quite a few days off from the Gregorian calendar, and their December 25 is our January 7. To add to the confusion, the Soviets had changed the calendar of every day use to the Gregorian calendar, aligning it with the rest of the secular world. So even though Georgians might refer to Christmas as January 7, it’s actually December 25 on their religious calendar (but still the 7 on their secular political calendar).

At the Tbilisi Christmas market (2018-2019), smoke from barbecue

All that to say that Georgians—who have long seen themselves as spanning Eastern and Western culture in a variety of senses—have found double the reason to party. They’re beginning to embrace the rampant commercialism and materialism that goes along with Western Christmas, which includes the standard Germanic Christmas carols at the beginning of November to Instagram moments with an alien creature known as the Santa Claus (traditionally they have a guy named Tovlis Babua, or Grandaddy Snow, who does the same thing but usually dresses in blue and wears a traditional Svan hat). So now Western Christmas is a Georgian reason to party, and it kind of opens up their Christmas season. Their newly styled Christmas/New Years markets start on December 25, with a Christmas/New Years tree lighting, and they go through the New Years and don’t end until Georgian Christmas on January 7. Which actually acts quite nicely and perfectly for tourism to boot and that for Westerners, even the New Years “season” is quite festive.

Tovlis Babua is quite a different guy than Santa...

Traditional yarn toys for sale. Krokodil Gena from the Cheburashka children's show pictured

So guys, make your resolutions. And plant them in the ground today on Bedoba by doing them and getting off to a proper start. May your year be sweet and full of love!

Borjomi: Ruins of a Resort

You can watch the blog instead of reading it here

Borjomi was the bizarre wonderland of the Russian tsars. I say “bizarre” because if I was the supreme ruler of the Caucasus, than it really is a peculiar place to choose. It’s certainly a beautiful place, but kind of on a second tier of beautiful places in a region that abounds in beautiful places. And the thing that’s really made it famous, the springs, is a far cry from something I’d spend two weeks and a large guard to get to and hang out at. But it became the local Romanov go-to vacation resort, and as such, what once was a military garrison town popped up palace after palace to cater to the affairs of the Court and the hundreds of attendants and secretaries that would follow along.

First impressions

When I first went to Borjomi 10 years ago, I saw what appeared to be the ruins of a resort town. Something of a town post-collapse, mites and beetles hiding underneath the remains of what must have been a glorious Soviet getaway. But in the weirdness that was Soviet and Russian culture, it was all ruins of a strange children’s kitsch, as though some factory in China were busy making slight alterations to Disney characters to make second-rate themed amusement rides for developing countries. And though that’s still very much the case now, back then it was even weirder, what with all the vines and vegetation that was then growing over everything (now it's only growing over half of everything).

Random corner near the park

The parks are filled with falling apart buildings, old hotels and past-Pioneer lodges, swimming pool projects that were never finished, half-planned dreams that were never even half-realized. But around these crumbling concrete aberrations there is still life. A small bazaar of Chinese children’s toys here, Russians having a faux-supra with rot wine there, some Saudis piling onto a jeep to ride the nature trail over there. Sometimes a new guesthouse sprouts some life like a hopeful seedling trying to break free through the shadowy undergrowth.

I do find this kind of living ruin a bit charming, and it certainly is a quiet escape from the bustle and hubbub that Tbilisi can get to be. The town is snuggled in a valley in the low Lesser Caucasus, following the Mtkvari River north and south, and going up a gentle gorge along a rapid spring perpendicular to the river. There’s a nice boardwalk that follows the river, with several bridges spanning the way. It forms the main artery of life for the town, where the locals wander and gather and live primarily. Most of the towns shops and amenities can be found here, as well as a growing number of guesthouses.

Still a few fancy hotels along the tourist route

The gorge features a whitewater spring as well as the premiere boardwalk of the town. It was along here that tourism was originally oriented. Indeed, it’s a cozy and beautiful stretch, almost a walk in the woods along a river except for the woods on occasion being broken up by high dollar hotels, palaces, and glamorous buildings-that-once-were. Truly, at every turn it’s hard to tell if Borjomi is a town coming up or coming down.

a river runs through it

The founding of a resort

Borjomi was “discovered” (in much the same way white people discover things everywhere where people are already living) by the Russians in the 1810s (indeed, Georgians have been living there since practically the dawn of time, but to be fair the Ottomans had basically murdered or forced out everyone living in the valley, so perhaps “discovered” is an okay enough term). Russians, like Europeans anywhere during that time, were obsessed with the fad of “curative waters”. When Russians had finally annexed Georgia and gave the Ottomans a romping, the soldiers who were garrisoned there found some curative waters of their own. They set up some baths and had a party.

But then the governor discovered the party. The Russian Viceroy Yevgeny Golovin brought his daughter there, which triggered a whole array of Russian nobility to flood the valley and brought the place back to life, with palaces, resorts, and several mineral water bottling companies, giving Borjomi its current fame.

Because of the huge attention then brought on by the nobility, it became a destination of sorts for Russians. Many just wanted to get out of the cold, wintry hell that was (insert Russian city name here) and relocate to somewhere inhabitable and friendly (give or take an Ottoman or two). Some came with the military and decided to stay, having now a Georgian son or daughter. Whatever the case, it was quickly Russified and by the turn of the 20th century there ended up being more Russians than Georgians even.

Modern times

Even today, Borjomi is very much a Russian town. Russians still flock there, despite it being something of a forgotten paradise, enjoying the Chinese trinkets available in the rows of souvenir shops, and the broken, run-down amusement park left behind by the Communist overlords of days past, the swings and ropes dangling in the wind as if still played on by the ghosts of an economic Chernobyl. And though more Georgians live there these days, they’ve kind of given up on being Georgian and many continue speaking Russian as the main language, indeed it’s more useful business-wise with all the tourists. When I try to speak Georgian to local staff, they mostly ignore it and continue speaking Russian. The assumption being that I’m a tourist in Borjomi and the ONLY tourists in Borjomi are Russians (unless of course, my wife were clad in a niqab), so I must speak Russian (of which I do, but that’s beside the point).

Chinese trinket shops (and some local honey) line the walk

In every way Borjomi is truly set to be a tourism paradise if it just can get out of its post-Soviet spell of sluggishness. From Borjomi, it’s a short train ride/drive to Bakuriani, one of the main Alpine ski resorts in the country. Across the river is Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park, one of the better developed hiking zones in Georgia (granted, whoever made the trails there needs to learn about switchbacks). About 2 hours away is the cave monastery of Vardzia, one hour to Rabati, and a score of other historic monasteries, and all up and down the valley in which Borjomi sits there is littered monastery and castle after monastery and castle.

So why is it still so… sleepy?

I brought my guests there this last time around, and nothing was open before 10. Literally nothing. Which meant not even a coffee or a croissant (if you’re lucky, you might find a Mobile Coffee van lingering about in the morning mists). The restaurants for the most part are still focused on only serving the Georgian “peasant food”, that is, khachapuri and khinkali, neither of which are local to Borjomi, and each restaurant isn’t that much different from the next. Price and atmosphere are really the only variations here. Do you want faux-fancy, with white everything? Then head to the rail station and stop at Rcheuli or Metropoli. Do you want faux-folk? Old Borjomi is a good choice (probably the tastiest option) or Inka. Everything in town though seems leftover from a previous Age, a general feeling of malaise… or waiting… Hanging about town gives you the constant feeling that something is going to happen... and then nothing ever does.

Borjomi Park

Crowning the boardwalk in what once was a beautiful square and now is a beautiful parking lot, there’s a long children’s park most of which I’ve described that follows the river. There are some neat things, like a children’s ropes course (not that it functions) and some bumper cars. There are a lot of things that don’t operate anymore too, like a rollercoaster, swimming pool, and whatever the heck the permanently under reconstruction building was.

The main thing to see in the park is the Statue of Prometheus, which sits at the base of a 20 meter waterfall. It’s surprisingly easy to miss. However, as you walk along, you’ll pass over a bridge and then there will be a little sitting area on the left. The statue is on the opposite side of the river.

Prometheus, who was chained to a mountain in the Caucasus

Past the developed park is the nature trail. It’s a pleasant walk, except that you have to jump out of the way of the occasional 4X4. I’m not sure why Georgians seem to want to develop tourism around people who don’t want to walk, but that’s the thing, so better to just get over it and stay on your toes.

Also near the entrance is the famed "Borjomi spring" where you can fill up your own non-carbonated Borjomi mineral water. For some reason, you're not allowed to bring 5-gallon jugs, but anything smaller is fine. You could even bring 5 one-gallon jugs if you wanted to.

fill up your jugs with this self-prescribed hangover medication

There's a nominal fee of 2 lari a person into the park.

You can also ride the Soviet cable car up to another amusement park above the city, which has a ferris wheel, some lookouts, a couple of cafes, a monastery, and a long walk along a auto road to come to the springs from above.

Borjomi Springs

I mentioned before the sorry state of the springs. But now they’ve renovated it. After about a 45-minute walk down the river, through the children's park and down the hiking trail, you’ll find yourself at a modern swimming pool with changing rooms and fairly clean squat toilets. The entry is 5 lari a person, on top of the 2 lari you paid into the park itself. There’s a little bar too, but prepare to pay exorbitant amounts of money for anything to drink.

Don’t expect hot water though. It’s not a “hot spring”, but a “mineral spring” (smells of sulfur, like the baths in Tbilisi, but not hot). The water is lukewarm at best. I actually think they should just install some water heaters and fake it. We went in autumn, and it was barely enough to knock the chill off. So best time to partake in mineral water activities is in the summer.

The future

Borjomi could do more to highlight its connection to Bakuriani, making the jump from train to train easier (for now you have to go across town, with no clear public transit—there actually is a modern bus that follows the river, but you’ve got to figure that one out on your own). Update the train, currently it’s just an elektrichka that clugs along—why depend on marshrutkas when you HAVE A BLEEPING TRAIN LINE?!!! The recreation area can be tended a bit better too. Though it’s great they’ve made the effort for a family inclusive environment, half of the playground equipment in the main park isn’t maintained or used. Clear it out. Make some places for romantic getaways (don’t forget how babies are made in the first place!).

Rent from the best company in Georgia, Family Cars

My ultimate dream though is to be able to take a canoe down the Mtkvari from Borjomi to Tbilisi. Really, my dream is from Vardzia to Tbilisi, but I realize that might be stretching it. As it is, it’s not really a near possibility, but I’ve got my fingers crossed… We also ran into a lot of bicyclists, but that’s got to be a nightmare route, contending with the drivers on the narrow Borjomi road. Now a bicycle/hiking path… okay, the sooner I get back to drinking some wine the sooner I might get my head out of the clouds…

#Borjomi #holidays #touristicsites #southgeorgia

Rabati Reborn

It was once a pile of crumbling ruins on the hill of a sad metropolis. Always grey skies, or raining, or if not that then sunny, hot, and dusty. Then one day someone had a grand vision to rebuild it all and make a wedding house out of it, somewhere nice for the locals of Akhalsitkhe to take fancy pictures and maybe not have their celebration in some hotel that for the rest of the year serves as a brothel or a refuge for very lost tourists.

That is, I guess, how Rabati came to be.

And why not?

I’ll admit I’ve been a detractor myself. But what was once there before was hardly a useful place to bring tourists, and now that I’ve been to Rabati with bright-eyed tourists not yet bogged down by the cynicism of thousands of liters of wine, I’ve grown to appreciate the site myself.

entering Rabati

A bit of history

The grounds here are fertile with history, and though what has bloomed is nothing but a complex of hotels, meeting rooms, and Instagram-perfect portrait studios, it’s still something beautiful where there was only the vague remnants of grey stone. And to their credit, they took some effort to restore the semblance of the great castle and citadel that once stood there. So why not indeed?

Come for the castle, stay for the "Gino paradise", whatever that means

What stands now as Rabati Castle was first built by Georgians as Lomisa Castle in the 9th century and by the 13th century was the capital of the Principality of Samtskhe, ruled over by the House of Jakeli. Here Queen Tamar often stayed, commanding her legions against the Turks, sending out her husband-consort David Soslan to crush the Turks at Bassiani and secure a hundred years or so of peace and prosperity for the Georgians.

Those golden years would end with Tamerlane and his “Mongols” riding in and devastating any land that would stand against him. In 1393, Lomisa finally fell. The fortress carried on nominally independent but mostly under Persian Safavid rule, a dismal reminder of what glory there had once been, until finally it was ceded to the Ottomans in 1590.

The Ottomans completely redesigned the castle. A medieval city within the curtain walls (now something of a park and restaurant/hotel complex) led up the stairs to the actual castle, itself having two more layers. There was the outer layer, which held the mosque and an Islamic school (and an Orthodox church that managed to peter on through the Ottoman regime, good news for all those weddings), and the further interior containing the citadel, where the regional governor would have lived and also where the dungeon was (and in the case of an invasion, the site of a last stand for the castle).

The mosque, freshly restored during the renovations (but only as a museum... until Hagia Sophia is restored!)

The Ottomans were constantly banging heads with the Romanovs, as the Turkish and Russian empires shared a very long border, from Crimea down to Armenia, tearing the Georgian territories into numerous parts. The Russians, for their part, were at least gluing some of those bits together under their own sovereignty, and in 1810 launched an attack to claim Samskhe-Javakheti, which meant confronting the Ottomans at Rabati. The Ottomans held up, but finally lost to the combined Russian and Georgian forces under the Russian general, Ivan Paskevich after some 30 years of intermittent fighting.

The old madrasa

It was then largely abandoned and ignored, falling into severe ruin (like most of the string of fortresses in the region), until 2011 when renovations took place (unlike most of the string of fortresses in the region). If you want to get a look at an “authentic” castle, or get a feel for what Rabati once looked like, you can visit Akhalkalaki, about an hour and a half away.

Akhaltsikhe from above

Feeling like a wedding? Just maybe you'll get some better weather...

Now though there are beautiful gardens, a wedding chapel, a history museum, and a citadel, all back and looking as good as new... because they are as good as new. You can walk along the ramparts, explore the entrance tunnels, view the city from above, and see an exhibit of what Meskhetian houses look like (in the citadel).

Heading up to the citadel

The castle gardens... one wonders if it was so beautiful in medieval times...

Getting to Rabati isn't too hard, but it is uncomfortable, as passenger rail no longer goes there from Tbilisi (you can take it as far as Borjomi, then you have to get on a marshrutka, I have no idea when this stopped, but it's clear that there was passenger rail in Soviet times, a period which any train lover gets all teary-eyed). It is, luckily, only a 10 minute walk from the marshrutka station. Akhalsitkhe Marshrutkas leave from Didube in Tbilisi.

If you're driving, note that the parking lot and entrance to the castle is here. At the traffic circle, you'll want to go under the passenger rail bridge.

Not just Rabati

There’s a history museum there. But I recommend anyone visiting to go there before 6 and actually see it. I’ve never been, as Rabati is always my last stop giving tours, first Vardzia, then Khertvisi, then here. If you have the time, Akhalsitkhe is definitely worth visiting for a few days, so to also see all the secondary sites, and here I don’t mean just the history museum, but also 10th century Sapara Monastery (if you haven’t been overwhelmed by churches and monasteries on your visit to Georgia, than perhaps this a tier one sight, better than Rabati), Tmogvi, Vanis Cave Monastery, the old half-abandoned mud-roofed Meskhetian villages, and by extension the megaliths on the other side of the Tianeti Range. But if you have a day you’ve got a day, eh?

There will always be those detractors about Rabati, claiming this or that is not “authentic” enough. Go around half of Europe. You mean to tell me those castles are the least bit authentic?

Where to stay and eat?

I've only stayed in Akhalsitkhe once. It was in a real budget-rate hotel, with an Armenian wedding going on downstairs, and I imagine the place wasn't used for anything savory during the off season. But Akhalsitkhe looks light years better than what I remember it as, and might be even worth a visit. If you've got the money, you can even stay at a luxury hotel within the castle itself: Hotel Gino Wellness. The restaurant across from there is also strangely affordable for being right smack in the middle of the main tourist attraction.

Hotel Gino's internal examination

If you're staying, I recommend eating at Pizza and Cake House at 61 Kostava and ordering a pizza. It's more of a xachapuri/pizza or perhaps a calzone, with the pizza baked into the bread itself. We ordered one set of topping and got another set, so be ready for a surprise. It was delicious though, so I can't argue about what we got.

If you want to eat on the road to or from Vardzia, I'd recommend hitting Cafe Leki, which is about at the halfway point on the highway. Super friendly people, and their entire selection of food is grown and slaughtered by the family, from tomatoes to pigs.

If you don't have a car, then it's easiest to stay in town. If you do have a car, then maybe it's even better to make this trip into two or three nights and base yourself near Vardzia at my favorite place, Guesthouse Tirebi in Aspindza.

#Akhaltsikhe #Rabati #castles #touristicsites #history