the traditional georgian breakfast

One year ago, if you were looking for a decent breakfast in Georgia, you'd be hard pressed. In the small villages that dot the pristine Iverian countryside, activity doesn't begin until 10 or 11, and by then the few cafes that might exist are already preparing cheese-breads for lunch. The only thing that lingers on the roads that early, other than students walking to school, is the occasional slumbering street dog or the couple of cows headed down the road to the pasture. In the capital city of Tbilisi, the situation isn't much different. A walk around at nine o'clock is akin to walking around New York at 5, though there's more wildlife in the form of lurking dogs and the cats that live in dumpsters, scattering at any sign of nearby movement (and much less sleeping vagrants gathered around steam vents). At homes, when breakfast is served, it seems that the "traditional Georgian" breakfast is simply the leftover food from the night before, left out in a pot sitting on and idle stove top.

The timing is, of course, one thing I love about living in Georgia. I never have to worry about getting a job that expects me in the office much before 10, which is ideal for a night owl like me. But on the other hand, getting a breakfast, even after 10, has been downright near impossible. Not even McDonald's serves breakfast, which I think is a simple sacrilege in the name of Ronald McDonald himself. Cheeseburgers for breakfast? Really, guys?! And you call yourself Europeans! I think though, with the influx of tourists and expats over the past few years, that this trend has finally begun to change, though there's still no hope in sight for the honored American institution that takes the premiere places across Tbilisi.

I woke up one morning and stumbled to Meidani Square, the main square of the Old Town, surrounded by refurbished, centuries old buildings - and new buildings that at least are made in a similar style - ringed with colorful balconies and hanging green plants. All the greenery nearly reminds me of Louisiana, a place in the States also known for its balconies, shades of green and lazy, sunny afternoons. A few of my friends were gathered on the porch of Tartine, a French restaurant that has long been an establishment on the plaza. It's a restaurant I rarely visit, since there's no dish under 15 lari, so it's out of the range of my own proletarian refinement, but as I watched dish after dish being served to my friends, I had to second guess my sensibilities. There was a soup, a salad, some eggs benedict, coffee, mimosas, and so on and so forth. Like a babushka yelling at her drunk grandson, the tirade of food never ended. "What is this?"

"This is the Sunday brunch," they informed me. "It's 32 lari." I guffawed, but was quickly in control of myself after doing a quick calculation of all of the cuisine that had passed before my eyes and into their stomachs. Was this the beginning of a new stage of European development that Georgia was beginning to see? Breakfast?

Next I witnessed a local grocery store, Smart on Rustaveli, serving all sorts of danishes and croussants, all of which are delicious. Something was happening. But with the current rise of anti-Western attitude, I can only imagine that there might be a frothing mob of priests and birjaviki united again, outside the supermarket, chanting such anti-Western slogans like, "You can take your breakfasts back and eat it, America and Netherlands!" or "Breakfasts are destroying the fabric of Georgian culture!" or "We are not a breakfast country!" or lastly, "Geobreakfastgia ara!"

Good things come in cycles here, so maybe after the initial, anti-breakfast reaction, we will see pro-breakfast riots and then some sensible dialogue in the form of internet memes. Then I can finally see and taste again what all of us expats have long been anticipating, an Egg McMuffin.   

a modest proposal for the problem of homosexuality

To my fellow Christian brothers and sisters:

I am not a homophobe, but values and children must be protected - allowing homosexuals to run rampant, like they do in Amsterdam or in America - would only destroy culture and create bad examples for children. We must always strive to be good examples for our children! And we must preserve the cultural integrity of our ancient people. Traditions and cultures are immortal and immutable things. If something changes, then already it is not the same culture, it is a different one.

When we see something that is so different, we must therefore crush it before it crushes us. Sure, the other day there may have been only a handful of homosexuals, and there may have been a much larger number of righteous men, but if we as a society condoned fagotry, then - like in America and Amsterdam - the numbers might one day be reversed. And then what would our culture be? Think of the children! And in that future, what children would there be?

I am not a homophobe. But understand me, if homosexuals were allowed to be open and free, the children would be corrupted. Homosexuality is such a strong impulse that it would be impossible for them to choose another lifestyle. It is like a disease, it spreads, by touch, whisper in the ear or exchange of fluids, like any other disease. The children - who are not yet firm in proper values - are prone to catching this pestilence. But it is true that anyone can catch it, no matter how heterosexual you may be, one day you too may wake in the bed of another man. So if you do not think of the children, think even then for yourself - do you want to be one of those sexual libertines who would then be condemned to both life and afterlife in Hell? If you had a choice, wouldn't you want to stay then straight, so that life would be easier and your friends and family might not curse you and mobs not trample you? So one must stay the true and narrow path that God has ordained for us, for truly it is the happy and the righteous path, and we must rid ourselves of this disease before we catch it, too.

We know now that homosexuality can even be genetic, that if they are allowed to breed then their children will also be homosexuals. So the solution to the homosexual problem cannot even be to force them to be straight and marry. They then would have children who would be homosexuals and would continue to spread this plague. No, there is but one answer.

God has chosen you to spread His seed, to raise up new generations of men - who love, care and nurture each other. Homosexuality then, is clearly not in God's plan and therefore must be liquidated, as all other evils and evil doers. Should we allow drug users, murderers and rapists to run free and proud? No, it is better to extinguish them, for the criminal - and what is a gay if not a criminal? - must quickly be dealt with - he must be given spiritual guidance to come back like the prodigal son - though to be honest, most gays are lost souls, mere carriers now of greater evils. If such guidance does not work, then the loving heart of God - for the children, mind you, they must have good and honest examples - calls upon us to become the Militant, to cleanse our society of the impure, to beat the unrepentant to repentance, or to hang them for their crimes against humanity. It is but a modest proposal to execute all those homosexuals and those with homosexual tendencies - like men holding hands, holding each other in each other's arms or kissing, even so much as on the cheek! - in God's loving name. For He did not come in peace, but with a sword, to divide us and prepare us for His kingdom.

Amin.   

the darkness within

May 17 is the day to mark when the World Health Organization removed "homosexuality" as a "disease", back in 1990. It's since been marked by gay pride parades and Days Against Homophobia. What is homophobia? Homophobia is a hatred people have for others who are different and who they don't understand - that is, the hatred of homosexuals. Of course, as time progressed through the States, we came to understand what homophobia really is - the self-hatred for feeling homosexual tendencies oneself. For example, I have no inclination towards being gay. I have a firm love for the tata and the pootang, so therefore I have no problems with my gay brothers and sisters. They simply have different preferences than myself. Some like Coke, others like Pepsi, and yet others prefer beer. Should I, as a beer lover, hate my fellows for loving Coke and Pepsi, regardless of how misguided I think their tastes may be? No, because frankly, it doesn't affect me. However, a self-described Coke lover who really loves Pepsi, might lash out against Pepsi lovers, since he might be jealous of his inability to publicly stand up for Pepsi.

I live in Tbilisi, Georgia. Georgia is still a hugely conservative country, especially when it comes to minority and sexual rights. In many ways it resembles the US in the 1950s, or some places in the South today. For an American to lament over the condition of Georgia today over social conservatism is to call the kettle black, there are still profound problems throughout the American social structure - and I'm not even saying conservatism is a bad thing, in many ways, I abide by it more than liberalism. But, alas, I live in Georgia and not there, so Georgia's problems are of more concern to me these days than America's. And one of Georgia's problems is homophobia. I don't mean a healthy does of homophobia, the kind that Protestants at least use claiming that homosexuality ruins families, though they're on their fourth or fifth marriage themselves. I mean a real deep seated hatred. In 2012, on May 17, there was a very small "march" so to speak, of maybe thirty people walking down the main street carrying a couple of signs that read things like, "Stop the hate." The Georgian Orthodox Church moved its more Church Militant groups to block them, leading to a beat down that was mostly just watched by the police.

Today it's May 17 - this time in 2013 - and the LGBT community was again planning an action against homophobia. But at night, the Church Militant began to gather. As I rode the bus down Rustaveli to work, I watched the gathering crowd. First, I noticed literally thousands of police officers. As we passed Parliament, the anti-protester protesters were gathered around, already hundreds of priests and thug looking types ready for the brawl.

The night before, the Patriarch prepped his flock with the following: 

"It is known a rally of sexual minorities and their supporters is planned on the Rustaveli Avenue on May 17, which aims not at resolving real problems of these people, but at speculating by this issue, because it is the fact that despite of traditions and way of thinking that is established in our country, they [sexual minorities] can live their private life without restrictions.

"It is also the fact that there are universal values, which are common across time and space – moral laws are among them. All the religions and scientific approaches (psychology and medicine) consider homosexuality to be anomaly and disease (of course we do not mean here newly created pseudo scientific views). The Church considers people with such inclinations to be in a grave sin, which need help and spiritual assistance as a remedy for correction, instead of encouragement and especially imposing their condition on population.

"That would be similar to liking actions of a drug addict and making public display of drug addiction. Our people have different aspirations and for that reason it is understandable their sharp protest against this [planned May 17] and similar rallies.”

Fair enough, I don't necessarily agree, but fair enough, if that's how you believe, that's how you believe. If that's how you feel, that's how you feel. But apparently the Church's answer to drug addiction is to beat the addiction out of the user. "Poor guy, he needs more drugs, keep kicking him!"

spiritual guidance

I was at work all day, so I didn't get to see first hand what was happening, but my friends started calling me. "I don't even see any gay people, just tons of priests and haters," one told me. "And now they're breaking down the police barrier. They're even attacking the police!"

Another friend called me, "That was the most terrifying thing I've ever witnessed," he said.

Below I'll link to what the Georgian Orthodox Church apparently believes is "spiritual assistance". The first video shows activists against homophobia evacuating to the buses, while priests and Orthodox anti-gay protesters flood in to block the evacuation. The second video shows from the view of the anti-gay protesters and priests storming Freedom Square. The third video shows one marshrutka with activists against homophobia attempting to be evacuated from the scene, while priests and Christians are smashing the windows.

Number 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iFjJDWn1sTc

Number 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GbWrHCRA1Zw

Number 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_f4lMuAhORU

For the Georgian reader, before you lambast me for posting this, let me introduce myself. I'm a Catholic. I believe that a lot of things are sins. I believe that most of the things I do are sinful, and yet I persist on doing them. And I believe that only he who has removed the speck of sin from his own eye can judge another, and to only "let he who has no sin cast the first stone" - two lines that are directly attributed to Christ Himself.  Before we go charging into a foray for the alleged crimes of others, we should look inside our own hearts and work on casting out our own darkness. Only then can we be ready to properly judge - and understand - the lives of others.  But of course, when we look at ourselves, sometimes the truth is to frightening to bear.

I love Georgia and I love Christ - but today, I feel shame on behalf of both.

lifts here have attitudes

The first time I used the lift, I gave a chuckle. But I understood the context. I had just come back to Georgia and was staying with my friend Lado. Lado brought me into the lift and showed me the box, "You have to pay ten tetri to use the elevator," he told me. It was the first time I had seen such a contraption, despite having traveled across much of Eastern Europe.  At its most base level, it could perhaps even be interpreted as the ultimate failure of the capitalist system.  "You have to pay for the lift?" I asked him, surprised - but not too surprised. It was an exclamation I've heard repeated hundreds of times, every new guest I had.  Even oftentimes my Georgian guests were surprised at this level of entrepreneurism.  

The floor was a piece of ersatz-wood linoleum, stapled on to what much have been a piece of particle board, resting on top of a couple cross bars. If you jumped hard enough, you could pop up the floor and make it hop like a skateboard. There was a gap between the floor and the wall and you could watch the passing grates as you rose up, up and up. It made all sorts of noises - creaks and moans - along with a jolt and a shudder - anything to make you feel as though you might not make it to the top. Going down was nearly as elegant, with the added benefit that it was free. It was fairly approximate on where the floor was, sometimes opening a foot above the floor or a foot below and it was rarely consistent on this. Often, the doors even would only open halfway and you'd have to pry them the rest of the way open. Those are days where you should simply consider yourself lucky that they opened at all.

The elevator didn't always work - which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who read that last paragraph. Sometimes it would come all the way down and the doors wouldn't open; sometimes nothing would happen when you pressed the button; sometimes you would enter the elevator and then, even after putting a coin into the slot, nothing would happen - it was a greedy beast. Always though, it seemed to plan these fits of ill-operation for whenever I was coming with loads of groceries, drunk late at night, or somebody died.

My first real experience wth getting to know the lift at 25 Kekelidze was when I had come home at 3 in the morning. The lift brought me to my floor and then stopped. Nothing else happened. The gears to pull the door open didn't click or budge or anything. I pried my fingers in and tried my best to pull it open. Nothing. I banged on it. Nothing. Someone on the other side came to try to help. We pulled together. Nothing. I called my landlady.

"I'm stuck in the elevator!" I told her. She sounded asleep in her responses, dreamy and unsure of this wasn't still a somniatic encounter. "What do I do? Is there a number of an elevator guy?" The literal translation from Russian I used would be, "Is there a number for a man of elevators?"

"I don't know," she said.

"Shit," I said.

It meant maybe I would have to wait for some time. I wondered what would happen if I tried to go down. I pressed the seventh button. Nothing. The sixth. Nothing. All the way down until one, when it knocked into motion. It brought me down to the bottom again. I tried another coin, but this time it didn't move at all. I then repeated my declaration of "shit" and walked up the stairs.

Another time, the elevator hadn't been working for about two weeks. It was a period where I lost much weight and my legs were beginning to resemble steel. One night, the woman next door was panicking at three o'clock in the morning. Apparently, her husband or lover or whatever he was was passed out on the floor, possibly dead. After some difficulty - the dispatchers spoke neither English nor Russian and she and I spoke very little Georgian - and help from another neighbor, we were able to summon the paramedics.

The paramedics were able to use the elevator to come up. However, after they saw the body lying in the bathroom, they decided that they needed their medical bag - why they didn't bring it in the first place was beyond me. Me and another neighbor tried the elevator. It was back to not working. So we had to race down the stairs and race back up them with the bag. At this point, the paramedics decided that a stretcher was suitable at this point - either because the guy had to be brought to the hospital or he was dead - so we were back to racing up and down the stairs. I never saw the guy again and the elevator didn't work for another few days.

There was another time when the elevator was miraculously free for about a week. I realized that there was a death on some floor and thought that maybe it was free for that reason. This gave me the unrealized idea of beginning a chain of murders so that I could keep riding the lift for free.

I often found that dropping the ten tetri coin wouldn't work. Sometimes the hungry box wanted twenty tetri or more, and only after an excessive amount of feeding would it decide to operate. I was tired of this attitude, so a slapped the thing as hard as I could after it wouldn't accept my ten tetri this one time. And then I hard a coin fall out. But I found that it wasn't my ten tetri piece, but a 20 ruble piece from the last year of the Soviet Union! I keep it with me now as a reminder that Georgian lifts are cheeky bastards and given the choice, perhaps the stairs are always the best options.

terror in the metro

While somewhat relaxed, enjoying some of the eye candy that was squished in the tin can speeding under the steep slopes of Tbilisi, someone reached down and thwacked the strings of my guitar. I woke from my dreams, looking around me, expecting to see a friend. Rather it was a man who was now sitting next to me, a little close for comfort. He was large, wearing mismatched and dirty clothes and he wreaked of vodka. He spoke to me in a mix of Georgian and Russian as though his language were crossing repeatedly across the border in a stumble of drunken confusion.

"Where did you buy?" he asked.

"It's a friends," I answered. I never directly answer questions to drunk strangers - though this habit of mine often gets me in trouble. My vague answers seem to be like a bucket of chum for roving idiots, serving as some signal for them to harrass me further. The hooks these carp devour are never the ones I'd like to reel in.

"You play?" he said. "I play." He took the guitar - which I had upright, the base on the ground and the neck in the air between my legs - and did a few strums. It sounded terribly - the strings needed replacing and the thing wasn't tuned besides. "You play me few songs?"

"No man, we're in the metro, no time, no room," I said. I was responding in the same blur of half Russian and half Georgian as he was, as I was confused on which language to appropriately use.

He gave it back finally and continued speaking to me, but it was indecipherable what he was saying. But his manner was extraodinarily aggressive, and I could feel a strong negativety with a borderline of hate coming from him that made me uncomfortable. It seemed to me that he was more of an animal than human - his drunken drool only extenuating this cirumstance - and even my steady and fearless gaze had trouble staying locked with his, in fear that it would only agitate him further. He kept grabbing at my arm, leg and guitar. I wanted to escape.

We at last arrived at Rustaveli metro station, "It's my station, later," I said. I thanked God under my breath and made my exit. I had to squeeze through crowds of people to do this, narrowly forcing young girls to drop their babies and old grandmas to swing their canes at me, but all the havoc was worth it if it meant my escape from this man.

Halfway up the escalator - and mind you, Soviet escalators are unimaginably long, steep and swift for Westerners - I thought I was safe. But then I heard a shout, "Hey!"

I looked back down, at the base of the escalator, there was the big man. I hadn't noticed just how much of a giant he was, as he was one foot taller than all the other people and twice as wide, a real-to-life modern ogre. His name would be Shrek if he were only green and nice. I thought to myself, there are lots of people between us and him - he'd have to push a lot of people out of the way - and I can make a narrow escape once we're to the top, curving around to the side of the metro station to remain unseen. I'll relax.

I felt a punch in my back. It would have been jovial if it had not been from the drunken force of a giant, and right into the part where my shingles had infected. I grimaced and turned, seeing the ogre beside me, his eyebrows in a V and his mouth downturned. He was angry that I seemed to be evading him. "Just one song, play for me," he said.

"I have no time," I said. "Quickly." My Georgian wasn't good enough for evasion, so I switched back to Russian, "I'm meeting my friends. I'm in a hurry." And in Georgian, "I go quickly."

"Just one song!"

My back was hurting, the pain from the shingles exploding again and I was greatly irritated by the force of manner that this man brought. I had to get away from him. My mind was not on appeasement - it was now only flight or fight and to be honest, from such a giant who didn't know his own strength, I didn't think I could win a straight out fight.

"Excuse me, I have to go quickly," I said to him when we reached the top. I walked briskly away from him and out the door, speeding up with every great step. He was just as fast though and grabbed my arm as I was trying to stride away from the station.

I looked back at him. "What are you doing?"

"You play one song!"

I wrenched my arm free and looked at the people around. Two girls glanced over at me and giggled as they walked. No one would come near the ogre, preferring that I was the source of his displeasure than bring his wrath down on themselves.

"No, I must go," I said. I kept walking and eventually he gave up his effort, either from realization he could not make me play or he was tiring out and needed a rest. I made it to the taxi and sped off, my heart racing and my excellent day for the time being soured. I needed a drink and to see friends, which was where I was headed.

getting the guitar

I left Dry Bridge with a couple of hours to kill before calling my contact, Levan, to meet and buy his guitar. I stopped in the park a bit to contemplate, I like to get lost in my thoughts and watch the people around me, something safer to do from a park bench than while walking along the street - I'm prone to walking into streets while lost in thought. 9th of April Park is my favorite park in Tbilisi, mainly because of the fountain that snakes down the middle of the walkway like a mountain stream, trickling over colored tiles - when the water's on. Much of the park is shaded and there's almost always a light breeze, making it a cool sanctuary from the summer heat. There used to be a beer garden sitting on one of the park plazas, but that has since disappeared. Most of the benches at one time were occupied by young lovers, some talking but most kissing, as parks in Georgia tend to function as a "moral free" zone, a place where lovers can pretend to escape their reality and don't have to deal with hiding their love from - or having awkward situations with - their families and grandmas at home. Last year though, a law was passed, making it allegal to show affection in public. The exact words are vague, giving the police license to ticket anyone doing any public "immoral" activity. That law gave way to more than a few anecdotes:

A married couple is in their car, making love. A policeman finds them, knocks on their window and tells them to step out of their car. "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to give you a ticket," the policeman says. The officer gives them their tickets. The husband says, "Hey, why is mine only for 500 but you fined my wife 1,000? That's outrageous!" The police officer puts a hand on his arm to calm him, "Sir, she's a repeat offender."

After my short contemplation, I moved on to the Freedom Square metro station. I could have walked to the Rustaveli metro station, but I find that the ice cream stand next to the Freedom Square is always serving cheap, first class soft serve. The one near the Rustaveli station is good, but not quite so good. Though that's often made up for by the serving girls, who have to bend down to hand you your ice cream, and any old lecherous fool like myself knows what that means. I spent my last remaining minutes then eating my ice cream and watching the crowds of people huddled in groups, each doing eating their own ice cream, shawarmas or sunflower seeds. Finally, I got onto the metro and made my way to Didube.

I have no praises to sing about Didube. I can refer the reader to my last blog about the station, which I wrote two long Easters ago. As the Tbilisi transportation hub for Western Georgia, it's surprisingly lacking in aesthetics, services and anything else you'd expect from a major transit station. What it has plenty of comes in the form of mud, confusion, shouting, haggling and gypsies. I called my contact, Levan to see where he would meet me.

"Do you know Akhmeteli Theatre?" he asked me.

"The metro stop?"

"Yes, let's meet there."

At least I didn't have to meet at my beloved Didube station. I got back on the metro and took it all the way to the end. Akhmeteli Theatre station was as of yet an undiscovered country to me, extending to the far reaches of Northern Tbilisi. I stepped out of the station to the sight of much mud, confusion, shouting and haggling. It was a step up from Didube in many ways, most notably for the lack of gypsies. When I first stepped out the door, I saw a small square. The plaza was below ground, though open to the sky. On the right side, there was a wall which held a series of vendors, most of them either selling used cell phones or making copies of keys. Straight ahead was a gauntlet of old, fat ladies who were selling anything from xatchapuri to hose to lingerie to carrots, all of them shouting, "One lari for carrots!" or "One lari for silk pantyhose! Feels just like the real thing!" To the left was a construction site, with a row of newspaper vendors who were all selling the same newspapers and magazines.

I dodged the babushka gauntlet and stood near a locksmith's store, waiting for Levan. There were two directions that Levan could come from, as the place formed a triangle with the metro station at the right angle. Each of the two other sharp angles also had exits, stairs leading upwards, with a constant stream of people going up or down. I called Levan and told him I was there. Ten minutes later, he called back, "Where are you?"

"I'm at Akhmeteli Theater station, right next to the metro," I answered.

He hung up. Did that mean he was there or that he saw me? I finished my Fanta and looked around. Still no sign. He called back, "Where are you?"

"Next to the metro station!"

Then he at last appeared. "Come with me," he said, motioning up the stairs. He talked as though he assumed I were fluent in Georgian and I tried to understand as much as I could. While following him up the stairs, I couldn't help but to think of how many foreigners in different countries had been mugged in exactly the same manner. Get him into an unfamiliar terrain in trusting circumstances and then take all his money. But my experience in Georgia had softened me - the friendliest people here are often the ones you don't know and some of the best experiences can happen with perfect strangers. I find that I can't be nearly as trusting with people in the West or in America as I can in Georgia.

We got to the main street, where cars were in a constant state of racing and honking. At the top was a three way intersection with no traffic signals or regulation in site, each car gaining the right of way by how loud they could honk or how aggressively they could drive. People crossed the streets at their own risk, dodging this way and that in a game of human Frogger.

Another man joined our side. "This is my friend, Dato," he said.

"Hey," I said. Those scenarios were playing through my head.

"Guitar is coming, we wait here."

We waited. Dato tried chatting with me for a while, some small talk about where I was from and if I liked khinkali and Georgian women, and how Georgian women the best wives but Ukrainian and Russian women make the best girlfriends - their words, not mine. Soon, one guy emerged from the raging rapids of the roads with a guitar in hand. The guitar seemed in moderate condition - old Soviet contruction but nothing overly wrong with it, the strings were a bit far, but that seemed by design, and they perhaps needed replacing. "50 lari you said?"

"Yes,"

"All right," I said, giving him the money. It was turning out to be a fine day after all. I went back down to the metro with my newly acquired guitar in hand and found a seat, ready to make the thirty minute journey back to my own metro stop.

Dry Bridge

Dry Bridge was once one of my favorite places in Tbilisi. On any given sunny weekend, I used to love wandering through 9th of April Park, past the fountain weaving down the sidewalk like a tiled river, and then at last coming to the old Soviet and antique bazaar, a concrete plaza and sidewalk filled with blankets spread across the ground and various souvenirs from bygone days exposed for all to see, gawk at and buy. Old men and women sit patiently by their blankets, or they busy themselves playing backgammon with their neighbor vendors or try to engage potential buyers in conversation - if you eye a watch too long, the old man in a blue jacket and telnyashka might start telling you its history, "That watch is 63 years old, if you look at the markings on the back, you can see it was a gift from a young Russian woman to her Georgian lover..."

The de facto entrance of the Dry Bridge is from 9th of April Park, where you cross easily over the embankment road by walking over the bridge, from which the area gets its name. Looking down at the constant roar of traffic - moving faster and more chaotic than any mountain rapids - Mercedes and Ladas, Volgas and Toyotas, like fish swimming onward down past the modern Ministry of Justice building, with mushroom roofs that make it look like a modern architectural reinterpretation of Mario's home - and you can easily make out the clash of time and civilizations that Tbilisi constantly emulates. It's that clash that is perhaps why I like to call the place home, with a complete inability to actually call it European, Asian or Middle Eastern, and yet at any given time finding each one of those labels appropriate.

Days like this were one of the reasons that I've continued to linger in Tbilisi. There is relatively few days of comfortable weather in Tbilisi - accentuated by the lack of air conditioning and heating in most flats - but on those days where the weather is good, it approaches perfect. With the mountains rising up in almost every direction, the flowers starting to bloom again, the ice cream vendors cranking up their machines again and the street dogs all out to happily play with each other, it leads to a condition that makes one want to stay here and stay here. It gives a person a creeping paralysis that freezes one to the bench, like the bronze statue of Reagan in Reichspark.

My mission at Dry Bridge was to look at musical instruments. Either I wanted to buy a new accordion - since my current one has a hole in the bellows - or get an old guitar to play around with to help write new songs. I stopped by Titan music, which is right off the park, to price some guitars. A cheap new one cost about 150 laris, so I knew that if I couldn't find anything at Dry Bridge for under 50, it'd be pointless. Gazing around at all the products, and how full not only of vendors, but of foreigners looking at everything from Soviet coins and hats to Georgian paintings, I began to realize how the place had changed over the years. Just three years ago, the place was only about half the size, without so many tourists. Bargains were easy to find, with everyone ready and excited to sell their junk from the attic or modern Chinese-manufactured Stalin wares. Now though, it seemed that the sellers had accustomed themselves to the tourists and no longer cared about the old spirit of haggle and fun, and would refuse even the most minor of bargains, knowing that you're in line and if you won't buy it for cheap, then the next guy walking in line just might.    For the real bargains, it was now necessary to go all the way to the Samgori bazaar - tourists still haven't uncovered that place and ruined the charm.

That reasoning was sound until I found some accordions. They were, admittedly nice accordions, Horch brand, German made squeezeboxes, each beautiful machines in their own right. The high end was a thousand lari, while the low end was 350. After trying them out, I thought that maybe even 1,000 lari might be appropriate, but still beyond my price range. "How much would you pay for it?" the vendor asked. "I don't have enough even to start bargaining," I told him. "But that one for 350 is nice, I can give you 300."

"No," he said.

"Oh," I said, and I left. So much for telling him how much I'd pay for something.

Someone else had a guitar. I tried it out. It was pretty old and weathered, a real Soviet piece. "How much?"

"100 lari," he said.

I wasn't so eager for that deal.

But then a kid from the other side of me asked, "Hey, you want a guitar?"

"Yes, but not that one, it's too expensive," I said.

"I've got a guitar I can sell you," he said. "For fifty."

"No kidding? Okay, where is it?"

"Let's meet at Didube in an hour," he said.

"Deal, I'll see you there." What was starting to make me depressed by Dry Bridge, that is, the seeming, overwhelming commercial quality that was beginning to take hold there, drained out of me and the place redeemed itself, besides the cursing of the vendor who was yelling at the kid for stealing his business. I was on my way to get a cheap guitar.