The most famous son of Georgia is undoubtedly Iosif Jugashvili, known to the world by his pseudonym: Stalin. He was born and raised in a town an hour outside of Tbilisi with the prophetic name of Gori. We decided to head back to the provinces for our final (unfortunately) look at Georgia outside the capital city.
We found a shared taxi to Gori for the discount price of three bucks apiece. Jen and I sat in the back, while the guy in the front was a very drunken and friendly man named Valera. He stank to high heaven and was quite the Chatty Cathy, rambling on incessantly, challenging Jen's slurred-Russian decoding skills. I made the mistake of trying out my only Georgian phrase, which translates as: "would it be possible to get two beers?" Valera took me literally and, at a highway rest stop, bought me a bottle of beer (with a mineral water and candy bar for Jen...sweet guy).
Gori, at first glance, looked very dead and crumbling away on a Saturday afternoon. Our hotel (again, the "best in town") was deserted except for an old man at the desk that reminded me of Bela Lugosi. At first he pretended not to speak English, but later he surprised us with several well-turned phrases that we suspected he practiced for hours prior to seeing us again. We strolled around town for a couple of hours, saw the giant Stalin statue, found a beautiful church, ran into some cute kids, peeked at the market, then had a nice Georgian meal at the place next to our hotel. We had a busy day planned for Sunday.
There is a huge old medieval fortress on top of a steep hill in the center of Gori that dominates the town. We got up early on Sunday and walked to the top of the hill. The views from the top were nothing short of amazing. The snow-capped Caucasus range seemed close enough to touch. We were alone up there save for two armed guards, a little boy and his grandpa, and a blind dog. At one point, the guard gave his rifle to the five-year old for some picture-taking. Jen, photojournalist, was right on it. Yikes! Sorry, I forgot to mention that Gori was at the center of Russian military action against Georgia in last summer's brief war. Russian troops occupied the town for days, and several people were killed. I couldn't help but think that the little kid was going to grow up ready to fight the Russians, who live just over the mountains.
We got to the Stalin Museum just as it opened. Stalin's birthplace is a brick and wood cabin on the grounds, preserved just as it was in 1879. Apparently the Soviets tore down the entire slummy neighborhood around the cabin in the 1930's and built the elaborate shrine that now houses the museum. Olga, our English-speaking guide, gave us the rapid, canned presentation, leading us from room to room showing us pictures and artifacts from the great man's life. She didn't appreciate questions very much. We saw his desk from the Kremlin, his favorite pipes, his death-mask (not that thrilling), and outside in the yard, his private train-car that he tooled around the Soviet Union in (see photo of me in Stalin's reading chair).
Olga recommended that her policemen buddies drive us to our next destination, the ancient cave-city of Uplistsikhe just outside of town. We could have taken a taxi for the same price, but why not ride with the cops? Uplistsikhe was fabulous, but we only had an hour to explore - not nearly enough. A series of cave temples dedicated to the sun goddess, the complex dates to the 6th century, B.C., although it has been occupied by many different groups through the years, and its most obvious feature today is a beautiful 10th century church high atop the rock. We scrambled around for a while taking photographs, but too soon it was time to leave Uplistsikhe and make our way back to Gori, and from there back to Tbilisi.
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