Where It Used to Swim

Somewhere around nine thirty I was determined to head out and see some museums here in the Georgian capital.  I also wanted to get my Azerbaijan invitation letters printed out for the family.  My sister had seen the rugs we'd bought and decided she wanted one too.  So we’d be getting her another rug at the store with the Georgian momma and her feisty, bald youth.

The first museum, the Gorgeian Museum was fascinating.  The beluga sturgeon, is that what it called?  Is huge.  A "sea" creature, surly.  What about that Minke whale skeleton?  I asked but no one could tell me where it used to swim.  "Are there whales in the Caspian?  Or the Black Sea?" They couldn't quite understand me and mid-sentence I recall that Georgia doesn't border the Caspian Sea anyway.  

A large, dark room has a somber treatment of the Red Terror there in Georgia and what that meant for those fiercely nationalistic people who had the irony of living under he yolk, of a Georgian leader at the head of a Russian overlord state.   Cattle cars that had shipped people, grainy films of people being shot.  None of this, certainly, in the museums in Russia.  

Now I set out to get the my printing done.  I had a shop that was a twenty-minute walk away according to the GPS, but the other side of the street looked as though it might have places that could print.  First I had to find an underpass to cross the street.  Eventually I found what could be called a business center and for much more lori than I'd anticipated, had my docs printed out. 

Then cut back under the street to the National Gallery. They had some wonderful Renaissance sketches imported from Italy, but I was saddened to see not so many things from Georgia itself.  What appeared to be basically two rooms.  Once downstairs offered a rather experimental installation that didn't merit more than a quick glance.  The other room was mostly naïve work, interesting but not as extensive as one imagine for two thousand year old civilization.  I took my call with a Chinese partner in the museum café and talked data partnering while charging my phone.  Soon after I left to look at the paintings, I needed to return again, quickly to the charging area as the phone, the all important phone had gone from 40% to 4%.  

Later, back at our apartment, leftovers from the evening’s dinner were being served up and they were good.  I rallied everyone go come explore and hop on the gondola to the fort at the top of the hill.  "They'll be beautiful views!"  I suggested.  And there were, but it was unbearably hot at the top and as the book reminded me that most of the fort had been blown up and destroyed in the last eighteenth century, I quickly joined the rest of the family in losing interest in searching over the remains in the crippling heat. 

Back down in the town we had some water and then some wine.  I showed the girls the remarkable 5^th century Anchiskhati Basilica.  We sat quietly on a bench by the side until the Monseigneur kicked us out as my older daughter had shorts on.  We bought some naïve reproductions of work like  Niko Pirosmanashvilli, that I’d seen in the National Gallery, from a guy who was sitting away from his collection, in the shade back up on the main alleyway and I imagined having the little gent in the painting framed back in Beijing.

Let's go to this place for dinner.   The Jehovas Witness driver ("That statue, with George slaying the dragon?  It's the devil.") dutifully took us to one place, that was the wrong place.  "They've moved. Here's the right address",  and then across the river to the right place, that was extremely cool and reminded me of the old Blue Plate down bellow us on Mission St. with its outdoor, hip urban industrial vibe.  I liked my soup and my food.  Others didn’t seem to enjoy their food as much.   We need to get to the train now.  Off to Baku.

Tuesday 7/10/18