Georgian impressions

Kazbegi men


A different wine cup


Stalin still around


Bridge in Kazbegi


Old Pagan-Christian shrine in Sno valley


Going on a hike in Jutta


Georgian men at a mineral pool close to Kazbegi


Elina and Kadri having fun with a waterpipe. It's natural mineral water in Truso valley


The sky is the limit


One day we helped our host Dantuna to make hey. Great view, but hard work!

Houses in Kazbegi

Typical house in Kazbegi. They all seemed quite fenced in- to keep the pigs and cows out that walk around everywhere.




Carpets everywhere


Mountain goat horns and a glass vitrine- common sights in every home


Having a break


I really don't know why but similar can be seen in many houses


One of the bathrooms. Running water is not yet standard in Kazbegi


The fotograph shows Alexander Kazbegi, famous Georgian writer


Fresh meat

State of mind

Being back in Tbilisi for a few days and being able to use the internet and catch up on what is going on the world also leaves some time for reflection about the first 3 weeks.

I have to admit: I love Georgia! It is a truly fascinating country. One of the reasons is that it is in between everything:

modern and backward

peace and war

Asia and Europe

independency and sovereignty

Communism and Capitalism

Christianity and pagan mythology

east and west (taking the current events in account -you might have heard about the bomb that appeared from nowhere and fortunately didn’t go off- the cold war is not quite over yet at this end of the world)

…

And also: The people. Proud by nature, believing they are one-of-a-kind. Very charming, very emotional, very beautiful, very warm and hospitable (and sometimes just a little bit too much of all of that). The unbelievable landscape: Mountains, steep rugged, daunting and welcoming at the same time. Valleys, gorges, rivers, lakes, natural springs. The culture, the history, the food: All kinds of fruits and vegetables -we eat a few kg each day. The dishes enriched with fresh spices. Very tasty.

The project is going quite well, we work independently and have almost half of the places visited and can start to think about the layout of the website. More Glen people start their projects in the country and this gives us a good excuse to travel and visit. Tomorrow Kadri and I will go to Borjomi, Elina travels on to Batumi and further to Turkey.

As we drove back from Kazbegi I was sitting at the window and realized how dangerous this road is: at some places it disappears into nothing. You have to be at one with the world and yourself to go here, I thought. In a way it’s a pilgrimage… a very light-hearted one…

… and this is just what my next entry will be about: on the 28^th of August 10.000 pilgrims pay a visit to the trinity church on Mt Kazbeg- and we will be among them.

People from Jutta

Last weekend we went on a trip to a little village called Jutta, situated in the Sno valley, one of the side valleys. Again we visited families who can accommodate tourists. All people in the village belong to the same family: Arabuli. They used to be shepherds, but now, where they have no access anymore to the winter grazing land 600 km away at the Caspian sea they keep cows and most of them work as border guards, checking the mountains between Chechnya and Georgia. Despite their hard life- the village is cut off from civilization during winter- these people kept an amazing humor and warm spirit. It was really amazing: here we sit just a few km away from one of the hotspots of current political events and still it feels like the most peacefull place on earth.


Our host Soso (the man on the right), who took us in his jeep from Kazbegi, showed us around. Here he is talking with Jargo.












When i was still in Hamburg a friend of a friend heard that i was going to Georgia and told me about Timo Vogt, who is a free photo journalist working a lot in and about Georgia. And here in Jutta, in the middle of nowhere, I met him. Together with Tine he is helping his friend Jargo to get his house ready for tourists. What a coincidence! We had a nice evening together and Timo could answer some of our questions about current political events in the caucasus region. His reportages and pictures can be found on www.i-traxx.net

What we do in Kazbegi

Since our project description (“developing tourism infrastructure in Kazbegi municipality”) is quite broad we spend some time before and also during the project to decide what to do. We decided together with the people from the municipality that it would be quite useful to provide more information about this region for interested tourists. Since our financial resources are limited the internet seemed to be the best platform to work with. So that’s what we do at the moment: Visit all tourist sights in this region, take pictures and notes about it and eventually put all this on a website. I think I don’t have to point out that this part of the job is quite appealing to me. The nature up there is fantastic! Next to information for things to do and see we want to provide information about accommodation. So we get a list of families that can invite tourists to their places and visit them and again take notes and pictures and eventually put it on the web. The background for this is, that most tourists come with Lonely Planet or other guide books as their “holy bible” and just stay at the places that are mentioned there. But almost every family has room and Georgian hospitality can be appreciated in many places. Again this is quite a nice job. The hardest part is to convince the people that we can’t have coffee, food or Chacha (“Georgian spirit”) with everyone- and for me to find new angles, views and enough light for the pictures. Its amazing to see the houses from the inside. Huge rooms, quite unusual for mountain area- apparently a left over from better times during communism. There are carpets everywhere and the furniture is similar in most places, but every home is unique. The third part of our project at the moment are standardized interviews with tourists. The aim of that is to find out about their opinion about tourism in Kazbegi: What is needed, which steps of development should be taken. At the end we will conduct a workshop at the village with all who are interested and tell about the results.

Our working partners

On one of our first days in Kazbegi we got to know these really nice men, the heads of the local municipality who offered us any possible help. They took us on a tour to see some local highlights, the township called Tsdo, almost abandoned but majestically situated on a mountains rige, a waterfall and the trip was topped with a nice picnic – and 10 litres of homemade wine. To make a long story short: After spending quite some happy hours emptying this kanister of whine, toasting in Georgian style, singing and talking about the world and Georgia in particular we refused to get in the car with them and decided to walk home- apparently some 12 km. Our new friends got really offended- in Georgia you are expected to drink, but not to get drunk and their pride and hospitality seemed to be at risk. In the end we could convince the one that seemed to us most sober to drive the car after we walked the most dangerous part and arrived safely back home. What followed was a weird sequel of phone calls, unexpected visits in the morning “girls, you like beer? I will be there at 10” and one of them even showed up totally drunk at night, convinced that we had a secret party with the other one.

Well, we learned from that. Being more carefully with whom we do what and working more closely together with Nona, who is in charge of tourism in that region and avoiding other “business meetings”.

Where we live

The town Kazbegi, or Stephensminda how it is actually called, is situated at 1700 m above sea level and is the heart of the Kazbegi district in the north of Georgia that covers 1081sq km of the Caucaus region. The biggest road, the military highway cuts through it and is the lifeline of the region, the passage through the Caucasus and also the connection with Russia. In Kazbegi live about 1500 people and 3400 in the whole district. Mount Kazbeg, a 5030 something meter high distinct volcano is clearly visible from the town and is just an amazing sight. There are borders with Russia in the north- closed since last year and at the moment out of reach because the rain took away the road, North Ossetia and Chechnya.


The Tereck river took over the Military Highway, about 12 km north of Kazbegi.

We found a really nice and friendly place to live. Our hosts are Minoni and Datuna. They have three kids, the youngest at home at the moment. Minoni works at the municipality and established the first contact when our project was born last year between a Glen member and the officials here. They are almost self-sufficient - like most people here due to the high unemployment rate, low wages and relatively high food prices. They have three cows, who are in the high pastures in the mountains at moment, a big pig and 6 little one who roam the streets of Kazbegi, bees, a huge garden, a cat and a little dog “Sharik” who is already our best friend. We have two rooms, a kitchen and a veranda where we spend most of our time and a balcony with an impressive mountain panorama on all sites. Most of the time there is power, sometimes there is none. Most of the time there is water and sometimes there is none. After a week we managed to get gas for cooking. Nothing to worry about…


Mt. Kazbeg on our first evening, picture taken from the balcony


The Churo Mountain range (up to 4000 m high) at the other side of the house, just after a little shower.


The view south. Little villages along the military highway.

Arrival and first week in Kazbegi

Our first week in Kazbegi is over and we're all doing fine. We saw a lot of this beautiful landscape and can't stop taking photos. We started to contact the people to get an idea of what we can do with our project.

Because there is no internet connection here, I can't update my blog every day. But we will make another trip to Tbilisi, and then you will see some photos of our region!

Also I've a georgian mobilecard and you can call me under 0099593124976. Using the 010017 before might be the cheapest way from germany.

last day in tbilisi

Kadri, Elina and me

Our time as "tourists" in Tbilisi is almost over (at least for this time, because I'm sure we will be back sooner or later). Today we will leave to Kazbegi and start our project. In the last days we allready had good ideas. We talked to many people and they shared theier view on the topic with us. I'm really excited to get there. Kazbegi will be again a totally different world...

ethnographical museum

Another wonderfull experince: Georgi invited us to the ethnographical museum. It is an outdor museum and they have all kinds of original houses from different regions on display.



Georgi shares his place with 15 cats and dogs




Georgi is explaining some ancient resurrection ritus


The artist and his masterpiece

images

These pictures where all taken at the ethnographical museum in tbilisi