Saturday, September 25, 2010
Pictures
I just tried to make a link over on the right to a photo album, but I'm not sure anyone will be able to see it. Please let me know if it works. Thanks!
Shuki Ar Aris
Following up on my initial posting of basic conversational Georgian, I offer here a selection of phrases I had no idea would come in handy until experience taught me their value:
“Shuki ar aris” – This useful phrase translates as “There’s no electricity,” and is one that I have heard rather dismayingly often. Sometimes there’s a reason, usually related to the weather, while sometimes there’s no apparent reason at all. The best reason so far, however, was that someone hadn’t paid their electric bill. Apparently this happens every month (always the same man), and as there are no individual meters on the houses, they turn off the power for the whole village until he pays. This may seem like punishing the innocent, but it can also be seen as a way of leveraging community influence, since everyone knows who this man is and pesters him until he pays up and the power goes back on. In fact, it seems to have just come back on as I’ve been writing, judging by the happy chant containing the word “shuki” coming from Paata downstairs and the sound of the evening news on the TV.
“Kartveli ts’oli ar ginda?” – “Don’t you want a Georgian wife?” I was warned about this one during orientation, and sure enough, it has cropped up twice in conversation with village residents. It is the follow-up question to be expected if one reveals that one is not yet married.
“Bavshebo, ramdeni ts’ignia?” – “Children, how many books are there?” One challenge of teaching in a Georgian village school that I hadn’t considered was that the kid’s families have to buy their own schoolbooks, and this process takes a while. Thus, many classes in the first week began with this question immediately after preliminary greetings (especially in the younger grades, the kids all jump up when we come in the room and shout, “Good morning, teachers!”). And while the books themselves have their limitations—more about this in a later post—it makes it very difficult to do any work in the books when only a handful of students in the class actually have them.
“Bavshvi!” – Grammatically, this is simply the singular form of bavshvebi (children, as in the previous phrase). In practice, though, in a house with a resident one-year-old, it means something like, “Watch out, the baby is coming your way, so try to keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn’t fall down/touch the stove/stick his fingers in an outlet/try to eat the chicken feather on the floor.” I should perhaps explain that there is a constant low-level war going on against the chickens, who will exploit every opportunity to get into the house, and are in constant need of being chased out.
“Soplis Harmonia” – The literal translation of “Village Harmony,” used in the dubbed footage of my second TV interview. This one was for a local Zugdidi station, and was a considerably longer segment, focusing on my interest in Georgian culture and folk music. The crew was very nice, but insisted on some rather contrived shots, such as one of me playing the panduri, even though I don’t really know how. I’ll admit to being relieved when they didn’t ask to come back to the house, thus avoiding another interview/supra extravaganza. Incidentally, while I’m on the topic of music, it turns out that one of the few other foreigners to spend any amount of time in Tsaishi was none other than ethnomusicologist and Village Harmony collaborator Carl Linich, who was here collecting songs from some of the older villagers.
Despite knowing these handy phrases, most conversation still passes straight over my head. I would have thought I’d be used to this, from the amount of traveling I’ve done, but I’ve come to realize one important difference: people here very often sound like they’re arguing, even when they’re not. Perfectly mundane exchanges quickly escalate to raised voices, emphatic gestures, exaggerated facial expressions (shock, disgust, scorn), and banging on tables, but then are just as quickly laughed off. I’m hoping I’ll get used to this, but as someone who ordinarily feels uncomfortable just being around an argument, let alone engaging in one, I’m finding it kind of stressful to be surrounded by so much conversational tension. I’m not sure if the fact that I have no idea what they’re saying makes the situation better or worse.
Lest all this sound like I’m feeling overwhelmed, I should say that on the whole, I really am enjoying my time here. School is certainly stressful, but I would be crazy not to expect it to be. It’s a new job, a new language, a new culture, and new rules to follow, all wrapped up together. And while I don’t think that it will necessarily ever become easy, I know that it will become less unfamiliar with time, and that I’ll eventually work out certain patterns and strategies to work my way through it. In the mean time, I just have to remember to treat everything as a learning experience, and consider how to use what I’ve learned going forward.
Lastly for now, I want to give you the closest thing I have to a mailing address, in case any of you feel like writing me on paper. The Georgian postal service is notoriously unreliable, but if you write to the following address, there’s at least a good chance that it will get to me:
Ben Sachs-Hamilton
Zugdidi, Village Tsaishi
Samegrelo
Georgia
I’m the only person in the village who could possibly be receiving a letter addressed in English, so if it shows up, they’ll be sure to bring it to me. I look forward to hearing from you, by whatever means you prefer!
“Shuki ar aris” – This useful phrase translates as “There’s no electricity,” and is one that I have heard rather dismayingly often. Sometimes there’s a reason, usually related to the weather, while sometimes there’s no apparent reason at all. The best reason so far, however, was that someone hadn’t paid their electric bill. Apparently this happens every month (always the same man), and as there are no individual meters on the houses, they turn off the power for the whole village until he pays. This may seem like punishing the innocent, but it can also be seen as a way of leveraging community influence, since everyone knows who this man is and pesters him until he pays up and the power goes back on. In fact, it seems to have just come back on as I’ve been writing, judging by the happy chant containing the word “shuki” coming from Paata downstairs and the sound of the evening news on the TV.
“Kartveli ts’oli ar ginda?” – “Don’t you want a Georgian wife?” I was warned about this one during orientation, and sure enough, it has cropped up twice in conversation with village residents. It is the follow-up question to be expected if one reveals that one is not yet married.
“Bavshebo, ramdeni ts’ignia?” – “Children, how many books are there?” One challenge of teaching in a Georgian village school that I hadn’t considered was that the kid’s families have to buy their own schoolbooks, and this process takes a while. Thus, many classes in the first week began with this question immediately after preliminary greetings (especially in the younger grades, the kids all jump up when we come in the room and shout, “Good morning, teachers!”). And while the books themselves have their limitations—more about this in a later post—it makes it very difficult to do any work in the books when only a handful of students in the class actually have them.
“Bavshvi!” – Grammatically, this is simply the singular form of bavshvebi (children, as in the previous phrase). In practice, though, in a house with a resident one-year-old, it means something like, “Watch out, the baby is coming your way, so try to keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn’t fall down/touch the stove/stick his fingers in an outlet/try to eat the chicken feather on the floor.” I should perhaps explain that there is a constant low-level war going on against the chickens, who will exploit every opportunity to get into the house, and are in constant need of being chased out.
“Soplis Harmonia” – The literal translation of “Village Harmony,” used in the dubbed footage of my second TV interview. This one was for a local Zugdidi station, and was a considerably longer segment, focusing on my interest in Georgian culture and folk music. The crew was very nice, but insisted on some rather contrived shots, such as one of me playing the panduri, even though I don’t really know how. I’ll admit to being relieved when they didn’t ask to come back to the house, thus avoiding another interview/supra extravaganza. Incidentally, while I’m on the topic of music, it turns out that one of the few other foreigners to spend any amount of time in Tsaishi was none other than ethnomusicologist and Village Harmony collaborator Carl Linich, who was here collecting songs from some of the older villagers.
Despite knowing these handy phrases, most conversation still passes straight over my head. I would have thought I’d be used to this, from the amount of traveling I’ve done, but I’ve come to realize one important difference: people here very often sound like they’re arguing, even when they’re not. Perfectly mundane exchanges quickly escalate to raised voices, emphatic gestures, exaggerated facial expressions (shock, disgust, scorn), and banging on tables, but then are just as quickly laughed off. I’m hoping I’ll get used to this, but as someone who ordinarily feels uncomfortable just being around an argument, let alone engaging in one, I’m finding it kind of stressful to be surrounded by so much conversational tension. I’m not sure if the fact that I have no idea what they’re saying makes the situation better or worse.
Lest all this sound like I’m feeling overwhelmed, I should say that on the whole, I really am enjoying my time here. School is certainly stressful, but I would be crazy not to expect it to be. It’s a new job, a new language, a new culture, and new rules to follow, all wrapped up together. And while I don’t think that it will necessarily ever become easy, I know that it will become less unfamiliar with time, and that I’ll eventually work out certain patterns and strategies to work my way through it. In the mean time, I just have to remember to treat everything as a learning experience, and consider how to use what I’ve learned going forward.
Lastly for now, I want to give you the closest thing I have to a mailing address, in case any of you feel like writing me on paper. The Georgian postal service is notoriously unreliable, but if you write to the following address, there’s at least a good chance that it will get to me:
Ben Sachs-Hamilton
Zugdidi, Village Tsaishi
Samegrelo
Georgia
I’m the only person in the village who could possibly be receiving a letter addressed in English, so if it shows up, they’ll be sure to bring it to me. I look forward to hearing from you, by whatever means you prefer!
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Home, Sweet Home in Tsaishi
Well, this was supposed to be posted on Monday, but various events, including a windstorm, a series of thunderstorms, two blackouts, and a horrible 24-hour stomach bug, have prevented me from getting to the internet cafe in Zugdidi until now.
The ten volunteers from my group who are going to be living in the Zugdidi area took a marshutka (minibus) here on Friday morning, where we met our host families at the local Educational Resource Center in the city (these are scattered throughout the country and serve as intermediary agencies between local schools and the Ministry of Education). There I was handed off to my host father, Paata, who is an English teacher at the school here in Tsaishi, and Marina, the school principal. It was about a fifteen-minute taxi ride to my family’s house, where I met my host mother Marika, their one-year-old son Nikolozi, and Paata’s mother, who lives nearby and was visiting for the day. Marika was also an English teacher before getting married, but she is not very confident in her English and doesn’t use it much. They are all very nice, generous and welcoming without being overly solicitous, and very interested in hearing about my life and my home in America.
Before dinner, Paata and I walked about ten minutes to a nearby hot spring, where I had a refreshing wash in the steaming water. As we walked back, the setting sun lit up the snowcapped mountains of Svateni, which rise abruptly off to the north. At dinner I met several neighbors, who toasted to my arrival and the prospect of a successful stay here in Georgia, in addition to the traditional toasts to family, to those who have died, and to many happy meals together in the future. I was encouraged to drink a lot of wine, but no one seemed put out when I only had a sip for each toast. After dinner, just in case there hadn’t been enough adventure for one day, I found myself corralled with the rest of the men to go tromping off through the brambles in the dark to gather up a litter of piglets that had been born that day and bring them back to the pen.
The next morning Paata and I walked through the village to the school. I am told that Tsaishi is one of the oldest towns in this part of the country, but from a newcomer’s perspective, it mostly just looks like some houses and a partially-roofed government building clustered around the main road that runs from Zugdidi to Kutaisi and points east. The school was just renovated this summer, which meant that we arrived to find many of the classrooms devoid of furniture, and the staff engaged in a prolonged (though seemingly not very hostile) shouting match about how to go about disposing of the piles of construction waste that filled the schoolyard. Slow progress was made in these areas over the course of the morning (my participation, as a new guest, was limited to input regarding the arrangement of desks in the fourth grade classroom), but there still seemed to be a lot to do by the time Paata and I went home for lunch. This meal ended up taking place at the house of his aunt and uncle, whose backyard adjoins ours. That evening a windstorm arrived, bringing a power outage in its wake, both of which lasted until Monday. Fortunately, life in Tsaishi doesn’t depend too much on electricity.
Sunday afternoon saw the four of us, plus our next door neighbors and their young daughter, all piled into the neighbors’ old Opel and off to the Black Sea coast. The strong wind meant stinging sand and murky water, but it still felt great to go swimming, and we found enough shelter to have a picnic before heading home. That night, however, I came down with some serious GI issues, about which I’ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that having to use an outhouse doesn’t sound too bad, until you have to go there several times throughout the night, with a fever, in a windstorm, and with only a flashlight to find your way (remember, the power is still out).
I spent most of the next two days recovering, while the wind finally stopped and gave way to a series of extremely violent thunderstorms (leading to more blackouts), and before I knew it, it was Wednesday and the beginning of school. The day was ostensibly to begin at 9:00, but in what I am learning is true Georgian fashion, the opening assembly didn’t actually start until closer to 11:00. Everyone I’ve told about my interest in Georgian music has seized on the idea, and so a couple other teachers and I had prepared a couple of songs that we knew in common to sing when I was introduced at the assembly. After this Paata and I had a few minutes of a somewhat normal 12th grade class, talking about what we did over the summer, though the classroom we were in still didn’t have any furniture. Before long, however, we were informed that a TV crew wanted to film us, so the class was whisked off to the fully furnished staff room to repeat our discussion for the camera. I was then supposed to go to a 3rd grade class with the other English teacher, Sophie, but the TV people wanted to film me with my host family, so we all—myself, Paata, Sophie and Gocha, the music teacher—piled into the reporter’s car and went home (don’t ask what happened to the 3rd graders; I don’t know). After some “candid” family shots and a short interview, some more school people appeared, and the afternoon suddenly turned into a supra (a feast with lots of toasting and singing), which lasted until the 8:00 news, on which our segment aired. There were only a few seconds of our footage, mixed in with clips of several other volunteers, but they included a bit of us singing, so I can now officially say that I’ve sung on Georgian national television. In all, it was a pretty exhausting day, but I felt good about the time I spent with the students, and about getting to know Gocha, who says he wants to sing with me more.
I know this is an incredibly long post already, and I promise that I’ll summarize more in the future, but there are a few things I’ve jotted down during my first week with my host family that didn’t fit in anywhere else. So until next time, I’ll leave you with these thoughts:
Food:
• Cornmeal-based products seem to be a common substitute for bread here, as a filling starch and a sponge for various sauces. Examples include ghomi (think grits, but just solid enough to cut into with a fork), and small corn pancakes.
• Cornmeal also appears in a surprisingly good dessert dish, mixed with sugar and grape juice and served in a cup like a mousse.
• While I still wouldn’t choose it of my own accord, as far as wine goes, what I’ve had here is actually pretty good. Having a glass with dinner on a semi-regular basis shouldn’t be too hard.
• Other dishes so far: two kinds of khachapuri (cheese bread), roast piglet (not those ones, at least not yet), some kind of white meat in a creamy herb sauce, various eggplant-based dishes (all of which I’ve at least tried), cheese dumplings, pasta in hot, sweet milk (for breakfast), homemade cream puffs, cheeses, and fruit.
Other odds and ends:
• There is a water heater and a showerhead in the bathroom, but the toilet is a hole in the ground, located in an outhouse at the end of the garden.
• The house is large for a family of three, but has a surprisingly small amount of furniture, given that they’ve lived here for two years.
• The light fixture in my ceiling mysteriously raises and lowers itself on its cord when the wind is blowing (unless it’s the ceiling moving up and down—I’ve spent a lot of time watching and I still can’t tell). I know it sounds crazy, but I have video to back me up on this one.
• Oh, and of course, the first language of people in this region isn’t Georgian. They can all speak it, but amongst themselves they speak Megrelian, which is related, but different enough to make it almost impossible for other Georgians to understand. Learning the local language has gotten a lot more interesting.
The ten volunteers from my group who are going to be living in the Zugdidi area took a marshutka (minibus) here on Friday morning, where we met our host families at the local Educational Resource Center in the city (these are scattered throughout the country and serve as intermediary agencies between local schools and the Ministry of Education). There I was handed off to my host father, Paata, who is an English teacher at the school here in Tsaishi, and Marina, the school principal. It was about a fifteen-minute taxi ride to my family’s house, where I met my host mother Marika, their one-year-old son Nikolozi, and Paata’s mother, who lives nearby and was visiting for the day. Marika was also an English teacher before getting married, but she is not very confident in her English and doesn’t use it much. They are all very nice, generous and welcoming without being overly solicitous, and very interested in hearing about my life and my home in America.
Before dinner, Paata and I walked about ten minutes to a nearby hot spring, where I had a refreshing wash in the steaming water. As we walked back, the setting sun lit up the snowcapped mountains of Svateni, which rise abruptly off to the north. At dinner I met several neighbors, who toasted to my arrival and the prospect of a successful stay here in Georgia, in addition to the traditional toasts to family, to those who have died, and to many happy meals together in the future. I was encouraged to drink a lot of wine, but no one seemed put out when I only had a sip for each toast. After dinner, just in case there hadn’t been enough adventure for one day, I found myself corralled with the rest of the men to go tromping off through the brambles in the dark to gather up a litter of piglets that had been born that day and bring them back to the pen.
The next morning Paata and I walked through the village to the school. I am told that Tsaishi is one of the oldest towns in this part of the country, but from a newcomer’s perspective, it mostly just looks like some houses and a partially-roofed government building clustered around the main road that runs from Zugdidi to Kutaisi and points east. The school was just renovated this summer, which meant that we arrived to find many of the classrooms devoid of furniture, and the staff engaged in a prolonged (though seemingly not very hostile) shouting match about how to go about disposing of the piles of construction waste that filled the schoolyard. Slow progress was made in these areas over the course of the morning (my participation, as a new guest, was limited to input regarding the arrangement of desks in the fourth grade classroom), but there still seemed to be a lot to do by the time Paata and I went home for lunch. This meal ended up taking place at the house of his aunt and uncle, whose backyard adjoins ours. That evening a windstorm arrived, bringing a power outage in its wake, both of which lasted until Monday. Fortunately, life in Tsaishi doesn’t depend too much on electricity.
Sunday afternoon saw the four of us, plus our next door neighbors and their young daughter, all piled into the neighbors’ old Opel and off to the Black Sea coast. The strong wind meant stinging sand and murky water, but it still felt great to go swimming, and we found enough shelter to have a picnic before heading home. That night, however, I came down with some serious GI issues, about which I’ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that having to use an outhouse doesn’t sound too bad, until you have to go there several times throughout the night, with a fever, in a windstorm, and with only a flashlight to find your way (remember, the power is still out).
I spent most of the next two days recovering, while the wind finally stopped and gave way to a series of extremely violent thunderstorms (leading to more blackouts), and before I knew it, it was Wednesday and the beginning of school. The day was ostensibly to begin at 9:00, but in what I am learning is true Georgian fashion, the opening assembly didn’t actually start until closer to 11:00. Everyone I’ve told about my interest in Georgian music has seized on the idea, and so a couple other teachers and I had prepared a couple of songs that we knew in common to sing when I was introduced at the assembly. After this Paata and I had a few minutes of a somewhat normal 12th grade class, talking about what we did over the summer, though the classroom we were in still didn’t have any furniture. Before long, however, we were informed that a TV crew wanted to film us, so the class was whisked off to the fully furnished staff room to repeat our discussion for the camera. I was then supposed to go to a 3rd grade class with the other English teacher, Sophie, but the TV people wanted to film me with my host family, so we all—myself, Paata, Sophie and Gocha, the music teacher—piled into the reporter’s car and went home (don’t ask what happened to the 3rd graders; I don’t know). After some “candid” family shots and a short interview, some more school people appeared, and the afternoon suddenly turned into a supra (a feast with lots of toasting and singing), which lasted until the 8:00 news, on which our segment aired. There were only a few seconds of our footage, mixed in with clips of several other volunteers, but they included a bit of us singing, so I can now officially say that I’ve sung on Georgian national television. In all, it was a pretty exhausting day, but I felt good about the time I spent with the students, and about getting to know Gocha, who says he wants to sing with me more.
I know this is an incredibly long post already, and I promise that I’ll summarize more in the future, but there are a few things I’ve jotted down during my first week with my host family that didn’t fit in anywhere else. So until next time, I’ll leave you with these thoughts:
Food:
• Cornmeal-based products seem to be a common substitute for bread here, as a filling starch and a sponge for various sauces. Examples include ghomi (think grits, but just solid enough to cut into with a fork), and small corn pancakes.
• Cornmeal also appears in a surprisingly good dessert dish, mixed with sugar and grape juice and served in a cup like a mousse.
• While I still wouldn’t choose it of my own accord, as far as wine goes, what I’ve had here is actually pretty good. Having a glass with dinner on a semi-regular basis shouldn’t be too hard.
• Other dishes so far: two kinds of khachapuri (cheese bread), roast piglet (not those ones, at least not yet), some kind of white meat in a creamy herb sauce, various eggplant-based dishes (all of which I’ve at least tried), cheese dumplings, pasta in hot, sweet milk (for breakfast), homemade cream puffs, cheeses, and fruit.
Other odds and ends:
• There is a water heater and a showerhead in the bathroom, but the toilet is a hole in the ground, located in an outhouse at the end of the garden.
• The house is large for a family of three, but has a surprisingly small amount of furniture, given that they’ve lived here for two years.
• The light fixture in my ceiling mysteriously raises and lowers itself on its cord when the wind is blowing (unless it’s the ceiling moving up and down—I’ve spent a lot of time watching and I still can’t tell). I know it sounds crazy, but I have video to back me up on this one.
• Oh, and of course, the first language of people in this region isn’t Georgian. They can all speak it, but amongst themselves they speak Megrelian, which is related, but different enough to make it almost impossible for other Georgians to understand. Learning the local language has gotten a lot more interesting.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Destination: Tsaishi
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Georgia: First Impressions
Gamarjobat!
We’ve been in an intensive orientation session for five days now, and the levels of both excitement and fatigue in the group are steadily growing. We’re staying in a residential school building on the outskirts of Kutaisi, the capital of the Imereti region where we will be placed (we go to our host families on Friday). We have three hours of Georgian language classes in the morning, then four hours of other subjects in the afternoon, including teaching methodology and intercultural learning. From my perspective, the language classes have been more useful than the others, particularly since we’ve been told that our host families may have a very limited knowledge of English.
We’ve been living in a pretty well insulated bubble so far, which may be good in terms of letting our bodies adjust to the food, the water and the climate here, but also leaves us feeling that in a way we haven’t really arrived in Georgia yet. That will all change in a couple of days, of course, but for the time being, here are some first impressions:
- Despite our location in a fairly urban setting, there are often dogs, cows and chickens within sight of the front door.
- There are lots of good combinations of bread, meat, cheese and spices in various forms. Unfortunately, many of them contain cilantro.
- Having experienced firsthand the driving habits of bus drivers in Tbilisi and Kutaisi, I have no complaints about the program rule that forbids any of us to drive while in the country. Nino, our orientation director and Mother-Hen-in-Chief, says her belief in God is renewed every time she gets out of a motor vehicle alive.
- Georgian is hard. I’m making good progress with the alphabet, but conversational ease is extremely slow in coming. Yesterday’s crowning achievement: “Shvid saatze k’ontsertze mivdivar. At saatze sakhlshi viknabi.” (At seven o’clock I’m going to the concert. I’ll be home at ten.) Today’s: “Tu sheidzleba, me minda kartopiliani khink’ali da upamidoro salati.” (Please, I want meat dumplings with potatoes and a salad without tomatoes.)
- We spend an inordinate amount of time in group meetings talking about toilets. Many volunteers are not familiar with concepts such as dual-flush systems and putting toilet paper in the trash, and this leads to a fair number of technical difficulties.
- As we were warned early on in orientation, waiting in line is an unknown concept here. The first time I went to the store, I waited my turn, only to have a man elbow in front of me without so much as a glance in my direction.
We did break out of our bubble briefly last night, when we went to see the 12th century Gelati monastery, about 20 minutes away. This is a complex of buildings, including a church covered with magnificent wall paintings of saints and angels (which were kind of hard to see, since it was dark), and the oldest known academic institution in the country. It is also the burial place of King David the Builder, one of Georgia’s most famous and revered rulers. I’m looking forward to seeing more churches in other places, preferably in the daylight.
***Updates since first writing***
I wast interviewed on film (not sure who for) yesterday about the program, and what motivated me to come here and teach. The reporter tried to get me to say something political (there is some opposition to to the program within the country), but I did my best to be positive while avoiding saying anything sensitive. Also, last night after we were done with our last meeting, a bunch of the trainers and I ended up singing a Georgian song we all knew (Aralo, a.k.a. Imeruli Maqruli) out on the front steps. Definitely a highlight of the week!
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Safe and Sound
Well, here I am in Georgia! My flight from Munich was easy, and I had my first direct experience with Georgian hospitality before I even got off the plane. The man next to me gave me a lesson in Georgian, told me that his region (Samegrelo) is the best part of the country and that I should try to be placed there, and ended up giving me his e-mail and telling me that I would be welcome to stay at his house if I ever wanted.
After meeting up with people from a couple other flights, we went to a hotel and slept for a few short hours. We're off shortly to a meeting at the Ministry of Education and Science (our sponsoring organization within the government), before heading off to the city of Kutaisi, where we will have our orientation. I'm tired, but exhilarated, and looking forward both to getting to know my fellow teachers and to seeing some of the country today.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Grüße aus Deutschland!
Unexpected, perhaps, but true. I write from the Munich airport, from whence my flight to Tbilisi will depart in a few hours. I had essentially the whole day here, so I took advantage of it and went into the city. Went first to the Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde, which has an impressive collection of traditional art from many (non-European) parts of the world. I had a lunch of sausage and a soft pretzel at the Viktualenmarkt, a big open-air market in the center of the city, wandered around and read on the grass for a while in the Englischer Garten (Munich's version of Central Park), and even managed to catch the 5:00 playing of the clockwork automata in the tower of the Neues Rathaus, a ridiculously Neo-Gothic but nonetheless impressive edifice. By that time, however, it had started to get cold, and as much as I appreciated a cool day in between hot Burlington and even hotter Tbilisi, I decided to call it a day. In addition, as I realized after falling asleep several times on the S-Bahn train back to the airport, I was exhausted.
Unfortunately, there's not really any hope of getting a good night's sleep tonight, either, as my flight will cost me another two hours in time change and land me in Georgia at 3:00 am local time. That's the traveling life!
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