Welcome to Hannover, Mr. President

It has never been cooler to be an American in Hannover. Or, actually, to be one particular American in Hannover.
No, sorry, it's not me.
President Obama has come to visit our humble city for two days, and he is all the rage.
He's here for the opening of the trade fair for industrial technology. Every year there's a partner country, and it's customary for that country's leader to open the fair along with Angela Merkel. Previous famous guests for this expo have been Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin (occasion of the famous topless protest). This year, the partner country is the USA and O-bams came to town.

Hannover is all abuzz about the visit. News blogs have up to the minute coverage of what Obama is eating, where he is sleeping, what his shoes look like. Police are everywhere, blocking off streets. Sections of the city were closed off so that the motorcade could drive through, with Obama's special armored limo shipped from the USA called 'The Beast'. Anyone who wanted to come or go from the neighborhood surrounding Hannover's conference center had to pre-register with the police. If you were planning to stand at your window give The Beast a wave, forget it. Waving through windows is prohibited. Keep your hands to yourself.

The Beast

Side note:

It's not the first time that I've hung around in the same obscure town as Obama.  Air Force One was parked (is that the word? do planes park?) in Hilo, Hawaii when Brian and I were there in 2009. We drove out to the airport to see, and guards waved us on when we tried to stop. Obama flew out on the same night we did. All the air space surrounding Honolulu was closed and we almost missed our plane to Minneapolis due to the delay. It was the only time I have run full speed through a near-empty airport just like in the movies, to find the wonderful flight attendants holding the plane for us. Thank you, Hawaiian Airlines.

Our international school was not to be left out of the excitement. The fourth graders wrote letters asking Obama to visit (he didn't, sorry kids), and we hired two security guards to stand by the school gate and protect us against those crazy America-haters that would surely be attacking. I saw the guards on Monday afternoon, looking chilly and watching over a handful of German and Japanese kids on the playground. Rumor has it there were several policemen in the male teachers' bathroom as well. Maybe they were scoping it out in case The Beast had to pull over somewhere so the president could pee.

Obama left Hannover last night, and our town's star-struck brush with the world's most powerful man is over. After all the security in Hannover, I can see how Europeans might think of the USA as a violent police state. They must imagine Washington DC as a city in a state of permanent lock-down. I hope they know that one of our freedoms, as Americans, is to wave whenever we like.

Up to the church

The main attraction in Kazbegi is the 14th century Holy Trinity church. Perched on a mountain in the shadow of Mount Kazbegi (which is 5,000m or 16,000 ft high), getting up to the church is the highlight. Some take four wheel drive vehicles up the muddy, snowy track and others, like us, walk. The hiking trail is not as clear as you'd think. But thanks to an old woman in a black headscarf, who pointed us in the right direction as she sat on her front steps in the sun, we found our way. The church itself is small and stout to withstand centuries of mountain winters. It was a tourist destination in Soviet times as well, as you can see from the abandoned Intourist hotel. Intourist was the USSR's state-run travel company.

the Intourist hotel, Kazbegi

Even though all religious services were prohibited, Soviet-era tourists still visited Holy Trinity and the government built a cable car up to the church in 1988. The locals, protective of their sacred place and angry at the Russians, promptly destroyed it.

Holy Trinity is still a working church. We saw a couple of long-bearded priests up there - one reading the Bible inside the church and another sitting outside, gazing at the mountains. To enter this or any other Georgian church, women have to wear long skirts and head scarves. Not planning to hike up a mountain in an ankle-length skirt? No problem. They have loaners, which wrap around and look great with hiking boots.

This was the last highlight of our Caucasus trip and the rest of our time in Kazbegi/Stepantsminda/Gergeti was spent hanging around with Wendy and Ketino and eating too much of Ketino's food ("what? you no eat eggs?" "No, I already had some, really.") She sent us off with a few recipes, a bottle of wine and a hug.

To the mountains, Kazbegi

After another day in Tbilisi, we headed toward the Russian border. Our destination was a mountain town with two names. Its original name is Stepantsminda, after the first monk who settled there. It's also called Kazbegi, for its first Russian ruler and his grandson, a famous writer. After independence, the town officially shed the name Kazbegi, but somehow it sticks around.

We were headed toward Kazbegi, also known as Stepantsminda, also known as you're almost in Russia now. Georgians do not like Russia. The man driving us to Kazbegi (I was getting used to having a private driver) did not speak much English, but he pointed out a pipeline near the highway and said, "Gazprom". He explained that the gas goes through to Armenia and Azerbaijan, but Georgia doesn't buy any gas from the Russians. "They are not good people," he said. He also pointed out some Middle Eastern tourists who had pulled over to take pictures of the river and to dip their toes in it. "Arab people," he said, "ooh water, ooh snow, wow!" Ten minutes later, we saw another group doing the same thing. It's funny what we find exotic - just as I would get excited for a camel in the desert, they were overjoyed with bodies of water. Our driver also pointed toward Chechnya, South Ossetia, Daghestan... all the small and disputed regions that make this a very complicated part of the world. There are so many identities, ethnicities, allies, enemies. Humans have lived in the Caucasus for thousands of years.  Do the divisions between people multiply the older their civilization becomes?

Ananuri fortress

Mountain pass on the way to Kazbegi

Kazbegi (altitude 1,740m or a little over a mile)

We arrived to find out that we were not actually staying in Kazbegi but in the village of Gergeti, on the other side of the river. As one of Georgia's top tourist destinations, Kazbegi has two hotels and several guest houses. A guest house is sort of a bed and breakfast, a room for rent in a private house. I had chosen Ketino's guest house mostly at random and as we arrived I thanked the internet for bringing her to us. Ketino was like my Georgian mom. She's not old enough to actually be my mom, but she kept calling me 'my lovely', telling me to eat more, and it didn't take long for her to ask when I'm having babies.  Ketino offered to show me how to cook Georgian food. An hour later I was sitting at a big kitchen table in a house in a Georgian mountain village and slicing tomatoes according to Ketino's specifications while her elderly mother sat across from me, squeezing spices into ground meat with her thick fingers. It was one of my happiest moments of the trip.

The other guests were Julia and Lisa from Moscow and an American named Wendy. Wendy works for the U.S. government and had just finished two months of interviewing Syrian refugees in Jordan. Over dinner, which included Ketino's home made cheese, home made wine, and home made everything else, she imparted some Ketino wisdom to all of us in her heavily accented English.

Ketino summed up her attitude toward Russia by saying, "I don't like Vladimir Putin, but I like these girls," she gestured toward the sweet and sunburned Julia and Lisa. "Have all the Georgians treated you good here?" she asked them. Julia nodded enthusiastically. Ketino talked about how she makes her wine, and about how each family has its own cherished recipe. "Wine makes relax. It's like part of your soul. When I drink my wine (this part she had to say in Russian because she couldn't quite find the words in English. Julia helped to translate.) it's like I am not even drinking, because it's already a part of me."

Dinner at Ketino's (there are more dishes coming)

Ketino's house

Cave men

From Gori we took a taxi to the ancient city of Uplistshike.
Here's how we got there:
We left the Stalin museum and a guy with a Barcelona soccer hat and brown teeth approached us. He had a sign hanging around his neck. The sign had a picture of a cave and said Uplisthshike. I still cannot pronounce this word, so luckily we could just point to his little sign instead. With the universal gesture of fingers rubbing against a thumb, which I guess represents rubbing your imaginary coins together, we asked him how much. He took out his cell phone and typed in 25. "Hmmm", I said, "twenty?" Despite our language barrier, he knew exactly what I was saying. He flashed his brown teeth in a smile and shook his head. "Oh no no", he said and pointed to the 25 on his phone again. "Twenty," Brian said, decisively. He smiled again and said "Okay," then led us to his car with threadbare upholstery and multiple air fresheners hanging from the rear view mirror.

The haggling is almost required, or at least expected. With a little bargaining, the tourist/customer shows that he/she is savvy and not to be swindled. The taxi driver/street vendor laughs to himself about how easy it is to swindle foreign tourists by letting them talk you down to a still-inflated price. In the end we pay eight bucks for two hours of the taxi driver's time and everyone feels very happy with themelves.

Uplistshike was one of Georgia's first cities. It was founded around 500 BC and thrived for the next 1500 years. It was all built into, on top of, and around a cluster of caves in the hillside. What you can visit today is just half of the city, and it has all been excavated in the last fifty years.

What will people in another thousand years uncover from our cities? What will last from our civilization? And what will the Earth even look like? This were my thoughts as we found our taxi driver. He stood patiently beside his car, waiting to take us back to the bus station.

Gori, Stalin, and the minibus

Heading to Gori meant figuring out how to get there, exactly. We didn't want to take a group tour, and we didn't want to get scammed. The idea of booking an all-day taxi like we did in Armenia didn't really work; the driver just took us to the bus station. So we took a bus.

The main bus station in Hannover is a very orderly and sanitary affair, with numbered gates where well-marked buses leave right on schedule. In Tbilisi, minibuses and taxis cram in as drivers shout out their destinations and passengers haggle for better prices. The minibuses sometimes have signs to state their destinations, but,of course, those signs are written in Georgian. Somehow we got pointed toward the bus to Gori. No, there were no chickens on board. And nobody smelled bad, either. It was crowded and Brian's knees jammed up against the seat in front of him, but otherwise the minibus worked fine. It took us directly to the Stalin museum for less than $1.50 per person.

Gori is the hometown of Joszef Stalin, and its main claim to fame. It's strange to go to a museum that honors an evil dictator responsible for the deaths of millions. It sounded so strange and awful that we had to go see how it's all done. The museum itself was a little ragged, kind of dark and cold with worn carpets and accumulated dust. The exhibits are overwhelmingly positive... let's just say that there is some information missing. The strangest items in the place are Stalin's death mask and the cottage where he was born, which stands outside the museum under a stained glass roof decorated with the hammer and sickle. You can read more about Gori and the museum in this article.

Inside the museum

Stalin's childhood home

Why do the Georgians have a museum for Stalin, but the Germans wouldn't dream of building one to honor Hitler? Maybe because Stalin's government succeeded.

There was actually a movement led by the national culture minister to transform the institution into a museum of Russian aggression. For a while, a banner hung outside the museum saying "This museum is a falsification of history. It is a typical example of Soviet propaganda and it attempts to legitimize the bloodiest regime in history." But the locals took it down and voted down the idea of changing the museum's purpose.

Thoroughly creeped out by it all, we left the museum and found a taxi driver to take us to the cave city.

Tbilisi

We pulled into Tbilisi on a Friday night. Roy and Mikhail, two other tourists on our bus, were staying the same hotel that Brian and I had booked. We weren't sure how to get there, and didn't have any Georgian money (Laris) yet. The plan was to get off the bus, find an ATM and take a taxi.  Roy and Mikhail seemed very relaxed and confident about it all.

We got off the bus in downtown Tbilisi (in front of Dunkin' Donuts) and they froze. They fumbled. They pulled out a Lonely Planet guide book to look for a map. The four of us had just gotten off a tour bus, standing with suitcases on a busy street and thumbing through a guide book. International tourism 101: this means we were fresh meat. Taxi drivers circled like sharks while we debated what to do (cue the Jaws music). I found and ATM and came back to find one shark loading my suitcase into the trunk of his car. He wanted to charge 20 Laris to take us to the hotel. Granted, 20 Laris is like 8 euros, but I felt like we were getting scammed and the driver had a crazy look in his eye. So I said no, 20 Laris was too much. I grabbed the suitcase and found another guy to take us for 10. We might have still overpaid, but it was my best bargaining moment of the trip.

I kind of like bargaining cultures. Prices are never negotiable in Germany, so I find it a little exotic to haggle. But after a few days, the challenge lost its luster. By our last day of the trip, I basically gave up and ended up buying some dried fruit for double what I probably should have paid. With my wits about me, I could have saved like 75 cents.

After peaceful, dusty Yerevan, Tbilisi was all bright lights, big city. It is bigger, busier, noisier. Tbilisi is long and steep, hemmed in by the hills on its edges with the wide muddy Kura river in the middle. Its streets meander, twist and climb. While Yerevan is still struggling to get up from its past, Tbilisi seems to stand on its own two feet. There is a charmingly decaying old town (which I like), and plenty of massive glass and concrete Soviet buildings (which Brian likes) and even more modern areas. There are beautiful parks to rival those of any German city. There are restaurant streets for tourists and well-to-do Georgians, and construction projects in Tbilisi seem to actually get finished, most of the time.

Tbilisi feels like a city with many layers. Like Yerevan, Tbilisi has been beaten, occupied, ransacked and colonized through out much of its history. But it was always an important trade city and a main stop on the Great Silk Road linking east and west. That legacy seems to keep Tbilisi moving forward. After nearly 200 years under the Russians, Tbilisi seems to be alive, growing, moving ahead. Unlike Yerevan, it's ready to take in tourists from many different places. Speaking of tourists, we never ran into Roy and Mikhail again at the hotel. Hopefully they weren't eaten by sharks.

Leaving Yerevan

There is no McDonald's in Yerevan, no Ikea, no H & M, no Burger King.
There is a KFC and Pizza Hut on the fanciest, busiest street corner in town. But other than that. the tentacles of globalization have not reached their sticky selves into Armenia. In this place that's not exactly Europe but maybe not quite Asia, I felt like we were just on the edge of everything.

Getting to Tbilisi, Georgia from Yerevan is not as easy as it should be. The cities are 300km apart (180 miles). There are almost no flights. There is an overnight train (literally a midnight train to Georgia) which is slow and expensive. You can take a five hour taxi ride (no meter, thank goodness) or a minibus that leaves as soon as it's full. We make the trip as tourists are meant to - with a bus tour. On our ride north, we stopped at three ruined monasteries from the tenth century. We saw beautiful natural scenery from the snowy mountain passes outside Yerevan to the rocky Debed river, which flowed alongside us most of the way. We also saw old Soviet factories, mostly abandoned or working at a fraction of their capacity. We stopped for lunch at a family's home which was made from two shipping containers with no indoor plumbing. The food was delicious but I couldn't help thinking of that novel about the boxcar children.

The huge monasteries we visited have stood solid for centuries, and you can still see their delicate carvings and paint on the walls. But all around them, years of colonization took their toll. People are living in apartments with broken windows, or sagging houses patched with scrap wood. At least, our guide pointed out, under the Soviets everyone had a job and a free education.

There is no McDonald's in Armenia. Is that a good or a bad thing? I'm not sure.

Home of the Catholicos

We also visited Etchmiadzin, Armenia's version of Vatican City. It's the headquarters of the Armenian church and home to its leaders, known as Catholicos. The cathedral there houses several famous relics: from St. Peter, John the Baptist, Noah's Ark and the lance that a Roman soldier used to pierce Jesus's side after he died on the cross. Of course, there is no DNA testing. But since Armenia was home to early Christians and the first country to become officially Christian, I guess it's plausible.

As a practicing Catholic, I am very aware that some of our Catholic stuff is really weird. Relics, whether Catholic or Catholico, are among the weirdest. Inside a fancy gold box is an eyelash, or a toenail, or maybe a nose hair of John the Baptist? Gross. Or gross and creepy in the holiest of ways.
I wonder what the inside of that toenail box smells like now.

Holy Lance

fragment of Noah's Ark

The gloss and prestige of Etchmiadzin stopped at the walls of the church complex. The rest of the town looked like other places in Armenia:

Armenia's top attractions

Day two in Yerevan began with deliberation. We were going to visit Garni and Geghard, Armenia's top tourist attractions. While internet was telling me that it was possible by minibus, foot and taxi. The girl at the front desk talked me into using a private driver for the day. The hardcore traveler in me resisted. But comfort, security and her convincing sales pitch won out, so we dropped twenty bucks for our all-day chauffeur. I realized I'd made the right decision when we got to Garni and it looked like this.

That's me.

Armenia's greatest attraction looked a little smaller than I expected, and it had about 10 visitors. There were more old ladies outside the gate selling dried fruits than there were tourists inside, and no taxis were waiting. The temple was built in the 1st century to the sun god Mihr (years too long ago to imagine). The site was turned into a summer residence for a princess, complete with hot sulfur baths. It somehow escaped destruction by the early Christians and a church was built next to it instead, on top of the palace ruins. The place toppled in a 17th century earthquake and has now been reconstructed.

From Garni our driver took us on to Geghard Monastery. It was cold, windy and the road went uphill. I was very glad weren't trying to get there on foot. There has been a monastery built into the side of the mountain at Geghard since the 4th century. The monks lived in caves in the hillside, often in isolation.  The main church, built around 1200, wasn't like any I'd seen. It was a series of dim, cold chambers, silent except for a trickle of running water. The only light came through windows carved in the rock and a few candles inside. The side altars were completely dark until you came close enough to see crosses carved into the walls. In one of the rooms, an old woman in a long coat squatted beside the spring, fussing with her plastic bags and cups. I didn't know whether she was collecting holy water or washing her dishes from lunch.

I walked up the stony steps to the next chapel, a music hall famous for its perfect acoustics. As I read the sign outside, the old lady walked by with her cups and bags. She said something to me in Armenian and gestured that I should come inside. I followed. The chapel was round, supported by thick pillars and lit by a single hole in the roof. The lady set her bags down and poured her cups of holy water into a basin in the corner. She tightened her coat and strode to the middle of the room, face lit by the weak light from above. And then she sang. Her voice was light and steady and young, and that moment it was the most beautiful voice in the world. She sang the songs which have probably been performed here for a thousand years. Now, with her loose coat and disposable cups, she performed in front of a couple of shivering tourists standing in the dark.

Yerevan

The only person I know who has been to Armenia's capital, Yerevan, is my friend Karissa. She said that it reminded her of Madison, Wisconsin, her hometown. Other than the locals' love of cheese I have yet to pick up on the similarities.

We stayed at a hotel call the Elysium Gallery, and arriving there reminded me not to choose hotels with fancy-sounding names. They may be trying to compensate for something. Don't get me wrong, the place was comfortable enough. It was just... Armenian. I mean what do you expect from a mid-range hotel in the former USSR, except a place where you enter the bathroom through the shower and push back the curtain to get to the toilet? The people were helpful and the bed was comfy, but our power went out because three hundred electrical cords were snarled together into one switchboard. Every day after a lovely breakfast, we would return to a room with no towels. The cleaning lady needed to wash them and hang them out the window to dry all afternoon before giving them back in the evening.

Yerevan is filled with grand avenues and huge statues. The Soviets built buildings to last, though those buildings now fly the Armenian flag. Sprouting off of the grand avenues are dusty streets, lined with decaying apartment blocks and half-finished construction projects. The place that really represented Armenia to us was the Cascades - huge white steps in the center of town, dotted with sculptures and fountains. They are truly impressive and as you climb and climb them, they suddenly just stop. A huge section is unfinished and has been under construction for a decade or so. After a detour on some gravelly roads you finish the climb at a wide plaza with a tall tower. To your right is a park that used to house a huge statue of Jozsef Stalin.  Now Stalin is gone and replaced by a sculpture of Mother Armenia, a woman warrior holding a sword.

Park in Yerevan

Cascades

Cascade construction

Mother Armenia

Armenians are quick to fly their flag and erect their statues because, since 1990, they finally have a country to call their own. Before the Soviets took over there were the Ottoman Turks. Before them came the Persians and the Byzantines. Armenia has been ruled by foreign powers for ages, and Armenians have been broken down for just as long.  Now they are trying to rebound, furiously flying their flags. Recovery seems slow, but in Yerevan you can spot a Lexus and a BMW here and there.

Around Yerevan there are signs that say "remember and demand." The slogan refers to the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian genocide. Over 1.5 million people were killed and they are honored at the Genocide Memorial and Museum.
Note: I learned that 43 U.S. states have recognized the genocide, but since Ronald Reagan, U.S. presidents have refused to use that term in fear of alienating Turkey, our ally and the perpetrator.
 

Genocide Memorial

Brian gazes at Mt. Ararat from the Genocide Memorial

Remember and demand

Trying to find a better life, Armenians have emigrated all over the world (much like the Irish, the Polish and so many others).  Famous Armenian-American Kim Kardashian visited Yerevan a couple of years ago. Some developer gave her a big house, in case she ever wanted to come and live in Armenia. That seems silly - she could just stay at the Elysium Gallery instead.

The constant reminder to remember and demand keeps the Armenians on guard, proud, conscious of who their enemies are, wary of who else might want to invade. Mother Armenia, sword in hand, watches over the city ready to defend them. Maybe the campaigns were not working, because people were all very kind to us and not demanding at all. Every Armenian man seems to wear a black leather jacket. Every Armenian woman seems to wear heels and heavy makeup. They didn't look like they were from Wisconsin, but they did show us some Midwestern kindness.