Talking about Georgia

I haven't written an update in a while, and in the meantime I've forgotten some of the stuff we've done, so this one will be slightly different.

We've visited: Gori, famed as Stalin's birthplace and host to the Stalin museum; Kazbegi, a rural mountain village with a hilltop church pictured on the cover of the Georgia edition of the Lonely Planet guide; T'bilisi, the capital of Georgia; and a winery in the Kakheti region.

All this variety has just highlighted to me the similarities of people around Georgia: their curiosity, openness, friendliness and hospitality are almost universal. Almost, because the people of T'bilisi proved to be the exception, at least in my case. I did not enjoy the city overly much, passers-by being particularly rude in cases. This probably speaks of the dehumanising aspects of large cities, the loss of community, the loss of respect for fellow people, the victory of the rat race over the human race. Or it may be just me, as no one else I spoke to experienced the same level of disrespect. The other cities and the countryside were much more pleasant in terms of the manners of the locals: they were just as curious but not randomly condescending like in T'bilisi.

I wonder whether this is how foreigners feel when they visit the UK, a country not known for its generosity towards strangers? I would like to think that we Brits are more tolerant of differences, at least in part due to the many rules governing "anti-discrimination", but possibly I am mistaken.

Speaking of differences, the Stalin museum in Gori presents a wholly different picture of the man to that which we in the west are used to. A family man, dedicated to his cause to the end, with no skeletons in his closet. According to the guide, anyway. She gave us a comprehensive tour of the great man's life, with nary a pause so that we couldn't ask any awkward questions. For me, the highlight of the tour was Stalin's own train carriage, in its original condition. A comparison between this and the state carriage of, say, Queen Elizabeth II, neatly encapsulates the differences between communism and the decadent west. Stalin's carriage had berths for other people, the fitments were good but not grand, overall it was on the quality side of functional. It did feature a very comfy wooden-seated toilet: even communist leaders must have their little luxuries.

We are heading for the border with Azerbaijan now, more pointless formalities taking several hours methinks.

Pics are the church from the cover of the Lonely Planet, with memorial, and an illicit view of the bridge to Azerbaijan.