Navigating and understanding a large city of more than 10 million was like chewing a piece of leather. Moscow has more people than the entire Czech Republic where I even got lost in my own back yard. My first day in Moscow was a complete nightmare. With an 18-kg backpack not adjusted very well, I felt the entire load on my neck and shoulder. A wind blow could tip me over. In this condition, I had to find my way in the maze of Moscow’ underground while deciphering Cyrillic.
No other country in Europe, except Albania, did I hear many disheartening comments like Georgia. “People are a little strange.” “Men there are like monkeys; They will rape you.” “How about you have a kid, wait until he grows a few years then you can go.” To be fair, Georgia, as we know it–thanks to the media–isn’t a sunny beach resort where tourists go to get a tan or a cosmopolitan capital lined up with coffee bars and restaurants. It isn’t a peaceful village where cows roam on green pasture, nor it is a place where one escape to the cottage in the summer. Georgia, as we know it, is the South Ossetia four years ago with vivid images of tanks, flying rockets, and bombed buildings. When I found out the mountainous area I wanted to visit, Kazbegi and Svaneti, located in proximity with the problematic autonomous Abkhazia and Chechnya, I seriously wondered about the environment surrounding this country.
I went to Khankhali House to have dumplings. As I was waiting for my food, a group of three in their early 50s asked if they could share my table. The waitress brought the dumpling on a small plate, a fork and walked off. I asked for a knife. “NO.” It wasn’t the waitress who refused me but one of the men. I looked at them, pointed to my dumplings indicating that I needed to cut. “Spoon?” “NO. NO. NO.” They vehemently confronted me. One of the men removed the fork from my hand, stuck it to one of my dumplings at the top where the sag tied up, flipped it over, held it with one hand, blew to cool it down, took a bite and sucked the juice. “See? Do it.”
I had never sampled so much new food in just one day let alone one sitting. Usually, it took an entire trip to get down only a few dishes.
Dan, my host, took me to lunch and ordered a tableful of Georgian dishes. I was still under the Central European time; that means I had lunch at 10 o’clock in the morning. I ate so much I almost fell asleep in the car after and had to pinch myself to stay awake and chit chat with Dan.
I got really nervous just by the thoughts of handling all these administrative stuff just so that I would be able to drink vodka every day and maybe shake hand with Mister DO-IT-ALL Putin.
My super-easy, spontaneous traveling days in non-restricting Europe is over. I can’t leave on a last-minute impulse, showing up at the bus station to get on the next available bus ride to wherever I want. I can’t take advantage of promotions and book flights leaving a few weeks later. I have to plan a lot, and this distressed me.
My name is Cindy, also rhymes with travel junkie. A friend said I was probably a gipsy in my previous life. One of my many secret missions in life is to convert you to run off every once in awhile.
