Сталин my hero

Hold onto your miters, everyone, but I actually went somewhere today and did something. You're going to like this, really. I went to Josef Stalin's birthplace! You'd think they'd have long since plowed over such an ignominious place and sowed the ground with salt. But if you thought so, you'd be so wrong. In Georgia, where he was born, Stalin is a national hero! What?! I guess there aren't too many heroes coming out of the Caucasus, so they take what they can get--even Stalin.

I woke early and caught the minibus to Gori, the town in question, about an hour from Tbilisi through stunning green countryside, backdropped by white-capped mountains. Lovely. In the center of the town is a Stalin memorial park, on one side of which is Stalin Street. You need a very subtle sense of humor to find such things amusing. There was once a village here, but the Communists (in, ahem, the 1930s) bulldozed every building except the Chairman's modest, Lincoln-esque hovel (love the story--mother a seamstress, father a shoemaker, lived in one room). Next to that, they built a less modest museum to chronicle the life of the U.S.S.R.'s greatest leader. Before going inside, I had my photo taken with some local youths who love Stalin next to his bust. Then I found out it was going to cost me 10 lari ($6.66) to enter--and that's the student price. Even the ticket lady lamented about how expensive it is. The Verdi opera last night, and it was enchanting, only cost about $3.25 for the best seats. Well, I wasn't going to miss this. And I still bought a Stalin keychain, too. All the signage is in Georgian (a bunch of squiggly things) and Russian (backwards letters, numbers, etc.) so I was in luck when a group of French tourists (!) came along with a guide for an English language (!) tour. The museum guide was a lovely young Georgian college student who talked way too fast even for me, so we relied on this other Georgian guy to re-translate. At one point, the (museum) guide pointed to a photo of Stalin casting a ballot and remarked, "This is Stalin electing himself." My composure-reflexes not quick enough to block the signal, I burst out laughing. I thought she meant to say, "This is Stalin voting for himself," but didn't realize the irony. I tried to explain, but she got confused, so then I wasn't sure if she didn't mean what she said!

After the tour, which included a peek inside the birth house and Stalin's private railcar, me and the Israeli, Frenchman, and Michigan-based Zionist activist I ended up with wandered over to the main square. There, we were delighted by what must be the last remaining colossus of Stalin left in the world. More photos, of course. Then we took a taxi to a famous house-cave city I never heard of, but which was fairly impressive and, as usual, sited in spectacular Caucasian scenery. The Lonely Planet-equipped Israeli informed us that the site dates back to 1000 B.C. Wow. Then we went back to Tbilisi, where I bought greens and tomatos at a market because I'm sick of eating fried bread and cheese for every meal, dammit. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have a salad.

Georgia, the prison state

OK, Georgia is not a prison, but I can't get out. It's not border control problems or travel restrictions. Mostly, it's laziness, probably induced by Couchsurfing. It's hard to give up free accomodation in a comfortable environment. Plus, the weather here only just started to get good, so now I'm outside a bit more instead of running from viaduct to viaduct and drinking (even clubbing, god help me) at night. Last night, I vowed not to drink again. I failed. Tonight, I am going to try and see Verdi's Requiem, which is on at the opera house here. If it's sold out, I guess I'll just go to a bar.

Georgia on my mind

Did you Americans know that, in addition to the state of Georgia, there is a country called Georgia? Does anyone know that? Crossing over from Yerevan several days ago, I passed to the difficult to spell and pronounce capital city of Tbilisi on one of the worst international "highways" I've ever seen. There were few people on the bus, and I found it very hard to change Armenian "dram" for Georgian "lari" once in the city, so I reckon there isn't much intercourse between the two countries, so to speak. But the Georgians noticeably loosened up once we were over the border, beckoning me over to their little group, offering me a mug of paint thinner they referred to as "vodka." Though I was still a tad hungover from the mandatory turning-30 birthday celebrations the previous night (Tom made me a cake! Teny sang for me in Armenian!), I could not turn down their hospitality, nor the opportunity to mug for the foreigners upon drinking their strong local distillant. Actually, there's a lot of drinking-for-leisure here in ex-U.S.S.R. (surprised?), so I feel like I've been hungover for a week... hence the dearth of posts, though the lack of Internet cafes contributes. I'm staying now with Dion, an English woman, and she has kindly brought me along to her office today so I could finally do some updating. There may not be any more, again, for a little while. Can I tell you readers anything interesting? There's been rain almost every day, it's cold, and I've mostly been drinking coffee and admiring the pretty, historic, European-esque buildings and drinking more coffee (by day...). I did visit a Turkish bath for the first time, where the full treatment "massage" consisted of me lying on a hard, marble slab while a bulky, cigarette-smoking Georgian man scoured, in two courses, all the dead (and some of the living) skin off my delicate body, pounded me a bit, and repeatedly dumped buckets of scalding water over my head without warning, all while a roomful of naked, uncircumcised men looked on. Don't you love, readers, my humerous use--to full effect in this post--of quotation marks?

The Land of the Unrecognized

This post should be more interesting than usual.

You may or may not be aware, readers, but there are quite a few countries in the world that are not recognized as such by any other countries or any international bodies of governance. I have been fascinated by these mostly unknown enclaves ever since I stumbled across a Wikipedia article about them (and the even more fascinating "micronations"):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrecognized_countries

Here are some amusing, characteristic entries in the area of non-recognition:

North Korea is not recognized by South Korea.

South Korea is not recognized by North Korea.

The Czech Republic is not recognized by Liechtenstein due to a dispute over the applicability of the Beneš decrees.

Slovakia is not recognized by Liechtenstein due to a dispute over the applicability of the Beneš decrees.

Liechtenstein is not recognized by either the Czech Republic nor Slovakia due to its refusal to recognize them.

What a silly place, the world! But these are at least countries most people can jab their fingers at on a map (use your pinky nail for Liechtenstein). Have you ever heard of the unrecognized autonomous Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh? Didn't think so! But that's where I am right now, thus fulfilling a long-standing dream of mine to visit one of these bizarre little places. Am I in Armenia? I'm not sure. Have I entered Azerbaijan? I don't think so. But, tediously, I had to get yet another $30 visa just to visit, so I'm counting it as the 40th country outside the United States that I have had the pleasure and good fortune to visit (unless Monaco and Vatican City count). Allow me to explain: while the Soviet Union was collapsing like Boris Yeltsin at a cocktail party, a process was established for the SSRs to declare their independence. That process was followed successfully by the three universally recognized nations of the Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. A small chunk of Azerbaijan SSR, however, claiming historic and ethnic associations with Armenia, decided to declare independence in its own right. The result was war. Azerbaijan invaded, bombed, and whinged about the violation of its territorial integrity, but, amazingly, they lost. The NKR even expanded its territory, making it contiguous with Armenia (before it sort of just floated in the middle of Azerbaijan). One of Karabakh's chief ministers then went on to become the present President of Armenia, and now there's a nice, new road connecting that country to Stepanakert, the capital city here. Azerbaijan continues to pretend sovereignty over Karabakh, so it remains to be seen whether or not the country will achieve true independence and international recognition or remain in its weird grey zone up in the clouds.

I half-expected it to be a prolonged, arduous ordeal to get here, involving things like interminable delays, horrid road conditions, army maneuvers, corrupt border officials, and goats. As an indication of the actual, disappointingly prosperous conditions, let me just say that when I asked a Karabakh girl on my minibus the time, she responded by whipping out an iPhone, at which I goggled. When I inquired how someone from a dirt-poor, unrecognized, autonomous ex-Soviet mountain republic could afford such a toy ($500 at least), she blithely answered that such things are not considered expensive in Armenia. Excuse me! At least I managed to deploy my famous charm to connive her into arranging a cheap homestay for me. The old lady I'm staying with stuck me in a basement room with no heat, shower, or toilet, but hey, it's cheap. She doesn't speak a word of English, so we had a spot of difficulty discussing the price and my plans. At one point, she asked if I spoke Russian. Don't these people know anything about Americans? We don't speak anything, much less Commie-talk!

Stepanakert is a fairly dismal place and looks much more like a depressing, Soviet-era city than anything I've seen in Armenia proper. The fact it's been foggy and rainy since I arrived doesn't help. Yesterday morning, I woke quasi-early, hoping to get a minibus up to a monastery which claims to possess the head of John the Baptist, which ended up here after a circuitous journey of centuries between Europe, Turkey, and the Holy Land. Believe it? I don't! But I was disappointed to miss the one and only transportation option so I could at least say I went there, credible or not, and I'm too cheap/poor to hire a taxi to bring me to such places. So instead, I went to the nearby town of Shoushi, which proved far more interesting. It was bombed during the war (ending 1994), but, unlike Stepanakert, does not appear to have been rebuilt to much extent. And it was an Ottoman Turkish town at one point, so many of the bombed-out buildings are quite old, with Turkish script details on a few (I found a mosque and a caravanserai) and neat cobblestone roads meandering between them. The dense fog made it even more atmospheric, and I wandered in the quiet gloom for hours. By the time I started walking back, I didn't even notice that I was soaking wet from the moisture in the air. Since I was walking, I didn't feel cold, but it is certainly chillier here than in, say, Yemen. I'm certainly glad I didn't mail my sweater home. A passing minibus picked me up as I stupidly (and typically) tried to walk back to Stepanakert, and it was once I was on board that I discovered what a dripping wet fool I looked like. And I've been wondering why all the people around here keep laughing at me.

So that's it for the oddity that is Nagorno-Karabakh. But my adventures in unrecognized, autonomous mountain republics are far from over. Georgia, my next stop, contains two of them! And I fully intend to break through the red tape, if I can, of at least one.

Today, I am 30 years old.

Yemen to Yerevan

Sorry for the delay in postings, folks, but Internet access remains unreliable, slow, and frustrating. Yesterday, for example, I wrote a nice, long post about Armenia--in Word even, so Blogger wouldn't eat it--and, should I be surprised?, Word crashed, and I lost it anyway. Windows, you are the scourge of mankind. I hate you. So here we go again.

When I stepped into the departure lounge for Yerevan at Sharjah International Airport, I saw a tired group of people. They were disheveled, their eyes were dark, and they looked a bit drunk. In support of this latter, they all carried plastic bags bulging with bottles of duty-free alcohol. The men looked beligerent and wore pointy, black shoes. The women were dressed in a style which I have since nicknamed "haphazard trashy" (something I haven't seen anywhere else except, well, New Jersey). Seeing this sight, I knew I was in the right place: these were Armenians.

I am exaggerating a little bit for comic effect, but the men really do wear pointy, black shoes, and the women really do dress quite trashily, with tight, revealing clothes and way too much cheap make-up/perfume. Not that I'm complaining! After months in religiously conservative nations where women mostly cover up their bodies, it is refreshing to see once again such liberal displays of cleavage and excessive reliance on push-up bras. Armenia, ho!

The flight to Yerevan became eventful when I rose from my three-seat-across slumber (score!) to see the majestic Mt. Ararat majestically looming before me in all its majesty. Snow-capped and over 5000 meters high, it's the Armenian holy mountain, though located nowadays in hated Turkey, and also the traditional final resting place of Noah's ark--so I guess it's appropriate that I'm coming to Armenia from the city of Shem, retracing the footsteps in reverse of the Semitic son.

I was surprised by how nice the airport is--high-end designer retail and all--and this made me feel both reassured and uneasy. I was also surprised when I was hit with a $50 visa charge. C'mon, Armenia, your country's the size and shape of a spare rib. Why can't these former Soviet Socialist Republics just drop the damn visa fees, or charge like $1 per hundred million square kilometers they occupy?

Cleverly dodging the taxi vultures, and though unable to speak Armenian (people keep asking me if I speak Russian--"why the fuck would I speak Russian?" I glibly respond), I somehow find my way downtown to my meeting point with English Tom, my couchsurfing host in Yerevan. I mostly hang out with him and his Iranian-Armenian girlfriend Teny for the next few days, going off on my own only to explore the city a bit, see the Armenian Genocide Museum (continuing my self-designed educational tour of the world's greatest crimes against humanity), and visit a "heathen" temple and ancient monastery in the nearby countryside. Tom is on a multi-year bicycle trip around the world. He and I both left our respective countries at about the same time, and here is where we met, Armenia, the crossroads of the world. I'm lucky he got a bit bogged down and has an apartment to make available to me. Since leaving England last July, Tom reports that he's only spent about $3000. And he's 24! So much for experience.

Armenia prides itself on being the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as a state religion (in 301 A.D.!). Yerevan, the capital, prides itself on having been founded a full 29 years before Rome (in 782 B.C.!). So you can imagine what things are like today, after the intervening several thousand years during which there was nothing for them of which to be proud. Actually, and even though I had read that Yerevan is somewhat depressing in a post-Soviet way, I rather like all the red concrete stone architecture. And after months in dry, desolate, and over-urbanized places, the abundance of trees and greenery in Yerevan's relaxed neighborhoods has been almost as refreshing as the abundant cleavage. And the countryside around the city is wonderful! Hilly and sparsely forested, it climbs and rolls and dips, looking to me like Scotland or parts of New Zealand.

I like it here. Unfortunately, the road goes ever on, and I cannot remain long. Georgia, with its traditional hospitality (and Southern belles?) beckons. But before that, I have one more oddity of an adventure to undertake.

Hounding Mahound

While I was enjoying a cup of shai outside the Sultan’s palace in Seiyun, Yemen, someone gave me a small book—actually, the book just appeared in front of me, so perhaps this was a case of divine intervention. The book in question was “The Religion of Truth” by Abdul Rahman Ben Hammad Al-Omar. I love Muslim names, by the way. They’re more like little family histories than names. If I ever convert, I’m going to pick a really cool one that goes on forever, like Mohammed Mahmoud Al-Sharif Al-Islam bin Hamid Aziz Ali Al-Omar bin Akbar bin Yosef bin Ismail Al-Sheik (“Shakes” for short). Anyway, “The Religion of Truth” is an Islam primer for unbelievers like myself (how did they know?) printed by the ultra-conservative Wahabis in Saudi Arabia. I read it on the plane from Sana’a to Sharjah, where, at an airport Costa Coffee, I abandoned it.

Those of you who frequent my society are no doubt familiar with my pitiless, uncharitable contempt for most forms of religion and spirituality. Given this profound and no doubt excessively intolerant prejudice, you might normally expect me to eviscerate the more sincerely idiotic passages from a book such as this, subjecting them to a biting, narcissistically cynical scorn that, while amusing to myself and a few others, is nonetheless unoriginal, offensive, and rather cowardly insofar as my victims are unable to respond to my vituperations. Friends, if these are truly your expectations, I should not like to fail meeting them, and so this is exactly what I am going to do.

Please note that I am not attacking Islam itself in this case, however much I may regard it, like (to be fair) every other, as a stupid religion with ridiculous premises, but only Mr. Al-Omar’s book, which is certainly one of the blatantly dumbest works of proselytizing literature I’ve ever encountered and would be more likely to send me rushing into the arms of the Mormons than to induce me to start wearing gowns and stoning my wives were I susceptible to proselytizing in the first place. That said, I’ll never forgive the Muslims for stealing Cat Stevens away from us.

“One of the most demonstrative and logical evidences which prove that the Quran is the revelation of Allah to His Messenger Muhammed is the fact that Allah had challenged the unbelievers of Qurayesh to produce a book like the Quran.”

And they couldn’t do it! But other than being asinine (the language of the King James Bible is quite beautiful, too, though it was only produced by human beings), isn’t this argument circular? The Quran is true because nobody in Qurayesh (and they were clever fellows) could write a Quran? I suppose that isn’t as circular as most of the Omar’s arguments, which are usually something like “The Quran is true because Mohammed said it was, and Mohammed spoke the truth because the Quran says he did” or, more laconically, “According to the Quran, the Quran is the truth.” But it’s still pretty stupid. And so is this notion that God only speaks Arabic. Abdul, if you’re going to win converts in the skeptical West, you’re going to have to come up with better “demonstrative and logical evidences” than these. I’d stick with IEDs if I were you.

That was just a warm-up.

“People, by their natural and innate character, believe that they came to existence by the creation and sustenance of a Creator. Allah is the Creator and Sustainer of all creatures. Whoever denies this innate nature is going astray and throwing himself into distress. Thus, the communist, who denies the existence of his Creator and Sustainer, leads a miserable life, and in the Hereafter his end will be in Hell-fire.”

OK, I’m going to have to skip right over the false deductive premises this bit opens with, because I want to know why he goes after the Communists! Granted, most of them probably do live miserable lives (not too many happy faces here in the former USSR), but is he suggesting that all atheists are, by definition, Communists? And that Communism is unnatural? Was this book funded by the US government? Perhaps there’s a deeper message here, that Hell itself is something like a Communist state. I suppose everyone there is equal (unlike the rigid hierarchies of grace found in the class-oriented Heaven) and, as in Communism on Earth, equally miserable, and I guess this pretense of infernal democracy is likewise lorded over by a dictatorial tyrant who ensures his subjects constant suffering. Hey, I think you’re on to something here, Ben! Well, I never considered myself a Communist before, but I guess I’ll be seeing you in hell, comrades.

“It is a fact that a healthy man can satisfy the sexual desires of four women.”

A fact! Just ask women! Seriously, Hammad, are you, like, a virgin or something? Have you, in fact, tried satisfying, for example, one woman? I like to think that I myself am a healthy man, but I find your rationale for polygamy just ever so slightly completely terrifying. I have just one more question, Mr. Ramen Noodles, why stop at four?

I suppose that’s enough shitting all over Islam for this week. Now that I’ve left the Middle East and arrived in Armenia (wait, is Armenia in the Middle East? I don’t know!), there are upcoming bigger and better things for me to shit all over. Literally and metaphorically, I wonder if I’ve done much else this entire trip. Food for thought (sorry) for those of you considering a similar voyage. Ciao! (sorry again)

I am a Caucasian

This post is only to inform you, my readers, that I have safely transited from Yemen to Armenia, and I think it's safe to say that Air Arabia's Sana'a to Yerevan run, taking you, as it does, from a conservative Arab society to a Post-Soviet one, is the number one culture shock flight in the world. I can't write more because it's late, and I'm using the computer of my English couchsurfing host's Iranian-Armenian girlfriend, and she wants to go to sleep. So more interesting things, at my usual, greater length, anon.