Georgia Russia

I have returned from a week long trip over Eid to Georgia, one of the countries annexed on the break up of the USSR. Madeline and Alex invited me to join them on this trip as Madeleine's son Joe, did voluntary work in a school there. The whole school experience was very humbling, as was Georgia.
Under Communism every one in Georgia had a job and an income, but now as a separatist state the people are poor, eking out a a subsistence livelihood any way they can. Parts of the country are very third world, while others, the main street in the capital Tblisi and parts of the capital are quite Western.
We traveled from the centre of the country which reminded me very much of NZ with the autumn leaves, to Kazbegi with the mountain of the same name, 17 miles from the Russian border. On the return journey to Tblisi we stopped off at Gorgi, the birthplace of Starlin and hence the Starlin museum. The museum was pretty grim, but grimmer were the tank tracks in the square, left after the Russian invasion in 2008. Gorgi got bombed and was under siege for approx 2 weeks in that time.
As poor as Georgia is, the people are so generous and friendly. We were invited to a wedding reception, the niece of Joe's adopted family, and niece of the school principal, Lia. The bride aged 15, looking very much a child, was marrying a man from Azerbaijan of her own free will. Although Mother of the bride spoke no English she indicated the bride was crazy getting married by twirling her finger around and pointing to her head, when we commented how pretty she looked. lia translated. The whole wedding breakfast/ reception is another story in itself. Each family puts on a meal, this was the bride's family, to whom you pay 40 lari towards the cost. The wedding day the bride and groom have all the finery, today it was faded jeans and jersey. And the food, a whole variety, served on small plates, stacked plate upon plate on the table and you eat from them with your fingers. The food, rice boiled mutton, pork, chicken, bread, coleslaw, lettuce cucumber and tomatoes and many many miscellanious dishes that shall remain anonymous simply because they looked.... well different and most unusual. Best to stay with what you know!
Georgia bought back all those Lada jokes. How many people or on many occasions, how many cabbages can you fit in a Lada, thats incidentally running on 3 cylinders and very old? Answer is 11 people and the cabbage question... zillions... and they were stacked almost as high as the car again on the roof
I'm going to try and get some photos online, in the meantime enjoy. I'm so glad I went and so enriched by this experience.