The Traveling Minstrel Journals – The Book-Butterfly

The Museum of Books

“Is this the way to the Museum of Books?” The main entrance where a statue of Shota Rustaveli stood guard seemed to have been closed for an indefinitely long time, so I had to walk around the loggia and look for another door.

“Follow me,” the guard said without hesitation and led me through office backdoors and hallways lined with filing cabinets and some curious eyes peering through them when the rhythmic footfalls of my boots echoed through the corridors.

Just as I was feeling a little lost and self-conscious for being the only non-employee around, he turned around and said, “When you’re done, just exit the way you came in.” He left me, alone, staring open-mouthed at what was the entrance hall of Tbilisi’s Museum of Books.

Amber sunshine streamed through the windows, casting light on intricate adornments that I had never seen applied to buildings before. It was as if I was drawn inside a page of a medieval illuminated manuscript.

I soon learned that the building is a collaboration between the architect Anatoli Kargin and well-known painter Henry Hrinevski, who was also a book illustrator and manuscript illuminator as well as a scholar on traditional Georgian architecture, but who was sadly arrested and killed during Stalin’s Great Purge.

The building was completed in 1916 and erected as a bank, but became part of Georgia’s series of libraries, fittingly so, in 1931. It is Building I out of V monumental buildings housing the National Parliamentary Library of Georgia.

Recognized as one of the finest museums dedicated to the written word, it boasts of personal libraries of Georgia’s eminent authors, the first book printed in the Georgian language, and autographed works by famous writers including Victor Hugo.

I went there for the books but came out deeply impressed knowing that the building that holds such treasures is, itself, one for the books.

Celebrating 40 in Georgia

To celebrate my 40th in Iran, that was the dream. It was supposed to be Iran.

But life often has a knack of improvising on my dreams. Flights to Iran were suspended as I was about to book tickets; and it wouldn’t have been good for my parents’ hearts had I forced it at this volatile time in history.

Iran chose to remain elusive. Then I was reminded of a line from Ali & Nino: “Surely love is the same in Georgia as in Iran.” Georgia, or Gurjistan, was one of the Persian “stans,” after all, and was under Persian suzerainty for centuries. And surely, if love is, as they say, the same in Georgia as in Iran, then perhaps celebrating 40 in Georgia wouldn’t be too different either? (“But there are protests,” they said. “At least there are no missiles,” I answered.)

The time had come for Georgia to be lived, aside from being read — for the literature of the Caucasus to be finally given the chance to lend depth and texture to my travels, and to the narrative of my experience.

Little did I know that the flight route from Doha to Tbilisi would fly over Shiraz and Isfahan. As if on cue, there was a sudden otherworldly sunset display through the airplane window just as we flew over Isfahan. Instead of Isfahan’s Eternal Flames, I was given the sun. And through the clouds, I saw traces of Isfahan down below; appearing to reassure me that it would be there waiting until the right time came along.

Then a full moon ushered me to Georgia. And I soon learned that Georgia, for a nation so tiny, is a generous country — not just in their wine servings, but in beauty and unforgettable experiences. (Maybe therein lies the advantage of smaller countries: beauty is concentrated, undiluted, and undiffused.) All at once, Georgia felt right.

Hopefully, someday, Iran will feel right, too. But at this particular point in life, Georgia is exactly what I needed. The trip was a gift that I’ll always be grateful for — a melding of deeply beautiful things and non-things, as if traveling knew no other way to be.

I’ve been asked what being forty feels like. With books (and maybe an occasional glass of wine haha) by my side, forty feels right. 🤍

Georgia’s peaceful pathways

“I hope you’ll remember me,” one of my guides said after a lovely day. “If not me, I hope you’ll remember my people and my country. I hope you’ll remember us as people who know how to live, and I hope your trip taught you a thing or two about how to live. I hope you love your country as much as we love ours.” Then he held out his glass of wine and said, “May this be the worst day of our lives. Gaumarjos!”

How their words for saying “cheers” and “hello” are rooted in the word for victory already speaks volumes of their history. Geographically flanked by some of the greatest empires the world has known, this isthmus connecting Europe to Asia has been bathed in blood for centuries. It is crazy to think that I have lived far longer than their democracy.

I have written my guide’s words in my journal, and they keep coming back to me as news of the intensifying protests reaches me here at home. I witnessed the peaceful protests in Tbilisi first-hand and it made me question if the media had exaggerated things. But I just saw a tranquil avenue I walked through many times swarming with protesters, now I’m not sure what’s really happening out there anymore. I can’t ask the people I’ve met because, as a rule, I rarely exchange contact details with people I meet in my travels.

But I do keep Georgia and her people on my mind. I remember them as people who know how to live. I know how much profound pride and love they have for their country, far from the shallow, sloganeering kind of pride and love for country. I hope their streets and their pathways remain free from conflict and violence, because I, for one, found peace walking down those avenues and through those pathways.

“On hills of Georgia lies the covering of night…”

Thus begins one of Pushkin’s most personal and most poignant poems, it inspired the composer, Rimsky-Korsakov to set it to music.

The full moon, an air balloon, and the Bridge of Peace over the Kura River

“Such sadness and such ease; my melancholy’s light…”

Has any other poet ever expressed this exact point in loving and having lost; when there is still sadness, but there is now ease; when there is melancholy, but it has become light?

On hills of Georgia lies the covering of night. There is darkness, but there is beauty, and there is light.

The World’s Most Ancient Wine Culture

“Georgia is a land that bursts with emotion, flavor, and texture, in people, landscape, food, and — so important — wine.” For the Love of Wine, Alice Feiring

Most of the Georgian words that I’ve brought back home have something to do with wine: Qvevri – the clay vessel used for fermentation (only their brandy and chacha are aged in barrels). Chacha – a cross between brandy and vodka derived from grape which Bourdain nicknamed the “national firewater”. Kantsi – animal horns converted into drinking vessels. Piala – terra cotta wine cup, like the one Mother of Georgia is holding with one hand, a sword on the other. Marani – a winery. Add to that the names of their wines: Kisi, Saperavi, Rkatsiteli, Kindzmarauli, Khvanchkara, etc…. The Georgians taught me well.

Mention “wine tasting” in the Philippines and you’ll come off to many as “pa-sosyal” (bourgeois with a dash of pretentious haha).

Not in Georgia. With approximately 525 indigenous grapes, an 8000-year-old winemaking history, and families producing their own wine, wine is tradition, wine is culture, and wine is part of religion, poetry, and daily life. After being assailed by the Ottomans, by the violence of the Mongols, by the Persians under Shah Abbas II who uprooted their grapevines, or by forced Soviet industrialization that replaced quality artisanship with mass production, natural wine is their symbol of survival. Wine is identity.

“Wine is an essential thread in the fabric of the country and the people… nowhere in the modern world is there a nation like Georgia, with this concept of wine — a fire coursing through its veins,” writes Alice Feiring. For the Love of Wine: My Odyssey Through the World’s Most Ancient Wine Culture prepared me for, and accompanied me to, a wine-tasting event for almost every day I was in Georgia.

These wine tastings are not like the ones in my country that are only for the privileged. Georgians are willing to let their guests experience this for free if only to convey that in order to understand Georgia and its people, one must understand their wine culture.

Additives are not used and it is illegal to add sweeteners to their qvevri wines, and chemical fertilizers for the vines are denounced. One Georgian vintner was quoted in Feiring’s book saying, “Every inch of my soil is soaked with the blood of my ancestors. This is the strength of the Georgian wine. This is our terroir. What do you use?”

But perhaps the best lesson I’ve learned is that producing the finest wine is also about planting the vines in places where they have to struggle. “If grapes had it too easy, the fruit had less character…”

That adds a profound layer to that adage about aging like fine wine, doesn’t it? It’s a rather fitting lesson to learn on a birthday trip. Fine wine is what survives the struggle. Gaumarjos!

Sulphur Baths of Tbilisi, “The Place of Warmth”

The sad thing about being a Filipino in colder climes is that you’ve still got to have that daily bath no matter how cold it is outside. 😆 But this was one long bath that I could not complain about and which I truly enjoyed.

Many conquerors including Tamerlane, and Genghis Khan’s son, Chagatai, have bathed in these waters. And these steaming domes with beautifully-tiled hammams underneath them have become landmarks of Old Tiflis.

“I have never encountered anything more luxurious than these Tbilisi baths, neither in Russia nor in Turkey,” Pushkin declared during his visit in 1829. Chekov and Dumas have also written about their experiences here, although it was through Ali & Nino, the most well-loved novel of the Caucasus, where I learned of how King Vakhtang Gorgasali discovered these sulphuric hot springs while hunting.

Being here in late autumn and already feeling the season giving in to winter, I can understand why the 5th century king was moved to transfer his capital where the hot springs are and call it “the place of warmth” — Tpili in Old Georgian, Tiflis to the Persians, or Tbilisi.

To experience these baths is to experience Tbilisi.

What once was ancient Colchis

Percival Everett is an unlikely choice to read on a trip to Batumi. But before his international fame catapulted with “James,” a retelling of Huckleberry Finn — which just won the National Book Award — he wrote “For Her Dark Skin,” a retelling of Medea’s story. The modern and humorous take is a contrasting companion read to Euripedes’ “Medea.” Everett’s version has only one word on the first page: Colchis.

Colchis, in Greek mythology the opulent kingdom, the place Jason and the Argonauts had ventured forth to obtain the Golden Fleece, homeland of Medea; and in recent times, the city by the Black Sea dominated by financial-oil dynasties of the Rothschilds and the Nobels; modern-day Batumi.

The scenic and comfortable train ride from Tbilisi to this city bordering Turkey is something worth experiencing. Seeing snow-capped mountains in the window gradually dissolve into the shores of the Black Sea was already worth the five-hour trip.

But when I arrived, the city’s superficiality was what I instantly felt. The hodgepodge of strange architecture seemed almost grotesque, and the sports cars driven by the showy spawn of Russian oligarchs did nothing to expunge that feeling. To shake off my first impression, I strolled to the corniche where the sunset was setting against the Black Sea. A dog was wading in and lapping up its history-rich waters, locals were sitting by the banks despite the wind chill, then I sought refuge in its art gallery which, thankfully, was a nice building. And then I started to soften, and I reminded myself why I was there.

I was there because of the stories: Because of everything I read about the Black Sea; because of Medea’s tragedy, whose statue is the centerpiece of its main square; because of Ali & Nino, whose two figures pass through one another as the sun sets, and separate again after a few minutes, depicting the bittersweet cycle of what is deemed to be the greatest love story of the Caucasus — written by a writer who happened to be Stalin’s first biographer and whose life was as adventurous and intriguing as his writings.

What Paul Theroux writes in the afterword is especially true of Batumi: “Ali and Nino is both a love story and a cultural artifact, and part of its message is that governments rise and fall, wars rage, cities are laid to waste, people are displaced, authors die. What remains? Well, written words remain…”

If my photos of Batumi look like an incohesive potpourri, that’s on Batumi. What weaves all these images together is intangible and invisible, but also transcendent — the stories.

The Cave Towns of Georgia

There are three significant cave towns in Georgia: Uplistsikhe (6th-4th century BCE), Vardzia (12th century CE), and David Gareja (6th century CE). These sites have distinct features that are unique to each, so I was naturally inclined to visit all three. Because I have already shared photos of David Gareja along with the Rainbow Mountain excursion, this set of photos will mainly focus on Uplistsikhe and Vardzia.

Uplistsikhe

UPLISTSIKHE lured me first because it was an important center of trade and culture along the Silk Road. The entire cave system covers an area of approximately 19.8 acres. Georgia’s major earthquakes have damaged a vast portion of the rock-cut architecture, but many vestiges of ingenuity in design and detail remain. The presence of a theater awed me. One room has an oculus and its walls bear markings of its raiders throughout the centuries. The first photo in this set is not of mere round holes overlooking a spectacular landscape, but evidence of Georgia’s ancient wine-making tradition. The holes are where they buried the qvevri, the clay vessels used in fermentation. It is the same technique that they use in natural wine-making today, and which sets their wines apart from the rest of the vinification world.

Vardzia

VARDZIA is close to the Armenian border. Some of its caves were already inhabited since the Bronze Age and then developed into a shelter from invasions during King Giorgi’s time, but it was under Queen Tamar’s reign in the 12th century, Georgia’s Golden Age, when it flourished as the complex cave city of 50,000 people. It is 13 stories high, although 19 during its zenith. The water system, the underground river, the ventilation, the frescoes decorating the church, the carvings, its library, apothecary, wine cellars, and monastery, are nothing short of impressive. The black figures you might see moving from afar are Georgian Orthodox monks. Amazingly so, the monastery is still being actively used up to this day. But even more impressive to me is the fact that at the peak of Georgia’s Golden Age, the king was a woman.

Rainbow Mountains, drunk monks, Russian authors, and Beethoven, near the Azerbaijani border

A day trip close to the Azerbaijani border had the Rainbow Mountains (preferably, bacon mountains haha) and the 6th century David Gareji Cave Monastery on the itinerary.

What I did not expect was the off-road adventure getting there, trekking some tricky paths, the otherworldliness of the landscape, and stopping at a far-flung, family-run restaurant in the mountains. This small restaurant had a cozy room full of books; an unplayed and untuned Russian piano; and two drunk, flirtatious, bearded Orthodox priests as old as the piano, who blurted out the names of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov in their drunken stupor. I was so amused by them, so when one saw my eyes light up in recognition, he asked, “You understand? You understand?” The names were all I understood, but it became a game. He would say, “Bulgakov,” and I would answer, “Master and Margarita,” and he would smile broadly and say a string of wine-soaked words. When he said, “Dostoevsky,” I said, “The Idiot,” and he laughed so heartily.

My frozen fingers which hadn’t caressed a piano in a week felt grateful for the contact with the piano keys despite the avant-garde sound that they produced. I felt the warmth generated by my fingers begin to spread to my heart and into the room. And even though it would have been more logical to play a Rachmaninoff, the Adagio of Beethoven’s Pathetique just flowed naturally out of me; and I relished in how it hushed the room, hushed the drunk priests, and somehow it hushed my soul. I did not wish for a better piano. I did not wish for anything else at that moment. Up near the Azerbaijani border, music still found me, and it felt like home.

An Unexpected Supra in Sighnaghi

The Caucasus Mountains is a sight that cannot be dismissed in Sighnaghi, and so is the thought that

The Caucasus Mountains is a sight that cannot be dismissed in Sighnaghi, and so is the thought that beyond that horizon is Russia.

This was the setting for my first and unexpected “supra”. I have read about these intimate feasts that are inextricable from Georgian culture; and dreamt of experiencing at least one during this trip; but at the same time, setting realistic introvert expectations that I could not simply get myself invited into one.

By lunchtime, however, I found myself in a group of two Uzbeks, two South Koreans, two Australians, a Spaniard, and a Georgian. The Georgian decided to perform the duties of a “tamada” to our very own supra. Simply put, a tamada is a toastmaster; although the role and significance of a tamada cannot be fully encapsulated in just one word.

Traditionally, a tamada is a family patriarch or a village wise man, and as he steers the course of the supra, the feasting is not merely on food and wine, but also on meaningful conversations.

And there we were. The united nations. The food was relished, the “kantsi” (a drinking vessel made from ram horn and filled with wine) was passed. After a poignant discussion on the two main topics that should be avoided — geopolitics and religion — our tamada prodded us to express what was important to each of us: Peace, said the Georgian. Love, said the Spaniard. Friendship, said the Korean. World leaders who are not war freaks, said the Uzbek. Meaningful experiences and learning about different cultures, said the Australian. Gratitude, said the Filipina. And even though we said different things, we all meant the same thing. If only the world could be one big supra…