Georgia on My Mind

I guess it's important to stop for a second and reflect on Georgia and exactly where I was in the world.  Most people haven't actually heard of the Caucasus.  I mean, I barely had.  People know Turkey, Russia and Iran, and they have heard of Chechnya, but for such a troubled and fascinating region it doesn't enter into our (or just my, as I have made absolutely no effort to find out how much press the area gets) imaginations.  As I approached Tbilisi by marshrutka the whole area was so unrecognisable and unlike anything I was used to.  There were beautiful mountains and crumbling Soviet infrastructure, which is something at this point I was quite used to, but there was something else about the place that seemed kind of, for lack of a better word, enchanted.

I think the fact that there were churches and castles from the 3rd century up in the hills (some of them in functioning condition) really made me sit up and take their whole "Europe Started Here" claim a little bit more seriously.  I mean, if you're walking around Batumi and you see thisw massive collage that says that, with a massive collosus of Jason on a Chariot made of concrete to the south you kind of laugh to yourself and think, "Yeah, okay, Georgia."  But seeing these castles that were built at a time when the Caucasus was at a critical juncture of the known worlds, and my ancestors were wallowing in mud pits along the Baltic trying to pry frozen turnips from the ground to last the long winter, these people were thriving.  Absolutely thriving.

And how could they not be?  I guess I understand how a place like the Caucasus could have fallen as a major centre of power over the years being on the fringes of too many powerful empires with large hinterlands to back them up, but the real question that nagged at me is how on earth did the British Isles ever manage to utilise its seemingly one comparative advantage--mouldy wool--to exert itself as a world power when there was all this going on down south?  In any case, I guess I'm happy that Georgia is reasonably priced with delicious cuisine today and why I would rather starve on a layover at Heathrow because I don't want to buy a disgusting and overpriced prepackaged sandwich from Pret-a-Manger.