Getting Out of One's Grill

If there is one thing I remember vividly from staying with a family of dentists in Transnistria it is that I was told I could get a tooth implant with the very best western equipment but with eastern prices.  This offer was incredibly attractive to me, but then I checked myself and said, "Wait, is the tooth going to be made out of steel?"  Metallic teeth are serious business in the FSU.  I am not quite sure where the dividing line is--and between what, exactly.  Is it North and South? East and West?  Europe and Asia?--but somewhere the steel teeth of the Ukrainian front becomes the gold teeth of the Transcaucasus.  While chronic shortages persisted across almost all sectors of the Soviet economy, thankfully procurement of steel and gold for dental purposes never seems to have been an issue. 

My life is a constant stream of regrets and one of them is the fact that I wasn't ballsy enough to get closer to the sign and take a picture.  It's such a great sign!  I don't get nearly the sense of adventure and intrigue when I go between BC and Alberta.  Testosterone-driven teenage soldiers with AK-47s notwithstanding.

So imagine my delight at walking across the border between Georgia and Azerbaijan* and coming across a wall of gold teeth, led by a particularly aggressive and liberated large woman, asking me if I needed a taxi.  If only my little Russian phrasebook included a translation for, "Really? You want me to pay 10x the rate for a taxi ride?  You're just going to spend it on more gold teeth" because that is exactly how I was feeling at the time.  So by the time I was ready to board that bus that was to take me to Sheki (I believe I bused, then marshrutka'd a couple of times) I had been made very familiar with the Land of Fire's penchant for flashy grillz.

I wish my country had so much money that we could try to reinvent our own history by building 1,001-Arabian-Nights-style border crossings that sketchy taxi drivers hang out at. 

A note to prospective Sheki visitors: the marshrutka doesn't always go directly to it, but drops you off 10km outside the city.  This was another In the Heat of the Night moment: what had once been a major caravan stopover was now fairly marginalized by the major highway presumably built to express hazelnuts to Baku.  So I was left with the task of actually getting myself to Sheki and an old man said we could take a taxi together from the vultures on the side of the road who quoted 4 manat.  The old man proposed that I pay 3 and he 1.  I said no and attempted a quick explanation of the currency exchange rate (1 manat at the time being worth more than the euro).  He insisted but I said I would walk.  There happened to be more taxi drivers across the road who quoted 3.  The old man then proposed I pay 2 and he 1.  I said no and that I would walk.  Somehow the price was reduced to 2 for the whole ride and the man said "Okay, you can pay the 2." And I said, "Okay, now I am really walking." He then got desperate and said, "Okay, okay!  1 manat each!" and I said, "No.  You had your chance, and you got greedy.  This is what happens when you try to take advantage of someone who has slept on a pile of bricks at a construction site in Albania in February to try to prove a point that a hotel room does not necessarily need be heated and therefore should not cost 30 euros."  Well, I sort of said that.  Russian can be really difficult sometimes. 

The gate to Sheki.  At right you can catch a taxi for 2 manat.

The taxi driver got impatient and made the old man leave with him and I kept walking.  The day was young, and I walked past beautiful fields and streams and was somewhat in the shade when suddenly a Lada whizzed past and screeched to a halt.  Out piled a gaggle of Azeri teenage boys who started hollering at me and insisting I get in the car with them.  Of course this is a good idea! I thought.  Of course getting into a black Lada with all my belongings and 5 teenagers was a smart move.

It was such a smart move.  They loved me.  One of them spoke excellent Russian and one of the spoke almost flawless English.  I say almost because while he couldn't put together an English sentence to save his life, he scream-sung the lyrics to "Boom Boom Pow" (I don't even know these lyrics, and every time I hear the song I actually wonder if it is even English.  Maybe it's actually Azeri because what is supposedly going on in that song makes no sense) which was blasting out of the Lada's system with the windows down.  They took me right to the centre of town, making the requisite loops around the town to holler at a couple girls, of course, and then dropped me off at a homestay.  And after all the excitement and my disembarkation they even alerted me to the fact that I had left my iTouch in the car and handed it back to me.  So maybe you should be a little less judgemental of teenage boys.

*Okay, there was a fantastic sign that basically welcomed all to Azerbaijan and it had clearly been made 40-50 years ago.  Can you imagine getting in a station wagon and just doing the Soviet Union with your family in the 1970s?  What a wild adventure.  What an absolutely safe time to go too, when the state apparatus had basically lockjawed because Brezhnev was so senile and incontinent and I'm starting to suspect not even alive.