Mixin' it up in Mtskheta

If you think it's unattractive when someone loudly clears phlegm from their throat then I wouldn't suggest trying to learn Georgian or having a Georgian person yell at you in Georgian.  By all means it's a lovely language and very interesting but it requires a lot of phlegm clearing for the "kh" sound that they seem to live for.  I always thought I was quite good at making this sound but it's almost impossible to say the name of "Mtskheta" and for that reason alone I am happy they moved the capital from here to Tbilisi just to make things easier for me in the future.

So, for a quick day trip, I went to Mtskheta.  It was pretty hot so I crawled into a church and basked in the natural A/C for a while, and then into a riverside cafe where I consumed a couple cafe glacees and waited for the sun to go down so I could find a marshrutka back to Tbilisi and repeat my usual routine, which by this point consisted of trying to sneak off to bed while the hostel owners' drunk friends showed up with a 2L Pepsi bottle of cha-cha, Georgian moonshine.

So there was less to do in Mtskheta than what an ancient capital warrants, so here is a series of pictures of an old crone herding cattle.

She screamed so much.

Lettuce Alone

Oh, probably the biggest highlight of my two weeks in Tirana was a “guys’ night” during which we played beer pong, called each other “bro” and talked about Civilization II.  I had thought this was basically it but then someone mentioned that no guys’ night is complete without a pear vinaigrette salad.  This was news to me but I used this opportunity to go to market and buy some lettuce. 

Next to the train station there was (and still is) a group of vegetable sellers from the countryside.  I selected the oldest and cronliest of vendors (who traded exclusive in lettuce) and indicated that I would like two heads of buttercrunch.  She then indicated some number to me which I thought was 50 leke ($0.50) so I gave her 60.  She looked at the coins, did an exasperated and disbelieving double-take, and then looked around with a smirk.  She put ALL of her lettuce into a bag, handed it to me, picked up her stool, turned to her fellow vendors as if to say, “Later, loooosers!”, swatted her hand and walked away.  60 cents!