Common Sense and Whiskey

Recommended Reading: Where the West Ends

Fun new book from Michael J. Totten. Fun, that is, if your idea of thrills is a drive from Turkey into Iraq for lunch.

Where the West Ends expands on Mr. Totten's Dispatches blog for World Affairs Journal. There are sections roughly grouped as the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Black Sea.

Many authors seem to believe they won't be taken seriously unless their work is laden with ponderous history. When well written, like in some of my suggestions below, that's  worthwhile. When it's not, it's the reason tons of books are returned to the shelf half-finished.

In Where the West Ends, Mr. Totten mostly allows a cursory sketch of the past to suffice. I suspect that satisfies armchair travelers. Then he gets on with the travel writing I like best, what it feels like to get up from that chair and actually go to a place, and what it's like, personally, to be there.

Should Mr. Totten's book pique your interest, here are some suggestions for deeper reading:

- Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War by Thomas de Waal
- Azerbaijan Diary by Thomas Goltz
- Georgia Diary by Thomas Goltz
- Towers of Stone: The Battle of Wills in Chechnya by Wojciech Jagielski
- Bread and Ashes: A Walk Through the Mountains of Georgia by Tony Anderson
- Rebel Land: Unravelling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town by Christopher de Bellaigue
- In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran by Christopher de Bellaigue
- Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup by Christopher de Bellaigue
- Black Sea by Neil Ascherson
- The Black Sea: A History by Charles King

Along the Georgia Military Highway, Republic of Georgia

And here, in five installments, are excerpts from Common Sense and Whiskey, the book,  about our trip through the southern Caucasus:

1: Getting to Armenia
2: Yerevan to Tbilisi
3: Tbilisi and the Georgian Military Highway
4: The High Caucasus & the Russian Border
5: Baku

Order the entire book for $9.99 at Amazon.com, at BN.com, or the Kindle version (just $4.99).

See many more photos of the South Caucasus in the Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan Galleries at EarthPhotos.com.

 

Etc.

This invites more questions than it answers.

This is a tremendous time-waster.

And while I'll surely read Michael Totten's next book, I think this is a little hard on the Republic of Georgia. Here's my take.

And this could make you cry.

Common Sense and Whiskey, the Book - The Southern Caucasus, Chapter Fifteen

Here is Chapter Fifteen of Common Sense and Whiskey, the book, a very short trip through Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Track down previous chapters here. Click the photos to make them bigger. More photos and additional commentary are available at A Common Sense and Whiskey Companion. And here's the Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia Galleries at EarthPhotos.com. Order the entire book for $9.99 at Amazon.com, at BN.com, or the Kindle version (just $4.99).

 

The Wien Flughafen stood disturbingly deserted at night, all the shops stocked like Christmas, but you couldn’t play with the toys. They glittered and blinked coquettishly behind glass doors pulled shut.

Our old buddy Austrian Airlines left Vienna on a beeline toward Budapest, then Timisoara, Bucharest, Constanta, over the Black Sea to Trabzon and on into Yerevan, all of it in blackness below. The flight tracking screen showed our destination tucked right in between Grozny and Baghdad: “Local time in Jerewan 4:31 a.m.”

Austrian’s corporate color scheme was brilliant red, the national color, and the cabin crew was dressed red hat to sensible (but red) shoes. Fetching, I thought.

Taxiing out (“We are number one for takeoff”), a wail arose behind us. A woman screamed “Go back, go back and check!” Crimson crew rushed to her and kneeled and huddled round our distraught Armenian. One of them came back forward and PA’d their apologies, “Dis is not Azerbaijan, ve know dis.”

The safety announcements were recorded, and they were for the wrong destination. This woman wasn’t by God going to Baku. Azerbaijan’s border with Armenia had been shut tight for fifteen years.

More Good Reads, Relevant Links

Lawrence Sheets covered the demise of the former Soviet Union for NPR. He writes his memoir in a brisk, non-academic style that's just right for the interested lay person. It's a quick read; Took me only a weekend and Monday. He includes what must be all his greatest hits, his quick trip to Afghanistan, a trip to Sakhalin Island in the Russian far east, visiting the Chernobyl exclusion zone, but I'm particularly drawn to his Caucasus reporting.

He makes my modest story on the southern Caucasus, recounted in CS&W, appear callow, and I appreciate him for it. It's exciting to get background on some of the places we visited a few years after he did, in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia (even a tiny place we visited, Dzoroget in Armenia, athough he visited under entirely different circumstances). His coverage of Abkhazia's succession from Georgia is admittedly maybe not general interest, but I loved it.

He reported that little war along with his friend and fellow reporter Thomas Goltz, who has written his own books, and if you read their accounts alongside each other, you get a real, exciting sense of what went on at that fraying edge of the Soviet empire.

The books:

Eight Pieces of Empire by Lawrence Scott Sheets
Georgia Diary by Thomas Goltz

Similarly, you can read Sheets on Armenia alongside Christopher de Bellaigue's Rebel Land, (earlier post) which is set just across Armenia's western border in Turkey, for a richer understanding of the Armenian genocide question, and Sheets on Armenia alongside Thomas de Waal's richly reported Black Garden (that's what "Karabakh" means), which is set just across Armenia's eastern border in Azerbaijan for a better understanding of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Go ahead and polish off your expertise about the southern Caucasus with:

- Bread and Ashes by Tony Anderson. Travels in Georgia.

Also in the region, see
- Towers of Stone by Wojciech Jagielski, reporter for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza,
- The Man who Tried to Save the World by Scott Anderson, about aid worker Fred Cuny in the north Caucasus, 
- Chienne de Guerre by Anna Nivat, incredibly brave war reporting from Chechnya,
- Beslan: The Tragedy of School Number 1 by Timothy Phillips on the nightmare in North Ossetia,
- Thomas Goltz's other books Azerbaijan Diary and Chechnya Diary,
- Thomas de Waal's other book The Caucasus: An Introduction,
- and Christopher de Bellaigue's In the Rose Garden of  the Martyrs , a memoir of Iran. de Bellaigue writes beautifully, and after all, Iran borders Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh.

Finally, to stay up to date, there's the International Crisis Group's North and South Caucasus reporting. (Lawrence Sheets is ICG Project Director for the South Caucasus these days) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Caucasus section. 

 

New Photographer Link

I've added Justyna Mielnikiewicz to the category Photographers, with Respect in the sidebar, below right. When you have a few minutes, please go see her work. Her bio says she began her career in Poland before moving to Tbilisi. Our photos of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan don't match the grit, the real, I-live-here feel of hers.

 

Who in the world knows anything about Abkhazia?

Quick, where is it?

No, it's not a mythical land like Phaic Tan or Molvania. Abkhazia is a silver of Georgia along the Black Sea, bordering Russia. I have a soft spot for these little forgotten slivers of land, although now that Kosovo has gotten some international recognition, I can't think of any others besides Trans-Dnestria, which lies between Romania and Moldova (Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan don't count, since neither makes pretensions to independence). Here's that story you missed about Abkhazia.

Where to Go, Why, and What to Read.

Travel ferociously. Get out there. Engage people. Witness events. Explore the world. Bust a move. See all you can see. But when you’re at home and calm, sanguine and reflective, back in the part of the house where people don’t come unless you invite them, in that one little spot where only you rule, that’s where you can see most clearly.

Back there in that room, I saw our trip to Sarajevo as a conceit. We decided we’d go and see the aftermath of war and then we would think about it. And we saw the burned out houses on the airport road. We saw children at play beneath a hand-painted sign warning of “snijper” fire over there, in that direction.

We stood on a hill above town with an old woman and her little granddaughter and a vast field of Muslim graves behind them. We took pictures of SFOR soldiers (NATO’s ‘Stabilization Force’) taking pictures. And in the end, we didn’t really understand it any better. Or at least, we didn’t Glean Wisdom.

I read and read, before and after Sarajevo, and we went to see it, and we had a view of the bombed out parliament building from the Holiday Inn hotel, where we paid in advance, in cash, in Deutschmarks, right up front, for our entire stay.

The parliament building from the Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

The elevator opened to carpet ripped by gunfire.

The main reconstruction work in Sarajevo was in busting down curbs and rebuilding them with wheelchair ramps.

We walked up and down the open air Markale market where a random, direct shelling killed 68, wounded two hundred on a rainy Saturday in February, 1994 – the bloodiest attack in the then twenty-two month long conflict. We saw bricks and mortar blasted from the side of the hotel next door. People bustled about the market that day, selling flowers, buying fruit, and we took it all in, but still we didn’t Glean Wisdom.

Laurence Mitchell in the Republic of Georgia: Guest Post

It's a pleasure to continue with another guest post from author Laurence Mitchell, this one dateline Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia (Read two reports from earlier on this trip, from Russia and Azerbaijan). Laurence is a photographer as well as an author, but since he's still out on the road, updating the Bradt Guide to Georgia, I'm augmenting his emailed remarks with photos from EarthPhotos.com.

Here's Laurence:

It is true to say that I have expereinced all four seasons on this trip. I arrived in Georgia at Lagodekhi, close to the borders with Daghestan (Russian Federation) and Azerbaijan, on a really hot day where the temperature was in the 30s (that's 80s for US readers). I spent only one night here but had time for a stroll in gorgeous hornbeam woodland that has deer, bears and all manner of woodland creatures - not that I saw any. Then I headed west to Telavi in to the heart of Kakheti, Georgia's wine region. The weather turned again here, becoming dull and grey.
 
Moving on to Tbilsi for a couple of days, I tried best to plan best my route around Georgia according to the most favourable weather, but it was not really great anywhere so I plumped for Borjomi (where the mineral water comes from) and spent a couple of days here staying in the spare room of a poor but friendly local family. On my second day here, I took a marshrutka up to Bakuriani, a nearby hill resort with slopes favoured by President Saakashvili. I returned by local train, which took nearly 3 hours to travel 45 kilometres down steep inclines through woods. Good value though - it cost just 2 Lari (£.0.60, $1) and one of the local lumberjacks gave me a bunch of grapes to eat. Now is vey much the season for eating grapes and every Georgian can be seen stuffing sweet purple fruit into their mouths in betwen cigarettes.
 
I backtracked slightly from here to Gori - Stalin's birthplace, whose massive statue has only recently (June this year, I think) been removed from the central square. Nevertheless, there seem to be plans to reinstall it in front of the Stalin Museum at some stage in the future. I visited the museum for the second time, having gone there previously in 2000, and once more marvelled at the many photos of the (apparently benign) dictator smiling at children and accepting gifts of flowers from Ukrainian girls. Not much sign of Trotsky or Krushchev it must be said. I passed on the opportunity to buy a bottle of Saperavi wine with his face on the label - it was tempting though.
 
The weather in Gori was foul - somehow fitting with its somewhat sinister - if airbrushed - history. I was the only diner in the Intourist Restaurant that night and made the mistake of ordering a pitcher of local Saperovi wine all for myself. It was so delicious that I drank it all, which was probably a bit of a miscalculation on my part. Georgians tell you that Georgian wine is so pure that it doesn't produce hangovers - yeah sure - and they probably think that Khachapuris don't make you fat either.

More from Our Correspondent: Siberia and Azerbaijan

Great fun to relay with permission the following email from author Laurence Mitchell. He's a photographer too, but since he's still out on the road, updating the Bradt Guide to Georgia, I'm augmenting his emailed remarks with photos from EarthPhotos.com. Here's Laurence:

I am writing this from the very splendid vaulted atrium of a converted caravanserai in Sheki, Azerbaijan. I don’t suppose the original camel merchants ever envisaged that their overnight lodgings would ever have Wi-Fi!  It’s been converted into a hotel now – majestic surroundings although the rooms are rather austere, with even a touch of Midnight Express about them. I am informed that I have to relinquish my cheap room today as there is a big tour group arriving. Hard to imagine a tour group of any complexion coming to Azerbaijan but if you are going to visit anywhere other than Baku then I suppose Sheki might just be the place.

I arrived here yesterday after yet another long and exhausting journey but let’s first go back to Tomsk, which seems an age away now. Tomsk to Irkutsk required one whole day and two nights on a train but it was comfortable enough. I arrived at Irkutsk station at 1 am Moscow time, 6am local – it was very cold and still dark. I decided to head straight out to Lake Baikal and managed to get a marshrutka straight away. But it was even colder there, and by the time I had walked to my pre-booked homestay I was visibly shivering. Listvyanka, where I stayed, is a sort of low-scale Russian tourist resort but it was the end of the season and many places were either closed or thinking about doing so. Away from the coast road the village was really nice and rustic, with a pretty Siberian church and lots of typical wooden cottages that had cosmos and cabbages growing in the yard. A shame about all the noisy barking dogs. Fortunately, weather-wise, the next day was completely different – blue skies, sun but still pretty chilly – and I did a couple of good walks in the locale. Lake Baikal is big – very big (20% of world’s fresh water!) – but it is hard to get an impression of size when you are close up to it. Frozen solid for several months of the year, it certainly didn’t beckon me in for a bathe but, there again, I am pretty squeamish when it comes to cold water – and this IS cold.

Caucasus Concerts, Tbilisi Tourism, Huge, Massive, Enormous Talents

Feel like heading off on a slightly-off-the-beaten-path holiday? How about Georgia? Okay, wait: What if they throw in Chris de Burgh!?

Talks are ongoing between the government of the Republic of Georgia and MTV to bring televised music festivals to Batumi, on the Black Sea coast. EurasiaNet tells us that the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has "vigorously sought to promote tourism along the Black Sea Coast. The acts playing at these concerts ranged from unknowns to has-beens: Anglo-Irish balladeer Chris de Bourgh -- a one-hit wonder whose song The Lady in Red climbed to # 1 on the UK charts in 1986 – was perhaps the most prominent name to play in Batumi."

Gee, next year could be the big "25th Anniversary of The Lady in Red" Concert.

Sochi Olympics Watch #10

May not be that much need to buy those Sochi Olympics tickets early. What do you want to bet good seats will still be available?

*****

In 2006, we met several North Ossetian artists on our trip to Kazbegi, just across the border in the Republic of Georgia. In light of today's bloody bombing in Vladikavkaz, I send my sorrow and solidarity to the good people of North Ossetia.

The BBC has what they always call "disturbing video," and it surely is. The accompanying story says 16 are dead. The North Ossetians have had more than their share of grief. Beslan, where the gruesome 2004 school siege killed over 300, is also in North Ossetia.

But the news is grim throughout the northern Caucasus, as this quote from an AP article today shows:

In Dagestan, officials said Thursday that a hotel employee and another civilian were shot to death by men trying to build a bomb in their hotel room.

Republican Interior Ministry spokesman Vyacheslav Gasanov said the shooting took place late Wednesday in the capital Makhachkala. He said three armed men fled a room in the small hotel after an explosion and opened fire on a hotel clerk and another person who confronted them. He says police found several bombs and six grenades in the room.

In the Dagestani town of Khasavyurt, on the border with Chechnya, a policeman returning home from work was shot to death, Gasanov said.

Dagestan is plagued by near-daily shootings and explosions blamed on criminal gangs and on militants inspired by the insurgency in neighboring Chechnya.

Before you head out for the 2014 Sochi Games, read some of the great, brave up-close reporting from throughout the region (including a nice description of why you likely wouldn't want to spend much of your vacation in a hotel in Makachkala, capital of Dagestan), in Towers of Stone by Wojciech Jagielski. A couple more suggestions here. More photos from Georgia here.

The Southern Caucusus Part Four: The High Caucasus & the Russian Border

Earlier in this series: The Southern Caucasus, Part One: From the Eventual Book & The Southern Caucasus Part Two: Yerevan to Tbilisi & The Southern Caucasus Part Three: Tbilisi and the Georgia Military Highway

The sides at either end of Kazbegi square comprised nothing much, with a road wandering off in each direction, one the direction from which we’d come, from Tbilisi, the other to Vladikavkaz in Russian Ingushetia. On the fourth side of the square, opposite the hotel, a half dozen desultory kiosks all sold the same things, the petty little consumer goods necessary for life. All had tissues and matches and drinks, but not cold – there wasn’t refrigeration anywhere in the whole lot.

The wares on offer jammed all the window space, inside and out, so that the salespeople sat back invisible behind a little open window in the middle. You wouldn’t call the collective attitude among these six tiny kiosk capitalists sullen. Crestfallen might be the better word.

Kazbegi itself rose on a low hill behind the kiosks. A morning walk among the houses revealed bright flowers on windowsills and suspicious, smoking men in caps seated on low benches with a wary eye and a nod of the head to a stranger. No vehicle traffic. Massive amounts of trash just cast onto the ground in the street, and pigs snuffling through it.

A dump truck sized Kamaz truck lumbered by, an unlikely family vehicle which disgorged a scarf-clad old woman and a basket down at the bottom of the hill.

At any particular time, six or eight or ten old Russian-made cars congregated at the center of the makeshift square, their drivers in little knots smoking and waiting for the odd passenger to here or there. Zaza hired a red Lada Niva, strong with a high undercarriage. Just the right vehicle to haul us up to the Holy Trinity church, way up at 2200 meters. We’d drive up and walk down.

Tomorrow: A Trip to the High Caucasus Mountains

Coming tomorrow here on CS&W: The Southern Caucasus Part Four: The High Caucasus & the Russian Border. Catch up on the series in the meantime with parts 1, 2 & 3, covering Yerevan, Tbilisi and the Georgia Military Highway.

The Southern Caucusus Part Three: Tbilisi and the Georgian Military Highway

 
Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia

Earlier in this series: The Southern Caucasus, Part One: From the Eventual Book & The Southern Caucasus Part Two: Yerevan to Tbilisi

The Marriott Tbilisi offered an island of luxury, and we took them up on it for a while before a stroll along main street, Rustaveli Boulevard, down toward the massive old Soviet telephone and telegraph building on the far end of the street. From there  a warren of cobbled streets led down to the river Mtkvari.

On the way pensioners sold their family artifacts and whatever else they’d got their hands on, old swords and telephone parts, cutlery and cigarettes, all spread out on mats on the sidewalks, below the leafy canopy.

Never was the sun more brilliant. The air was crisp, the sun hot and the light, somehow, had a northern-latitude clarity.

Impossible to read the Georgian script. The sign outside the first building across the river was doubtless once in Cyrillic, but now it wasn’t in Russian, or in English, but only, proudly, Georgian. Couldn't read the sign, but looking inside, it was a restaurant, and we went inside.

Sometime in Greek antiquity, Jason, in his quest for the Golden Fleece, sailed safely with his Argonauts through the Symplegades, rocks that crushed anything that tried to pass between them, to land in Colchis, the Black Sea coast of present day Georgia. After a series of heroic feats, Jason seized the Golden Fleece.

In the Argonauts' honor we enjoyed Argo beers as groups of men sat at wooden tables, drinking and enjoying khinkali, sort of the Georgian equivalent of pelmini, Russian meat pastries. Three men in costume wandered out of the back, sat on low chairs and played the traditional Georgian reed instrument called the duduki.

An old man in a bright orange jumpsuit with BP on its breast took our picture from a table across the room, so we took his too. He grinned, got up and left, and came back in a minute with ice cream bars for Mirja and me. He showed us the pictures and said something like, “Souvenir for me, gift for you.”

Seven Million Dollar Airplane Seat

... but it's a very special seat.

An opposition Labor Party politician named Iosif Shatberashviliin the Republic of Georgia has claimed, via the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet (Liberty), "that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili had a personal ejection seat installed on board his jet, but the presidential office denied the claim."

Mr. Saakashvili travels via Bombardier Challenger.

Fabulous Destinations When Money Doesn't Matter #9

Proximity to Power is Pricey.

This surely wouldn't appeal to everybody, but it's right up my nerdy alley:  

Global Challenges in a Post-Perestroika World

World Leaders Symposium: Russia & the Black Sea

With Condoleezza Rice, William Perry, Mikhail Gorbachev, and other special guests

Aboard the Silver Wind • August 30 — September 15, 2010

I'm no cruise fan, but this is no ordinary cruise. It's a symposium that begins in Moscow, travels to Istanbul, and then continues by ship and local transport to Batumi and Tbilisi, Baku, Sochi, Yalta, Sevastopol and Odessa. 

I'd say put me down for that in a flash. Just one tiny problem: The least expensive accommodation is $47,980 for a "Vista Suite," based on double occupancy.

*****

There are photos from Moscow in the Russia Gallery, Istanbul in the Turkey Gallery, Tbilisi in the Georgia Gallery, Baku in the Azerbaijan Gallery and Odessa in the Ukraine Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Sochi Olympics Watch #6

Sochi, home of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games, is in a terrific neighborhood. Sochi and Makhachkala, for example, are a little less than 400 miles apart. Makhachkala, you ask?

Yep, Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan, boiling hot, humid center of crime and thuggery on the Caspian Sea.

The Unesco World Heritage site of Derbent is down the Caspian coast from Makhachkala. But you're unlikely to want to visit anytime soon because of the general state of lawlessness that prevails in Dagestan, where "Criminal activity is widespread throughout the region, often targeting the few foreign tourists that do continue to visit for kidnapping, extortion, and worse." 

Dagestan is one of the roiling north Caucasus republics that, along with Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia (east to west), are giving the Russian fits. And are right next to Sochi.

Stratfor has an open access report this morning called The Caucasus Emirate. It notes that so far this year there have been double the number of killings in the region than last year at this time.

Why should this specific little slice of land throw up bands of militant Islamists? Why not Azerbaijan, which is adjacent to Dagestan, and has been predominantly Muslim forever, for example?

Wojciech Jagielski has a theory. A reporter for Gazeta Wyborcza, a mass daily in Poland, he's also the author of Towers of Stone, a terrific book about his war reporting in the Caucasus. To summarize and greatly simplify, the people of the North Caucasus allowed the godless Soviet system to replace their old, moderate Islamic way of life, and once that system collapsed, they couldn't very well return to their old ways, which they had rejected just 70-odd years before. So in effect they doubled down, and embraced the much more austere version of Islam that visitors from Arab lands brought with them.

Jeffrey Tayler visited Makhachkala, and even Derbent, for his book Murderers in Mausoleums. A quote:

We climbed out of the Volga's smoke-befouled cabin into a Bengali blaze to confront a scene reminiscent of Partition and the mass flight of refugees. Throngs of heavyset scarved women and short, swaggering men surged up the steps, dragging tawdry bundles and taped-together suitcases; following them, glancing about fearfully, were boys in skullcaps and little girls with babies lashed to their backs. Up on the platform the police checked papers... troops, clad in camouflage and wielding Kalashnikovs, loitered, stone-faced, in groups of three and four.

Any idea where he's talking about? Yep, it's the Makhachkala train station. And you can be sure, as with any Jeffrey Tayler book, it only gets worse.

Remarkably, there's a Dagestan Travel Guide on the internet. It's where the quote in the third paragraph about criminal activity, kidnapping and extortion came from. It goes on, "Dagestan shares along with the rest of the North Caucasus an extravagantly corrupt official culture and bribes and harassment are business as usual."

But if you should still wish to go, the Dagestan Travel Guide ends with this good cheer: "Visitors should know that there is no real embassy or consulate in Dagestan. Your best bet would be Moscow in Russia, Tbilisi in Georgia, Baku in Azerbaijan, or Yerevan in Armenia. Good luck!"

(Read more Sochi Olympics Watch articles here. Haven't been to the North Causacus yet, but you can see photos from the South Caucasus in the Armenia Gallery, the Azerbaijan Gallery and the Georgia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

Your Holiday in Grozny Just Got Easier

RFERL's Caucasus Report tells us that "Russia, Georgia Move To Restore Transport Links" at the Verkhny Lars/Zemo Larsi border crossing and via direct flights. Zemo Larsi, on the Georgia side, is in the beautiful Kazbegi region of Georgia, a few hours drive up the Georgian Military Highway from the capitol, Tbilisi.

Across the border in Russia lies North Ossetia, whose capital Vladikavkaz is maybe twenty five miles (40 k) on down a road that will get you to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya in about another fifty miles (80 k). Or take a left after Vladikavkaz and it's a short drive to Beslan, home of the September 2004 schoolhouse siege that killed over 300.

It's a daunting neighborhood. And it's all less than 300 miles (482 k) from the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, Sochi. Get your tickets early. (We're keeping an eye on Sochi in our Sochi Olympics Watch.)

At least until the summer war between Georgia and Russia in August 2008, the Georgia side of the border was lovely and peaceful, and I imagine it is again. If you ever visit Georgia, a drive up from Tbilisi to the community of Kazbegi, near the border, will make you feel like a real adventurer.

The border crossing that's reopening is spectacularly located, too, along a narrow pass in the high Caucasus through which the River Terek rushes as if out of control. On our trip to Kazbegi in 2006 we visited the border as guests of an Army Corps of Engineers contractor who was then on the job of constructing the Georgian side of the border crossing. Here's what it looked like in June, 2006:

Note the sheer vertical canyon walls and the tiny gap where the road continues, up ahead in the photo past the buildings under construction.

It really is dramatic scenery. Have a look at the spectacular mountain scenery in our Georgia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com, and read more about our visit to Kazbegi town.

Travel Around the Old Soviet Rim

Travel in former Soviet lands has a special place in my heart. When I first began to travel a little off the beaten path, in the late 80's and early 90's, the lands from the Arctic east of Finland to the Adriatic east of Italy, and all the way east to the Pacific Ocean, were in greater or lesser spasms of turmoil. Some of my fondest travel memories include wicked cold, gloomy trains and bad sausage - all part of the experience of travel in the dying Soviet Union.

With my own personal souvenir pieces of the Berlin Wall in my bags (that I had proudly chiseled from the wall myself), I spent the night on the floor of East Berlin's Lichtenberg Station in the first days of 1990, having missed the late train to Prague, where the revolution still surged ahead. From Tallin, Estonia, we watched Finnish TV with considerable alarm (and couldn't understand a thing they said) as they displayed maps of the nearby Sosnovy Bor nuclear plant's leak on 25 March, 1992. Once on a train bound for Moscow, I woke up with a bag of potatoes at my feet where my camera should have been. I found the camera several compartments down the aisle. I've forgotten what happened to the potatoes.

Here are a couple of new articles about trips around the former Soviet Union's still unkempt borders that you can take today:

- A few years ago we sailed across the Black Sea on a working ferry (not a luxury cruise liner), the M/V "Yuzhnaya Palmyra," from UKR Ferry shipping company, Istanbul to Odessa, Ukraine. This same company puts on what is probably a little more adventurous travel experience elsewhere across the Black Sea, from the Georgian port of Poti to the Ukranian port of Ilychevsk.

Read about it in the article The Ukraine-Georgia Black Sea Ferry is no package tour from georgiandaily.com, which starts like this: "The ferry connecting Ukraine and Georgia across the Black Sea is, depending on one's point of view, either a tourist experience from Hell, or one of the world's last properly adventurous sea voyages."

I'm in.

- This morning comes the BBC article Belgrade-Sarajevo railway reopens after 17 years. The former Yugoslavia wasn't part of the old Soviet Union. But when Russia's dominion collapsed, the former Yugoslavia was thrown into much worse paroxysms than much of the former Soviet space.

As the article puts it, in the 1970's & 80's "Golden Era" of Yugoslavia, "People could start the day in an Ottoman-style cafe in the Bosnian capital before taking an easy six-hour ride in comfortable carriages to party in Belgrade."

Put me down for that one, too.

*****

The book to read is Murderers in Mausoleums, Jeffrey Tayler's Moscow to Beijing adventure around the old Soviet rim.

(Top photo, of the UKR Ferry Shipping Company's M/V Yuzhnaya Palmyra at dock in Istanbul, from the Turkey Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. See also the related Ukraine Gallery and Georgia Gallery. Bottom photo, of a pedestrian street in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, from the Former Yugoslavia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

The Receding Glaciers Thing

To mark the climate change meeting in Copenhagen, you might enjoy a short three-minute clip from The History Channel called "How the Globe Was Made." It's about receding glaciers, with pretty pictures of the Swiss Alps (Via A Distinctive World).

(Photo is the Gergeti glacier on Mt. Kazbek, Republic of Georgia, from the Georgia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)