Intern in Russia, part 7: Through the Caucasus in marshrutka

More than once in your life you will find yourself standing at the confluence of two river beams, having to decide whether to set off along the already familiar bank, or you'd better explore the rather crooked stream - and instead of booking a flight ticket on the route Rostov - Tbilisi you will reserve a seat in a marshrutka.

Armenian transport company has a quite precisely designed website for the post-soviet world, I click on a date in the calendar and I am announced, that I have successfully reserved a place, however, I don't get any confirmation mail, no one asks money in advance - I feel like I should somehow seal the deal. The next day I call Armenia and ask - are counting on me for sure? Yes, yes, come to Rostov to the old bus station, the driver will call you the day before departure. The driver actually reaches me on the very day of departure when I'm already on my way the platform, firstly he orders me to pay for my ticket at the cash desk on the ground floor. The company's headquarters are located in a concrete box on the right side of the waiting room, inside there is an Armenian man sitting with a notebook and a pen, he asks 2500 roubles for the ticket. Do you have luggage? I do. You need to pay extra for the luggage. How much? I can't tell you exactly - the salesman opens the question of the variable component of the ticket price. He intends to give me 2000 roubles change from a five-thousand note - is that OK? It is not - I reply and start to bargain - 200 for the luggage, eventually we agree on 300. Georgians consider Armenians a savvy folk and there is surely some truth to it. I carry both of my backpacks a short distance and stuff them into the prepared minivan with the sign EPEBAH in Cyrilic behind the windshield. The crew consists of the driver, five Armenians and me. This pack will spend the next 16 hours in a closed space, until the only non-armenian particle rolls out of the car in front of the bus station in Tbilisi. Everyone is attracted by my passport - a foreign agent or what? How much time will be wasted until they finish interrogating you at the security post... the driver loses his faith in me even before departure. 

An encounter of two Armenian marshrutkas in the middle of the road. A burning field in the background.

Travelling in a minivan for seven people gives you a feeling of coherence with people, with whom you in fact have nothing in common and so I feel like being on a family trip. Armenian-russian pop is sweeping through the interior, accompanied by driver lighting a cigarette approximately every 20 minutes, taking no regard to a child and a toddler sitting in the car. Should one Armenian marshrutka meet another one of the same kin on the highway, it is obliged to respond to this joyful encounter by honking, waving, perhaps even stopping at the shoulder of the road and sharing a word or two, often including an exchange of goods which will be later traded for some sort of box in a different marshrutka or a stall placed somewhere by the road. The road is weaving through monotonous Russian fields and steppes, the closer to Caucasus the more frequent spelling mistakes in signs labeling food on petrol stations. It gets dark, there is a police cordon stationed in middle of the road, commanding us to pull over. The door slides open, a ushanka-covered head makes it inside and asks for passports, mine works like a magnet and in no time I am making it through the metal detector and a fistful of questions at the police outpost - apparently we entered some Russian Caucasian federal subject. This procedure repeats several more times; the prophecy of the Armenian driver has come true. Come on, come on, get quickly inside! No one gets screened as much as you do! he tries to put the blame on me. They have checked my passport already three times and we haven't even made it to the state border - I think about good old Schengen for a moment. Shortly after midnight the customs appear and several tentacles of marshrutkas from all the Caucasian republics sticking out of them. We wait in the car for an hour, the driver keeps us awake by a mixture of chilly breeze and cigarette smoke; in a while we line up before the post, shivering synchronically from the cold. My reward for the bravery is an exemplary bureaucratic interview from the Russian policewoman:

- Where are you coming from?

- Rostov.
- And where are you going? 

- Georgia. (the conversation takes place on Russia-Georgia border).

- And where were you before?

- Volgodonsk. (I provide additional info about my internship).

- Why didn't you go back from Rostov?

- Because I want to go to Georgia.

- What will you be doing there?

- Sights, mountains, nature...

- But why didn't you go home?

- Because I want to go to Georgia.

- But what for?

- Well I said - trip, sights...

- You have to wait!

The last order was rather a desperate authoritarian command than real threat and in two minutes I was already sitting in our Scooby Doo van, the driver was for sure relieved - no more interrogation of dumb foreigners. There is a so-called 'invasion highway' leading from the state boundary to Tbilisi - three hours of ride downhill into the capital. Due to objective reasons I cannot fall asleep and so I observe the dawn over the mountain tops. Shortly the marshrutka spits me out at the bus station, the driver shakes my hand, lights the seventieth fag and I am incautiously driven to my hostel for double price. After two days of soaking up the atmosphere of Tbilisi I feel being drawn to the periphery again; the town of Gori - the birthplace of Stalin - is only an hour drive to the west. I arrive at the marshrutkas' post and after some time inquiring I sit inside the Soviet minibus again, heading to Kutaisi - Gori is on the way there. And indeed it is: after hour's drive the marshrutka suddenly stops at the side of the road and the Georgian version of conductor is asking me to get off. I glance out of the window: I can see mountains, crash barriers, three lanes, but nothing that would evoke Gori, or at least a build-up area. It turned out that the 'bus' doesn't go directly to Gori, therefore they have to drop me off in the middle of the highway - they say that Gori is 'right there' (he points his finger), the sign later reveals information - 4 km. Two backpacks weigh over 20 kilos, therefore I'm happy when I can rest them for a while on a concrete block just at the height of my waist, failing to notice that I'm standing in front of a military base. Two soldiers in an outpost are immediately attracted by a tourist, one of them helps me to catch a taxi right on the road. A few minutes later I'm sitting in the kitchen with my Polish host Alicja - she works in Gori as a volunteer, before that she went through an internship as an English teacher in Russia as well. We exchange our experiences, it's quite stunning, that they're almost identical - the attitude, the approach towards people, the flexible timetable, Nastya the secretary. We come to a conclusion, that we didn't have bad luck - Russia is most likely everywhere the same. 

Gori, bus stop. If you are travelling West, you can catch a fresh marshrutka directly from the highway.

We have had four blackouts during our discussion, after the last one we didn't even bother blowing the candles.

When it comes to driving zombie cars, Georgians are even more advanced than Russians.

Stalin supermarket. For rent.

As a collector of unrecognized states I couldn't allow myself not to visit Abkhazia - a small, but de facto independent strip of Georgia supported by Russia. You only need your passport to enter Georgia, however, for entry into Abkhazia is required 'visa', which you can obtain online via Abkhazian 'Ministry of Foreign Affairs'. Georgian-Abkhazian border is guarded by Russian soldiers; me and Czech guy Franta, whom I met the day before in Zugdidi, are standing in the queue behind a fence, stone faces are walking by us with batons in their sturdy hands. Suddenly we are called inside a booth and seated on a couch by one of the uniformed men; he asks us about almost every stamp in our passports, although with a relatively friendly voice. The process is over within an hour, however, the administrative procedure needs to be concluded by visiting the MFA in Sukhum. We walk back and forth along the correct street, there is no ministry in sight though; in the end the ministry turned out to be a consular room in the far left corner of the Repatriation department. We receive a passport-sized paper, which you need to guard as an apple of your eye - Abkhazian visa, without which you can't get back to Georgia. Our host Pavel promised us a trip to the mountain lake Ritsa, sorrounded by Caucasian peaks. We are on our way, however, I must have caught a virus some time around the morning: I haven't eaten anything the whole day, my head is about to explode, I'm shivering from the cold, wrapped in two jackets, I barely leave the car. Pavel offers me a ride to his friend - a doctor, who is on call tonight. The dark object on the periphery of the town doesn't resemble anything close to a hospital from the distance, I have no choice though and in a few minutes I'm being interviewed by the doctor sitting on a hospital bed in front of me. I describe the symptoms - according to my opinion as a layman - of a common cold. And here goes the doctor asking questions, whether I had used substances like methamphetamine and such. What does it have to do with the illness? I answered with a stare. 'This is a hospital, not a police station, so - speak' and I answer negatively. Whatever, we'll give you a shot and an infusion - what? The most action scenario that I had anticipated was - go home and take two painkillers, but it was quite the contrary: a few moments later I have two more holes in my skin. I am lying on the bed, staring into the ceiling, the infusion is flowing through my left arm into the rest of my body, in order to kill some time I reach out for my harmonica in the jacket and I play jauntily out of boredom. To my surprise the temperature is gone in two hours and except for fatigue I fell so good, that I even let myself be defeated in chess the next morning. After crossing the border again you can feel the political vacuum filling up with oxygen and it immediately gets easier to breathe; leaving Abkhazia is a much more pleasant feeling than entering it, just because you are coming back to the part of the world, where you can at least get a medical insurance. 

Entrance into Abkhazia. Should your legs fail you, you shall be carried forth in a vagon.

Abkhazia in a nutshell. 

The abandoned building dominanting the center of Sukhum, with a flag proudly hoisted on its roof. In Abkhazia the amount of flags per square metre is higher than in an American movie.

An experience with Abkhazian medical care.

A pacifistic monument in a country, where there have been two wars in just 15 years.