Tbilisi – Mtskheta Again

You might remember that a few weeks ago I walked from Tbilisi to Mtskheta.

Last Sunday, this time with a few friends, I did the same walk again.

Or almost the same walk: this time; for part of the way we walked along the other side of the Mtkvari River and instead of visiting the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral as I did the last time we climbed up to the Jvari monastery.

The high points of the trip were gorging ourselves on wild mulberries which were in season, eating lobia at a restaurant on the way, and then being "forced" to drink 2 liters of home made Georgian wine by a guy from who we asked directions.

I didn't bring a camera with me on this walk, but one of my friends Vladimer Shioshvili did. Here are some of the photographs from our walk that he took.

Actually Vova is a very decent photographer and you my may want to take a look at all of his photographs.

Trip To Yerevan

An Internet acquaintance of mine offered me a free ride to Yerevan, Armenian so I decide to take him up on on. It's kind of nice being back here, seeing some of my friends I haven't seen in fairly long time and it's also very pleasant hanging around a Yerevan, a city I lived in for about six months.

But of course, it was interesting to talk to people about politics.

One of the biggest issues here is an idea being floated around to unilaterally return parts of Azerbaijan that were captured during the Karabakh War. The parts that would be returned aren't part of Karabakh, but were captured for strategic reasons.

The argument for the return is obvious, but the argument against the return is that the conflict isn't over, there is no agreement from between Azeris and the Armenians on the status of Karabakh, and the Azeris aren't offering anything in return (no security guarantees).

In Armenia one of the main parties is called the Dashnaktsutiun party. It's a relatively old party that goes back to the first Armenian Republic, and even before. It's fair to say that Dashnaktsutiun is a one of the most nationalistic of the mainstream Armenian parties, and the one with the heaviest Armenian diaspora component.

One of my best friends in Yerevan (who will remain nameless) is a Dashnak supporter and she went to a demonstration against the return of these territories. In the ensuing discussion (I was appalled that she didn't support the return of these territories) she told me a pretty funny joke. I think it's only funny if you're Armenian or if you've dealt with Armenians (in which case it's probably even funnier), but here it is anyway:

One day the Armenian government decides to build a spaceship and send two Armenians astronoughts to the Moon. Of course, one of the two has to be a Dashnak, but the other one is chosen from one of the remaining parties in Armenia. When the spaceship finally lands on the moon, as soon as the Dashnak puts his foot on the moon the non Dashnak Armenian astronauts pulls out a dagger and kills the Dashnak.

When the spaceship returns to the Yerevan, the non Dashnak is promptly arrested, but refuses to say why he killed his colleague. Finally, because of the political and historical significance of the murder the president decides to interrogates him.

When the president asks him why he did it, the astrougnot looks at him and says, "Don't you understand? Dashnak blood has been spilled on the Moon! This means it belongs to us too!".

Hash House Harriers

Brought to you from the "And Now For Something Completely Different" department: the Hash House Harriers.

If you haven't heard of these guys, you can be forgiven: essentially nuts, rather than seeking psychiatric attention, they've institutionalized what can only be called insanity. But I digress — let's take this from the beginning.

The Hash House Harriers seems to be a world wide runners club for kooks. Legend has it that the club was founded in Malaysia by British colonial officers who decided that to compensate for their drinking they should start running, now describing themselves as "Drinkers with a running problem" (if the Tbilisi chapter is any example) the club has evolved into a bizarre hedonistic ritual of running, drinking, and very, very strange rituals, chants and songs.

Yes they run, but I've never seen a run like this before. First, the trail is marked but deliberate left vague. It's half run and half a treasure hunt for the markers. You come to decision points where the leaders have to fan out in all directions to find which way the trail should go, there are other points where you have to double back, and finally there are other points where the markers are there but deliberately hidden behind trees or rocks. The idea is a good one though: it slows the lead runners down to so that everyone stays together, to keep everything social.

And socializing is what this is all about. If anyone has met any Jehovah's Witnesses, then you've seen the kind of happy, join-our-family smiles these guys all wear. With it's roots in an ex pat community the organization has maintained itself as networking system for travelers and foreigners. People told me that when they get a new job in a new city, the first thing they do is find the local Hash House Harries chapter, and hey presto, they have about 100 new friends (OK, perhaps somewhat kooky friends but still friends). While to various degrees most es pats try to blend in to whatever extent they can, these guys stick out like drag queens at an NRA meeting.

Talking of drag queens, listen: the day before I went on my run with these guys, all the men dressed up in red dresses and ran through downtown (very conservative) Tbilisi (and it turns out down my very residential street – thank god I wasn't there). If you don’t believe me check out this video they shot of their run.

When I went on my first run with them after about three kilometres forty degree heat everyone stopped to drink beer. Beer! I asked if they had any water, but they just laughed and said no, I had to drink beer like everyone else. Well, I'm not that nuts, there was still about five kilometres, and as I said it was forty degrees, so there was no way I was going to drink beer. I poured the beer over my head to cool off but I first hid myself behind some bushes because I was worried what people would think if they saw me do this. Well, no one did notice, but listen: at the end of the run there were all kinds of ritual beer-over-the-head pouring. With everyone chanting bizarre songs all the fast runners, all the slow runner, all the whatever runners (oh yes and all those running with the club for the first time) had to pour a beer over their head.

Very, very strange. Will I go again? I hate to admit it, but yes.

Here is the Wikipedia Article on the Hash House Harriers.
Here is World Hash House Harriers Home Page.
Here is Tbilisi Hash House Harriers site.
Here is Ottawa Hash House Harriers site.

More Old Tbilisi (Photographs)

Hazards To Navigation

Well, if you read Champagne And Chocolate and The Trial, you probably know how happy I was this week when I finally got the data I needed from the Tbilisi land registry office.

Unfortunately the happiness was short lived since the data brought some very bad news.

It turns out, interpreted literally, about 60 centimeters of my house and yard may sit on my neighbors land. If this case, again interpreted literally, I would have to tear my house down or buy the land from my neighbor.

This, however, is really, really worst case scenario: the problem is most likely not where the houses were built, but rather how the maps were made. The reality is that the maps are simply too accurate for their own good.

Let me explain.

The houses in my neighborhood all at least seventy-five years old. When they were built the technology, not only to survey the land, but also to map the city was simply not up the level that it is today. True, coordinates were written down, but everybody understood that they simply could not be sure where things really were.

Today, the technology to map has improved greatly. Looking over the cartographers shoulder I saw unbelievable satellite imagery – way better than Google Earth has – that he uses as a starting point to draw the maps. It’s really no wonder that when the old measurements don’t agree with the new ones. According to my architect, to varying degrees, not just my neighborhood, but all of Tbilisi has the same problem. For example my land, though it allegedly encroaches on one of my neighbors, is being encroached on by two others.

Of course that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem, it only explains how the problem got there. The question is how are these contradictions resolved.

My architect tells me that, assuming there are no other considerations, in almost all cases the law rules in favor of existing structures. The land registry should simply update their coordinates to match reality. Mine is a open and shut case.

How to do to go about getting this done is entirely a different question. Remember, I’ve already written pages and pages on how much fun it is to deal with the land registry.

Basically I have two options: I can either convince my neighbors to agree to moving the boundaries or I can take them to court if they refuse. My architect tells me in the second case, I will certainly win, and though it sounds terrible, the whole process should take no more than two months.

But the story isn’t over yet. Just as we were about to talk to the neighbors about this I found the old map that I got when I first bought my house. Looking at it, I noticed that even though on the old map my house extends beyond my land, between my neighbor’s land and mind there is a small gap* that doesn’t belong to anybody; according to this map, my house doesn’t cross over into the neighbors land. Maybe, this problem had been discovered and corrected already, with this sliver of land being created to rectify the mistake.

If this sounds to fantastic, there is even a more spectacular possibility: maybe the gap is another cartographic error, but this time in my favor. I'm due for a break I think.

In any case I showed my old map to the mapping people and they are now checking into this. It looks very, very positive. I’ll have more information on Monday.

But you know what? All this has a very familiar ring to it.

In Canada I work for the Canadian Hydrographic Service and we’re responsible for all of Canada’s charts (a chart, for the uninitiated, is a map of a waterway that is intended for navigation). Most of Canada’s coastline was also mapped a long time ago also with the with the same kind of accuracy that Tbilisi was (actually, probably a lot worse since landmarks and fixed points are a lot harder to come by at sea) so when the Canadian Hydrographic Service, or before us the British Admiralty, noted a hazard to navigation on a chart it wasn’t positioned exactly.

Was this a big problem? Of course not: not only did everybody know that the chart couldn’t be all that accurate, they also didn’t know precisely where their ship was in the water; if we put a rock in the middle of the channel everybody gave it a very clear berth.

Now things have changed: not only does every ship have a GPS receiver (as well as other positioning systems) their expectations of chart accuracy have also gone way up. It’s all logical, except the chart they are using may have the accuracy of a century ago, because maybe, that’s when the water was last surveyed.

To make things worse, not only is money for charting drying up so resurveying is often not the answer, the pressures on the shipping industry are making their route planning more and more demanding. They really don’t want to give waste time in the water, and they want assume the chart is perhaps more accurate than it is.

Just like my house, no easy answers.

More news soon I hope.

* The Russian word that my cartographer and my architect used for this gap between our properties was really interesting: Луфт. Transliterated into English it would be written and pronounced Luft. Even if you don’t know German, this might be familiar to you: think of Lufthansa. Luft in German means air. Cute, isn’t it?