Stalin, Rocks and Some Churches on Hills

This weekend we had a whole bunch of excursions to various parts of Georgia. Most of these excursions involved climbing all over insanely picturesque bits of the landscape. It was a lot of fun.
Our first stop yesterday was the town of Dmanisi, which contains an archaeological site where the oldest human remains outside of Africa have been discovered. Apparently, around 1.8 million years ago this particular part of Georgia was very popular with our distant ancestors.

Here is one section of the site.

And here are some skulls that have been dug up there.

Another section of the site.











Nearby was a little church and a fortress with a great view of the town and valley.

It had tiny doors and even tinier cats.

Then we went to a church on a hill.

Way on the right is a little line of cows.

That concluded our first day. We went back to Tbilisi, and I went with a few people to look for bookstores. I... may have bought books.
The next day we set out again, bright and early. The first place we headed was to another church on a hill.

The important thing about this cathedral is that it overlooks Mtskheta, which was the capital of Georgia before Tbilisi. It's an old city, and buildings from over a thousand years ago are currently being excavated there.







After that, we drove to the town of Gori, best known being the hometown of a certain Joseph Stalin. He was Georgian. Russians are very big on this point.

On the way there we passed by this settlement. These homes belong to refugees from South Ossetia, one of the areas of Georgia affected by the Russo-Georgian War of August 2008.
Which I don't think I've really discussed yet. Okay, story time. I'm not clear on the details because, well, no one's really clear on the details. It was all very confusing and involved a lot of finger-pointing. But what I've managed to gather is that, in August 2008 the Georgian army attacked two areas of Georgia: Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These were areas with a lot of Russian citizens, and there's a fair amount of racism in Georgia against Russians... for obvious reasons. So. These attacks caught the attention of Russia, which sent in troops and used... the term in the official report was "disproportionate force"... to majorly kick the Georgian army's butt. This took place over a span of five days. After this, Abkhazia and South Ossetia declared independence from Georgia. So far their independence has only been recognized by a few countries, including Russia. Georgia refuses to accept their independence, and considers Russia to still be a hostile, occupying force.
All in all, I've decided not to mention my fascination with Russia while I'm here.

Gori was a rather decrepit town with a noticeable military presence, since it's fairly close to South Ossetia and, therefore, those evil Russians. The town's main feature is the big, dramatically columned Stalin Museum. Apparently it's other main feature used to be a big statue of Stalin in the central square, but the statue was taken down. In 2009. In the middle of the night, to avoid possible angry locals. Hm.

The first thing we noticed about the museum is that it was colder inside than it was outside. There's probably a joke in there somewhere. We were led around, through grand rooms with stained glass windows, by a woman who talked a mile a minute about all the pictures and artifacts in the museum. It was the cleanest, most blameless description of Stalin's life that I had ever heard. One particularly entertaining moment came when our guide was discussing Stalin's second wife, who committed suicide. Someone asked why, and she responded "The official story was that she had a headache" and then moved on. 

Stalin...washing a car? I don't even know.

A miniature version of...

...this! Lenin's Mausoleum. Though you'll notice that the miniature includes Stalin's name too. This is because his body was in there too for a few years, until the Soviet government thought better of it and took him out.  

And this is the house where Stalin spent the first three years of his life. The inside wasn't all that interesting- just a single room with a bed and table and stuff. I just liked the big temple-like enclosure they put it in. 

And this is Stalin's armored train car. 

Stalin's armored train was pretty nice. But I going to put it out there and say that Trotsky's was cooler. His had printing presses. 

After getting our minds broadened at the Stalin Museum, we headed to the cave city of Uplistsikhe to climb on more rocks. 

The cave city is a network of caves and buildings dug into some cliffs. They were used by various people from the 6th century BCE all the way up to the late 1700s. And they make for some great rock climbing. 

There were a great variety of dogs in the parking lot. 

And then we went to a restaurant, where we had Exhibit A: baked beans in bowls with bread on top. 

...As well as a bunch of other stuff.

All right. That was a very basic overview of what I did this weekend. I'm ending this post now because it's late and I need to go to bed. Good night!