Society could easily consider this night as a ladies night...but there are no ladies

It is Saturday night and I am sitting in my room listening to sad music and writing these lines. Saturday is the favourite day of many people I know because one can wake up late and stay up as long as one can.

In Hollywood teenager movies, pyjama parties (the mother of all teenager parties) are always held on Saturdays. There, girls sit on their bed all night, watch cheesy romantic movies, eat chocolate and hear to love songs and drink white wine.

Today I woke up late, had breakfast, cleaned my apartment, did Pilates, took a shower and went out to the restaurant area of Tbilisi. As a starter, I had thin cheese-slices filled with homemade yogurt and mint; then I had a trout with green and red bell peppers served with pomegranate sauce and lemon.

Then I headed to a wine bar had two glasses and a bowl of rosemary olives, then, I went home...at 8 p.m.

I think I easily cover all areas to qualify for a ladies night:

• I am wearing my pyjama,
• I have been sitting on my bed for the last five hours,
• I watched a romantic movie (Clerks II),
• I ate a whole package of chocolate-covered wafers,
• I am hearing sad songs,
• I am drinking red wine (shortly ago, I could not open a white wine bottle, and this is slowly developing into a serious masculinity problem),
• By the way, is it legitimate to feel less masculine for not being able to unscrew a bottle with a Swiss knife? Is having a masculinity problem related to hormones?
• Is it stupid and chauvinist to ask?

Since this night has all of the elements above, I think society could easily consider this night a ladies night, only without the ladies…

…shit, this is not a ladies night; it’s Bridget Jones' opening scene.

Instead of focusing on the audit, I started to work on my telepathic forces

I first heard about whisper interpreters about 6-7 years ago. It was 2003 or 2004, and two Spanish friends of mine told us about it, well actually, they told Hannes and he told me.

Since Sunday I am in Baku, Azerbaijan. It is very nice here; I love communist architecture and Muslim food and tea culture, and Azerbaijan has both: It was part of the USSR and its inhabitants are Muslims.

Even though I have not been for more than one day in many Muslim cities, but being in Baku feels good, and it is a women-friendly Muslim city: There are no hundreds of men bothering, or intimidating women. I remember how hard was it for me and my brother to cope with the dozens of men bothering my sister in Aswan, or all men at the bazaar in Istanbul making pseudo-jokes about women, or the most sad incident: some weeks ago at Tahir square in Cairo, women were demonstrating against the social tolerance of sexual offences on women, when a group of assholes went deliberately to the square to molest and touch the women demonstrating.

Soviets prohibited religion during 71 years and the result is a very tolerant city with a Muslim majority, but Christians, Catholics and some Jews live also here. Women wear skirts on the streets and no one grab their intimate parts, and women don’t receiving public physical punishment for provoking bad thoughts on men.

The other Soviets legacy in Azerbaijan is Russian. I am in Baku because I am joining my Georgian colleague in a 4-day quality audit. The audit is in Russian, so we had to hire a whisper interpreter.

On the audit’s first day, I felt important: The director, some of his co-workers, the Georgian auditor and I were in the room. We were only waiting for the interpreter. He arrived 10 minutes late, sat next to me and immediately began to translate.

Elmar, my interpreter is from Azerbaijan. Azeris are Eurasians, and many Asian men are (for our western culture) very touchy! They hug other men and even held hands as a sign of friendship.

Have you ever wish you could have the power of telepathy?

Elmar was sitting behind me translating and every time he came closer, he suddenly put his hand on my chair’s back, then right besides my leg. It was uncomfortable! But this was not the only thing: Elmar had bad breath! Do you know how it is to be whispered by a man with bad breath? I hope you don’t…

After some time, we were offered black tea and caramels. Instead of focusing on the audit, I started to work on my telepathic forces “Please drink the tea and have a caramel, please drink tea and have a caramel, please!!!” They were the worst 10 minutes this year, a living hell... Elmar finally reacted to my message, he took a sip of tea and had a caramel and with this, his bad breath disappeared.

Then I started with my telepathy again: “Please move away from me, please don’t touch my hand with yours, please!!!” But that did not work…

The substantial changes

My life in Tbilisi is nice:  I wake up, take a shower, take the subway, reach the office, start working, drink a cup of tea, continue working, have lunch outside, go back to the office, fight the desire of taking a nap and continue working.  At around 7 or 8, I take the subway back home, buy peaches or strawberries or cherries, do some facebooking, read news online, eat the fruit I bought earlier and go late to bed.

This has been my life in the last 2 and a half weeks, however, there have been some substantial changes. During the first days in Tbilisi:

   - I had nice meals not only at noon, but also at night, now I barely have dinner.

   - I had 2-3 glasses of wine at night, now I get drunk very fast! Last Friday it took me
     only one bottle beer to party alone all night and on Saturday I went wild from a Gin &
     Tonic and a Martini Rosso.

I am not sure if my body is asking me for these eating and drinking issues (I don’t want to write “drinking problems”), because it need a break.

This is the story:
The day I arrived at Tbilisi, I was waiting for my luggage in the airport when I saw a huge electronic scale. I took my jacket and shoes off and hoped for the best.

Well, of course “the best” did not happen. Actually, what appeared on the scale after I stepped on it was a number I considered impossible for me to reach…Eighty bloody kilos.

What I like now is that I am eating lots of good & fresh vegetables and that I am having 4 wine glasses per week…instead of per day.

I hope my body likes this, and it gives me back what I want the most: the weight I had in 2007.

P.S. Attached you can see some pics, one of the street where the office is, two from my flat and one of me with a green polo shirt.

The newly renovated Marjanishvili-street, where the office I work is  

 My bed and the hall that leads to the exit, bathroom and kitchen

My bedroom from th eopposite perspective

Me in the corridor, wearing a olive-green polo shirt

If you are expecting a funny blog, you will be dissapointed!

When I was studying political sciences in Innsbruck, I had to combine my field of study with a second one. I chose media studies, there I learned about Monsieur Jacques Lacan.

Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Amongst many things, he developed the theory of the Mirror-stage. As I have it in mind, it states that around the age of 2, children begin to perceive themselves as a single person (before that, they think they are an “extension” of their mothers). Also at this stage, children begin to perceive their fathers (or father figures) as something new, as a stranger who does not belong to his/her “mother-child universe”.

Lacan talks about things like mother, home and paradise and differentiates them from other things as father, the unknown and earth/society. He also talks about doors, things that allow us to switch from the safe indoor to the dangerous outdoor.

In a lesson, I used Lacan for a presentation about “The last tango in Paris”, but right now, I am not in Paris, but in Tbilisi, and here there are beautiful balconies everywhere.

I personally have no idea how architects see balconies. Maybe for Lacan they could have been a way to experience the wild outside and stay safe at the same time. Contrary to doors, which leave you outside on your own and unprotected.

Friends of mine built in 2008 the biggest balcony I ever saw. It was a wooden structure that allowed people to get closer to the dangerous Inn River (people in Innsbruck call it wilder Bach – wild creek).

I will stay with my interpretation à la Lacan. A balcony may be a safe place which gives you enough freedom to hear cars passing by, feel the wind and get wet if it rains, but in Tbilisi, balconies are more than that. They are aesthetic and give character to all houses, the old, the modern, the poor and the rich. Here some pics.

      

 

my fingers smell like the most delicious strawberries

It all happened so fast: I had loads of documents to finish, many e-mails to send, a film festival to organise, three bands to attend (and hear), luggage to prepare, a brunch to cook for my friends and finally, to take the plane to Tbilisi. That all happened within 8 days. I arrived 36 hours ago to Georgia.


While in Innsbruck, I heard only good things about Georgian food, and even though I have been here for less than two days, I can already say that all my friends were not exaggerating when they told me Georgian cuisine was the best in the Caucasus. What they forgot to tell me was the wonderful agricultural products you can get on the streets.

Today I bought fruits and vegetables from a “store” in a garage. AMongts many things, I also bought strawberries….the best I have had in my life.

For me, it was always a mystery why strawberry-flavoured lollipops and chewing gum tasted so different from fresh strawberries; and then I tried wild strawberries from the Mountains around. Only then I tasted what food scientists were trying to imitate. They wanted to synthetically replicate the flavour of wild strawberries.

The artificial flavour is similar to the one from wild strawberries, with the difference that the natural ones are more intense and fresher and have an incredible texture that no analog candy can ever recreate - even though their flavour’s molecules are identic to the natural’s.

Wild strawberries are very small and very intense in flavour, but for me, they lack something: Juice. The strawberries I just had were perfect. They tasted very similar to the wild ones, but had the size of a common strawberry; they smelled like heaven and were so juicy that my fingers still smell like strawberries.

I also bought tomatoes, cilantro, cucumber and eggplants…I can’t wait to make a tomato-cucumber salad with lemon juice and cilantro topped with fried eggplant cubes…

I will be in Tbilisi for six more week and I can’t wait to discover more street markets, visit the thermal spas, swimm in the black sea...and eat more, much more.

The ones I got, are the straberries in the left front side of the picture. The ones behind (middle and right part) are sour cherries, normal cherries and white cherries

My fingers smell like these strawberries right now :-)