Bacon …

On 31 March 2008, at approximately 6:00 AM, I found myself standing in front of a German Passport Control Officer. He was looking for a better answer than I could give him.

“So you are in Germany illegally”

It was more of a statement than a question.

See, I had sent my Official Passport with someone else to Georgia so that they could obtain an Armenian Visa for me. I was trying to explain this to the German Officer who was now giving me the hairy eyeball.

“Doesn’t matter”, he says, “it is not here.”

I had given him my tourist passport, which showed no entry into Germany. The only European entry was into Spain, and it was dated last September.

“This is a serious crime in Germany”

and

“What do we do now?” were his next two phrases.

Of course it took him about a minute between sentences. He kept flipping through the blank pages of my tourist passport, and looking at the computer in between the hard stares he was giving me.

Now let it be said that I was on my best behavior during this whole incident. I was calling him “Sir” the whole time and was maintaining my composure, but firmly standing my ground. I knew that I was right, and this little authoritarian posturing wasn’t spooking me. Had I been French, I might have surrendered. I was thinking that I might have to give up a pack of the cigarettes that I bought (to bribe people in other countries) before I got to leave Germany. However, after a couple of minutes staring me down, I guess he figured out that I was trying to LEAVE the country and that would be OK. He just told me to bring my other passport next time.

The flight left on time, and we had a beer at the airport in Istanbul before our next flight. On the plane to Tbilisi, I was sitting next to this pretty blond girl who actually looked a bit like Uma Thurman. I played it cool for the first 45 minutes of the flight, then I made my move. I offered her my chocolate pudding from the airplane meal…

She accepted it and we chatted a little bit. She had a great accent. It only took me another half an hour to work up the courage to ask her for her phone number. It only took her about 2 seconds to ask the stewardess if she could change her seat. As I was sitting in the aisle, I slipped the stewardess a pack of Marlboros and she told Uma that she couldn’t move.

I’m beginning to see how this bribery stuff works.

We landed in Tbilisi and were picked up by a driver and taken to our hotel. The Marriott in downtown Tbilisi. We met up with some others for dinner, and it is then that I find out that the people I’m supposed to meet in Armenia the next day will not be there. They’ve arranged for me to meet with someone else about the project. “OK, fine”.

We ate dinner at a Spanish restaurant. Needless to say I was disappointed. Not in the Spanish food mind you, but that fact that my first night in a new country is being spent eating food from another country. It’s kind of like going back to the USA and eating pizza as your first meal. What? That doesn’t sound odd to you? Well the analogy may stink, but I was still a bit peeved.

We had a great breakfast at the hotel the next morning, and were on the road by 0715 for a 5 hour road trip. There were five of us in a Toyota Land Cruiser bouncing around on extremely rough roads for 5 hours. The potholes were plentiful and deep, and the rest of the road wasn’t really that great either. Let’s just say that the geometric design of the road was not quite Autobahn standards.

The scenery was very stark and rugged. Lots of grassy hills were interspersed with steep rocky mountains. Every once in a while we would pass a flock of sheep grazing, or an old woman walking with a couple of emaciated cows.

The older part of Tbilisi is actually pretty (though a bit run down). It is when you get outside of town and see all the Soviet style concrete buildings that you can appreciate architecture (and yes even architects). The bare pre-cast concrete panels, with the grout between them visible and sloppily done, have never even been painted to help cover them up.





We crossed over into Armenia. Before we checked into the hotel in Yerevan, we found out that the guy from the Non-Governmental Oranization (NGO) who was supposed to meet me that day would not be able to meet with me until the next day. I guess that the two months of emails going back and forth about the timing of the trip and getting us there were not enough advance notice to ensure that anyone besides me would be at the meeting. Tomorrow was supposed to be spent on a site visit and then traveling back to Georgia. Today I was hoping to gather what information was available, ask for more (you always have to ask for more – even though you asked for everything already), and get a better handle on what this project actually was. I know it seems kind of funny to travel several hundred miles by plane and a few hundred by car before finding out what the project was, but trust me, God and the Government work in mysterious ways.

So I went to another meeting with the others from my group. As I write this I am sitting in a non-air-conditioned room with about 15 people. The windows are closed because it is too noisy outside, and it is hot in here. I’m listening to someone read off contract clauses, which are being translated into Armenian.

i.e. I am in a roomful of people who are meeting about a project I know nothing about, don’t really care about, and I’m being forced to hear it in two languages. One of which I barely understand, and the other one is Armenian.

I was beginning to think that this was all just one big, expensive April Fools Joke on me.

At the end of the meeting the guy in charge (I’m not really sure what his official capacity was, but he was definitely the man in charge) asked us to have dinner with him. That night we had an awesome feast at an Armenian restaurant. The man in charge from the meeting was acting as toastmaster, which is serious business here. Almost everyone toasts, and you need to get the toastmaster’s permission before you do. The food was excellent, the wine was good, and the vodka shots were flying back for each toast. I started out with wine, and was sipping it for each toast. That was until I noticed all of our drivers tossing back shots. I thought, “Hey, if we get in an accident on the way back to the hotel I want to be loose too.” So I did a few shots of vodka too. And the vodka was good.

The next day we went to the NGO’s office and I discovered that what I thought was a single project was actually seven separate projects. The guy from the NGO explained the project, and the project manager asked him a couple of questions. When I was asked if I had any questions, I was somewhat dumbfounded.

“Questions?”

Sure, I had a bunch of questions. Back when I thought that it was one job. Now that it is seven completely different jobs, with completely different needs, and completely different problems, well now I didn’t know where to begin.

“Any drawings?”

“No.”

“Any specifications?”

“No.”

“Any photographs?”

“No.”

“Any local standards?”

“No.”

“Well, thanks. I’m all out of questions, Your Honor.”

So we drove around for the better part of the afternoon looking for someone to show us a site. We actually met the mayor from one of the towns. She was traveling south on the same road we were traveling north on, when we called her. We met at some signpost, and her husband translated for her.

The mayor only spoke Armenian. But her husband could only translate it into Russian. This luckily is one of the languages our Georgian translator spoke, and she translated it back into English for us. And everything goes back the other way too. It was kind of like playing “telephone” with your third cousin, twice removed.

Let me try and describe how surrealistic this scene was. We were pretty high up into the Caucus Mountain range, and there is snow on the ground. It is very cold and windy and everybody is standing around shivering. One person would talk for about a minute, and the message would take about 2-3 minutes to get to the person at the end of the line. Then it would start all over again in the opposite direction.

Oh, I’m sure we were all perfectly understood and nothing got lost in translation…

We got back to Georgia that night, and the others had to go to some State Department event, so I went out to dinner on my own. I wet to this place which was supposed to have some of the best Khinkali around. Khinkali is basically a stuffed dumpling. It is a bit bigger than a pierogi, is wrapped more like a pot-sticker, and is either steamed or boiled. The ones I had that night were meat filled, but they also are filled with cheese, mushrooms, cabbage, &c. I had heard how good these things were, but to tell the truth, I was not really that impressed. They were OK, there was certainly nothing wrong with them, I just didn’t think they were worth raving about.

The waitresses at the place were all very pretty too. Well every one except mine. She looked like Satch from the Bowery Boys.



The next day I had nothing to do until my ride to the airport at 1500, so I took a little walking tour of Tbilisi.







For lunch, I had a cheese filled Khinkali and a Megruli Khachapuri (savory cheese pie with egg) that was pretty good. I bought some salami and a $45 bottle of 10 year old Armenian Cognac. Though I think I would’ve rather spent $50 on an 18 year old Armenian girl. Armenian women are beautiful, jet black hair, fair skin, amazing deep brown eyes. Some have these piercing pale brown, almost yellow, eyes that look incredible. But they are big on moles. Not that they want them, they just all seem to have them.

I made it back to Wiesbaden Thursday night.

Saturday we were smoking some meat for a party because a friend was leaving the next week. We used more grape vine and this time did two ~5 lb each boneless pork shoulders, a 4 lb leg of lamb, and a turkey breast. It all went well, and everyone liked the grub and seemed to have a good time.

On Tuesday I was heating up some of the smoked pork in a skillet with a little olive oil and some Sriracha when I got the idea to scramble a few eggs in with it. It turned out very good, and had it with a nice Rochefort Trappist Ale.



I was feeling like a genius.

That feeling lasted until the next day when I found out what genius really is. I was just sure that somebody had won the Nobel Prize for this. (If those P.O.S.’s Jimmy Carter and Al Gore have them, surely the inventor of this has one as well.)

Yes, this towering figure must surely be a man among boys.

What I saw that day, is what you see before you now…



Yes. Those are bacon wrapped mini-hotdogs. Now you tell me, is there anything that bacon can’t make better?

I also found some Getrocknete Pflaumen im Speckmantel. Which translates as Dried Plums in a Ham Coat. Otherwise known as ham (which is almost as good as bacon) wrapped Prunes. I had some of these with the bacon wrapped hot dogs.



That other stuff on the plate is cheese. I thought I might need to counteract the prunes and hotdogs.

Let’s just say I should have eaten more cheese…


Don’t forget to click on the pictures, there are a lot more on my Flickr page.