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by Michael E. Campana
(being a semi-truthful account of my travel adventures, designed to amuse, befuddle, and to be read with a dose of skepticism)
24 September 2004
After waxing less than glowing about South Carolina in my last report, some of you inquired whether I had any friends from the Palmetto State. Alas, no more. But what else could be more appropriate than penning a missive about Georgia – no, not South Carolina’s neighbor, but the Republic of Georgia. I flew to Tbilisi for the annual meeting of our South Caucasus River Monitoring project, which involves participants from Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Norway, Belgium and the USA. I get to play ringleader, or more appropriately, ringmaster.
I was in Amsterdam for two days to get used to the time change before flying into Tbilisi at 1:30 AM Monday for a 9 AM meeting. I enjoy (as much as one can) flying into Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, which, as I said earlier, is really a gigantic shopping mall with an airport attached to it. As I deplaned, anxious to fill my pockets with euros (aka “shrapnel”) I searched for my favorite change place – WMD (“Want More Dinero?”) but was dismayed to find that no WMDs could be found anywhere. Funny, I had been told they were everywhere….
The usually dour Dutch immigration officials were uncharacteristically chipper as I passed through their booth. I figured they had just finished their union-mandated marijuana break. Bright smiles greeted me as they stamped my passport and wished me a pleasant stay. The air was redolent of the Honduran rain forests just after the locals burn some of the native vegetation (and people wonder why I take my students down there to “work” every year). On the other hand, the customs folks were a bit cranky – guess their break was overdue. Amsterdam is a great town. There are no police, because nothing is illegal. When you walk by some of the establishments in its infamous Red Light District you will get a THC buzz if you linger too long.
The Holiday Inn here is something else. Fortunately, it has no high-pressure toilets like the one in Osaka, Japan. But when I turned on the TV, I realized that the Dutch have not yet discovered parental controls. The TV show appeared to be a somewhat grainy but graphic reenactment of the infamous Seinfeld episode “The Contest” but with younger, comelier actors. As my beloved Mary Frances would say, “Let’s not go there.”
Being back in Europe reminds me how much I have missed the Euro Techno-Pop sound. I just heard a really bad cover of California Dreamin’ by the Dancin’ Gigolos. It was almost as putrid as Faith Hill’s cover of Janis Joplin’s Piece of My Heart.
From the “Tell Us Something We Don’t Know Department” – a headline in the European edition of the Wall Street Journal: “U.S. Says Saudis Repress Religion.”
I was dismayed to read that the USA had put singer Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens, and before that, as Steven Georgiou) on its “no fly” list and had diverted his London-DC flight to Bangor, ME. But there is more to the story than meets the eye. Some exceptional cooperative sleuthing by the CIA, FBI, DIA, NSC, RPM, and AARP, including analysis of chatter on the Internet, had led the Department of Homeland Security to ascertain that Islam was actually flying into the USA to arrange a re-release of his semi-hit “Moonshadow” and massive airplay on all elevators and the 1200+ Clear Channel radio stations. This would have induced collective nausea in most of the USA populace, thereby leading to a breakdown in our defenses, resulting in our susceptibility to yet another terrorist attack.
So did you read about the latest West Virginia T-shirt flap? Remember a year or so ago, when WV Governor Bob Wise took exception to Abercrombie & Fitch’s T-shirt West Virginia: It’s All Relative. If Governor Wise (campaign slogan: “My name is, but I’m not”) had kept his mouth shut, the world would not have known about some T-shirt that disparaged his beloved state. But Bob blew it up out of proportion, A & F sold lots of shirts, and WV’s sterling cognoscenti image became somewhat tarnished. Well, this time A & F has a new WV T-shirt: West Virginia: No Lifeguard at the Gene Pool. The good governor was incensed and vowed to find out who this “Gene Pool guy” was and give him a piece of his mind. Actually, WV’s response was clever, especially for them: they are marketing their own T-shirt: Abercrombie and Fitch: First Cousins.
A & F plans T-shirts lampooning each state. Some examples - Kentucky: We Have Electricity in Many of Our Towns; Arkansas: Less Corrupt than Louisiana; New York: Fageddaboutit; New Jersey: Bada-Bing Bada-Boom; Wyoming: Where Men Are Men And Sheep Are Nervous; North Dakota: The Wind Blows Because Canada Sucks; and my favorite: New Mexico: Carpe Mañana! Speaking of New Jersey, did you hear about the announcer at a minor-league baseball game in Atlantic City who was fired for playing YMCA over the PA system and dedicating it to Governor McGreevey?
The WV flap reminded me of my first few days as a freshman at the College of William and Mary in 1966. I was at a reception hosted by the president, a fine old Virginia gentleman, and his dutiful, United-Daughter-of-the-Confederacy wife. On the reception line, when the girl in front of me said she was from West Virginia, the president’s wife turned to him and cooed “I didn’t think we let in many from there, Davis.” The poor girl was speechless, but I suspect she did get the last laugh - turned out her father worked for the IRS. When my turn came and I said, “I’m from Noo Yawk – you gottaproblemwitdat, lady?”, she was the speechless one.
Well, this is supposed to be about Georgia. To refresh your memories, visit http://www.unm.edu/~wrp/reports/vienna7.htm. Georgia has the distinction of being awarded 3 stars for danger in Robert Young Pelton’s The World’s Most Dangerous Places (for comparison, Colombia, Liberia and Chechnya all earned 5-star rankings; the USA received one star). It’s not that bad, unless you venture outside its capital, Tbilisi, and into some of the disputed areas or Pankisi Gorge, where Chechens are said to hide from their Russian pursuers. Beslan, the city where the recent school massacre occurred, is just across the Caucasus Mountains in North Ossetia. South Ossetia, an enclave within Georgia, is lobbying for autonomy. Its economy is built around smuggling, kidnapping and hosting the Britney Spears’ Fan Club WWW site.
I am beginning to think that the airport at Tbilisi is operated by vampires - seems like all flights arrive/depart in the dead of night. This trip I flew KLM and was spared the trauma of using Georgian Airlines, the local carrier. Only the domestic Chinese airlines manage to strike greater fear in my heart. But we did have to abort our first landing attempt. The guy across the aisle told his partner that there probably were “just some Chechens with RPGs on the runway”, but I knew better – the first pass served to rouse the air-traffic controllers from their slumber. The airport interior had been spruced up. Gone was the “Soviet gray” color scheme; the immigration inspectors’ booths were almost turquoise. The inspectors’ uniforms had not changed, and the scowls were still there. Although our flight was the only arriving flight, the luggage still took about an hour to make it to the carousel, which gave the baggage handlers ample time to extract items of value.
Georgia’s new president, installed last fall in the “Rose Revolution”, is a young (mid-30s), American-trained (Columbia University) personal-injury lawyer – Mikhail Saakashvili - who had been running the extremely profitable Caucasus office of Jacoby & Meyers (Loved one kidnapped? Hit by a stray mortar round? Call 32 771 009!) with his Dutch wife Sandra. He replaced the deposed Eduard Shevarnadze, the old Gorbachev sidekick who had been running things (mostly into the ground) for about a decade but who did nothing about corruption, except make it worse. The locals finally got fed up and told Ed to take a hike, which he wisely did, opening up a Starbucks in Gori, Stalin’s hometown. The Georgians seem to be serious about curbing corruption – why, the local papers were touting the arrival of an Italian prosecutor who was to advise the Ministry of Justice on anti-corruption measures (probably how to beat them). The Russians were coming next week to advise on environmental stewardship, followed by the North Koreans instructing on diplomacy, hair styling, and nutrition.
Our watershed team was invited to meet with the Minister of the Environment, a bright, young (30-ish) biologist who looked like a former Miss Georgia. She was enthusiastic about our work and told us to drop in whenever we were in town. She was also quite interested that we were going to start sampling for radioactive substances in surface water. Yes, Georgia is finally going to tackle their nine-eyed carp problem. The little buggers are everywhere. Seems like those pesky cesium-137 canisters finally made their way into the streams.
USA-Georgia relations suffered a setback earlier this year. Georgia was all set for a state visit by President Bush in early 2004. They spruced up the place, threw a few thousand dissidents/terrorists in jail, cleaned the guano off the statues, and really laid out the red carpet. Unfortunately, their plans went for naught when the President directed Air Force One to fly to Atlanta. I am still hearing about that one.
But I had a great trip, including two firsts. I made two calls to the US Embassy and both were returned! Life is sweet!
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