Back rockin’ in the “partly free” world

Although the exacts are hazy, between the times of 10:50 a.m. Jan., 18 East Coast time and 6:35 p.m. Jan. 19 GMT +4 I was on my way back to the wilds of what Freedom House considers the “partly free” section of the world according to it’s scale of measure so simplistic that makes Tom Ridge’s look nuanced and complex.

Overall, the trip was a bit more eventful than I would have liked. While I managed to actually sleep soundly on planes and in airports for the first time in my life — due to some hard partying during my visit to Washington, DC — I also very nearly missed a flight, spent way too much on overpriced airport food and drink and ran the very real risk of never seeing most of my possessions again.

I arrived with time to spare at (my least favorite) Washington Dulles Airport, after an accidental detour through Fairfax county, Va. made by my well-meaning friend/chaffeur, Jacques, and was totally unsurprised that Dulles, one of the nation’s largest airports, was funneling all passengers through a single security lane. Afterall, who’s in a hurry at an airport?

Either way, I had no problem getting to the gate on time, only to fly up to New York and find that my next connecting flight to Istanbul had been delayed four hours giving me a grand total of eight hours to be spent dawdling and spending money at JFK. I was given a $10 meal voucher, but the only meal in the terminal that would buy would be a frank at the (curiously present) hot dog cart next to one of the gates.

I burned through the first couple hours by making pestering phone calls to a few American friends and finally by napping, only to be awoken by some guy asking if he could borrow a pen. Bewildered, I sat up and looked around at the hundreds of other waiting passengers he hadn’t woken up who probably had writing utensils on them. I lent him a pen and went back to sleep. He woke up me up a half an hour later to give it back.

I then parked myself at the nearest bar/restaurant and choked down a pig sandwich and had a few beverages as I sent out a flurry of emails preempting my return to Tbilisi. Eventually the call came, and I was herded onto the lovely Turkish Airlines Boeing 777 and continued the same recipe for time-killing I had used going the other direction: NPR podcasts and Tetris on the in-seat video consoles, punctuated by meals and naps thanks to little complimentary bottles of red wine at every turn.

We landed in snowy Istanbul about 45 minutes late adding to the previous New York delay giving me about a half an hour to deplane, talk my way through Turkish security’s game of 20 questions, tear out my laptop, belt, shoes and other randomly placed metallic objects, and sprint to all points in between — all while looking unsuspicious and unthreatening.

As I bolted out of the plane and made my first 200 meter dash to security, a small but official-looking Turk in a suit chirped out to me “Tiflis? Tiflis?” My first thought was that was he was looking to quarantine Americans from spreading some obscure venereal disease through the airport, and I was pretty sure I was negative so I ran on. But, as I passed him I remembered that Tiflis was the old Russian name for Tbilisi, which hadn’t been used since the turn of the century, but it was logical that the Turks might have been slow to change. So I jogged back to him, and, flustered by the situation, I affirmed that I was going to Tbilisi in English, Russian and Georgian “Yes! Da! Kho! Sorry, I don’t know any Turkish.”

He gathered me and two or three other passengers — all of whom seemed to be Georgian — and waved us through security so that we wouldn’t have to explain that no one had put anything harmful in our luggage, and if they had we wouldn’t tell them. Once on the other side I still had to run the gauntlet of beautiful, inviting duty free shops and Turkish goods boutiques that had lassoed me into spending lots of money on additional souvenirs and Christmas gifts for folks back home going the other direction.

I then had to go through the actual security routine, removing all metal from my body and then getting felt up by an awkward foreigner or two. Then off I was again.

I’ve always found it awkward to sprint towards any stranger — especially an official-looking one — shoeless while holding up my pants and a passport, but the gate agent was my last gatekeeper on the way to Tbilisi. After she checked my passport, I hobbled over to an automatic sliding door that stood between me and a bus that ostensibly was idling there to take me and the other stragglers to the plane on a tarmac somewhere. Rather than pad out into the snow in my socks I took the opportunity to stand in front of the door (which was not automatically opening for some reason) and get myself back together. When I was almost done, a voice behind me yelled in English “Show your hands!”

“Now what?” I shot an alarmed glance behind me to smiling Turkish Airlines employee who was motioning me to wave in order to active the sensor on the door. Ahhh, okay. Thanks. About a dozen other passengers including some sort of Turkish sports team and a couple of guys who looked like mad scientists loudly hopped on the bus after me.

Once on the plane, I noticed someone familiar in the first row of business class — Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze. As a later discovered, he was returning from a visit to Tehran, in which he reportedly stated that his country “would never act against Iran, no matter in which alliance or organization it is participating.” Good luck maintaining that promise if you get your wish and join NATO.

My seat was back in coach between one of Vashadze’s bodyguards and a similarly burly Georgian who took all the arm rests and did nothing but order whisky and stare at the seats in front of him. I, on the other hand, got one last 30-minute nap and finished the epilogue of Thomas Goltz’s “Georgia Diary,” in which he described handing the torch to a new generation of crazy freelancers arriving in a rapidly changing Tbilisi.

That flight’s arrival was also delayed about an hour due to snow in both the city of departure and arrival, and my checked luggage had not been as quick as I getting to the Tbilisi flight, and would arrive at an undisclosed time sometime soon.

So I sauntered out of the airport and talked to a couple of cab drivers until I found one who would take me to Vaja Pshavela for 20 lari ($13). I neglected to mention that my apartment was all the way at the end of Vaja, and I knew for a fact that cabs no longer take anything less than 25 lari to go between the airport and the city. So, as expected, he whined to me upon arrival that it was really far to go for 20, and afterall he was but a poor villager doing this taxi gig to feed his family.

I gave in and tossed in 5 lari more, but needed all the rest of the lari I had left to buy myself a toothbrush, toothpaste and a razor, because I had little trust I would be seeing my bag in the following 24 hours.

Once I got home, I set my Mac back to the Moscow time zone (I had lost all sense of what time it was at this point) and went to sleep. I woke up at 4 a.m. and got some stuff done before leaving to teach my first journalism course of the year at the University of Georgia. As usual, I timed myself to get there about 15 minutes early at 8:45, but as I walked into the office to pick up my roll sheet, the girl behind the desk who normally smiles at the goofy American professor looked stunned to see me.

“Your students already left,” she said.

“What?” I consulted my watch. “They’re normally not even here by now.”

“No, your class was supposed to begin at 9, it is 9:45.”

Oops, that’s right, Georgia doesn’t follow daylight saving’s time unlike every other country in this time zone. Great. Luckily the Georgian education system is very professor-friendly when it comes to accountability, and faculty often don’t show for their own classes only to reschedule them later.

Instead I decided to hunt down my luggage. The third number I tried at the airport got a response and it appeared they had indeed gotten my bag. So I took the metro to the train station and hopped on a bus there that would supposedly take me to the airport. Unfortunately the bus fare was 40 tetri ($0.25) in exact change, and all I had was an old-style 50 tetri piece that I knew wouldn’t work in the machine, but I dropped it in anyway for good measure, and after if fell through a few times, I took it and kept it in my hand. If I was bothered by transit police I figured I’d just tell them I didn’t have change, although I wanted to pay. “Just take this 50 tetri and we’ll call it even.”

I ended up riding both ways to and from the airport for free. Come to think of it I’ve never paid for a city bus in Tbilisi.

Once I had recuperated my luggage I ran a few more errands including buying groceries and replacing a few chargers and power converters I deftly forgot in the States and went back to sleep.

My Tbilisi life is about 10 percent sorted out again. Maybe less. But hey, it’s never really 100 percent anyway.