Cultural Trip to Gori

So last weekend PC allowed the G13s to take a cultural trip somewhere within a day's worth traveling from our cluster site. Our cluster decided to go visit the city of Gori. We picked it for a number of reasons

1) It is one of the few places that we have to get prior approval to visit because Gori is really close to the South Ossetia buffer zone where we are not allowed to travel...so we decided to take this opportunity when we could because you never know what could happen in the South Ossetia region

2) We really wanted to see the Fortress of Gori and Uplistsikhe Cave City


3) And the last reason was that we wanted to see Joseph Stalin's birthplace and visit the Stalin Museum.


We rushed to our Osiauri train stop to take the 9am train to Gori, which is about a 45 min train ride. We then met are fellow G13s at a cafe about a 3 blocks away from the station. We then proceeded to have coffee and katchapuri (kind of like a big cheese hot pocket) for breakfast before checking out the sights.

First stop was the Stalin Museum. The museum was surprisingly well laid out although it did a pretty good job of skipping over/ not even acknowledging all of Stalin's crimes. The view of Stalin here for the most part is that Georgians recognize him as an infamous figure in world history but they don't support what he did. That being said many folks in the city of Gori celebrate him for the mere fact that Stalin was a small town boy from Gori who made it big in some context. 

We gonna walk down to Stalin Avenue...

Ann and I doing the Stalin

Me looking at Stalin's picture...pretty sure he is sloshed in this picture 

Stalin's Birthplace.

After the Stalin Museum our group decided to split up and tackle different sites around Gori. I decided to go see Uplistsikhe, a cave city from the 5th century. Four of us decided to go but we had to find a marsh to take us to the city since it was a few kilometers out from the center of the city. We witnessed our first Georgian funeral procession as we got of the marsh. Everyone was dressed in black and four men were carrying the open casket of a man decorated with various military medals. Kind of weird thing to witness in the mist of our journey but we didn't let it bring us down too much. The walk/hike to cave city is a little strenuous or as Brenna's guide book states "for the able bodied". The view from the top was amazing I've included a few photos here but I probably took closer to 50. Here is a website if you want to check out more of the cave city's history Uplistsikhe Info

The cave city of Uplistsikhe, it's from the 5th century...very old

This was a theater back in the day

The view from the top of the cave city...Ann took this picture of me....sneaky girl

Our cluster...well minus Aaron but yay! Wish Kirk would pay attention.

After our excursion we caught the last marsh back to our village in Osiauri. When we got back we went to four, that's right four supras (feasts) around the town because it was a local holiday in our village. Everyone was drinking, toasting, dancing, and singing. I wasn't able to take too many pictures...mainly because I forgot  too but I did get some pictures of the supra at Aaron's house.