I Hate Chicago.

Actually, Chicago is fine. It's the airport there that inspires such grotesque loathing in me. I can't think of one time that I've been through there and something didn't get screwed up. You know things are bad when you're sitting on the tarmac waiting for takeoff and the pilot says, "We're just going to turn off the engines to conserve fuel. Feel free to get and walk around or use a cell phone."

I'm home now from the Great Caucasus Trip. Three weeks of photos, painful bus rides, food poisoning, interesting people, and Monopoly money! I'm so glad to be back.

And Gravity Takes Effect

Our skyrocket of a trip has hit the top in Karabakh, and now we are on our way home... slowly. This commenced this morning with a 7 hour bus ride back through the mountains to Yerevan. Apparently, our bus driver learned to drive from a 4 year old, because our trip included an serious lack of the elementary concept of the gear system. This led to no attempt to down shift while passing large trucks around blind mountain passes, and attempts to coast uphill. I swear the guy added another hour to our trip.

Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh

No country in the world recognizes Karabakh as an independent state (including Armenia), but that doesn't stop us from having to get a separate visa to visit the area. Well, we're finally here. Tomorrow we'll spend all day in a cab with a driver and interpreter driving all over the area. After that, we begin the long journey the next day back to Istanbul via Armenia and Georgia.

In the Shadow of Mt. Ararat

We've been in Yerevan for a day now. Parts of the city are quite beautiful, but it is difficult to notice when the sky is clear and the 5,000 something meter tall Mt. Ararat is lording over you. We leave for Karabagh tomorrow, finally. It is something of the centerpeice of our trip and I am anxious to finally see it. Greg and I have been talking about our thoughts so far. We have alot of impressions and elements to convey, but puting it all into a cohesive picture is still difficult. Into the mountains we go!

Stuck in Tblisi

When Greg and I arrived in Tblisi, Georgia on Friday, we intended to stay only one night and continue on to Yerevan, Armenia on Saturday. Unfortunately, I got some food poisoning (so much for Georgian peaches) and spent most of early Saturday morning getting more acquainted with our toilet. After a house call from a Georgian doctor and her entourage, an injection of saline and one of Demerol (apparently for my slight fever), I was sound asleep and woke up fine this morning, albeit a little weak. Food poisoning is never fun, especially so in another country.

Georgia is so different from Azerbaijan. I expected to see much more in the way of evidence of the Soviet Union in crummy apartment blocks and the like, but the area we're seems to have retained much of it's local character despite the Soviet's best efforts. We haven't done much site seeing because of my little episode, but we have to return her later this week on our way back to Turkey. We hope to finish up then.

Crossing the border

I just lost an entire post, so the retyping will be a bit brief.

The last few days in Baku were great. We made several friends who drove us around and took us to see all the sites. They also found us a contact in our next destination, Ganja, the original capital of the first Muslim democracy in the world. Today, we crossed the border into Georgia. I'm not a smoker, but a pack of cigarettes was the most useful thing that I could have had on me aside from my passport. Making friends with the border guards helped us avoid getting fleeced for bribes and cut down on the processing time. Being an American actually is a huge asset in this part of the world which is rather strange for us. We're kind of instant celebrities. We have to head back through here on the way back to Turkey so we'll see the sights then and just have a much needed rest today.

hagia-sofia

Well, I finally made it to Istanbul, and Greg is still alive. His Turkish is still better than mine. It's nice to see the Hagia Sofia again (as pictured). We fly into Baku, Azerbaijan on Monday and the craziness will begin. But for now, we're just taking it easy for a few days. For those of you who know who he is, I rode on the airplane from Dallas to London with Dave Crowder. The band was heading to Edinburgh, Scotland for a music festival. That was pretty much the highlight of my whole trip.

Hagia_Sofia, originally uploaded by bartemeo-negro.