Back to Nature: Sukhumi

I'm not a big fan of historical ruins (see my philistinism referred to earlier). But one of the best I've seen was Saranda in Albania. It was a huge and apparently important city in its day, but because Albania was so closed off for so long, it still hadn't been properly excavated when I went in 1996. But that was much of its charm -- all these cool Greek and Roman ruins were overgrown by the forest, a pond had formed in the amphitheater, and it was all very atmospheric, it was like I was the first person discovering it.

I remembered Saranda as I came to Abkhazia today. There was a year-long war here in 1992-93, and a lot of buildings were destroyed or gutted. And this is a subtropical climate, so things grow here easily. So there are lots of war ruins in which, over the past 14 years, trees have grown to over the former roof line. It's rained a lot here lately, and so a park in the middle of the city is now a big bog, with a ton of frogs in it making a lot of noise. And today, after leaving the main government building, I saw a pig foraging on the building grounds. It's like civilization can't keep up with nature.

I already have lots of good photos, but due to internet issues I can't post them. Possibly later tonight.

Anyway, I had a good day, much of it spent in the "foreign ministry" of Abkhazia. The foreign ministry seems to employ about ten people, and occupies only half a hallway of the government building. Not a surprise; it's not an internationally recognized country so there's not a lot of diplomacy to be done. Everyone there, except for the minister himself, seems to be a 25-year-old guy. As soon as I got there, I was asked "Do you want to interview the deputy foreign minister? He's not very busy." I saw two people playing solitaire on their computers, and when I borrowed one to check my email, the address bar was full of porn and gambling sites. One of the guys is a rap producer in his spare time, and his band is having a concert at the Youth House of Culture (or something like that) at the very hip-hop hour of 3 pm tomorrow, so I'll be sure to report back on that.