So, yet again, I've moved to a new place. I'm now in Tbilisi and, as I learned last night, had a bit of a close call a few days ago. First, I want to avoid doing the 'we went here, we saw this, we went here, we did this' because that gets really boring really fast, I'd rather tell you different stuff like this. Again, just the fact that this happened is another thing that just says 'war sucks.'
So, we decided to go to these villages in the north-east - according to our guide book, they are 'shattered' and it is unwise to explore the land because of land-mines. Don't worry, we didn't go wandering through cattle patches and we all stayed completely on the road. But we drove to the end of the village and we saw these tank traps on the road but nothing else... we figured that if we couldn't go any further, there would be a sign or something. There was nothing. So we weaved around these tank traps and drove for about another 500m or so until these big pipes were blocking the road. Tim (the guy who was driving our rented car) said 'ok guys, THIS is the end of the road' and I snapped a quick picture of this cool statue about 200 meters in front of us (attached). We were sitting there just thinking about ... well, why there were NO soldiers around?? Really weird, because if we weren't supposed to go any further, why hadn't anyone stopped us??
Out of the corner of my eye, I looked back and this guy was walking to us, 'uh oh, we're going to have company.' And as soon as I had turned around, there were two soldiers standing in front of us with baby faces and very real Kalashnikovs. We asked if we could take pictures and they smiled and said no. However, all of a sudden two more soldiers appeared on our right. Tim looked left and there was a trench that was running really far and the 'pipe' that blocked our forward motion was actually the trench's roof. Oh. Not good. And all of a sudden there were 8 soldiers in front of us... all with baby faces and very real Kalashnikovs. Not good. We decided that it was time to go and quickly left with our apologies. Not a big problem.
So, at our homestay the next night we found out a few things. First of all, our (obviously very inaccurate map) said that we were several kilometers from the front. We weren't. We were ON the front line. Not good. Second, apparently soldiers still shoot at each other across that line. Not good. Third, apparently kids still die there - not everyday, not every week, but they still do. And that sucks.
