Stockholm in snow

It took me some time to decide whether going back home was ever a good idea. At first, leaving Sweden I was determined to leave, complete the full lap and then return. Meeting Georgia I changed my mind, in fact already before entering Georgia, at the mere thought of Georgia I decided that this was a place to stay a while and a time to return home for some weeks.

I went through some rough talks with myself about this return trip. I was not sure if it would completely ruin my will to continue or rather strengthen it. When i realized i was quite in love with Georgia and that I was really a Georgian man in a Swedish mans body it was quite clearly not a problem anymore and I booked a ticket home.

The initial culture chock, in head first action, right in to the christmas rush in downtown Stockholm after not sleeping all night and arriving 7 hours later than the itinerary indicated i should, was brutal. I’m still somewhat shattered, more from lac of sleep but still.

It is cold in Stockholm, really cold and the streets are cowered in real white snow and people who walk side by side to keep an up-right balance. It is love to be home, it is a visit in the homeland while Tbilisi feels like my proper home-where-i-roam.

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I have been working on the photos for a cook book on Georgian cuisine in one of the fancy restaurants in the old town by the river. The music played in this place has started to give grey hairs and full day head aches, it is really the very least attractive music available here in Georgia. They also follow a scheme where the volume is increased rather than the opposte when more guests arrive. anyhow we have managed to get some pretty fair photos of the lovely Georgian food.

Green bean sallad

stew

click the images to get to my Flickr page for more photos.

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I tagged along when SIDA was invited to one of the Ossetian refugee camps outside Tbilisi. They are funding a local football association.

My brother came to visit, he looks better in kodak chrome, but B/W works!

Me and my brother went to a small village outside Gori. Here we are disturbing an old man who is mustering his cows.

And we went to the Kaheti region in the east of Georgia. brilliant light, brilliant food and lovely people!

I have a new job taking photos for a cook book about Georgian food. this is katchapuri, a very representative dish.

Food is a passion, thats for sure. I dont agree fully to the way the food is presented. it is very “Jante”, there is no ambition to make it beautiful to match the taste, of course with exception but today i was trying to photograph a fish that looked more dead than is pleasant.

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market in the mud

Seems I have manage to get another job. I will write about my trip, about the cultural collisions and about my photos for a tabloid magazine here in Tblisi. Good life! at the same time I was introduced to the very interesting online magazine “Beat magazine“, check it out!

Life in Tblisi, what a life it is. I went for the food and produce market on a rainy morning this week and made some new friends among the cheese monglers at the corner. My shoes were not fit for the mud and are not loosing their “one week old”-look for the more rustic, ” been there done that”-look that I try to avoid when since I am only owner of one pair of walkable shoes (the other pair eats holes in my heels the size of silver dollars).

Leaving the complaining aside I’ll tell you about a real ruff taxi ride home yesterday. It makes me really wonder if biking here is such a good idea. Everybody is driving a taxi it seems, no real rules for who can or how to do it, just add a taxi like sign at your roof and go for it. Anyways, I waved down a small golf and got in. It costs about the equivalent of 20 SEK to go anywhere in the city (metro and bus is about 2 SEK). The driver accelerated the little car up to 90 on the small road, dodging cars and pedestrians while leaning over the steering wheel, like beginner drivers do, not really givning the impression he was familiar with drivning at all. We stopped at a red light (thank god!), he did the cross sign three times, rushed the engine and raced out, passed a police car and accelerated the wreck to 110km/h on the city street. I was trying to look as if it was normal practice but in reality I was scared shitless.

little lady trying to scoop up a small lake that formed at her market spot

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It is not always possible to get along with the neighbors, after last year, nearly impossible

I roomed the citys market area just in the early hours. A woman tried to showel a small lake of water, that had gathered at her spot, into a bucket and a blind man with an accordion was composing a rythem to support her in her doing. Along with the smell of coriander and the background made up from old soviet buildnings it is very exotic in a daily life type way. There are no pink flamingos but well cars filled with potatoes, little ladies with big round blocks cheese on mats in the mud and a great deal of cigarette smoke.

I don’t think I got any of those really fancy shots that I hope to get when I sacrafice my well being for a morning in the mud and the rain but I does give some energy to see the life in the market. I was slidning around in the mud of the site for over an hour, talking to the locals, trying to convince them to let me take photos of them. I ended up hungry in the school just before starting my first lesson for the day, English for 9:th grade students, good fun.

Yesterday was a small adventure, I started out in the morning by visiting the local green party office, funded by some swedish organisation. I got the tour of their activities before i had to dash to catch a taxi out to a village nearby. I was traveling with a girl from Holland, here for NGO work and she arrange a taxi. The driver changed his mind about the sum he felt in need of and stoped for filling the gas and got hit by a car from behind before we finally reached our destination.

Out in the country, with a sign pointing in the right direction, a large house with facilities for some 20 people and large areas for constructing and displaying sustainable and alternative techniques for energy and food production. Solar collectors, a straw bale green house and dry toilets were part of a large scale program for improving rural life within a sustainable frame work. I had a great day siting around reading up on straw bale construction after an extensive and delicious lunch.

The city is filled with creative people and it has an air of creativity, hidden in the old blocks of houses and in the holes in the streets. The unorganized sides gives birth to so many ideas and energy to start so many new things. It is great fun!

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I might also have a photography job coming up, it is more unclear and it will be sorted in the near future. I do hold my thumbs and fingers crossed for this one.

It is likely that I am the luckiest man alive since I met up some NGOs the other day, during a demonstartion in the town center. The neede an engineer for some straw bale construction and I hope to have tiome to get engaged in that as well. I feel happy to have a few balls flying again, i realise how much I like the creative stress of haveing loads to think about and for sure my brain has had a fair bit of rest lately.

I am renting an apartment with a German girl, we are sharing a two bed room russian style dark apartment in the Delisi district of town. Even though hot water supply seems to a bit irregular, when we have it is from hot spring, thus smells of shit, but is apperently good for you. Not for the social partof life though, smelling of sulphur has not proved to be an aphrodisiac. Food is so cheap and tasty that cookinjg at home becomes almost hard to motivate, at least before getting tired of melted cheese and dumpling style pasta.

So, what more, yes, did I mention that some things here are quite fucked? Like the use of educated people? I met a man on the bus yesterday, he started talking to me. He looked like a bum, dirty clothing and an old dirty cap on his head. He told me he was collecting cans, while pullling out a no name bottle from one of the bags, he told me that the money in the coca cola bottles, not in the no name ones. I was surprised to hear that he acctually was a translator, German and English to Georgian but that he had to collect cans. It is a world of contrasts, last night coming home i also met a doctor working in a tobacco store. It is clear that some thinks that things were better during the Sovjet times, while others are more satisfied with the current government.

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I was lucky to find a place to stay just close to the center and the streets around the house is filled with old men and women selling veggies, fruits, soap and books. One can explore the strange russian/nouveau riche/alcoholic/friendly atmophere here for weeks.

I crossed the border to Georgia a few days ago, it was in fact already late when I came into Batumi, a town on the Black sea and reading the shear madness in the traffic I knew I would have to stop somewhere soon. Here it is not a matter of left or right, it is a matter of where there are less holes in the road and where there is free space to run the car into. In northern Europe we would call it madness. I picked a house, or rather a shackle, not more than some planks and some corrugated iron stiched together, just outside town to get some water. A short man without teeth offered me to come in and have something to eat.

The livingroom in the little house, a table, two couches and a small tv was hosting already six people. I was seated and the food was brought in. The men, three brothers and I were eating melted cheese with butter, sausage omelett, soups and bread from some small plates. Soon the vodka was brought in and since we finished the first bottle for fast another one was sent for, and another. By that time I was well drunk and I promised to attend a wedding that was going to take place in the village the day after. I do not remeber quite well, half a liter of vodka on an almost empty stomach after 145km of biking, that is just more than necessary.

I woke up in a room next to thew livingroom, in a bed shaped like a bathtub. The morning was spent drinking coffee and resting. Around three the brothers that apperently slept somewhere else arrived and we were of to the wedding. It is another story but for sure it was quiote and experience to live through that mount of food, people and wine that an georgian wedding suggests.

I got my kit together on my third day in the country, ready to get myself going. I bed farewell to my hosts and rolled of into the streets where the traffic still was a complete mayhem. Soon I understtod that my back rim was just too crooked to continue, I did an atempt to get this sorted but after another 60km I had to give in a get a minibus to Tblisi. It is all well, it was an experience as well and after seeing how they drive I know now it is the small roads with less traffic that are the only feasible option.

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entering Erzincan from erik ekedahl on Vimeo.

more in Swedish on at RES and outside magazine

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At night fall I met Leon, a British biker coming from South Korea heading home. We decided to camp togheter and that night we decided, since we now had company to hit Nemrut Dagi, a stone head mountain just south of Malatlya. The morning after I realized that my back rack once again had given up and cracked in yet another place. bugger, luckily enough the Turks are skilled aluminum welders and I got it fixed for free in 5 minutes.

After a late start we only manage to climb the first hill, at the top we realize that there certainly would be more to come before we would reach our destination, only 40km on the map but for sure a hell lot more considering the serpentines. Kids along the way started to be annoying, constantly asking for money and things while pulling our kits got on our nerves. We had heard about people getting rocks thrown at them but we had nothing of that and luckily no dogs either. Just uphill, sun and a flat tire.

last bit to the top can be seen in the background

We reached the top of the ridge at 2000m on the second day out and we were celebrating what we thought was the end of the climb. After a short downhill and around a bend we looked up to see how the road turned and kept going up, seeming to aim at the top of the very highest peak around. That was a shock for the motivation. A deep breath and we climbed the last 400m gravel road while swearing and hoping that the sight at the top would be worth the two days of climbing.

So, however, we had to go down again, 10km of hand layed garden stones led us to our stormy camp site for the night. We had to snuggle into my tent both of us when Leon’s tent just about gave up for the gale force winds. Not much sleep that night, waking up just about every minute when the wind gusts lifted the tent.

The next morning we both realized that our rims were broken, we had to solve that and we stayed a night in a hotel in Siverek to figure it out. Siverek seemed to be a PKK stronghold and while asking the people on the opinion on Atakturk vs PKK the first got thumb down. It nowhere resembles the west of turkey, the people are different, they are more open and friendly but at the same time less considerate. My poor foot got ran over by ca car and the driver just shuddered his should like saying I should have watched out better.

Siverek

We decided in the end that we had to back to Ankara to fis the wheels, here we are after a night on a bus driven by a man with a death wish. We had to argue for a while before they would let the bikes on the bus, we were persistent and at the end they had to give in. Still makes me happy I only have to deal with that very rarely, on the bike there is no one to tell you what to bring on and what not. just the rim giving up occasionally when not considering the force of gravity

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filip resting from some stomach issues

We got stuck in Kayseri, Filip had a bit of stomach problems. Today was a good day though, on the whole. Got up with the early birds to shoot (photograph that is) the city waking up. At six I was too early, bugger, found a bakery and had some good old bread – that cheered me up for sure.

Kayseri is this big city in the middle of nowhere, well like most places are depending where you are at when considering it where “where” is. It does not shine but it does not suffer either, it is not beautiful but the people are and at the end of the day, today at least, that matters.

At night, just before the fourth prayer, the one that breaks the fast for the day I found a park where people seemed to be serving food. With my camera I approached and started snapping away, people went from the hunger at their tables to pull me over to have their portrait taken. I spent a good hour documenting most of the guests at the place. have two hundered shots of happy hunger smiles and plates of food. I did not fnd out for sure but it seems like people from the nearby mosque were giving out food for the less fortunate. It was not really for us but when the people from the mosque insited that we would eat with them we sat down and had some soup and meat stew with break and water melon. This is the best side of traveling, the hospitality and smiles from the people. Turkey is, let me use the word: brilliant for this.

We have some of that rainy weather moving in from Istanbul and we are planing to run of up to the hills, to hide out there, if Filip is doing better tomorrow.

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