by Meg Nesterov (RSS feed) (29 days ago)
Get nervous when you see a kid on a plane? How about a whole classroom of kids on a plane? A clever kindergarten in Georgia (the country, not the state) has transformed an old airplane into a school, with an intact cockpit. Check out the video above from the UK Telegraph ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
Georgia
Video Of The Day: Airplane Kindergarten
Stalin Back in Style In His Hometown of Gori
Two years ago, Georgian officials carried out a secret, dead of night operation to dismantle a statue of Joseph Stalin in his hometown of Gori. But on Thursday, a municipal assembly in Gori voted to restore the monument. According to press reports, some 6,000 people signed a ...
The Caucasus, Central Asia And British Airways
I traveled to Beirut earlier this year with bmi (British Midland International), the East Midlands-based airline partially absorbed into British Airways in the spring. My Beirut trip was meant to be the third installment in an ongoing series called "Far Europe and ...
Apparently People In Georgia Live Longer
According to this recent release from the Independent, a woman from Georgia has documents, which claim she passed away at the tender age of 132. Contrary to what you might think, however, Antisa Khvichava didn't live a long life thanks to eating buckets full of peaches. Mrs. ...
A Traveler In The Foreign Service: The Best Foreign Service Blogs
The World Wide Web is saturated with amateurish blogs created by people who'd be lucky to command the devoted readership of their immediate family members, let alone the wider public. There are scores of blogs managed by Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) and while many of them ...
Budget Vacation Guide 2012: Tiblisi, Georgia
Why now? Georgia's investments in infrastructure and tourism over the last several years mean that the country is raring to go. Tourist facilities have improved and Tbilisi's domestic travel agencies are well organized.
With a bustling capital city, Tbilisi, ...
New Georgia border crossing provides a whimsical welcome
Customs checkpoints tend to be dreary, depressing places.
A rare exception is the new Georgia border crossing with Turkey, located right at the crossroads between Eastern Europe and Western Asia. There, German architect Jürgen Mayer H. recently unveiled a modern, ...
Mtskheta: Easy day trip from Tbilisi
Mtskheta is Georgia's ancient capital, a little village about 15 miles to the north of Tbilisi. It is home to a number of very important Georgian religious sites and functions to this day as a kind of spiritual heart of Georgia. It was in Mtskheta that Georgia adopted ...
Tbilisi insider Q&A: Nina Andjaparidze
To walk around central Tbilisi with Nina Andjaparidze is to feel as if you've been invited into the exciting beating heart of the local social scene. Andjaparidze, the Director of the Tbilisi International Film Festival, seems to know everyone in town; moreover, she seems to ...
Georgian cuisine: Adjarian khachapuri and other delicious things
Georgian cuisine has not really received its international due, and this is a shame. It is an exciting cuisine that takes its cues from points east and west, relying on an extraordinarily fresh local bounty.
Part of what renders Georgian food so insanely good is this ...
Tbilisi: Orbeliani Baths
Some cities have an isolated public bathhouse here or there, in a remote corner; others, like Budapest, have public baths strewn throughout. Tbilisi has its own bathhouse district called Abanotubani, with several bathing venues on offer. I'd been looking forward to ...
Far Europe and Beyond: Introducing Tbilisi
"The Soviets always had a difficult time with Georgia. They were never able to turn Tbilisi into a Soviet city," says Revi. I've just met Revi, the cousin of a friend, and he's introducing me to Tbilisi. He's just picked me up at the airport and is giving an impromptu ...
Introducing Far Europe and Beyond
Far Europe and Beyond, a Gadling series in partnership with bmi (British Midland International) launches today.
Europe's eastern borders cannot be defined simply. The western, northern, and southern perimeters are easy: The Atlantic, the Arctic, and the Mediterranean ...
Five ways to get more European stamps in your passport
Lake Ohrid, Macedonia.
Yesterday, I wrote about the fact that European passport stamps have become harder and harder to get. The expansion of the Schengen zone has reduced the number of times tourists are compelled to show their passports to immigration officials. For ...
Travel then and now: Travel to the USSR and GDR
This year is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union and 21 years since the reunification of Germany. While citizens of the USSR and GDR were unable to travel abroad and restricted in domestic travel, foreign travelers were permitted under a controlled ...
AirBaltic expands, spruces up
Yesterday, Latvian airline AirBaltic launched two new routes: Riga-Madrid and Riga-Beirut.
Riga-based AirBaltic is an airline to watch. Little known in North America, the airline is notable for its low starting fares and the inclusion of most of Europe's most popular ...
Turkish Airlines plane mistakenly lands at Georgian military base
Woops! A Turkish Airlines 737 on its way from Turkey to Tbilisi, Georgia (yeah, that Georgia) took a wrong turn somewhere and landed at a military airbase instead of Tbilisi International airport. The 2 airports are just under 5 miles apart, but in the world of aviation I'd ...
Russia disproves the "Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention"
New York Times columnist and mustachioed flat-earth proponent Thomas Friedman posited back in 1996 that two countries with McDonald's restaurants had never gone to war with each other.
This "Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention," as some have called it, holds that ...
Where on Earth? Week 36: Vardzia, Georgia
Wow. This is only the second time we've stumped you with Where on Earth; the first time was coincidentally within the same country of Georgia. Those who guessed Turkey came closest. The former Soviet Republic borders Turkey and naturally shares some of the same limestone ...