Liam Levitz
Postcards from Kazbegi - A Church not built by human hands
I mentioned this briefly but it is worth saying in more detail that while there is very little in the way of hype and blurb about Georgia, the Tsminda Sameba church does feature prominently in what little text there is. Somehow this expectation led to my seeing it for the first time being something of a let-down. The issue for me was that all the text and all the stories I had heard focused upon location, location, location. Look how high it is! Look how big the mountain is! Isn't it old! How did they get up there! And indeed, all of these aspects are impressive and in their own way remarkable. They just did not move me.
What I instead felt about the church, at first, was something I often feel when I am expecting to be amazed. This is a disconnect between expectation and reality that leaves me emotionally flat upon first exposure. There are a few exceptions to this ( the Empire State Building and Sagrada Familia being the most obvious) but on my travels I have managed to stand numb in front of the Niagara Falls, Sears Tower, Eiffel Tower, the Julian Alps, Lake Bled, Palma Cathedral, Yorkminster and, well, that list goes on for a while. Each time I arrive at these places my brain has already produced a preparatory slideshow of what it is about to see and sadly, my imagination is oft more proficient at pleasing me than reality. The sights, no matter how spectacular always end up being more grinding and prosaic than the floating castles and mile high waterfalls of my mind. Whether it is me feeling the sudden urge to urinate at Niagara or being overcome with a rabid urge to eat a banana while in Palma Cathedral, I always struggle to tap into what is edifying and beautiful about my surrounds. Instead I find myself more engaged with the life that goes on around these places rather than the sights themselves.
Sometimes I never get past this feeling and in fact it is this numbness amongst beauty that I believe has directed my travels to the likes of Bosnia, Georgia and Lebanon. Where there is no expectation of total synapse surrender to a sight so awesome that no man can comprehend, I feel freer to explore the nooks and crannies I come across, no matter how mundane. I guess I am interested in or at least more comfortable examining how everyday life ticks over in different scenarios and situations. Be it post siege Sarajevo, the tinderbox peace of Sour in southern Lebanon or the quiet ticking over of rural America.
Anyway, back to the church. The Tsminda Sameba suffered the same fate as some of the more globally renowned locations I have visited. What chance did a tiny church in a failing Georgian border town have when the combined might of the Eiffel tower and Yorkminster had left my socks resolutely unblown?
The first night I spent in Kazbegi consisted of me sitting on the veranda of my home stay looking up at the mountainside. Despite the intermittent power supply in the village, the Georgians had somehow managed to install a fully functioning floodlight system that gave the church a halogen halo. All around me the valley and my bedroom fell into a power free darkness.
That night, something of what that church must mean to the people of Kazbegi, and Georgia as a whole started to fall into place. Here I had the time, and to be fair a lack of any other distractions, to just take in what was around me. This was a village with little purpose, a way of life forgotten by most in the west and a future that held more opportunities for regression rather than progression. Yet up there on the hillside was the church. An edifice that existed long before the current population were born and one that would stand for centuries after they were gone. For lives where the strings of consistency and control are tied around the hands of politicians from either end of the Georgian Military Highway, the Tsminda Sameba was (and I sell it short here) a spiritual comfort blanket for many. This was not something I appreciated at first. I came expecting to be amazed at a physical, tangible sight where really I was there to experience the intangible essence of a unique place.
Postcards from Kazbegi - A Church not built by human hands
I mentioned this briefly but it is worth saying in more detail that while there is very little in the way of hype and blurb about Georgia, the Tsminda Sameba church does feature prominently in what little text there is. Somehow this expectation led to my seeing it for the first time being something of a let-down. The issue for me was that all the text and all the stories I had heard focused upon location, location, location. Look how high it is! Look how big the mountain is! Isn't it old! How did they get up there! And indeed, all of these aspects are impressive and in their own way remarkable. They just did not move me.
What I instead felt about the church, at first, was something I often feel when I am expecting to be amazed. This is a disconnect between expectation and reality that leaves me emotionally flat upon first exposure. There are a few exceptions to this ( the Empire State Building and Sagrada Familia being the most obvious) but on my travels I have managed to stand numb in front of the Niagara Falls, Sears Tower, Eiffel Tower, the Julian Alps, Lake Bled, Palma Cathedral, Yorkminster and, well, that list goes on for a while. Each time I arrive at these places my brain has already produced a preparatory slideshow of what it is about to see and sadly, my imagination is oft more proficient at pleasing me than reality. The sights, no matter how spectacular always end up being more grinding and prosaic than the floating castles and mile high waterfalls of my mind. Whether it is me feeling the sudden urge to urinate at Niagara or being overcome with a rabid urge to eat a banana while in Palma Cathedral, I always struggle to tap into what is edifying and beautiful about my surrounds. Instead I find myself more engaged with the life that goes on around these places rather than the sights themselves.
Sometimes I never get past this feeling and in fact it is this numbness amongst beauty that I believe has directed my travels to the likes of Bosnia, Georgia and Lebanon. Where there is no expectation of total synapse surrender to a sight so awesome that no man can comprehend, I feel freer to explore the nooks and crannies I come across, no matter how mundane. I guess I am interested in or at least more comfortable examining how everyday life ticks over in different scenarios and situations. Be it post siege Sarajevo, the tinderbox peace of Sour in southern Lebanon or the quiet ticking over of rural America.
Anyway, back to the church. The Tsminda Sameba suffered the same fate as some of the more globally renowned locations I have visited. What chance did a tiny church in a failing Georgian border town have when the combined might of the Eiffel tower and Yorkminster had left my socks resolutely unblown?
The first night I spent in Kazbegi consisted of me sitting on the veranda of my home stay looking up at the mountainside. Despite the intermittent power supply in the village, the Georgians had somehow managed to install a fully functioning floodlight system that gave the church a halogen halo. All around me the valley and my bedroom fell into a power free darkness.
That night, something of what that church must mean to the people of Kazbegi, and Georgia as a whole started to fall into place. Here I had the time, and to be fair a lack of any other distractions, to just take in what was around me. This was a village with little purpose, a way of life forgotten by most in the west and a future that held more opportunities for regression rather than progression. Yet up there on the hillside was the church. An edifice that existed long before the current population were born and one that would stand for centuries after they were gone. For lives where the strings of consistency and control are tied around the hands of politicians from either end of the Georgian Military Highway, the Tsminda Sameba was (and I sell it short here) a spiritual comfort blanket for many. This was not something I appreciated at first. I came expecting to be amazed at a physical, tangible sight where really I was there to experience the intangible essence of a unique place.