We could be assholes...

...just for one day, though.

Tuesday, C received a sudden flurry of email and phone-call from the US Embassy in Tbilisi.

My heart soared. Were our passports, which we'd submitted for visa processing WAY back before Christmas ("real" Christmas), finally ready? Might we finally take our long-anticipated holiday to Istanbul or Yerevan to catch some quick respite from Tbilisi? Were we, at long last, going to be able to flaunt our citizenship and multiple-entry-capabilities to underpaid border-guards at each cardinal crossing?

Alas, no.

Instead, we'd been offered up to a TV Station seeking Americans willing to participate in a short segment of Imedi TV's weekly "Droebea" ('the times'), one of the country's most popular TV programs. Okay! We thought. Cool. Critical to the pitch, though, was the notion that this was a "One Day Event." And where would we be heading? Where else? Gori - best known for it's apples, and Stalin!

We arranged to meet the journalist and his crew at 12, which ended up being 12:45. No problem. We crammed into a Niva and rocketed across town to the TV station. We made some small-talk.

• Had we brought a map?
• Of Gori?
• Yes, of course!
• Um, no.

And so on.

We changed cars at the TV station, then burned rubber to Gori, where the programmers were anticipating a bristly, less-than hospitable from the locals -- apparently not renowned for their big-heartedness. (This impression might be partly due to the hyper-proliferation of Stalin memorabilia -- towering statues, streets, temples, museums -- that dominate the otherwise modest city.)

C was miced, and after getting out of the car, and getting out of the car again, and again, and one more time please get out of the car, but this time don't look at the camera please, we set to work hassling the unsuspecting pedestrians of Gori for directions to museums, churches, and cheap eateries.

Everyone was disappointingly (for the purposes of the program) friendly. One older lady patted my cheek and called me "dearie" when she heard we were visiting Gori from the United States. Virtually everyone we approached offered to walk us to the museum/church/eatery we so desperately sought, which was awkward for us, because we weren't actually supposed to go anywhere.

When we shifted gears and started haranguing people in their own homes, the reception was likewise warm. We approached a cluster of men overseeing some illegal rewiring of TV cable-wires in the street, and the promising crowd all-but-vanished by the time we got there. One man in his 70's or 80's walking with a severe limp and a cane was still there, though, and when we asked where we might find water to drink he immediately waved us inside his home. He made his slow, shuffling way to a small kitchen, produced a clean glass, filled it with water, and gave it to us. We drank it as he beamed at us.

We left his home thanking him profusely over our shoulders, and practically ran into the TV car, which had driven right up the the front door. We got in the car and drove away. As he watched us leave, his face clouded over with a perplexed and suspicious expression. I felt dirty and kind of ashamed, as did C. We were both relieved when the next people we approached waved us towards a watering hole near the old church, and all we had left to do for the day was to be fed. (In the interest of further research for my food column, I'd been dropping leaden hints that I wanted to try some good Kartlian food).

The TV guys took us out to dinner at a restaurant with a modest canal-and-willow garden and etchings of Venice on the walls. The dining area was a high-ceilinged ski-lodgey wood-beamed hall. The restaurant served traditional Kartlian fare (which it turns out we were familiar with -- good old meat-on-a-stick and local red wine), and was called "Venetsia" ("Venice") ((of course)).

Somewhere along the way, the TV crew made it clear that they were expecting us to make a repeat performance the following day -- only this time, we were heading to Telavi, 2 hours east of Tbilisi. Now, it's not like C and I have a great many commitments that we absolutely have to meet day-to-day. But we are -- how shall I say? -- extremely jealous of our time, clutching our unstructured days to our collective bosom with clammy, fretful hands.

The trip to Gori, 45 minutes from Tbilisi, had taken about 8 hours. Telavi, with the two-hour-each-way commute, plus the expectation of more elaborate hospitality, promised to gobble up another fair day that might otherwise be spent more fruitfully (translating poems, writing about donuts, blogging, yada yada). This morning we both woke up grumpy and reluctant to participate any further in the inadequately prenegotiated TV thingy.

Thankfully, I received in my email a reminder about an Idealist.org meeting that I'd signed up for. I legitimately don't want to miss it -- it's part of a larger world-wide initiative that I think I will want to write about here -- and there's no way that we'd be back from Telavi in time for me to attend. So C called the TV people, and while they made "O dear" noises, we promised to be available tomorrow if they need us, and that will have to be good enough for everyone.

And now, I must go investigate the quality of donuts at a local pastry shop. (It's easy to pooh-pooh "where's the water?" programming, but I'm unkindly blowing that off in order to write about fried dough and international grassroots social organizing. Wait... that's kind of cool, though -- isn't it?).