Capital of Chaos
On sketchy border towns, the strange geography of market halls, and adjika, the condiment of Gods.
For me, Zugdidi will always be the capital of chaos. If Georgia is more than a bit disorganized, and all the more lovely for it, entering this city in Samegrelo, western Georgia, always felt like driving into pandemonium. My then husband and I stared in utter disbelief, every time: what on earth were all these people doing? People were of course just going on with their daily life, but for some reason it seemed like everyone really put their heart into doing whatever they were doing with such frenetic gusto it bordered on the insane.
There would always be a car accident or three. Nothing serious, usually, which was strange, considering the tempo. But you’d see the aftermath of a collision, and various groups of men, joyfully smoking, each with their own, loudly voiced opinion on whose car was the most badly hit, and what driver should pay whom. At times, this felt like a spectator sport, a sort of traffic chess played out by the modi men and their pals. I never saw anyone actually win at this game, but that was probably not the point. Conflict resolution is a serious matter in any clan-based society.
(The modi men are a wonderful Georgian feature. These elderly men adopt a piece of the street, pull up a chair and then expertly help people park on their turf. You don’t really have a choice in using them, because it’s their street, their rules. “Modi, modi, modi!” they call, urging the driver ever closer to the curb. You’ll be happy to have them – and if you pay them a moderate fee, your car won’t be blocked in, or … damaged, when you return. It’s one of these things that just make Georgia work.)
Zugdidi borders on Abkhazia, the temporarily russian-occupied area that was the site of a gruesome war during the 1990’s – one that still has long-lasting implications for Georgia. Hearing the stories from those who survived russia’s brutal attack echoes the war crimes now being revealed in Ukraine. Most people won’t talk, though. I understand them, because the cruelty and the downright sadism of these russian invaders has been there all along. No coincidence, then, that so many Georgians are fighting in Ukraine today – Ukraine was one of the few countries coming to Georgia’s aid back then.
Surely, it’s the proximity to lawless, catastrophe tourist hotspot Abkhazia (no, I never visited, and I won’t until it’s once more free) that gives Zugdidi its decidedly sketchy vibe. Border towns are always full of strange people moving stuff about, and shady stuff happening just outside the corner of your eye. How I thrive in such environments – despite me doing very little sketchy stuff myself. I like the promise of it all: pretty little Biała Podlaska with the sad-eyed Belarusian truckers, gaudy Batumi with all its glitz, high-browed, romantic Chernivtsi, where everyone kisses you on the cheek and seems to have at least one scheme running.
So, it was a good thing we often found ourselves in Zugdidi. We’d moved up to the high peaks of Mestia, Svaneti, and Zugdidi was the last pitstop before the winding, dazzling three hour long drive up there. It was the place to buy the stuff you couldn’t understand how to get in the mountains: rat traps for the food cellar, coat hangers, stuff. Most of them probably could be found there – but for a town of about a thousand souls, Mestia is pretty hard to find your way around. And sometimes, it just felt like a relief to be on flat, oxygen-fat ground again.
And Zugdidi has a central market. A basari. Every city does of course, as the Georgian internal economy would collapse without them, but this one is a thing of absolute beauty. Find the streets of that city tumultuous? Boy, wait until you get inside of this brute.
The building is huge, and – yes, I realize this is travel writing 101, but there is no other word – bustling. Outside of it, women sell flimsy lingerie and sturdy synthetic nightgowns. There are Calvim Kloin briefs to be had for the young, hip men, and Mercedes T-shirts for the middle aged ones. Old ladies squat at the pavement with a sheet full of clown-colored beans, or with a basket of eggs. The taxis lined along the street have smoking, bored men in front of them, some sharing a buttery khachapuri from a thin pink plastic bag. There will be a commotion of sorts. There always is.
You might not notice the size of the market at first, as the main hall seems almost manageable. There will be a lot of pork heads glaring at you, and lanky men running around with carts, and women smiling shrewdly at you, hawking their yellow-skinned chickens with the innards still inside. These are really good chopped up, fried with red wine and crushed walnuts. If you don’t know that already, they will explain.
That’s when you discover this is only the beginning. If you go to the right, you’ll find the spice lane, with dried, smokey persimmons thread on string into long, decadent necklaces. The churchela hang thick from the ceilings, their matte grape coat hiding the walnuts within. Here are dried yellow flowers by the bucket, garlic-crumbly Svaneti salt, spiny boquets of summer savory. You’ll find dried chilies, and ready-peeled garlic sold by a group of chatting ladies with a plate of white corn which they nibble languidly, and there are the endless rows with bottles of sauces. Tkemali, the sour plum sauce that comes in both yellow and red, purple pomegranate molasses, and satsebeli (which confusingly enough just means sauce), a spicy, thin tomato mix that goes well on just anything.
The spice lane leads to the outdoor market. And here, under the bright blue tarps, you’ll find everything you ever wanted to eat. In one end, there will be the chacha sellers, and the konjaki women. One can get any flavor on God’s earth in this konjaki, from mint to strawberry, thanks to the wonders of artificial essences. A guest we once had over – briefly nostalgic for her Soviet upbringing – bought a liter of chocolaty, sweet konjaki before we headed up the mountains. We managed to finish the bottle in little less than two days, a feat that won’t bear repeating.
Further down, you’ll find the pickle ladies, with vitamini salad of sweet and sour cabbage, chili spiced carrots in big plastic buckets. Jar after huge jar of green tomatoes, of chilies, of beet colored cabbage, of tightly rolled wine leaves. Heaps of jonjoli, the pickled flower buds of the Caucasian bladder nut tree (no, I’m not making that name up), clusters that taste a bit like capers … only more. Be sure to try everything before you buy, as you have surely by now tried several chachas, and your stomach will yearn for these salty morsels. Besides, they are all completely different. Some will reek decidedly of diesel (which is a treat if you’re into that kind of pleasure), while others will have clean, sour flavors that don’t get in the way the vegetables.
Then come the exhilarating displays of vegetables: dark-skinned eggplant, tomatoes of all colors and shapes, endless tables with fresh herbs. More beans are to be found, of all varieties, as well as sacks of gritty cornflour and pebbly buckwheat, the small seeds of millet, and chubby grains of rice for making dolmas. This part of the market will make newcomers a little dizzy with all the sights. And sightsee all you want, but remember people shop and work here. Be a little slow and gawking, and they’ll remind you. But well, the sounds and the smells and the people milling about will keep most visitors, foreign or domestic, at a slight edge.
At some point the vibe changes. It gets a little darker, as the tarps give way for another hall, and the soapy scent of coriander will turn into that of new textiles and Chinese plastics. This is the dry market, and it’s here that one goes for … stuff.
I won’t get into that too much, but I can tell you that we once spent 3 hours there, wandering about, trying to find coat-hangers – until my husband had a stroke of genius, googled himself a picture (Google translate is better these days, but back then, more often than not people just looked at you and slowly shook their heads if you tried using it). He showed it to the lady selling rattraps (we’d found those, at least). She shone up, asked us how many we wanted (otsdaati, kalbatono) and then was gone for half an hour. No, she didn’t return with any hangers. But she was smiling: she had struck a good price, and now we just had to accept it. We did, with relief, and she scurried away with our crumpled notes in her bra. Twenty minutes later, we had our hangers and three huge rattraps. I still don’t know how much of a premium we had to pay, but knowing Georgians, it wasn’t much.
Let’s head back to the main hall – if we can find it. Take a wrong turn, and chances are you’ll be out on an unfamiliar street, where there are new stalls lining the market building, and in the walls themselves: bakers of Georgian breads, and of khachapuri, and of small pizzas with some thin slices of salami, a ring or two of black olive, and generous spirals of mayo. They’re good, though. Really. But just head back in again for now.
Eventually, the way will reveal itself. Back in the main hall, time has come to visit the main attractions. First, the cheeses. They’re to the left. In here, it’s calmer, the air all milky, slightly acidic; the high structural glass windows mattening the sharp Georgian daylight into the muted glow of an Italian basilica. Big slabs of sleek-skinned sulguni and crumbly, salty imeruli lay arranged on a long horseshoe of tables; blocks of butter weep. Smoked sulguni, the color of an inherited oak cabinet, dots this sea of sheet-bright whites and soft yellows.
Now you breathe.
Wide open bags of cottage cheese spill their pillowy grains everywhere, and glass jars with matsoni stand in straight lines against the spheres of cheese. The fermented milk has a cream cap, of the sort a couple can fight more than once about the other having eaten in the middle of the night. Walk around, try the cheeses. It takes stamina to do so – and willpower not to over-buy. After all, everything tastes fantastic, and the ladies have a way of tracking each visitor, proudly guarding her goods – casting jealous sideway glances whenever you stay to praise a cheese. You don’t get to have favorites.
There is a reason to wait until after the cheese before entering your last station. This alcove here, just to the right , is not as big or fancy as the grand cheese cathedral we just left. Wooden beams line the slanted ceiling, and the window slits just beneath them paint everything a golden hue. The white tiles are cracked, the walls crumbling, and the place has every feature of a medieval chapel; a sanctuary from the bustling crowds and the visual assault of the market outside. Voices are muted, and peoples’ clothes swish as they move around the vendors. The atmosphere is heavy with the incense of Samegrelo spices. This is it, the slow-beating heart of the Zugdidi market: the adjika room.
Adjika is something you need to taste to understand. It quickly becomes an obsession, and the reason for all the cheese munching earlier is that the heady chili and garlic paste won’t go easy on an empty stomach. Most common in Samegrelo is the rust red kind, wet and grainy with coriander seeds; sometimes with ground walnuts, or flecked with the green of coriander leaves. There is a drier sort, saltier, made for longer storage; there is the dry red adjika salt, lumpy with slowly drying garlic. And there is the green one – the one that I keep returning to – a deep grass colored mash of beauty, packed with all the herbs of the late Caucasian summer.
Same procedure as with the cheese: you walk around trying each and every one of them, because everything else would be plain rude. Now you’ve come all the way here, a Westerner, and it’s about time you learn to appreciate some proper spice. You’d be surprised how varied the different blends are, how pungent. The only thing they have in common is that the wet paste is sold in rickety plastic cups, covered with thin plastic foil. You’ll have to hold them upright in their bags all the way home, or they’ll leak and cause everything in the car to smell glorious for all time.
I’ve yet to be to a Georgian dinner where the table adjika wasn’t pondered upon: who made it, in what region was it bought, how does it hold up? Everybody’s got a favorite, and mine is without doubt the green one I used to buy in Ushguli, one of the highest villages in Europe. Half of the flavor probably comes from the setting, and it’s drier than the fresh ones I otherwise prefer. But I swear there’s stinging nettles, or some addictive, undiscovered-by-Westerners mountain herb, in there. I still dream about it.
One day, when the invader and occupier is driven out of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali, there will be even more adjikas to try, even more markets to visit. One day, Zugdidi will not be a border town anymore.