In Country

I have arrived in Tbilisi, Georgia, after a long slog overground from Baku, Azerbaijan. This country is rougher than I expected. Downtown Tbilisi is wonderfully exotic and charming, but the outskirts and the border region have been much more brutally Sovietized than anything I saw in Eastern Europe, including Albania. It is shocking to see. Georgia aches with past and present oppression from Moscow.
I’ll write something substantive when I can. In the meantime, take a look at my colleague and traveling companion Andrew Breitbart’s dispatch from Baku. “Read it”:http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/aug/18/baku-to-the-future/print/. Trust me.