death by hospitality

There have been a number of memorable encounters this week.
On Tuesday evening I had the chance to meet, even if only for an hour or so, with Tania and Brad. We lived in the same komunalka type flat 6 years ago in St Petersburg. Then we saw each other quite a bit in Moscow in 2001-2002. Then they moved to Vancouver, which is where they have been for the past four years. Now they are off on a 6-month tour around the world, lucky them.
Then yesterday a group of my students decided to take me out for dinner. As the ringleader of them is ethnically Georgian, it was naturally decided we would go to a Georgian restaurant. Those of you who have had the pleasure and pain of experiencing Georgian hospitality will know what I suffered. The guys ordered enough food to feed the whole flipping Georgian army, and then insisted I try EVERYTHING.
Of course the food was delicious, Georgian food always is. I really have no idea why this cuisine has not caught on outside the borders of the old Soviet Union, it is truly incredible. I love the various vegetable dishes, especially as they often include my favourite aubergines, baklazhani po gruzinski is one of my favourite choices…and Georgian cheese is the best, I could eat it every day. Georgian wine is also very good, although unfortunately it has been made illegal due to stupid politically bickering between the Russian and Georgian governments (we don’t like you, so we will make your wine illegal!…..great foreign policy)
So the problem was no the quality of the food, as always the issue was quantity. Georgians have very specific notions of hospitality, one of the rules of this elaborate code seems to be that all guests must not leave the table until they are only able to do so by rolling. The guys ordered me multiple salads to start with, then multiple main dishes. I had to try them all. Next they ordered multiple desserts, and huge plates of fresh fruit to wash it all down. In the background a pianist was playing all the old songs of my 1980s childhood, including multiple sessions of Chicago’s “if you leave me now” and Toto’s “Africa” and this combined with the interesting Kavkaz interior design and the excess of food and drink created a rather surreal impression. The whole dinner lasted about three hours. When I got home I had to sit in a very still position without moving for about and hour before I could think of getting up and changing into my pyjamas. Then I had to sit still for another period of time before I could think of lying down.
This morning, just when I thought my intestines had more or less recovered from the beating, I went to work…….on Wednesday and Friday mornings I work in a company that seems to employ mainly Muslims. This is great for me, since I don’t have to listen to the endless racist jokes about my origins (or my origins as imagined to be implied by my name) but, unfortunately it provided me no rest from the complicated rules of Kavkaz hospitality.
So I arrived at work, sat down and a Chechen brought me coffee. Then a cheese concoction appeared. Then chocolat…..I think I can imagine now what a boa constrictor goes through.