Aside from some dude spilling tomato juice all over me, my next flight was uneventful. I got into town at 6 this morning, slept for two hours, then put in a full day at the TI Georgia offices. To say I’m going to sleep soundly wouldn’t even begin to describe what’s about to happen. Past jetlag-sleep episodes have featured slumber so sound that kindly old ladies held mirrors under my nose to check if I was still breathing. But that was after only half as much travel as this time.
But before I hit the sack, here’s a video of my extremely comfortable accommodations, and of the broadcasting tower at the top of the hill above me. Driving into Tblisi was fun — not just because of the high speed employed by my driver, but because of the way the city is lit. Grandiose architecture is lit with sometimes-garish accent lighting, and the effect is really pretty striking. It’s near-Eastern Soviet decay under a layer of New Orleans’ sinister pageantry — that’s the closest I can come to describing it, anyway. I actually really like it.
The tower in this video doesn’t mesh with the color palette or static nature of most of the lighting, but it does seem to have sprung from the same mindset that launched the overall illumination program, which I’m told is only a few years old. The tower was the first thing I could see through the fog from my airplane window, and if it isn’t visible from space I’m sure the administration will soon tear it down and build one that is.