Our landlady was very scathing when we announced our trip to Gori, a town that is primarily famous for being the birthplace of Iosif Dzhugashvili, better known as Joseph Stalin.



"Only to Gori? That's a very bad excursion. There's the Stalin Museum and nothing else. You should go to Mtskheta. Or David Gareja. You should hire a taxi, and go to all these places. But not Gori. Not interesting."

She's old enough to remember Stalin in action, so maybe that colours her views...

Anyway, we skipped our guesthouse breakfast, in the interests of getting on the road early, and ate in the spacious buffet at the railway station.


It takes an hour or so to get to Gori by train (covering again the same track we'd travelled on our way from Batumi). There are marshrutkas, of course, too, but we'd had enough of that cramped form of transport for the time being.

Then it's a not unpleasant walk from the station to the Stalin Museum.

Which is very grand, somewhat anachronistic and controversial, and -- providing you don't expect a critically analytical account of Stalin's life and work -- very interesting.













At the front is the house where Stalin was born, its modesty (the family rented just one room) rather overshadowed by the pillared edifice that shelters it.



At the side is his train (he wouldn't fly).







An added bonus for a Gori trip is the fortress, which offers amazing views over the surrounding mountains.






Just below the walls is a powerful set of sculptures commemorating those lost in the Russo-Georgian war of 2008, when Gori was briefly occupied by the Russians.




We had lunch at a little resto that was full of Pirosmani reproductions. How fated is that?

We ordered osuri khachapuri (the Ossetian version of cheese bread, with a mixture of cheese and potatoes in the middle), ostri (a tomato-and-beef stew), and another of Georgia's perennially nice salads.



Then we walked back to the station by way of tree-lined, vine-shaded streets.








Its odd history notwithstanding, this is a pleasant town, well worth a visit.