. All the Russias: travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. l de Londres is the first really civilised and comfortablehotel I have found in Russia—and this is in Asia! I dwell uponthese matters because the striking fact about Tiflis is that Rus-sian rule has made a handsome, clean, safe, civilised, and merrylittle town out of a jumble of dirty, jarring Eastern races, outsideher European frontier, and far from anywhere. But one does not go to Asia to see Europe, and Rostom, theguide, in Circassian costume, with long poniard and war-m
. All the Russias: travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. l de Londres is the first really civilised and comfortablehotel I have found in Russia—and this is in Asia! I dwell uponthese matters because the striking fact about Tiflis is that Rus-sian rule has made a handsome, clean, safe, civilised, and merrylittle town out of a jumble of dirty, jarring Eastern races, outsideher European frontier, and far from anywhere. But one does not go to Asia to see Europe, and Rostom, theguide, in Circassian costume, with long poniard and war-medal,haunts the hall of the hotel. To test the German philologist, Iask him how many languages he speaks. He does not remember. TIFLIS OF THE CROSS-ROADS C105 but proceeds to count them upon his fingers. Russian, Mingrel-ian—his native tongue—Georgian, Armenian, Persian, Lesghian,Gruznian—I cant remember them, and I dont know how tospell them, but it is an extraordinary list. And he needs themall in an hours stroll through the bazaar. Ten minutes in atramway from the hotel door transports you into a piece of. Tiflis and the Ruins of the Citadel. Baghdad or Tehran, and one of the very few Eastern bazaars Ihave seen which has not its eye fixed, so to speak, upon theWestern purchaser. A few things in the silversmiths shops arefor the foreigner, but otherwise, if you go there, you go as thenative goes, you see what the native sees, you haggle as thenative haggles, and you get what the native gets. This is re-freshing when one remembers the bazaar in Cairo, for instance, 2o6 ALL THE RUSSIAS where the tourist buys with solemn precautions and secret gleethings specially made for him in Birmingham or Germany, whichan Oriental passes with a contemptuous shrug. If one half of Tiflis is Hke Europe, the other half is purelyOriental. Narrow, steep, ill-paved streets; mysterious houseshiding the life within behind closed doors and shuttered win-dows; the merchant sitting among his wa
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjecttolstoy, bookyear1902
