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It is past midnight, and I am on an internet cafe on Vazha Pshavela street in Batumi. We arrived Batumi this morning by train from Tbilisi. The night train was quite comfortable, and it cost only $15. We checked in to Pyramid Hotel, went to the beach - this was my first time seeing the Black Sea - and got some breakfast. Then we split up, and I spent the rest of the day untill lunch walking around this sub-tropical city, visiting the Mosque, the Church (Church of the Virgin Mary), the market, and a few cafes. The buildings here are very different from in Tbilisi, and the city overall has a very different feeling from any other city I have seen so far in Georgia.

After lunch we took a cab to a church which is on a hill looking down over the city. It was great to see the city above and to see the building of the church (or was it just being built up again from scratch after a fire?) I will upload pictures once I get back to Denmark.

Our dinner tonight was traditional Georgian; very tasty and inexpensive. After dinner we went to the beach with a watermelon and some vodka, and it was great sitting there on the pebbles on the Batumi beach looking at the stars and eating vodka-drenched water melon with friends.

While there, on the beach, I thought back to these last days here in Georgia. I have now been here almost two weeks. I have experienced a Georgian parliamentary election, I have held workshops at a seminar, I have thought a lot about new media tools in those parts of the world where the internet IS rather slow. It is easy to talk about the wonders of videoblogging if you are on a T1 connection - not quite as enjoyable if it takes 3 minutes to even begin to watch a movie on youtube.

Tomorrow we will go to Sarpi further south on the Georgian coastline, close to the Turkish border. The beach is much nicer there, and I will get my first swim of the year. Tomorrow will also June 1st! What happened to these first months of 2008? Dang.

I will be back in Denmark Wednesday morning, and then it time to work a lot, catch up on things I haven’t looked at while here, and focus on progress on those projects I work on.

But I guess one effect of this trip is that I feel the urge to blog more often. Admittedly, it is mostly rather superficial at the moment, but I cannot always do the deep questions-probing.

I will see if I can get some sleep now and get up early tomorrow to take more footage from Batumi.

I am still in Georgia, having finished the seminar today. Tonight, I will take the night train to Batumi on the coast of the Black Sea. I will travel with a fellow participant of the seminar and two of her friends. We will stay in Batumi untill Sunday night when we will take the train back to Tbilisi

I have never seen the Black Sea, and I look really forward to this trip. Batumi is a famous tourist destination - not only for Georgians, but also Armenians and Turks.

When I come back from Batumi on Monday I will take a 1-day trip into the Caucasian mountains, but that is for another blog entry.

Yesterday, I was at an excellent bookstore in Tbilisi (Prospero’s Books) where they have quite a big section for English-languaged books. I bought two books: Stories I Stole by Wendell Steavenson and Georgia Diary by Thomas Goltz. I have begun with the Wendell book, and I find it quite enjoyable to recognize this country and city in the pages of this 6 year old book.

Today, I then read the Georgia News Digest from the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, and I read things like:

Speaking during a televised session of Georgia’s National Security Council on May 27, Saakashvili stated that Russia could no longer be trusted to act as an impartial peace-broker in Abkhazia. Moscow, he insisted, “pretends to play at peacekeeping” in Abkhazia and such misbehavior “annuls this peacekeeping role.”

“It is absolutely clear that Georgia cannot remain in such a situation when we all, together with our international partners, are sitting and waiting for [a new] provocation,” he said. Saakashvili did not specify precisely how Tbilisi would try to overhaul Abkhazia’s peacekeeping format.

If Russia does not agree to a Georgian proposal to change the peacekeeping format in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict zone, Tbilisi could declare Russian peacekeepers occupiers, a Georgian MP said Wednesday.

US Deputy Permanent Representative Alejandro Wolff has made comments about a report on “an incident occurred at 09:53.31 local time on 20 April 2008, when “a MIG-29 “Fulcrum” Russian fighter jet shot down an unarmed Georgian reconnaissance drone (UAV) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs over Georgian territory”.

[Presenter] The incident in which Georgian buses came under fire on the day of the parliamentary election [21 May] was staged. This statement was made today by the state security service of the unrecognized republic of Abkhazia. It refers to the incident in Zugdidi Region; the footage was shown on the Georgian [TV] channel Rustavi-2.

According to Tbilisi, the vehicles carrying Georgian voters were fired on from the direction of Abkhazia. Sukhumi, however, says it has evidence to the contrary. [Russian] peacekeepers, who have a road block just 500 m. from the scene of the incident, have also confirmed that fire was opened from Georgian territory.

All of these quotes are from different news channels that I do not know well, and I am uncertain what to think of them. I do know that the stakes are high: Both the U.S. and Russia wants as much control in this area as possible. Behind every press release, there is a web of intentions and history that I cannot decode currently. I am reading up on the political history, but it takes time: This is a complex region and I don’t want to jump to conclusions.

At the moment, I am merely trying to get to know some people here and follow the news.

I am in Tbilisi, at an internet cafe near Rustaveli Avenue. I have been here for 10 days now.

I left Copenhagen on Sunday May 18th. At Kastrup Airport, I met up with Anna, who is a Polish student of journalism who is currently studying in Denmark (the Erasmus programme), who would also be an election observer in Georgia. We also spent the five hours together in Riga, waiting for the next flight to Tbilisi.

When we arrived Tbilisi at about 4 AM local time, we met with some of the other Danes (who had flown via Istanbul) and went to the hotel. On the way to the city centre I just stared out the window, seeking out as much as I could. I could see all the posters for the different political parties, and I noticed the numerous taxis and gas stations. We arrived the hotel and checked in. I was exhausted.

Monday 19th was a day mainly spent preparing for the Election Observer Mission (EOM) in Tbilisi. I helped Anna go to the Azeri embassy to get her visa for Azerbaijan where she would go after the election observation. She would attend a workshop on human rights there - I forget the details. I took some videos and pictures, however, and in the afternoon I went with Peter (the Danish photographer) and Anna on a trip to the mountains outside Tbilisi, seeing among other things the view from the television tower outside Tbilisi. We spent the night at a Georgian restaurant where I ate some Very nice food - I forget the name.

Early Tuesday 20th we went to Rustavi, which is a smaller city southeast in Georgia, close to the border to Azerbaijan. Rustavi is a typical city that used to have a lot of industrial activity that has died down later years. It is a pretty run-down city, and there are large holes in the road, but I liked the people I met there. Actually, I want to return to Rustavi if possible.

The tuesday was mostly spent on lecturing the observers about their role as election observers. What to look for, how to behave, etc. Also they were given some update on the Georgian political situation. Me, I spent a lot of the day running errands, getting Georgian SIM cards for the polling station mobile phones, etc.

Wednesday 21st was election day. I was up at 4.30 AM, preparing my things. At 6 we all met, and at 6.40 we went out to the different polling stations. The day was hectic, and I spent most of it in a taxi between polling stations, taking video footage as well as trying to understand the situation at the different stations. Especially in the Marneuli district, which is in the country-side, we experienced some conflicts. But overall it went well, and at 8 PM we watched as they closed the polling stations and the counting process began. I will write about my experiences during the counting of votes in another blog entry.

Thursday 22nd at 11 AM we had a press conference, where our main conclusion was that the elections overall were conducted in a fair way. Unfortunately, we had not processed all the information from the polling stations yet, so we could not give a full account of the situation in for instance my polling station. After the press conference, lunch, and working on our individual reports from the polling stations, we went to Tbilisi again, where some of us attended the OSCE press conference at 5 PM. I was there, listening to the words, thinking about this country, this whole region, and the different world powers that have interests here.

Thursday night we had a farewell dinner at a Georgian restaurant, saying goodbye to our Belarusian and Azeri friends - they would not join us for the following seminar in Tbilisi.

Friday 23rd we went to our new hotel outside Tbilisi and started our programme in the seminar on gender and sexual minorities issues as well as the usage of “web 2.0 tools” in organizations. The hotel is nice, there is less dust in the air there than in Rustavi or central Tbilisi (I had developed a cough while in Georgia which still haunts me every night), and the staff is friendly.

It is now Wednesday May 28th, and our seminar ends on Friday. Monday was national holiday here in Georgia, and there were some demonstrations by the opposition in the afternoon which I am glad did not lead to any violent confrontations with the police or army. Since Saturday I have done a series of workshops teaching the participants about different tools, be it blogging, videoblogging, twitter or del.icio.us, and I have always been very aware of the problem that — I must do all this in a way that can inspire them. Talking about the wonders of new media helps them nothing if they don’t see how They can benefit from it. The problem is that there is no quick fix. Establishing a blog does Not guarantee visibility to a national or global audience.

The internet access while being here has been quite bad, particularly before thursday last week when we came to the new hotel. I had also hoped that I could use twitter to give live updates from the field during the election, but the Georgian SIM cards seemed to not work for sending to the UK-based twitter number.

It is 5.30 PM now, and I will enjoy my two hours of free time before we go to some Georgian bath house. Tomorrow I will have another workshop session, but I also need to work with them on a one-on-one basis.

I have extended my stay here in Georgia till tuesday night next week - four days extra. I will spend those extra days taking as much videos as I can, interviewing locals and exploring diferent aspects of this culture. One of my goals is to get to understand the Georgian alphabet which now seems like total gibberish to me

I have made great friends while here, and I hope to be able to follow the development of this country and region at a closer range the coming years.

I will post more within a few days.

In a few hours I fly to Tblisi via Riga. I am packed and ready, and I look very much forward to this.

I will next week update from the election observation at SILBA’s twitter account for this mission: http://twitter.com/silbageorgia08. I will also use that account sometimes during the seminar after the elections.

I will also twitter some on my own twitter account while there, with more personal notes.

This week, I was approached by the Danish-based organization SILBA and asked if I want to

1) Videotape election observers and their activities during the Georgian Parliamentary elections on May 21st as well as document aspects of the election. We will do our election observing in the city of Rustavi in the south-east part of Georgia.

2) Hold a workshop on videoblogging at the May 23.-30. Seminar “Developing Gender and Minority 2.0 Tools” in Tbilisi. The seminar, which is for youths involved with minority issues and who originate from several countries, will to a large extent focus on how they can use new media tools in their work.

It did not take a lot of consideration for me to accept this invitation, despite knowing that Georgia is not going to be the safest place on earth in case there are demonstrations in connection with the election.

I have earlier been holding workshops on videoblogging in among other places Sarajevo, and I am aware of some of the challenges associated with talking about videoblogging to a mixed audience like this. I have talked with the organizers of the seminar, and we agree that a hands-on approach is ideal - that they get to use the tools themselves and experiment with the medium.

I am leaving already in two weeks, so time is short, and there are many questions that need to be looked into. What is the internet situation like in Rustavi? What kind of footage will we want to put up on Youtube and similar sites? What do we do if we find that there are electoral irregularities in Rustavi?

What kind of footage would You like to see? If you had the chance to see the election in Georgia from first-hand accounts and not just filtered through the main-stream media - what would you be interested in?