Georgia’s haunting Tskaltubo spas

Tskaltubo spa, Georgia / Kimberly Sullivan

On the edges of Kutaisi, Georgia is the spa town of Tskaltubo, very much in vogue when this was a part of the USSR. We went to visit these haunting remains of this elegant spa town. This was a favorite spa destination of native Georgian Joseph Stalin, and the infrsastructure exploded around his visits, making…

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Visiting Stalin’s birthplace – in Gori, Georgia

Gori, Georgia / Kimberly Sullivan

Many years ago, I remember reading a biography of Joseph Stalin. I was living in Prague and struggling with the grammar of that difficult Slavic language. Although I knew Stalin was originally from Georgia and that Georgian is an isolated language and not Slavic, until that biography, I did not know that Stalin never perfected…

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