good talk

From Tbilisi I took a group-taxi for $2, 55 miles to Gori, birthplace of Iosif Dzhugashvili (Dec. 18, 1878 to March 5, 1953), later known as Joseph Stalin.  The "Stalin Museum" is magnificent, depicting the life of Gori's famous son, one of the most powerful figures of the 20th Century.  A lady takes you on a group-tour and doesn't sugar-coat, under the Czar, Joseph was sent-off to prison 7 times, 6 of these to Siberia, for his revolutionary activities, his arm was broken and didn't heal-well.  Stalin became a hard man not given to sentimentality, during WW 11, his son, Yakov, a junior-officer, was captured near Minsk in 1943, and Hitler wanted to exchange Yakov for Friedrich von Paulus, who was captured at Stalingrad ...You don't exchange a Field Marshall for a soldier... Depending on what you believe, the Germans either shot Yakov, or he committed suicide, in any event he died soon after.  On the grounds is Stalin's first home, a small rented-room where he lived with his parents for his first 4 years, with his father's cobbler-shop directly below.  You can look at this but not enter, but you can enter the bulletproof railway-car that took Stalin to Yalta.  Up the street is their War Museum, which is mainly devoted to WW 11 but also the 2008 War with Russia over South Ossetia.  The Russians bombed Gori, with many fatalities, they exhibit unexploded bombs, the population of 45 thou fled.  Gori was occupied by the Russians for 10 days, I hadn't known anything of this.  Climb up to Gori Fortress and you have a view of the entire area.  In Georgia, a 4th-World place, I only used Greenbacks to get Georgian lira, if I hadn't these I would have been out of luck as the ATM's didn't take my cards.