so everything's dictated by urbanites

there's some Open Society money but not a huge amount

Georgia is a low priority for Soros

but the opposition are happy to parrot that line anyway because they're whores

there's also the wedge issues of Abkhazia/South Ossetia

as long as Russia is occupying those territories it's impossible for any government to completely thaw relations

Russia won't even reopen their embassy here

if I want a Russian visa I'll have to go to Yerevan

And also fly through Yerevan, right?

yep

or Baku, but that requires an e-visa

and stricter laws

Azerbaijan banned the Old Testament at one point because it mentions Armenia

Oooh yeah, that is a hot topic, Armenians cannot even play there when their football club has to visit

Anyways Matt, I'm off to sleep

nice talking

If you have any more questions, I can answer them later, just let me know

What is the economy based on, primarily?

@Right_Honourable in Georgia?

tourism and agriculture

Yes

the wine sector is big

Georgia purports to be the birthplace of wine

there's a wine store chain called "8,000 Vintages"

for the 8,000 different varieties of Georgian wine

Tourists from Russia or Europe or both?

overwhelmingly Russia

there's a few Europeans and Americans but not very many

walking down the tourist areas you're more likely to hear Russian, Farsi, or Turkish being spoken than English or any mainland European language

enough so that when I come across people speaking English I always do a double take

georgian wine is top tier

we drink it here in the PMR too

That’s got to be tough to rely essentially on the economies of other countries to be stable enough to keep yours afloat

georgian wine is the best in the world imo

yeah I'm not a wine guy but Georgian wine is pretty good

the best wine/chacha is generally homebrew tho

@Right_Honourable that's pretty much every country in Europe outside of the big powers

Georgia's problem is that it wants to orient to Europe and the West but Russians basically fuel their economy for reasons of geography

it'd be like if Canada wanted to stop trading with the U.S. and orient to Britain

No country should orient to the west

G@y pride marches every month