ABSTRACT
The train ride from Tbilisi to Zugdidi and then Sukhumi took sixty hours. In the bad old days of the USSR, it might have taken ten hours, maybe fifteen, maximum. But this was post-Soviet Georgia, and things were different. For starters, there were power outages all the way down the tracks, and west of Kutaisi, the so-called Zviadisti brigands also interfered with our passage, although their activities seemed limited to preventing men of military age (or aspect) from reaching Sukhumi and the front. Certain youths got the shit beat out of them in public, but the rest of us were left alone.
