About Civil.ge
Eng | Geo | Rus
Last updated: 10:55 - 1 May.'18
RSS
Mobile
Twitter
Facebook
Op-ed: Products tell the story best
Tbilisi / 1 Dec.'15 / 12:00
Thomas Engström

Travelling by car through Poland, Ukraine and Georgia this autumn, the one thing that struck me as a Swede was how little I actually knew about these countries.

The only place that even remotely lived up to my preconceived notions was the former extermination camp in Majdanek, but that was because most of my reading on the region has been connected to World War II; I even made some preliminary weather assumptions based on conditions prevailing in late 1941, the year of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. I knew close to nothing of the daily lives of Poles, Ukrainians and Georgians today.

My lack of awareness is bad news – for the West, but even worse news for the East.

I am, after all, a reasonably interested and informed citizen. For many of my compatriots, knowledge about central and eastern Europe is even lower. The knowledge I am referring to is not one of history, the culture of a place or a group of people, but a basic idea of how it is to wake up and walk around in a city like Kiev or Tbilisi.

The first time I travelled to Berlin, I knew what to expect. I had seen German films, read German books, eaten Turkish-German food. I had loathed bitterly the behaviour of people back home driving German Audis and BMW`s. There was not anything in this new city that surprised me. With London and Paris, this was even more so. But in Odessa, Batumi, Warsaw and Lviv, I was roaming a whole new planet. Why?

Because I had never bought anything from these countries. Yes, I do believe it’s that simple. They never sold me anything. And as a westerner, I am primed, groomed and conditioned as a consumer.

The East needs to start pushing some serious cultural imperialism on the rest of the world. Fancy words like “democracy”, “tolerance” and “openness” are all fine for students and politicians, but for us, average consumers, what matters are products.

Show me what you manufacture, and I will start taking you seriously.

In Georgia, this is all about the wine and food. There is a culinary culture here that is both deep and rich. If you haven’t tasted a cold, dry Georgian wine, bought by the 10 liter-jug in a market on a crisp Tbilisi morning, you have no business talking about wine. If you haven’t tried seasoning a steak with Svanetian salt, keep quiet about food. Georgia is one of the most beautiful places on the face of the Earth – and somehow, by the strange magic of creation, craft and ecology, this is something you can actually taste. Beauty, it seems, can be drunk and eaten.

When making your country known to the world, you should start with your best foot forward. The rest – a wonderful hospitality which spills over into a great business climate for newcomers, a serious desire to join with other open, democratic societies – is for college professors and intellectuals. They’ll come around anyway. But the average westerner will need to have his curiosity roused by something more palatable.

Sell him your best stuff and he will start paying attention.  

 
Thomas Engström is a Swedish novelist and journalist. He has recently moved to Tbilisi, Georgia

Our permanent page will be up soon.

Read more about The Clarion.

Follow us @TheClarionEU 


This project is supported by:

 

The views and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania or the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation.

Latest News
01 May.'18 10:55
We Have Moved to a New Platform
Direct Your Bookmarks to https://civil.ge.
29 Apr.'18 03:54
Ruling Party Candidate Wins MP By-Elections
Givi Chichinadze will represent Vani and Khoni single-mandate constituency in the Parliament of Georgia.
28 Apr.'18 09:40
Polls Open for Vani and Khoni MP By-Elections
48,123 voters are eligible to cast their ballots in Vani and Khoni single-mandate constituency.
27 Apr.'18 17:23
State Dept’s Europe Affairs Point Man to Visit Tbilisi
Wess Mitchell will meet senior government officials and address the NATO-Georgia Public Diplomacy Forum.
27 Apr.'18 13:45
In Quotes: Georgian Politicians on Ex-PM Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Comeback
Bidzina Ivanishvili will be approved as the Georgian Dream party chairman at the upcoming convention.
26 Apr.'18 18:15
SG Jens Stoltenberg: Georgia NATO’s ‘Very Close’ Partner
The NATO Secretary General says Foreign Ministers meeting tomorrow will recognize the country’s progress.
26 Apr.'18 14:24
Ex-PM Ivanishvili to Chair Georgian Dream Party
Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili said Ivanishvili was ‘best equipped’ to add new dynamism to the party.
26 Apr.'18 11:12
Lawmaker Proposes Criminal Liability for ‘Insult of Religious Feelings’
The parliamentary human rights committee decided to set up a working group for scrutinizing the draft law.
25 Apr.'18 17:21
New Abkhaz Government Head Appointed
Gennady Gagulia has served as the Abkhaz “prime minister” twice - in 1995-1997, and 2002-2003.
25 Apr.'18 14:43
Watchdog Improves Georgia’s Press Freedom Ranking
None of the countries of the former Soviet Union (except the Baltics) are ranked ahead of Georgia.

About Civil Georgia
Civil.Ge © 2001-2024, Daily News Online
Registered office: 2 Dolidze Str, 4-th Floor.
Creative Commons License
All posts by The Clarion are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
12