Quarter 3 Post 2- Abkhazia.

Bergeri, Eric. "Absolute Abkhazia- Seeking Powder in a Country that Doesn't Exist". Transworld Snowboarding January 2009: unknown-unknown.
(i dont know the starting and ending pages cuz its my brothers magazine and he took it to his house before i did the MLA citation)

Darius Heristchian, Victor De Le Rue, Per Loken, and some guy named Remi went to a place called Abkhazia to snowboard. Abkhazia is a country that doesn't appear on any maps, except in Russia, because the rest of the world doesn't recognize it as its own country. It's a small peice of land on the Black Sea coastline and was once part of the Republic of Georgia that used to be part of the USSR. When the USSR collapsed in 1991 less than one fifth of Abkhazia's population was ethnic Abkhaz. Georgia gained its independendence when the USSR collapsed and not too long after Abkhazia did too. Ever since then Abkhazia and Georgia have had constant tension between them. Georgia tried to take over in 1992 and in 1993 they were pushed out after killing several thousand people and creating 250,000 Abkhazian Georgian refugees because their houses were completely burnt down. nstead of snowboarding the whole time they were there the guys spent most of their time wandering around and sight-seeing. The way they describe the place makes it sound horrible. The writer says "Scars of past wars were everywhere- bullet holes on building walls, the remains of the Georgian's burnt-down homes." Abkhazia is a poor country with a bad economy which probably explains why they beleive its bad luck to rebuild any Georgian buildings, they simply don't have the money to do it. I'm really thankful that I live in a place like the US and not Abkhazia. It would be so hard to live in a country that's been pretty much destroyed and never rebuilt. Living in constant fear of being attacked and taken over again would be the worst way to live. A taxi driver the guys met on the trip described the war by saying "One morning I woke up and my neighbors were not my neighbors anymore, buy my enemies." I can't imagine everything changing that fast. I think the worst part is that shortly after they left, the country broke out in war again, before they could even start cleaning up the one from over a decade ago.