World View: When the lift failed to work at the military institute in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, the elderly cleaner gave it a sturdy kick. "Built by the Russians", she said contemptuously, and together we started the long climb to the 11th floor in order to meet a group of senior army officers who were struggling to learn English, writes Mary Russell.
Georgia is a member of the Partnership for Peace (PfP), and the language course is part of the Caucasian Peacekeeping English Project designed to enable military personnel to participate in NATO and PfP exercises.
To help him with his English, I asked one officer who had attended a training course in Budapest how he had communicated with his Hungarian colleagues. "We spoke Russian," he said.
This push-pull relationship with its powerful and at times threatening neighbour is only one of the many problems Georgia's next administration will have to deal with.
But the non-functioning lift is particularly relevant to the political prospects of Misha Saakashvili, the main opposition parties' sole candidate in the presidential elections due on January 4th.
Saakashvili, the 35-year-old lawyer partly educated in the US and groomed by Eduard Shevardnadze for the job of Justice Minister, has been building a strong power-base in Tbilisi since 2002 when he parted with his mentor to form the National Movement, a party committed to eradicating corruption and cronyism.
Perceived by some as a US-backed candidate, Saakashvili is something of a fixer whose seeming ability to deal with such things as broken lifts and leaking roofs has won him considerable support in the capital, home to one-third of the total population.
A coup or a revolution? While one ingredient of a coup is that there should be a plot - and Shevardnadze is quoted as saying there was one, instigated by Washington - many Georgians, still heady with the success of the "rose revolution", deny this and say that in any case the new parliament was unlawful since the November 2nd elections had been fraudulent.
Semantics aside, the situation is still volatile, with the country vulnerable to the opposing interests of Russia and the US.
Georgia's task, therefore, will be to maintain friendly relations with both powers while at the same time pursuing the ideal of reformist democracy necessary if its deepfelt aspiration to join the EU is eventually to be realised.
Aspirations are one thing, however, but in an energy-dependent country like Georgia reality is what constantly intrudes. There is not one day, a Tbilisi resident told me recently, when either the water, the gas or the electricity supply does not break down.
Georgia buys electricity from Russia, and at the moment its electricity bill is $3 million in arrears. There are still four Russian military bases, leased for 25 years under a 1993 agreement. (One of the demands of the opposition is that these should be dismantled by 2007.)
But there is also a sizeable US presence in Georgia, manifested in the 500 special troops deployed around the country, detailed to keep an eye on, among other things, the Pankisi Gorge, a favourite crossing point from Chechnya for drug-dealers and suspected Islamic activists.
After Israel and Egypt, Georgia, together with Armenia, is the third-largest recipient of US dollars, and every year the Bush administration invests $600 million in the country, of which $160 million goes on military training. A new US embassy is being built near Tbilisi on a 20-acre site at a cost of $58 million.
The explanation for all this activity is the Caspian oil pipeline that will run from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey and on to Europe. North of the turbulent Middle East and south enough to avoid Russia, the route was negotiated as the safest by the BP-led consortium.
As its conduit, Georgia will be paid $60 million a year, but since the country's mafia is quite capable of siphoning off whatever it needs and selling it on, Georgia's bill for securing the pipeline will be enormous.
Such things as security firms, the mafia and bullet-proof cars - Shevarnadze received two from Helmut Kohl in gratitude for bringing down the Berlin Wall - are far removed from the lives of the average Georgian, who wants only a decent pay packet, fairness at the polling station and membership of the EU.
"That is our ardent dream," a scientist told me fervently. "We are European."
Ironically, it is one of Georgia's attractions that it stands at an east-west crossroads. Tbilisi has both a mosque and a synagogue, and its lovely old, blue-tiled Turkish baths are a must-see for any visitor.
But while it might wish to join Europe, the question is, does Europe want Georgia?
At the moment the EU puts €60 million annually into the counntry which, with its ancient and diverse culture, its vineyards, its stupendous mountains and its heart-stopping music can only be seen an asset.
That is, if you forget the poverty (average wage $17 per month), its crumbling economy, its Russian-backed, semi-autonomous regions and its corruption in high places.
Yet it is this last that Georgia has already started to confront.
When the OSCE failed to declare the recent election null and void - many were the stories of dead men voting, of pre-loaded ballot boxes and of ballot papers that had been "corrected" - Georgia's Supreme Court did just that.
By so doing, it enabled the sitting parliament to call two fresh elections, one presidential and one parliamentary, and Nato Burjanadze to be declared acting president.
At each point, it stuck to the constitution and in that respect alone cannot but endear itself to European democrats. It may be a long road to membership of the EU, but the first step has been taken.
Mary Russell, who has just returned from Georgia, is the author of Please Don't Call it Soviet Georgia