This is a continuation of a previous post regarding my visit to the country of Georgia. The place is still on my mind, and not for the best reasons! Here I share several additional insights and experiences from my time spent there. The rubble seen in the post header photo is representative of the kinds of things I’ll be describing, haha.
– Let’s begin with my Airbnb apartment building and the surrounding old town area in Tblisi. Imagine your Airbnb host sends you the following helpful photos the day before your reservation to guide you to your “home away from home” for the next six nights:
I was clearly more than a bit put off by these photos. Why take them at night anyway? But I knew that the reviews had been good, and at least this guy’s honest, haha. When I arrived at the building the next day after an arduous hours-long journey from Kutaisi, gratefully it wasn’t dark outside yet. But the reality of the building was even worse than in the directions photo! There were three burly guys doing construction work on one of the “units” of the building, and it was what one could call an “open floor plan” since there were few walls anymore, even the external ones. And the guys were piling their debris up against the stairway, which had no railing. Plus, there was an old bathtub (from the unit being worked on?) on the other side of the stairway, now being used as a storage bin. And these stairs, wow, they wouldn’t have passed any safety codes in the US or Europe. I hoped for the best and climbed up with a solid amount of trepidation. One thing was solid, anyway.
But quite thankfully the interior of the apartment was a complete contrast to the exterior!:
– The apartment building turned out to be par for the course around old town Tblisi. In fact, it was in excellent condition compared to many other buildings in that area:
– Tblisi also had an ongoing reconstruction project which was the hugest cluster-fudge I can recall ever having encountered anywhere in the world during my travels. And I’ve now been to over 60 countries. It was epic, and it was mega-destructive, seemingly quite unnecessarily so. You see, the city has experienced a number of protests against the current pro-Russian government, where protestors would gather and travel down the main avenue, Rustaveli Ave, to reach Liberty Square. “Coincidentally” the government decided it was time to redo that very avenue, and not a section at a time, but the entire length (1.5 km, almost 1 mile) all at once! And really, as you’ll see, most of its width too. It truly looked like the area had been bombed. Not only was the road completely dug up, but many of the sidewalks were gone, and even some buildings were rubble (perhaps unrelated). It was often necessary to walk directly down the middle of the construction zone, dodging bulldozers, dump trucks, excavators, and water sprayers, all while carefully avoiding falling into an unfenced pit. I saw people helping old women with canes to climb over debris piles. Many of us were walking on the narrow remains of a sidewalk only to come to a point where everything was dug up, all the way to the very edge of the buildings. So then we had to backtrack and climb a mound into the road after a backhoe was out of the way for the moment. Pure chaos, and very unsafe. Lest you think I’m exaggerating, take a look at some samples below, with these being the ones I felt momentarily sufficiently safe to capture.
You can see on the following map sample that there are many attractions which line this avenue. These include some restaurants. However, I didn’t dare eat at any because there was a thick layer of dust covering everything around this area. No thanks.
Here are some videos to provide an even better sense of what it was like there:
– I noted in the previous Georgia post that van tours were not always enjoyable. Part of what detracted from some of the tour van group tours was that the guides often complained aloud about how much they didn’t like their job. One guide downed multiple brandy shots at each stop we made, becoming further agitated as the day progressed. I was impressed that he could even stand after that much drink. Luckily the van drivers stuck to coffee. The alcohol drinking in Georgia seems to be next-level, and there is a lot of pressure to join in. The great Anthony Bourdain has an excellent segment about the challenge of staying sober while in the country:
– Once while riding on a city bus in Tblisi, I noticed that several fellow passengers were making the sign of the cross. Then a few minutes later it happened again, and so on, throughout the bus journey. I wasn’t sure if they were thanking God that they had survived another few minutes on a Georgian bus. I looked it up afterward, and it turns out that many Georgians do this when passing a sacred place, like a church. Also, side note: I learned during my visit that Georgian/Eastern Orthodox Christians cross themselves from right to left, rather than right to left as Roman Catholics do.
– Families who live in rural areas and own their homes traditionally have multiple generations living together, and also build a standalone smaller building on their property for the kitchen, which is kept separate from the building with bedrooms!
– I didn’t encounter the following while in Armenia, but in Georgia there are numerous cars with the steering wheel on the right side of the vehicle. Apparently Georgians like to buy used cars from around the world, and they particularly like Japanese cars straight from Japan due to their pricing and reliability. And because the cars built for the Japanese market are meant to drive on the left-hand side of the road, these vehicles have the steering wheel on the right.
– After sleeping and shitting in the roads, the cows literally come home at the end of the day. Their owners just let them roam freely, and the bovines always find their way back.
– A tour guide related a funny story about a female American tourist. She booked a solo private tour to be shown various monasteries around Georgia. So the guide presumed that this woman must be into Christianity and monasteries and be well-acquainted with the associated history. Therefore the guide was shocked, and quite amused, that right after he began the tour by telling her that Georgia became a Christian country in the year 319, she asked earnestly: “BC or AD?” 🤣 I wonder what she had thought “BC” stood for? Perhaps Georgia was just planning ahead!
Today’s dad joke:
Which image service aptly offers the ability to share pictures of fake feet?
Google “faux toes”
Today’s video:
Thanks to Putin, Georgian native Joseph Stalin is having a comeback, with a cult of victory:
Today’s Stoic quote:
“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.” ~ Seneca
