The Dodo Lives

Sighnaghi, Georgia - 2nd-5th October 2011

We did, eventually, get to Sighnaghi. After a few setbacks. The aim was to spend a night there, do some winetasting (Sighnaghi is, after all, in the middle of Georgia's best wine country), come back to Tbilisi and hit the rails to Yerevan. We had it all lined up. First, we'd go to the train station and buy the tickets to Yerevan, and then we'd hop on the metro to Didube, the bus station from where someone had told us last night minibuses go to Sighnaghi. The train station, as it seems they are in all ex-Soviet countries, is needlessly confusing. There are around 15 ticket booths, all of which appear to serve a different purpose. Of course, no booths have any explanation (in any language) as to what purpose they serve. M and I had already learnt this in our desperate attempts to buy tickets to Zugdidi, and she cleverly sat this one out, chatting with Tom (who was staying in Georgia) while Cole and I went on a man mission to sort the ticket situation out. One of the consequences of unmarked ticket booths is that the queueing system completely breaks down. One moment you are behind one person, the next you are behind five. Just when you are busy cursing the queue jumpers, you realise that they're only asking what the point of this particular ticket booth is. The fact that the Georgians themselves didn't seem to understand what was going on did make us feel slightly better. Amazingly, the booth we had chosen on a whim turned out to be the correct one.

"Yerevan, OK ! Today or in 2 days ?"

"Er... tomorrow ?"

"No train tomorrow. Only every two days"

Dammit. We retreated with our tails between our legs. This meant that Nagorno-Karabakh, one of our missions for this trip, was suddenly eliminated from all realms of possibility. We just wouldn't have enough time. It would, however, mean that we could take our time in Sighnaghi and so we decided to spend two nights there. We left the ticket buying for our return to Tbilisi and jumped on the metro to Didube, where a wandering gentleman asked us where we were going.

"Sighnaghi ?"

"Yes ! You want taxi ?"

"No, minibus."

"No minibus from here, you take my taxi !"

We'd seen this before in Africa. A clever ruse to trap the unsuspecting tourist into taking a long distance taxi. We asked around and were repeatedly given the same answer. Unfortunately, it appeared that our initial contact was not a scoundrel at all but was telling the truth. If we wanted a minibus, he told us, we'd have to take it from Samgori bus station. It was on the other side of the city. Another metro ride later (during which Cole was unfortunately booted off at the wrong stop - by us) we got to Samgori and waited a small eternity for our minibus to take off.

Caution : Handsome sleeping man ahead

Filthy backpack carriers ruin the beautiful streets of Sighnaghi. Fortunately, there are no residents around to notice this...

Sighnaghi is a pretty little town in the mountains but I couldn't help but feel like it was more of a museum than a town. We all agreed that it appeared far too big for the amount of inhabitants that it held. We didn't have time to catch our breath, though, before we were assaulted by an old woman waving a brochure around. "FIFTEEN LARI !!" she yelled at us. 15 lari for a brochure ? No thanks, darling. We wandered off to an address which Tom had been given, while the old woman gave hot pursuit. The place we were looking for was full, but there would be space tomorrow, we were told. Our old woman friend was still niggling us and we realised that the brochure carried a picture of her house on it. 15 lari was the price she was asking for one night. We followed her to a shiny Mercedes which gave us a free lift all of 300 metres to her house, during which she instructed the driver to stop and leapt out to pursue another couple of backpack-toting wanderers. The sign on her front gate instructed us that our new friend's name was Dodo. She was far more tenacious than her feathered namesakes and, despite the fact that we didn't understand the Russian she was blabbering at us with, she persevered, showed us to our beds, and invited us down to what looked like the bomb shelter from "Enemy at the Gates" and poured us glasses of wine and chacha.

Sighnaghi rooftops. This is probably about 95% of the town.

We wandered aimlessly around small yet attractive yet quiet Sighnaghi, and as darkness fell we came across a restaurant and dropped in. This was wine country so along with our uncivilised amounts of Khachapuri and Khinkali we wanted a bottle of wine. A concerned discussion came up when we remembered that a similar wine-buying attempt in Mestia ended up costing us 35 lari. We wondered how we could diplomatically ask for a more affordable bottle. M, proving her diplomatic worth, stepped up to the plate. "Excuse me", she asked the waiter. "What's your cheapest bottle of red ?". General giggling broke out at the bluntness of the question but more giggling was yet to come when the waiter looked awkward and we realised that he didn't understand the question. He whipped out a mobile phone, called someone, and passed the phone to M. More giggles. "Hello !" exclaimed an increasingly awkward looking M, "I was just wondering what your cheapest bottle of red was ?". The other customers quietened down to listen to the conversation and murmured amongst themselves. It was like something out of a Mr. Bean movie. She was eventually informed that we wanted to order the house wine. We did, and bizarrely, it was probably the best wine we had in Georgia.

"Yes, I'd be interested in a cheap bottle of plonk, any suggestions...?"

Khachapuri, wine and khinkali. The Georgian table in a (very tasty) nutshell.

And some idiot who thinks it's funny to pose with walnut-stuffed aubergines as a makeshift tongue. Looks good though eh ?

We celebrated this success with a night out at Sighnaghi's only casino, in which we were the only customers for the whole night. M, Cole and Tom all did well but I helped the business stay afloat by losing, as I usually do.

A site of great success, for most

The next morning, we decided to leave Dodo despite her infectious enthusiasm and stay in the place we'd been to yesterday, hoping that the conditions would be slightly less Arctic. For the same price, it was. A good choice. More wandering around culminated in a winetasting session at the "Pheasant's Tears" winery, the only one we could find. A classy place, with a wine tasting session hosted by an even more classy, and fantastically ambiguously gay guy who insisted on calling his female co-worker "Darling", even when speaking to her in Georgian. Cole and he, for some reason, got on very well. Following this, we ended up in an even more surreal place, "Pancho Villa", the only Mexican restaurant in Sighnaghi (population 2500). The restaurant was run by a guy who had fallen in love with Mexican food while visiting the US, had only three tables, and only four customers that night. Namely M, Cole, Tom and I. The Mexican food didn't really taste like Mexican at all but it was still tasty, and we celebrated this discovery with another night at the casino. Cole, Tom and M won again, I lost again. It's depressing.

Tom and M, "Los Gringos Georgianos"

The entrance to the "Nato and Lado Guesthouse"...

...where we were welcomed a glass of wine and a plate of cheese. The fact that it was 9am did not seem to bother them.

Cole celebrated his victory by abusing the unlimited free wine from the casino and falling asleep on the steps outside, and on finding him feeling rough back when we got back, I volunteered to go on a Khachapuri mission. The restaurant down the road, thankfully, was open at 2am, and a gang of drunken men gave me a fond welcome. One guitar toting man welcomed me with a song which another drunk sang along to, a third sat down next to me, fell off his chair and knocked me onto the floor. The manager booted them all out and invited me into the kitchen.

I would have enjoyed their company for a bit longer but this is one of the funny things about travelling. When the manager had finished ejecting his previous customers, he came into the kitchen and apologised profusely (if only he'd known where I grew up and what we got up to...), toasted me with a large shot of chacha and lent me a tray to take the khachapuri home with, insisting he would come to pick it up the next day and I didn't need to worry. We brought it back the next day anyway and had breakfast there. The manager and the babushka in the kitchen both gave me a warm handshake and a big smile. What delightful people.

The ride back to Tbilisi was punctuated only by a change of minibus in the delightfully-named town of Tsnori. We once again found the correct train ticket booth at the first time of asking, made our arrangements to meet Tom once we had returned to Tbilisi and M, Cole and I set off, once again, for the great unknown : Armenia.

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Winner of the most ridiculous-looking food award :

M takes the gold medal position for having ordered "Skewered boiled eggs". Any suspicions that it may have been a typo evaporated when this outrageous dish arrived.

Winners of the Sighnaghi English language award :



I have no idea the majority of the above means. Boiled sucking pig ??