On your marks....

Tbilisi, Georgia - 26th-28th October 2011

And the're off !!

We started off the day with one challenge and three unknowns. Georgia was a total unknown to us, as was the entire Caucasus region. Ukraine International Airlines, our ship of the desert (or rather our ship of the skies) was also an unknown. The challenge for the day was to have a beer in each of countries on the same day. It seemed doable.

Our little escapade began in the small village of Sergy in the Jura. We had breakfast with my parents, shared a beer (it was 9am, after all, and we're not that wild) before heading off the the airport in Geneva, Switzerland, where we had beer number two. Our flight to Kiev was uneventful, and we stepped out into the beautiful Ukrainian sunshine where my friend Marina was waiting for us. As if to make our challenge easier, she'd brought a selection of delightful Ukrainian beers with her and we decided to find a bench somewhere for a chat and a drink. Sadly, she had to inform us that with our 3 hour layover, Kiev was too far to drive and so she suggested that we go to the neighbouring town of Boryspil. "I've never been there though", she warned us. It was a one street town with a few casinos, a few shops, and many cars. Unfortunately though, no benches. Marina's car bounced through the potholes of a few sidestreets looking for a bench before she decided we should probably head back to the airport car park and find a bench there. And thus ended our tour of Ukraine. The beers and the company were lovely though, even if the setting was less than exotic, and it was with great sadness that I realised at some point that we only had one hour left. Marina kindly pointed out that I hadn't changed my phone's clock to Ukrainian time and that in fact we had to leave right now. And that was that. Back to the airport. As it happened, our onward flight to Tbilisi was delayed by four hours which meant that a) we could easily have gone for a nice wander around Kiev, b) we got a free sandwich from the airline, and c) we would land in Tbilisi at 4am, which would not only end up with us being very tired, but also completely scuppered our "4 countries" plan. We did eventually end up at the Why Not? hostel, though, and settled down for a large amount of sleep.

Marina joins in for number 3 !

The Why Not? Hostel, typical Georgian courtyard house. Note the unlikely-looking balcony at the top. Tbilisi is full of these and strangely, none of them ever seem to collapse

Dragging ourselves out of bed the next day was quite a challenge but we eventually managed it and let ourselves loose on the streets of Tbilisi. It's a charming place with a nice old town, plenty of parks to wander through, and a few grand boulevards thrown in for good measure. It was up one of these, Rustaveli avenue (named after the famous Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli, of course) that we wandered in search of food. At the feet of a statue of Rustaveli himself, we found a little shack with a terrace (which went by the name of "Vache", meaning cow in French) which served us our first Georgian food and drink. Natakhtari beer passed the taste test with flying colours but it paled in comparison with Khachapuri, Georgia's greatest contribution to the world's culinary scene. A sort of pie with Sulguni cheese melted inside (you'll have to take my word for it), varying according to where in Georgia it's from. Imerulian is plain, Mingrelian has melted cheese on top, and the George Foreman cholesterol award goes to the Ajarian Khachapuri, which has large amounts of cheese topped off with a fried egg. Slightly difficult to eat without making a mess but tasty. We ordered another one for good measure, by which point it was time to meet up with Tiniko.

Tiniko is a friend of Marina's who offered to show us around Tbilisi while we were there. Over the two evenings, we probably covered the majority of Tbilisi's eating and coffee-drinking options, as well as finding the somewhat bizarre sight of an outrageous new bridge of the Mtkvari river. An impressive sight, although completely out of tune with the neighbouring old town. In the image of our friends the Sudanese, Tiniko's eyes clouded over with thinly disguised anger whenever we tried to pay for anything to thank her. M, of course, is an ungracious guest and insists on paying for everything and I just sat back and watched these two ferocious women argue over who would pay. When it started to go on for too long, Tiniko's friend Tako would sneak off and pay the bill while no one was looking. M would then insist that we go somewhere else to get them a coffee, and the whole circus would begin again.

Fortunately, Tiniko was at hand to help us read

Designer park

The Georgian parliament house looked a lot better lit up, hence I'm giving you a pic of it at night

Eventually, our new friends had to go to sleep (some of us have to work on weekdays, after all) and we went back to the hostel. There we met Ani, an American girl of Armenian descent who had jacked in her New York lifestyle five years ago to set up sticks in Yerevan, despite knowing no one there and not being able to speak Armenian. She was a fascinating character who told us a bit about the history and culture of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, and offered us a bed whenever we came to Yerevan. Which was, of course, accepted with pleasure ! Ani was also a keen football fan and said she'd try to sort us some tickets for the upcoming Armenia-Macedonia European Championship qualifying game. It looked good already.

Tiko (l) and Tako (r), our delightful guides

M is either deciphering the Georgian alphabet, or having a jealousy fit regarding the statue's ice cream

Tbilisi old town square

Some parts of the old town are seemingly older than others

Getting up the next morning was even more difficult - I felt somewhat ashamed at only getting out of bed at 12.30 but M snoozed on until 3.30 in the afternoon. Her slightly tougher working life probably contributed to that, as did the fact that our declared "early night" didn't materialise and we finished chatting with Ani at around 5am. Cue another wander around Tbilisi, taking in the golden-statued Freedom Square (formerly "Lenin Square", surprisingly), the park on the other side of the outrageous bridge (featuring an equally outrageous musical fountain), old district on the other side of the river which we believed was the Armenian quarter (featuring more narrow streets and more delightful old churches) and a deeper walk around the old town. It's a place full of cobbled alleyways, old small churches, cafes and a few tree-lined streets, easy to get lost in for an afternoon. And that's pretty much what we did, until Tiniko called to announce that she'd got out of work.

Outrageous bridge

Old church. With apologies to the purists, I can't remember its name...

M lives the hard life. Once again.

Tonight was to be slightly different - it was Tbilisi International Theatre Festival week and Tiniko had got herself a ticket and asked if we wanted to come long. "I'm the only person interested in these kind of things so I'm sure there'll be space !" she told us. And so there was. Which is why at 8pm, we were sat in Tbilisi's Marjanishvili theatre, contemplating a stage with three identically-dressed Iranian women on a stage with 6 toilets. One brushed another's hair for an hour while the other frantically attacked a pile of chicken with a large meat cleaver, and the three of them discussed their suicidal thoughts in Farsi. Thankfully, we were given subtitles in both Georgian and English and the chatter was broken up as one or other of the women went over and flushed one or more of the toilets. At several points during the play, a large bag or suitcase came crashing down from the heavens. And then it was over. The regular theatre-goers gave the women a standing ovation, the three of us had no idea what had just happened, and we went out to find a terrace. An interesting evening.

It's MY turn to flush the toilets !!

During the day, we'd somehow managed to decipher the intricacies of Tbilisi central railway station and ended up with 2 tickets on that night's train to Zugdidi where we were to have a long overdue reunion with Cole (see various African blog entries) and Tiniko accompanied us to the train station. Having failed to work out the system for buying tickets until we stumbled across the right desk that afternoon, we also failed to understand the platform system. The non-existent "departures" board wouldn't have helped, had it existed, given that the platforms were not numbered, and Tiniko went around asking until we found our right train. She waved us off, but not before inviting us to her summer house near Mtskheta for a barbecue on our return. We'd liked Tbilisi but Tiniko had already single handedly given us a warm feeling about Georgia and its people.