"They're not even big travellers"

Dzegui and Tbilisi - 2nd-3rd October 2011

Firstly, apologies for the bizarre fonts and text sizes recently. I just can't see any logic in the way blogger.com works. That's just how it is.

We were slightly apprehensive as Mako told us that we'd have to change minibuses in Zugdidi - we had already promised Tiniko that we'd come to her barbecue and we'd already donated many hours of this trip to the cause of sitting around in Zugdidi on the way up to Mestia. We shouldn't have worried - the turnaround time was around 10 minutes. We couldn't, however, work out why we'd paid 20 lari to get from Mestia to Zugdidi and onlz 12 lari to get to Tbilisi. These were both confirmed as correct prices, but the second leg was longer in terms of both time and distance. Georgian minibus logic seems to be on a par with blogger.com. But I digress.

The minibus ride was an adventure in itself - our driver sported an outrageous Russian-style short, spiky haircut, an equally outrageous shellsuit top, and had socks pulled up as far as they could go on top of his sandals. His choice of music was second to none featuring cheesy Russian techno interspersed with obligatory outbursts of Celine Dion and a techno remix of Status Quo's "You're in the Army Now". Schoolboy giggles were heard from the foreign delegation at the back of the minibus. We'd already asked to get off the minibus in Mtskheta, as Tiniko had asked us to, but we flew straight past the turn off and asked fellow passengers "Mtskheta ?" with a lost look on our faces. They nodded back at us and we were reassured. Shortly afterwards, we passed a sign welcoming us to Tbilisi. This was obviously the wrong route. We hopped off by the highway, hopped into a taxi and called Tiniko to ask for help.

Right. Where now ?

We didn't really know where we were going and I passed her onto the driver. The conversation got more and more animated. "I think she's just realised we're being stitched up", M pointed out helpfully. I got my phone back and the driver pulled off the highway and drove around a bend with purpose, following a 4x4. Unfortunately, roadworks were being carried out on one lane and a Kamaz truck came haring towards us. Both cars in the cortege slammed on the brakes, but ours were obviously inferior and we ploughed into the back of the 4x4. An irate woman got out and started yelling, and we got out to inspect the damage, joined by no less than 4 police cars. It appeared that the 4x4 had suffered no damage whatsoever apart from a scratched bumped, whereas our technologically inferior taxi had had its front caved in. We sat around and waited until Tiniko arrived.

Crash scenes. Tom and M are obviously more amused than the driver was.

She brought a lot of energy to proceedings, trying to flag down several passing minibuses and eventually a taxi stopped for us.

"Doesn't the other driver want money ?" I ventured

"Pff. It's not my problem that he crashed"

We got our bags from taxi #1 and started transferring them to taxi #2 when driver #1 realised what was going on. A lot of arm waving and shouting took place between Tiniko and him,.

"I think he doesn't like me from earlier" she explained, referring to her phone call. "I told him he was robbing my guests. I called him fucking bastard"

The image of Tiniko as a sweet. innocent girl was destroyed in hilarious fashion right there and then. She eventually threw 5 lari at him and we walked off, ignoring his pleas repeatedly featuring the word "benzine". If Tiniko hadn't told us that we'd been charged over the odds for the original ride I may have had some sympathy, but then life is cruel sometimes. We pulled off the tarmac road and bounced our way to the summer house without further incident. On landing in Tbilisi some days ago I never imagined that I would spend an afternoon in Dzegui, a village I'd obviously never heard of. But travel takes you to strange places.

What awaited us there was a feast in true Georgian style with the amount of meat and drink far exceeding the stomach capacity of those present - the foreigner brigade was wonderfully hosted and entertained by Tiniko and her friends, although we did protest about not bring anything to the table ourselves. Tiniko eventually relented and guided us to a shop where we picked up sausages and beer, and we wandered back. A cargo train had unfortunately drawn in to block our path and we crawled under it, only to see it pull off 30 seconds later. And this is why I never tell my mother where I am or what I'm doing.

Cole displays the goods...

...and M takes the dive !

The barbecue passed too quickly, which good company and good food (despite Tiniko's predictable claims that the pork was crap) tend to do. The meat was piled high, the wine and the chacha flowed freely. One of Tiniko's friends had won an architecture competition to design a small park in Finland,of all places. The world is small.

A Georgian meal, where ideally, the participants should be dwarfed by what is on the table. Mission accomplished.

The time came to leave far too soon and we caught the last local train back to Tbilisi where we shared the compartment with several million other passengers, passed around one of those 2,5 litre bottles of Natakhtari beer, and were merry. Tiniko was half listening to us and half eavesdropping on a group of girls sitting near to her.

"How I wish I could speak English so that I could communicate with those people !" one of them said.

"Why would you want to communicate with a bunch of drunkards like them ?" asked another. I resisted the temptation to interject that, just because we were sharing one bottle of beer between 6 didn't mean we were drunkards.

"They're not even big travellers !" exclaimed a third. "They're only going from Dzegui to Mtskheta !" I once again resisted the urge to say that we were going all the way to Tbilisi, which was at least 5km further on.

The gang at Dzegui station

And a larger gang on the train

The evening finished in a little shisha bar where we wanted to thank our new friends for their hospitality and attempted to toast in the Georgian way, which means long and rambling with some kind of moral at the end, upon which everyone raises their glasses and drinks. The next person along then has to think of an unrelated long and rambling speech, and so on and so forth. The foreign brigade was inexperienced but it seemed to go down well. A short night (as usual) ensued before we had to get up at the crack of dawn to get to Sighnaghi, in the eastern Kakheti region. Wine country. Yum.

This picture from Tbilisi metro is specially placed here to show how tough the Georgians are. Not only is Tiniko still alive after being placed so close to my shoes, she's also taking it with a smile

Cole, Tako, Tengo and M, the shisha bar gang

He just had to go, and I just had to post the picture.