In the heart of the Caucasus
Just a quick 3:30h flight away from Germany, Georgia can be reached quite easily, but is yet to be discovered by tourism on a larger scale. I have to admit that prior to the visit there, the country - well, the whole region including its neighbors Armenia and Azerbaijan, Russia and Turkey - was a fairly blank piece of paper to me. I only had vague memories of following the Russo-Georgian War in the news back in 2008. While the country looks back at a varied and troubled past, in which it was occupied various times, it has made some great steps forward and expanded its infrastructure in recent years.
From the airport it was only a quick ride to the center of Georgia's capital Tbilisi, where we first headed to the Airbnb apartment we had rented for the first days. The whole communication had taken place through the son of the elderly couple where we ended up staying. He was living in Los Angeles and helped his parents to earn some extra cash by renting out a room in their place. As we found during our stay in the region, it is rather typical that the younger generation speaks English, exemplifying the Western orientation of Georgia itself, while the older generation tends to speak Russian as their second language. This was also the case with the guy's parents, who only spoke Georgian and Russian. I am always surprised how much information you can get across by throwing words from various languages around, using mimics and gestures to highlight the main points. My travel companion Chris usually excels in this discipline, drawing from a whole repertoire of noises to support his communicative efforts, like that sound guy from Police Academy. Our hosts could not have been lovelier though, forcing insane amounts of tea and food into us in a friendly-resolute manner and supporting all our travel plans with multi-language advice.
The apartment was located a brisk 20 minute walk from the center and the high ceilings with stucco were quite pleasant. A little creepy in an adorable way: Our host couple collected little dolls, which were basically everywhere in the apartment. Waking up in the middle of the night and seeing 40 pairs of eyes in the semi-dark was refreshingly unsettling.
Meeting the Master
Whenever our conversations with our host mother reached a point where a particular expression or vocabulary was crucial to the understanding of the story and could not be conveyed through our usual mix of languages or gestures, modern technology had to help out.
One evening, we sat together in the kitchen over some tea and the old Georgian woman tried to explain to us - as we found out later - that she used to be the city champion in cycling. Since we were not able to understand any of her Georgian/Russian sentences and did not recognize the cranking of her arms as "cycling", she led us to the living room, where a desktop PC was waiting for us - with Google Translate on the screen. As anyone familiar with the service can attest, it is a helpful tool, but not exactly perfect. The little lady sat down on the chair, Chris to her left, while I stood to her right. Together we watched her typing her message into the left box on the screen with those beautifully mysterious Georgian letters. She finished with a contended grunt and looked up to both of us in an expectant manner. We leaned in closer to examine the box to the right, where Google told us in English, what our host mother was trying to get across. It said:
"I AM THE MASTER OF SPORTS"
We looked at the words, down to the elderly lady, and back to the screen, looking for some context we might have missed at first glance. Nope. Avoiding eye contact we murmured something like "Ah, okay." It was only later in the week when she showed us her old photo albums with a younger her wearing medals on a bike track that we made the connection.
Football in the rain
Tbilisi is a very diversified city, in which one can see both, the struggle and glory of the past as well as more modern buildings, which show the ambitions of the current government. It used to be a different country: not too long ago, Georgia was a nation riddled by corruption, up until 2003 when the Rose Revolution overthrew the old government and established a pro-Western course. To tackle police corruption, about 16,000 policemen were fired and the newly hired force received a salary ten times higher than before, significantly reducing the lure of bribes. Unemployment went down from 16.9% in 2009 to 12% in 2015, tourism is growing in the double-digits - all this results in a very varied mix of impressions when one walks through the city and the rest of the country.
Tbilisi's cityscape is dominated by the Holy Trinity Cathedral (first pic below), which was only finished in 2004. With 105.5m in height and the golden roof which reflects the sunlight beautifully every evening, it really is a remarkable landmark. A further construction which stands out is the Bridge of Piece, a curvy steel and glass construction in the middle of the city (second and third pic below), which looks somewhat detached from the traditional architecture surrounding it. At night the whole bridge is illuminated with countless LEDs, which adds to the feeling that it is a little out of place there. We felt a little sorry for the architect, though: Due to its particular shape, the bridge is commonly referred to as the "Always Ultra Bridge."
I was born in 1981 and to throw in some football trivia, that's the year in which FC Dinamo Tbilisi, the capital's football club, won the European Cup, beating FC Carl Zeiss Jena of East Germany 2–1 in the final in Düsseldorf. While Dinamo is the most successful football club in Georgia, the glory days are gone today. They still play in the national stadium, which can hold about 55,000 people, but only a fraction of the seats is filled on a regular match day. We wanted to watch a game anyway and walked to the stadium. The huge concrete building holds a bunch of stores where one would usually expect to be able to purchase fan gear like flags, jerseys and the like. Instead, puzzlingly, the shops inside the stadium sell sofas, cupboards and other furniture, as well as washing machines. We joined a group of somewhat hooligan-esque looking fans, who were quite excited to have foreigners join their cause, and watched the game unfold: Dinamo versus FC Dila Gori (Gori, a little North-West of Tbilisi, is the city of Stalin's birth, by the way), the first against the third in the Georgian league table at the time.
The game itself was a tad boring, though, and we wandered off to explore the stadium in the second half. Surprisingly, none of the doors were locked or guarded, so we simply walked in to explore the changing rooms, where all the bottles were still scattered around from the halftime break. We made it to the empty press room, where the interviews would take place after the game. Since we had the whole room - and some pots of coffee - for ourselves, we decided to have a bit of fun and could fulfill our fantasy of giving an interview as the coach of a professional football club.
Things to add:
Tbilisi old town - Right in the heart of the city lies the old town of Tbilisi with a labyrinth of beautiful paths and intricate buildings featuring large wooden balconies to relax on. Definitely worth a visit.
Khachapuri - This traditional Georgian dish is a rich, doughy monster. It kind of looks like an old Egyptian boat on your plate, and contains so much egg and cheese that you should not try to finish one when you intend to move another muscle for the rest of the day. Those things are ridiculously filling.
Georgian cuisine - An overused term of our days is "authentic", and it is attached to every other reality TV star - mostly in a positive tone, as if authentic irrelevance is somehow better than regular irrelevance. I will still use the word to describe the Georgian cuisine, but what I want to convey is that the dishes are not westernized and benefit from the varied ingredients and influences that come with the eventful history of the country. It's rich in flavor, satisfying to look at and leaves your purring at your table while you pour down a last beer to round off the meal. Definitely try Khinkali dumplings and the Chakapuli lamb stew. Also have a go at Churchkhela as a tasty treat in between - a sweet and hearty string of walnuts dipped into concentrated grape juice.
Georgian wine - Georgians are very proud of their wine and its tradition in the region. Occasionally the owner of restaurants we visited came over with a bottle for us to try. "All natural, all natural, no chemistry," he would ensure us. In most cases, it was not that great, though. In some cases, it was positively bad. "In America, people pay $1000 for a bottle of real Georgian wine", we were told. I doubt it, but given the recent election results, who knows what some over there are capable of.
