A tiny slice of paradise


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Asia » Georgia » Tbilisi District
October 24th 2011
Published: November 21st 2011
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On Friday morning I pack my bag and go to school with no clear idea of what I’m doing for the weekend. The kids keep giving me food they’ve bought from the little tuck shop, which is sweet but I don’t know what to do with it all. I really need to go to Tbilisi but I know the others have their hearts set on Batumi so I’ll probably end up following them there. Eka asks me if I’ll be back on Sunday or Monday which I take to mean that it’s ok for me to stay away until Monday and I say I’ll text her and let her know. I head straight into Zugdidi after school and wait to receive instructions from Ara. A couple of days earlier I’d received an email from the TLG team about a Halloween party that’s happening at a new American bar in Zugdidi next weekend and, whilst I think there’s something slightly perverse about coming all the way to Georgia to sit in an American bar, I want to see what it’s like. To be honest I just think it might be nice to sit somewhere and have a beer without being stared at. The bar’s quiet and I sit in the window watching the world go by and drinking a beer whilst I wait for somebody to call me to tell me what I’m doing for the weekend. I’m not normally such a sheep but the others are all together so I know they will make a decision and I will end up going along with it. I’ve spoken to Jane who happened to be with Ally and they’re waiting for Ara to finish school to make some sort of plan. The vague idea is that Jane will stay at Rachel’s in Guria, Ara will stay at Clare’s in Kobuleti and we will all meet in Batumi the following morning. Ally is set on saving money and staying at home until it’s time to go to Batumi. I’m still waiting to hear back from Clare about whether or not it’s ok for me to also stay at hers and by the time I do I’ve already had two beers and am watching X-Factor with the bar staff. Another ten minutes and I’m sure I wouldn’t have left. I agree to meet Ara in Kobuleti and stagger off to the bus station, only to find there are no direct marshrutkas and I have to go via Samtredia. Whatever. By now I’m fairly used to just getting on marshrutkas and hoping for the best. I’ve lost my guide book with the map so I have no idea how much of a roundabout trip I’m taking but I do know I live about an hour and a half tops from Kobuleti and it takes me about four hours to get there. I get told, not unkindly, to get off in Samtredia, ask somebody on the side of the road about a marshrutka to Kobuleti and I am finally deposited beside the bazaar, congratulating myself on another successful journey, the majority of which was spent having no idea what was going on or even if I was going in the right direction. I find Ara, Ally and Jane all waiting for me in Kobuleti – so much for meeting up the following day! Apparently there were no marshrutkas going to Rachel’s and who knows what Ally’s reasoning was. It seems no matter what alternative plans we make, we always end up gravitating back towards each other. What I do know is that we’re all staying at Clare’s and we’re all late for dinner so we grab a cab (that makes it sound like such a simple process. We never just grab a cab. It always involves at least 15 minutes of Ara haggling with the driver). Clare’s place is even more rural than mine. She lives in a big old house in the countryside and we get there to find dinner on the table. I’m still in my work clothes so I throw on some jeans and I am immediately given a pair of slippers to wear. I think it may actually be illegal to walk around in your socks in Georgia. Some of the neighbours are round so we eat and drink wine and chat as best we can. The Georgians favour us with some beautiful Georgian singing and Clare and Jane reciprocate with a truly painful rendition of the American national anthem. The atmosphere drops so palpably at his stage that Ally and I feel the need to sneak outside where we chat to one of the neighbours for a time. Fortunately when we return the atmosphere has improved somewhat. There’s dancing and more wine and then everybody departs to various corners of the house to sleep. I would truly love for the others to be able to come and visit me at some point. I really want to show them where I live and introduce them to my family, but there’s just no room. So far I’ve stayed at Ara’s and Clare’s and both their places are huge. Clare’s bedroom is about half the size of our house. I wonder how many people I could squeeze into my tiny little bedroom?! The next morning we’re up early for the bus to Batumi. Clare makes pancakes with maple syrup she brought with her but her host mum has also made khachapuri so I eat far too much. Afterwards Jane and I try to help clean up but Clare’s host mum just laughs at us. We realise we need to dry the dishes and put them away before we can wash up the dirty ones but we can’t for the life of us work out where they go. In the end we give up and are shoed away. We arrive at the ‘main road’ just in time to catch the marshrutka and settle in for a bumpy ride to Batumi. At one point there’s a loud bang from the back of the bus (not a rare occurrence) and Ara screams like a little girl, the clear highlight of our otherwise uneventful journey. Having said that, the scenery between Kobuleti and Batumi is stunning.
We arrive safely in Batumi and manage, more by accident than design, to meet up with some other volunteers from our intake. We’ve been really lucky with the weather – after a cold and rainy week it’s finally sunny again so we’re keen to dump our stuff and get to the beach. We meet up with Sean who actually lives in Batumi and he quickly becomes our tour guide. Only he’s shit at it. We wander round for ages before he admits he can’t remember where the nice cheap hotel is that other volunteers have been staying in on their visits. No matter, it gives us the opportunity to see the city. It’s a strange place. I was exaggerating in the title of this post – I just wanted to use my little rhyme! I’m not even entirely sure how I feel about Batumi. It’s Georgia’s one ‘seaside resort’ and has been forever but there’s a lot of work going on to modernise it – another step in the president’s master plan to modernise Georgia and turn it into a tourist destination. We actually saw benches being put in along the promenade and trees being planted while we were there. Batumi actually has some very beautiful architecture, but it’s kind of a mish mash of styles and nothing really matches. Plus, there’s nothing there. When I told Ara I wanted to go to Tbilisi because I needed to buy a cd player and a new lip ring his response was ‘Don’t worry, Batumi’s a big city, anything you can find in Tbilisi you’ll be able to find there.’ Not so. There are any number of high end clothing shops but that’s literally it. I couldn’t even find a camera. Anyway, I think the problem with Batumi is that, intentionally or otherwise, it kind of feels like the Benidorm of Georgia. People who at all other times are sensible, conscientious human beings come to Batumi and all of a sudden it’s like Brits abroad. There’s just something about the place that makes you lose many of the inhibitions that you didn’t even realise you’d developed in Georgia, due to the desire and pressure to confirm to their cultural and social etiquette. Or that’s how it felt to me anyway.
After 20 minutes or so of Ara trying to haggle with a woman called Madonna who he met in a church (don’t ask) for us to stay at her place we gave up and eventually found the hotel. More haggling ensued. Now, it’s not that I’m made of money or anything and I am grateful to Ara for handling things but at the same time he’s haggling over something like 50p per person and I just want to get out. Eventually things are settled and he gets us a good price for three rooms for nine or ten of us and finally we’re on our way to the peer. Sean warns us that it’s a long way but I really want to walk so we stroll for nearly an hour along the promenade which is very clean and very modern with some awful new restaurant/bar/shops sprouting up in places. The beach at Batumi is stony but the sea is beautiful and it’s just nice to be near the water. About half way along we see this crazy building, completely covered in mosaic so Ally and I go to check it out. Big mistake. It stank like a urinal. We weren’t exactly planning on spending much time there anyway but then a massive rat scuttled past and that was the end of that little adventure. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant called The Tower which looked like a giant helter skelter and Ally and I decided to climb to the top of the tower. There were some amazing views from the top. Unfortunately one of them was of two soldiers holding machine guns who told us in no uncertain terms that we couldn’t be up there! Eventually we reached our destination – the peer. Liam was there with some other volunteers. He also lives in Batumi so jumping off the peer was hardly a new experience for him but it took a little while to coax the rest of us in. It was worth it though – bloody freezing but it felt great to be in the water. The cold water made us decide that vodka was a good idea so we did a shop run and ending up drinking shots with the fishermen on the peer. I’d also bought some gherkins from the shop cos I had a craving for them which resulted in me playing gherkin baseball with Liam’s little host brother using an empty vodka bottle. Before we left one of the fishermen decided to give me a little fish, which he then told me to throw back. I decided to tell myself that I saw it swim away but given I then had to wash fish blood and guts off my hand I think I may be deluding myself. We headed back to the hotel to shower and change, pausing on the way to watch the sun set over the sea, before heading out on the town. Ally and I eat kebabs and drink vodka at a little table on the pavement while we wait for the others to catch up. We’d arranged to meet Liam and everyone else in a place called Vinyl Bar, which is apparently where the expats hang out. It sounded awful but I was assured it was just a starting point. It was ok actually, until the bill arrived. I’d offered to take care of it before I realised they had charged us 12 Lari for a carton of fruit juice! (To put that in context the litre of vodka was 25 Lari and even that’s expensive for Georgia.) After this the night descends into, well, into a typical night out I suppose. We went in search of an English Pub and eventually found it only to realise it was far too expensive. The boys found two lampposts next to each other and decided to race to see who could reach the top first while I try to pretend I’m not with them. We came across a Georgian fundraising event in the street – one of their friends is a contestant on Georgian X-Factor so they were trying to raise money to send them to the finals. Ally and I dance to Twist and Shout on the street and I give them all my change. Eventually we end up in the Radisson Hotel. I don’t even know how expensive the drinks were because I didn’t have one. We were there for the views. It’s the tallest building in Batumi and the bar takes up the top floor. The views really are breath taking, especially, oddly enough, from the bathroom. We hit one more bar where we sit around telling terrible jokes before heading back to the hotel where we proceed to sit up for most of the night talking and drinking.
The next morning I am hung over and grumpy. The others have gone out early and it takes me forever to find them. I am hot and irritable and in need of a drink. Eventually I find Ally and we walk to the front to have ‘breakfast’. I have no idea what I’m ordering but I end up with a jacket potato the size of my head with about 100 different toppings on it. It was weird to say the least. Fortunately I know how to order beer in almost any language. We go back to the peer to meet Liam and the boys jump off and go swimming but I’m not in the mood. We get a bus back to the centre to meet the others. Or that’s what we think we’re doing anyway. Liam puts us on the wrong bus and we get to see some truly horrible parts of town and drive down some breathtakingly bad roads. This is not what I need at this stage. We eventually find the others and decide it’s time to head home, although this in itself takes forever. Basically marshrutkas will not leave until they’re pretty much full, cos it’s just not worth their while otherwise. So we sit and sit and sit. I’m not really thinking straight and I decide to head back to Kutaisi with the others, even though I don’t live there and they’re all getting off in Terjola anyway. I get it into my head that I really just want some alone time. I love my host family and they’re great but I never get to fully relax. I want to sit around in my underwear and drink beer, throw all my clothes on the floor and watch TV at full volume. A hotel is the only thing for it. I know it’s decadent and wasteful but I also know that, just for one night, it will make me very happy. Unfortunately I can’t persuade any of the others to come with me cos they all have school the next day. I also realise that I should have gone straight back to Zugdidi because, if I’m going to be wondering round a city on my own at night, I’d rather it was one I know. Ally offers to let me stay at his but I know this will involve conversing with his host family and this completely defies the point of being alone. Luckily there is a woman on the marshrutka who speaks fluent English (she works for the UNMM). This is something we now routinely check when we get on a bus – the number of times we’ve been having massively inappropriate conversations in English only to find out later that someone on the bus studied at Cambridge or something is ridiculous. Anyway, she assures me that marshrutkas run between Kutaisi and Zugdidi well into the night. So I say goodbye to the others at Kutaisi, confident of my plans. I’m actually in a good mood, despite the hangover. I’m excited about the night ahead and a random policeman stops me on the street to give me a piece of fruit (is it ok to take candy from strangers if they’re in police uniform?) Anyway, I go to the place where the marshrutkas normally depart from and it’s deserted. The only people I can see are a couple of guys and an old lady packing up a stall so I go up to them and pull out my best Georgian: ‘Bodishi. marshrutka Zugdidishi?’ Literally, ‘Sorry. marshrutka to Zugdidi?’ They say something to me in Georgian to which I respond, ‘Bodishi, ar mesmis.’ – ‘Sorry, I don’t understand.’ I say this a lot in Georgia. The old lady then proceeds to take me by the wrist and lead me down the road, like some naughty school girl, to where the taxis are. It was so humiliating, but quite funny at the same time. I think everybody was laughing at me. Anyway, according to the taxi drivers there are no marshrutkas to Zugdidi (thanks UNMM lady) but one of them offers to take me in his cab for 20 Lari. This is stupidly cheap and I don’t have much choice so I agree. It’s actually a small price to pay to not be stuck on a marshrutka for another two hours with a hangover. I text the others and let them know I’m on my way home and immediately get a worried phone call from Ara. He makes the very good point that 20 Lari is far too cheap to go from Kutaisi to Zugdidi and that I’m probably going to get raped and killed. Thinking off the top of my head I tell him I’m not an idiot and that at least ten people saw me get in the cab with him but in actual fact I hadn’t even considered the safety side of it which really does make me an idiot. Anyway, I promise to text Ara every ten minutes until I get back. The taxi driver actually turns out to be a little bit creepy but nothing I can’t handle. He asks if I’m married and I say yes and we chat for a little while. Then he says he’s going to stop so that I can get in the front but I improvise and tell him I get sick if I sit in the front seat. Then we pick up another guy waiting on the side of the road. I’m not thrilled about this but at the same time I figure that, unless they spontaneously through the course of their conversation discover that they’re both murdering rapists then I’m probably safer with someone else in the car. Either way, I get to Zugdidi without incident. All the way there I keep thinking I must have misunderstood the price we’d agreed on but no, he charges me 20 Lari so I’m happy. Now there aren’t many hotels in Zugdidi and there definitely aren’t any good ones. The one I pick is pretty grotty but it has hot water, a fridge and a comfortable bed so I’m happy. I arm myself with beer and food and pass a blissful night in front of the TV. I have three hot showers in the space of eight hours.



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