Day 16 Tblisi. Loud Men, Men Sitting Around, Women Grafting....

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Day 16 Tblisi. Loud Men, Men Sitting Around, Women Grafting....



It’s all very lovely, Tiblisi. Even in the midst of the traffic with a helmet-less guy roaring by on a Harley Davison with decibels beyond the reach of normal human kind.



As always, we walk plenty, taking in the changes for we were here in 2016.



The sun is up, we’ve eaten Eggs Benedict on toasted brioche in the Blue Fox, and all is good.



There’s a wedding on the main boulevard, Rushtavi Street. Kahveti St George Church. Car horns are blaring, with all the young women dressed up in satin almost matching the bride’s beauty and attention to detail. Meanwhile the young men hang about outside the church slugging from zimboom with their bellies out of ill fitting shirts and suits with skinny jackets.

We retreat to the 9th April Gardens lower down, on the slope to the river. The significance of the date is the day of split from the USSR in 1989.



Back to the traffic and past the state theatre, the opera, National Museum.



Inside MOMA, The Museum for Modern Art, we take a further breather. It’s calm. Currently, the entire gallery is devoted to the pictures and bronze sculptures by Tesereteli, Georgian master.

He’s very energetic, both in the quality and vigorous execution of the colourful, expressive canvasses. He uses themes of clowns, circus, animals, and specifically, Charlie Chaplin who he saw in childhood at in silent movies in 1930’s Tblisi.



The sculptures here are big, larger than life-size. Commissions of men. Artists, actors, politicians ........ and a couple of hens. And his catalogue of civic works in Moscow, St Petersburg, the USA is impressive. The monument in Tbilisi’s Freedom

Square (newly shined up with gold foil on a column) is an example.



We make it to the end of Rustavi Street, spot the point where we were picked up for our plane ride to the towers of Mestia in 2016, and return on the other side.

We pass lots of men, sitting around, smoking.

Until crossing the road, where the wedding has moved on, then down through the 9th April Gardens to a second park: Leonidze.

A guy who says he is Ukrainian has been following us and says he needs to look for his embassy on a map. He isn’t content with our paper one. He wants to see a phone. We both see a scam in the making and suggests he talks to a Georgian who lives here, making a fast retreat.



Back on our balcony it’s time for a cup of tea, painting, then a beer apéro followed by some port wine offered by our host........



Evening meal in Pirosmani's dukani ფიროსმანისდუქანიrestaurant, which we spotted earlier. Very traditional, reasonable and it’s a bakery with excellent bread and Khachapuri. The wine is served in a jug and is a bargain.

An entertaining diversity of people are gathered here. A guy with a big nose, loud voice, a bottle of Jack Daniels on the table, and a number of stooges that he nudges and gestures to, as they nod and cope with the amount of alcohol being drunk.

There’s a woman with a three year old boy, both have blond hair. We reckon the man with them is not the Dad and he’s barely coping with having to share the woman with her child. There’s a further group of younger men in the corner who all stand up to make a toast. Meanwhile, the Turn sings passionately, accompanied by a midi keyboard sound track on his laptop before rejoining the Jack Daniels man.

The manager, a skinny tired looking chap, comes sporadically to sit with JDMan too, but is not happy ........ until a woman in green turns up who chats to him and gets him smiling.

The whole place is expertly choreographed by three hard working women in black and white who could be sisters. They giggle together, may be about the scenarios I’ve hinted at, certainly the men standing for toast

Outside men sit around, smoking. Are they all taxi drivers looking for custom? Or is that what men do here?

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