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Published: September 24th 2023
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Day 18 Tblisi, Georgia. Art Nouveau, Flea Market and Sports Fest
In Santiago, Chile, we took our first ever ride on an open-topped tourist bus. It felt like a bit of a sell out, we don’t normally sign up for guided tours. But it gave us a new insight to areas of the city we had not explored and turned out to be a good idea.
In Tblisi there are two red bus firms touting for trade. The buses are nearly identical, they share the same route and stops but are different operations. Unknowingly, we opt for one that says ‘Worldwide Sightseeing’ and are told to wait for the next bus to arrive. We don’t understand why the one saying ‘Georgia Sightseeing’ can’t be used, it’s nigh ready to depart. We gradually work out the system and soon our very similar red bus arrives.
We find three new spots, previously unknown to us.
1 The Heroes Monument, a tall shard-like column on a roundabout hub that looks like a giant, but skinny, matchstick bundle. It is 51 m high, with 16 marble faces, with the names of more than
4,000 Georgian victims: students who died in the fight against the Red Army n 1921, leaders of the anti-Soviet counterinsurgency in 1924 and the dead of the 5-day Abkhaz war in 1992/3.
2 The stately Aghmashenebeli Avenue, a German built area at the turn of 19C/20C and featuring a number of Art Nouveau influences. It is tree-lined, is straight and well proportioned without being on the same grand scale as Rustavelli.
The Apollo Cinema is at the western end. Closed (and up for sale), it features a dome on a corner site. It said to be designed by an unknown Russian architect and Czech builders who provided the rather Classical stucco work on a somewhat Art Deco overall design, I think, rather than A Nouveau.
There is a building designed by German architect, Paul Sten, with beautiful window detail incorporating stars of David and pastel painted designs on a terracotta painted render.
There are a pair of Hermes characters holding up one doorway on a part renovated building in a very Moscow Art Nouveau style.
And so many other details on other buildings that reflect the era of Art Nouveau without the asymmetry and flow
of eg. the Scandinavian designs we’ve seen.
3 The Flea Market on The Dry Bridge. I spot a secondhand trombone from the top deck of the bus in this market of bric a brac and newly handcrafted wares. Down on the ground the instrument looks okay ......... some work on the bell needed ........ but the seller wants 150$ for it. I couldn’t fit it on the plane anyway. There was also a clarinet, a fiddle, some new sazs and a miniature kid’s guitar. Walk away from them, Ken.
Marion buys from one of a number of felt-makers stalls. A pair of cute mice for the grandbairns and a scarf/hanging where bold designs are made by threading felt strands through fine black gauze, a technique I have never seen elsewhere.
Past a group of Capoieraistas with berimbau and pandeiro players we enter Dedaena Park where a Sports Fest bonanza is underway. A large crowd is singing the national anthem along with their national rugby team (on a TV relay screen) who are just starting a match with Portugal (final score 18:18).
Tots to teens (and older) are scooting, skate boarding, and cycling around an undulating skate
park. A dance school of 7-9 year old girls with hair scraped back in buns wearing yellow leotards and black leggings put on a display of the splits that makes the eyes water. There are table tennis players on a four way circular table, a three way table and a football version of the same. People try out snow boarding moves on grass, canoe paddling techniques on a rowing machine. Basket ball nets are set up in rows.
We walk east past the White Pancakes Services building and eventually find a way to cross the river to get back to base.
Painting, beer and crisps.
Evening meal in Pirosmani’s Dukani* sister restaurant to where we ate two days ago. Fiercely garlicky eggplant salad, bread, mushrooms in cheese, a sausage that was full of all the chitterlings that go into a French andouilette, but peppery and tasty (as opposed to the overly piggy French version). Red wine and a singer with a PA too loud and reverb-y for a small restaurant.
Excellent.
*Pirosmani was an animalistic painter whose paintings of donkeys and cows are spread around the walls
of the restaurant. The bill is presented on a mini artist’s palette. Dukani is a tavern
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