Georgia on my mind – part one

Georgia on my mind. Great song and undoubtedly a place worth visiting, yes, but this blog entry is not about the US State – it is a whole different Georgia I have on my mind. My Georgia is the fantastic little country nestled in between the peaks of the Caucasus mountains somewhere in the borderline between Europe and Asia. We had the privilege to pay a short visit to this country of amazing landscapes, mind-bogglingly rich history and mouth-watering cuisine in late 2015, and the warm Georgian memories have prevailed ever since.

We were looking for a destination to make the best possible use of our early November mini-holiday, and after trying and failing to find a satisfactory schedule and price for more conventional European destinations such as Portugal, Netherlands and Croatia, I ran into an airline ad about flights to Tbilisi, Georgia. Thanks to web-cookies for that, turns out they actually can – occasionally – be useful. Too bad for the advertiser Ukrainian International Airlines, but we ended up booking the flights from Turkish Airlines due to more convenient schedule...

 I had just a few weeks earlier seen a Finnish travel show where the actor Ville Haapasalo travels in Georgia and had been impressed about this small nation that has mostly made headlines as a stage of war since the break-up of Soviet Union. We sat down with O and said “I’ve never heard of anyone making a spur-of-the-moment long weekend trip to Georgia. Sounds like something we gotta do!”

We booked the flights, and a few weeks later we descended upon Tbilisi together with the golden sun setting behind the peaks of the Lesser Caucasus mountain range. We took a slow, low-key train directly from the airport to the city – a convenient connection and a hands-on inauguration to the authentic Georgia with local commuters and other daily travellers, but only if you happen to land exactly at the right time, since the train only runs a couple of times a day. Certainly there are also taxis and buses readily available in case your flight does not coincide with the little train.

Georgian letters on a Coke bottle

After finding our way to the hotel, we took the underground to the city centre to have a first glimpses of Tbilisi in its Friday-night mood and have a bite to eat. The underground in Tbilisi works very well and is a convenient and cheap way to move around as long as your destination is close enough to a station. A definite bonus for a foreign traveller is, that the signs and directions are written in both Georgian and English, unlike in the buses, where only Georgian is used. This can be a major issue, since Georgian is a Kartvelian language that has its own writing system in which even the name of the language looks like this: ქართული ენა. I had tried to study the Georgian alphabet for a couple of hours on the way, but I can tell you that it was not quite enough to master it.

Narikala fortress seen from a bridge over Mtkvari

Already during our first night in Tbilisi we started to get a feeling we had come to the right place: the grand architecture of the Rustaveli Avenue, the winding alleys of the Old Tbilisi, the ancient Mtkvari river slowly winding through the city in the bed it has cut through the rock over centuries, the beautifully lit Narikhala fortress sprawling  on the hills next to the magnificent  Mother of Georgia statue (Kartvlis Deda) standing guard over its children and welcoming friendly visitors with a bowl of wine in her left hand while the right hand holds an unsheathed sword ready to fight those who are foolish enough to brand themselves as enemies of the Georgian nation.

We certainly did not want any enmity with this country and its friendly people, so we opted for the wine and our first taste of the Georgian cuisine – famously delicious among all those who know about it. On this first night we had a very pleasant encounter with one of the national dishes of the country: a cheese-filled egg-topped bowl of bread known as Khachapuri. Khachapuris come in slightly different versions in different parts of Georgia, but all versions we tried were really tasty and absolutely worth trying. I do strongly recommend it to everybody (unless you are a vegan or allergic to milk, eggs or wheat, of course).

Traditional Khachapuri and a cool Georgian beer

With full stomachs and blissful smile on our faces we headed back to the upscale Holiday Inn we had chosen for the first night of our Georgian adventure. A good rest was needed, because early next morning we were to board a train that would take us through the mountains, pine forests, pastures, fruit groves and vineyards through the the entire east-west span of the country to the old Soviet Riviera, the Black Sea resort and port city Batumi. At least we hoped the tickets we had bought upon arrival to Tbilisi would be good for the journey, since the purchase operation had been a bit of a hassle and scramble over the language barrier and the characters on the tickets we were given were all Georgian to us...

I.