Tbilisi: A First Look

I wake up feeling still wired up, not tired and not rested. After taking a significant amount of time to shower and get dressed, I decide that Anthony is a nice enough guy to present him with the bottle of single malt I had purchased in Munich. He is visibly surprised and pleased, so my idea turns out to be a great ice breaker. We chat about random things, and in the process I find some facts about him. Born and raised in New York, he taught English in the Bronx for a while until he got fed up with it and decided to embark on an adventure. He somehow ended up in Georgia, got married and had a baby 2 months ago. He is the editor of a weekly English-language magazine and works part-time for the Ministry of Education.

Less than one hour after waking up, I was already armed with a map of Tbilisi and a Georgian SIM card (Magti GSM), the number of which I still don’t know. I called Khatuna (Vaida’s former housemate and best friend), who promised to take me to a ‘new place, very upscale and with a great view.’ There I am supposed to have some Georgian wine. More about that later.

I get out of the apartment with Anthony, who shows me around a bit. This is my first encounter with Tbilisi.

Tbilisi is spread along the valley of a river (need to remember the name), in between green hills. The location is quite charming. The city itself looks quite run-down in certain areas, with potholed streets, the standard decrepit communist blocks (Georgians call them Kruschchovi, or something like that, after the Soviet leader during the time of which they were built) abound in the outer areas. Yet the wide tree-lined boulevards with smart shops and the architecture downtown remind me that the city has seen much better times.

Overall, what I saw was roughly what I had expected. Tbilisi looks a lot like Bucharest in the late 1990s, in terms of its development level. New buildings, hotels and residential areas start to pop here in there, a sign that Tbilisi is going through an incipient boom. Walking along a boulevard of Tbilisi makes me think of towns in Romania – Constanta maybe? Yet some of the architecture looks quite unique – some influences look Eastern, but yet again what does that mean? Obviously there is something about this place. Yes, it feels “Eastern European.” And it also feels post-Soviet . But there is also something else to it, something I cannot quite pinpoint. My job here during the next few weeks will literally be to identify that “something.” In other words, what makes Georgia Georgian. If I can manage that, my job is mostly done.

Good sign: Shawerma kiosks seem to be everywhere. The guy who sold mine was from Baku, looked friendly and had a big moustache. I thanked him in Turkish, while Anthony was trying to talk to him in broken Russian. I wonder if not speaking either Georgian or Russian is going to be a problem. So far, I can’t really understand anybody and hardly anyone can understand what I am saying. Yet things somehow seem to be happening. People accept my cash and give me what I ask for in return. A mixture of sign-language and English words seem to be fine for now. In the next few days I will analyze the possibility of learning the Georgian alphabet. They have 33 symbols, which apparently more or less correspond to the general idea of letters as we understand them. As long as I memorize them I can read stuff and that should make it much easier to get around.

The people here seem quite friendly, approach me with a mixture of surprise and curiosity. They seem to immediately notice I am foreign (I wonder what gives me away), yet so far none of them intended to rip me off. On the way back home I asked the cab driver for the price, and he showed me three fingers. By the way, I need to remember the word ‘skolko’ – I think it means ‘how much’ in Russian. It could be essential vocabulary.