We got back to Tbilisi from a really great (and very enlightening) trip to Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh! (more on that later) with some delightful epicurean Kiwi baggage we had picked up in Goris (more on him later as well) to apply for our visas at the Russian Interest Section of the Swiss Embassy – located as far away as possible from the Swiss embassy itself:
Kai got to the “embassy” at 8AM with our passports, photos, money and various filled-out forms and triplicates, but then called me to come join him as there were “a lot of children” also waiting and he thought my actual physical presence may be required (it was). We were let in around 11, just to wait another hour inside. After a meeting with the Consul General and several trips back to window #3, we were finally allowed to pay the $190 fees in cash, which was a huge savings over the $1600 we were quoted by some very helpful agencies:
As we were hot, thirsty and frustrated and there was absolutely nothing else of interest (ie. bars) in the self-proclaimed elite hood of Vake, we hightailed it to the nearest Wendy’s around 1:30:
I blew off some steam by kicking Kai’s ass at air hockey with our free Wendy’s “game time” tokens:
And he blew off his steam by beating a child in a dystopic Pac-Man themed version of the aforementioned:
We now had ten days to kill before getting our visas and needed a plan. We wanted to go to Batumi, but the train had already left for the day, so we decided on Borjomi – an almost five hour train ride away. The tickets were suspiciously cheap (70 cents). This is why:
I bought us lunch (a beer and two sweet pretzel thingies) which cost more than the actual tickets. And after spending more money on the train than on the train, two nice girls from Xashuri let us squeeze into their seats with them before they got off.
Funny though: after Xashuri, there were plenty of seats, but people chose to stand to admire and photograph the beautiful (very slowly) passing landscape.
Just before Borjomi, an old man got on and asked us if we needed a place to stay. He was boasting about his eggs and cheese and talked about his chickens. We smelled a good breakfast and agreed. Although he’d lived in Philadelphia for ten years, he spoke little English. The place was so comically dismal, it had exactly the kind of charm we’re always on the look out for. We felt like we were living in long-dead gramma’s 1924 time capsule:
When we asked about breakfast, the man laughed maniacally, so we headed to the amusement park to amuse ourselves with some real life “Angry Birds” and the obligatory taste of the foul-smelling waters the town is so famous for:
The next day, we took a taxi to the sulphur springs that the Romanovs used to favor, having left our bags with a wonderful woman at the top of the hill:
When we got out of the pool, smelling of rotten egg and sweat from the climb back to the top, we went to find the nearest bar, which turned out to be over 5km away and included a shrine to the late Leonid Brezhnev:
A car ride back to the house and it was well-past dark, so we decided to stay with the woman after another guest got us drunk on vodka, beer and chacha and we were plied with food.
Back in Borjomi in the morning, we took a crowded marshrutka to Rabati, breaking all the rules:
To do some Game of Thrones location scouting, before heading down to Vardzia to sleep in the cave monastery:
Which, turns out, is not allowed; so we crashed in a field until it began pouring like the end of days and we ran for cover to the closest outdoor restaurant pavilion with only the intermittent lightning to guide our way. As this was the first rain we’d seen in months, it was fascinating for about five minutes until it became the miserable wet nuisance most people generally associate with a downpour.
We got the first marshrutka outta town the next morning and went back to Xashuri, a pretty horrible non-city, to be immediately pounced upon by taxi drivers as soon as we got off the bus. We got a ride when the rain let up from a really great guy who took us all the way to Batumi:
And set us up at a cheap and awful hostel after prodding us with some wine in the car.
We met my friend, Pete! (which means “drink!” in Russian) the next afternoon. And drink we did! He said it was “tradition” to pound the first ice-cold beer in one swallow and then chase it down with a shot of chacha… and then repeat this process several more times. He then took us up to “Sputnik” a luxury restaurant and hotel at the top of a hill overlooking the city, where we drank some more.
He let us off the hook around 7:30 with promises to meet later. I immediately passed out back at the hostel, only to be awoken by half the neighborhood next my bed screaming at Kai for having borrowed a single clothespin from the next balcony. Then it rained anyway and clothes drying wasn’t gonna happen. I woke up again a few hours later to puke up the entire day’s history.
We slept on the beach the following night, with Kai on a stack of lawn chairs and me on the rocky shore. We switched places in the morning when I got up to smoke and talk to the women cleaning the beach at dawn:
We’re really behind on this blog, so I’ll post this now. We’re back in Anaklia waiting for our Abkhaz clearance letters and haven’t even posted about our first time here yet…
So, I’ll let Kai tell the rest of the story of how we’ve been chasing our tails and running in circles very shortly. As always, thanks for reading! And now a word from our sponsor:
put your money where our mouth is™ 