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| The Caucasus - My Journal |
Wanderings in a Small Town
Batumi -> Kutaisi, 21st August
Georgia is a very laid back nation, life never starts early and always runs late into the night. This isn't really a problem if you're living there, but if you're a tourist trying to get breakfast in the morning, it can be very infuriating! No restaurants or cafes open before 10am, so getting breakfast at a reasonable time before jumping on a morning bus is practically impossible. In the end, I worked out what the Georgians do to overcome this, and I followed suit. Basically, in the morning only small bakeries and very basic worker cafes are open. They only serve a food called Catchapuri, which is a cheese filled pastry that can come in a dozen different forms. It's always a very filling, but greasy and fatty snack. I'm normally a healthy eater, however when there's no choice, you have to go with what you've got!
I'd already found the bus station during my wanders around town, so it was easy to haul myself over there, and conveniently, the first mashrutka (little mini-bus) I passed was going to Kutaisi, my next destination. There was a short delay while we waited for some more passengers to turn up, then we were off to Georgia's other main town. My guide book said the journey would take about 6 hours, so I made myself comfortable for the long and bumpy journey ahead.
In fact, the journey did turn out to be bumpy, but definitely not long. After about 2 and a half hours we pulled up in a busy bus station and everyone jumped off. I was a little unsure about getting off, what if it was only a rest stop? But the driver was waving frantically for me to get off. Still dubious, I asked half a dozen bystanders "Kutaisi?" They all nodded and one guy, assuming I was Turkish, began a long diatribe in Turkish. All I understood was something about hours and costs, but as my expression became blanker and blanker, he eventually stopped talking and wandered off.
I got a taxi to the town centre and used my map to find the homestay I'd be using here. The place, Lia's Homestay, was actually quite famous, even though it's completely unmarked from the outside and only used by budget travellers. Looking for an unmarked gate was easy, most of the gates were unmarked! But I eventually came to a huge pair of intimidating, grey gates which closely matched the description I'd found on the Internet. So, I timidly pushed the huge gates open and wandered up the drive. A young lady was busy washing some clothes and turned to look at me as I tiptoed towards the house. "Lia?", I asked. She nodded and pointed to another small building by the drive way and after shouting a few times, a friendly looking lady, with purple hair appeared...it was Lia. I was in the right place. I dumped my bags in my clean but dark and musty room and set out to find one of the town's three cafes for some lunch.
Kutaisi was a fairly small but busy town. It was easy to navigate around, but there was a lot of hustle and bustle as everyone went about their lives. Just off the main square, I found the small cafe I was looking for and wandered in. As I looked around the room, I saw a guy who was definitely a tourist. He was eating on his own, and a copy of the Lonely Planet guidebook for the region lay facedown on the table top. As tourists had been quite a rarity in these parts, I walked over to him and started chatting, using the fact we were both tourists as the common ground.
He was an interesting guy, an Israeli who'd been hiking in North-East Turkey and in parts of Georgia and like me, he'd just arrived in Kutaisi. Apparently, Israelis really like to visit this part of the world because the hiking is so good and Israelis love to hike! I was surprised they visited Turkey (what with Turkey being a Muslim country and the current Israel-Lebanon conflict) however, he assured it was very common and he'd had little trouble.
I ordered some Kinkhali for lunch, small meat filled soft dough pies which turned out to be very tasty, despite their simplicity and very cheap price. Kinkhali is a Georgian staple food and is easy to find everywhere, so it was essential I tried it at least once!
After we'd finished eating, we set out to explore the town. It's always more fun to have company and as neither of had seen the area yet, it made sense we did it together! For the next few hours, we wandered around almost every square inch of the town and the outlying streets. Immediately outside of the busy town centre are very quiet residential streets that wouldn't look out of place in a sleepy Spanish town. The gentle slopes, looping streets and scattered sights made Kutaisi easy to explore. We visited an ancient church at the top of a hill were even though the roof had collapsed, it was still used for personal, silent worship. We couldn't go in, because we were wearing shorts, but we could peak through the door and the interior was cavernous and in excellent condition for not having had a roof for the past few centuries!
We also wandered past a few derelict synagogues and some very busy churches (Georgians as a people, are very devout Christians and churches can be found in abundance everywhere. Georgians will also cross themselves every time they see or pass a church). We also walked along a huge, behemoth of a dam, obviously constructed during the Communist era, but still functioning to control the level of the river passing through the town.
Apart from wandering around the town, there's very few "tourist sights", so I only spent one day in Kutaisi, having easily seen everything I wanted in one day. The Israeli guy decided to stay in town longer because he wanted a break from travelling and was also keen to find out about a nearby monastery, so in the early evening we said our farewells and went back to our hotels.
My evening was pretty quiet, except for one loud disturbance by some Georgians staying in the homestay who were having some pre-drinks before going out for the night. One of the ladies came by my room and started talking to me in French. The first local in the town I could communicate with! She explained that she studied French at university, but she was probably the only person in town who could speak it, so it wasn't that useful! Nevertheless, she invited me to join her and her friends for some Georgian champagne (actually very good!) and some cake.
I chatted for a while, with her acting as interpreter between me and her friends, however, when I came back from a quick visit to the bathroom, I saw that she and one of the guys were having a pretty serious argument about something (inviting a foreigner to the party?) so I decided to leave them to it and snuck back to my room.
Tomorrow I'm moving onto Tbilisi, the difficult to pronounce Georgian capital!
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To know the road ahead, ask those coming back
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