Tbilisi from the travelers perspective

October 20 2011

For the past couple of days the weather has turned blustery with lots of wind and occasional rain and cold. We had to shut the window in our bathroom due to the cold but discovered nothing gets dry in there with no air circulation. We wash out our socks, underwear and handkerchiefs daily and have a small clothes line that we use for our hand washing when we travel. So today I climbed back on top of the tub edges to open the transom over the window so our items didn’t mildew. 

Today I met three friends: Nino, our former housekeeper, met me for coffee, Maia, our artist friend, met both of us for lunch at one of our favorite restaurants Pur Pur and I met Satvir, a young man from India whom we befriended through our favorite Indian restaurant. Pur Pur is owned by an artist (metal worker) and has a rather unusual yet creative décor and a great menu. We always meet with Maia there as it is close to her apartment. It was great to see each of our friends and find out how they were doing. 

Ron has been busy at work and that makes him happy. His last job here was boring by comparison. He will be training people in local government on a number of topics but this week his proposed schedule has change literally everyday. We hope to get a firm schedule by next week so we can plan accordingly. Ron will travel to at least one location outside of Tbilisi to do the training and hopefully I will be able to join him. 

Last night we went to Little India, our favorite Indian restaurant. After we came out we were waiting for a taxi and I watched three different people back up though a cross street. It was dark and a very stupid and dangerous move but so very Georgian. Needless to say I still find myself muttering under my breath about the bad driving here. When I got home I discovered we had heat from the radiators in our room. No more worry about getting our hand washing dry.

October 22, 2011

The weather has turned back to Indian summer here and it is delightful. Yesterday I got a manicure and went to the laundry on the metro to pick up our clothes. They weren’t ready so this will require another trip across town on the metro. I walked so much yesterday while on errands and meeting Ron for lunch that everything hurt: my feet, my back and my hips. Good lord, getting old is not for sissies!  I came back to the room and rested, took an ibuprofen and a very hot soaking bath. Later we went out to dinner but eating in restaurants is beginning to catch up with us so we had soup and a light green salad and bread at our fave Italian place. I loved going out to eat but three times a day gets old rather quickly. I am grateful that the food at our hotel is good. Many places that include breakfast serve a poor meal, high in carbs and low in quality. The Betsy has a great buffet with eggs to order any style. The fruit is fresh daily. All the bread products are fresh as well. They do not serve lunch although there is a small coffee shop run by another company within the hotel. They have a limited lunch menu and espresso drinks. Dinner here is good but expensive so we often go out for dinner. 

Today Ron is working (it is Saturday). He got his travel schedule. This week he will go to Batumi on the Black Sea coast for three days to do some training. I will check out of the Betsy and stay with Kirsten and her son (and Ron’s nose brother) Aquil, friends from the US embassy while Ron is gone. Then Ron will be in TBS doing more training for a week. Then we will go back to Batumi and stay there for two full weeks while he does more training. I will go with him then. There is little to do in Batumi so I decided to stay in TBS for the first trip but go with him for the longer trip as neither of us likes to be separated for long periods. After 26 years we are rather fond of one another! 

Yesterday I did a little shopping looking for bar soap and hand cream without perfume. Since 85% of the products in the grocery stores are imported from Russia, Turkey and Germany, I can’t read the labels. I asked a clerk who showed me what to buy. She got it half right. I have soap without perfume and hand cream with perfume. Yuck! 

Today when Ron is finished with his work we will walk down the hill and over to the dry bridge area where there is a daily flea market. We only bought one thing there in the time we lived here, a hammered copper pot. But we love to go look, seeking treasure. There is everything from war metals, old coins, used dishes, antiques and junk, particularly a glut of jewelry that looks like it is plastic imitating amber and the like. Some of the cut glass and china is lovely but ornate and not our style. 

October 24, 2011

Bidzina Ivanishvili is a Georgian billionaire (worth $5 billion ) who recently announced his intention to enter politics. He made his money in Russia when the USSR collapsed. He currently lives in Tbilisi. As soon as he announced his intentions strange coincidences occurred. First his citizenship was revoked because he also holds a Russian and French passport, i.e. citizenship. Georgia apparently doesn’t allow for dual citizenship. Funny that it just now became as issue as he has lived here for a while. Next the government seized a vehicle that was transferring large amounts of cash from a bank to his bank, claiming that money was being laundered. In fact it is a common practice for banks to transfer large amounts of cash back and forth. But they arrested the employees in the vehicle and seized the cash ($2 million dollars and 1 million EUROS). It is evident that the current administration is anxious about his intentions to seek the PM position which the current president is considering so he can run for president again. Gee this sounds vaguely familiar ala Putin. 

More news from Georgia. It was reported today that 11 out of 20 meat samples taken in supermarkets in Tbilisi and Kutaisi, the second largest city in GA were tainted with a bacteria. No wonder my friend Steph who lives here gets food poisoning frequently. We rarely cooked with meat when we lived here and normally we dined in finer restaurants so didn’t get sick. OY!

Back in Tbilisi

Oct 13 2011

Ron and I left for the airport on Monday Oct 10^th to fly to Tbilisi. When we arrived we discovered that our plane would be late due to bad weather in San Francisco. To make a long story short, we could not make our connection in SF for Munich so we came back home and caught the flights the following day, Tuesday the 11^th.  I had completely emptied the refrigerator before leaving since we are to be gone for almost two months. So we had nothing to eat. We dined out for dinner, breakfast and ate lunch at the airport the following day.  

We caught a 1:00 p.m. flight to SF, had a six hour layover, then caught a flight to Munich and had another five hour layover before flying into Tbilisi. We spent 30 hours in transit, arriving at our hotel at 5:00 a.m. on Thursday. Our former driver, Gia, offered to pick us up at the airport. It was wonderful to see his smiling face when we emerged from collecting some of our luggage. One bag didn’t make it. We managed to sleep for a couple of hours then got up and had breakfast. We are in the older part of the Betsy Hotel. The two previous stays were in the newer section. We have a pleasant room with one wall of windows overlooking the city. We have a bathtub/shower which is not available in the newer section. I love taking a bath so was excited to see one in our room. My joy was short lived however. I discovered that the plumber who installed it was a knucklehead. He put the faucet at the end of the tub where your back rests, the slanted end of the tub. So it is impossible to lean back while the water is filling the tub. If you turn the water off and scoot down under the faucet you can relax but you have to be careful not to bump your head when you sit up. How do I know this? I bumped my head and manoschevitz it hurts. The other wend of the tub is narrow as your feet don’t need the width and there is a knob in the tub at that end that you turn to close the plug so it was impossible to use that end for my back. It also is not slanted but straight up and down.

Ah Georgia! 

After breakfast I walked with Ron to his office to see where he worked. It is close by, maybe 15 minutes by foot. Our friend James Wall got Ron and me to start walking for exercise when he visited us this summer and I truly hope to walk all over Tbilisi this trip as we will not have a driver as we did before. Luckily the Betsy is located near downtown, high on a hill overlooking the city. I can walk to the main drag easily and also to the metro. It is a steep climb coming back up the hill but it is all good exercise. 

October 15, 2011

We are sleeping quite well for the most part. I did wake up at 4:00 this morning but was able to get back to sleep around 6:00 and slept until almost 9:00. The weather was beautiful yesterday and today. Sunny but not too hot. Since we didn’t bring hot weather clothes I am grateful. We have made connection with many friends already. Yesterday while Ron was working I had lunch and ran errands with my dear friend Steph from Minnesota. Last night we had dinner with 13 people we had met through IWA when we were living here. Today, Saturday we had lunch  with Lily, her four year old daughter Adey and her nanny Fantanesh. All three are from Ethiopia but Lily has lived in the US for many years and works here for the World Bank. We met over a year ago and became fast friends. Tonight we will eat at the hotel.  

Ron and I are walking a lot. One of my goals is to do a lot of walking for the time we are here and hopefully be more fit by the time we leave in December. Yesterday we tried to find a better path for Ron to walk to work. We walked for 45 minutes and ended up going to the Radisson for a decent cup of coffee before coming home. Yesterday afternoon we tried to find a gallery that we like here that had moved to our current neighborhood so we walked another 45 minutes. Later we walked to dinner, a 20 minute walk. Yeah!