Wednesday, May 22 - Day 2
As I was not biking this day, I thought some exercise would not hurt, so I went for a nice long morning jog, combined with sight-seeing. It took me two hours or so in a very comfortable pace, the town was still quite asleep. I got to another orthodox church, where I chatted with a priest, he did not speak English, but his shy young son did, who happened to work for an IT company, if I recall, he mentioned Apple.
Getting back to the town center, I got to the central market, which had definitely more sellers than buyers.
Outside the market, I bought some cheese from a farmer, who had quite happy with the deal (I must have overpaid, but so what), he bid farewell with a cheerfully screamed "zdorovye!" or "cheers!" in Russian. Georgia used to be part of the Soviet Union and Russian is still the "lingue franca". Young people do understand English quite well, but, similar to other places in Eastern Europe, the older people are not language experts, except for the language of their former rulers.
I returned to my hotel and was pretty much done with Kutaisi. Florian recommended some hikes close-by to town, but I thought I would rather make it over to Tbilisi, where I was supposed to meet Florian the following afternoon - with the plan of taking a train to Yerevan, the capital of Armeina, in the evening.
Within Georgia itself, except for a couple of train lines, the fastest and cheapest way to get around is by "marshutka". These are private mini-buses that run on a certain route, with people getting on or off at quite random places - you can flag these down wherever they run and just have to talk to the driver where you want to disembark. For locals, it is a well-known fact where these start from and arrive to, at what intervals, and for what prices. Money is exchanged just by passing it from one passenger to the other; if you are in the back, you just ask your fellow travelers to pass the cash to the front seat. At the bus terminals, there seems to be quite a competition, one marshutka driver trying to outshout the other.
The marshutka stop in Kutaisi was quite far from my hotel, so I took a local bus, where a young girl helped me buy a ticket (it was very easy, you just have to hold your credit card to a machine) and she also told me where to get off. I saw a funny scene in the bus. An old lady boarded, a young girl of about 6 years gave her the seat, which she readily took. The young girl got a kiss on her head following this - no social distancing, as it seems.
Having arrived at the station (to which the ride cost me 30 cents), it was now time to find the next marshutka for Tbilisi. Here there was an actual ticket counter and I paid like €6 for the 200 km-ride - sure not cheap when you live off on Georgian wages, but rather inexpensive by EU standards. I have long legs and was actually happy there would be a 40-minute wait-time, as I could now chose and pick a seat and I opted for the seat next to the driver and reserved it with a bag, looking ahead to a comfortable ride. To kill time, I did a bit of people-watching.
The bus filled up gradually, when a guy came up and told him he wanted to get in where I was sitting. I protested, when he showed the internationally-recognized sing of "3", meaning three people would be sitting up front. Memories of my flight the previous day got vibrant and yes, my seat 1C had suddenly got a person next to it, sitting on 1B.
Anyhow, somewhat cramped and pretty much on time, around 2 pm, we left Kutaisi, riding on up on a mountain road. For a while, we rode on a highway, but it ended - the road was being constructed. Having lived in Pakistan for six years and travelled to many exotic counties, nothing really surprises me, but here I thought it would have been better to update my life insurance, the way the driver was performing. He would overtake another cars (plurar) when there were about 5 trucks were coming our way, all of them flashing their headlights, trying to veer out of the way. He was a bit older and by the looks of him I would have never guessed he had inspirations to be the next Niki Lauda - though he seemed to be extremely relaxed, checking things on his phone, while driving, chatting with the person on 1B, counting money, etc.
At the pass, we stopped to take a break, there were dozen other buses, so I made sure to take a photo of his license plate to find back to him.
The road uphill was pretty, with what I called was 50 shades of green, but the road downhill was even nicer. We rode by fields full of wild flowers that looked like snow, next to castles and orthodox churches on top of hills.
On my bike ride in 2016, I did not ride on this patch of the road, as I had arrived to Tbilisi from the south, coming from Armenia.
In the outskirts of Tbilisi, we got to final destination - I was quite relieved to have arrived safe and sound. There I found the subway, they call it metro, next to a very busy market. I did not know how to get a ticket, asked a young person, he winked at me, said "you do not need a ticket" and held lead me to an automatic entry point, held his wallet to the reader - so I was let in for free. Thanks and madloba (thanks in Georgian)!
Another madloba goes to my host that night, called Victor. I had booked a room while still in Kutaisi and told me he would pick me up at the metro station at Freedom Square (pretty much the center, where protests had taken place just a couple of days prior to me arriving) and would lead me to the place. Niki Lauda drove so fast that we arrived ahead of schedule, so I had to wait a couple of minutes for him to show up. I was doing people watching - quite a different scene than in Kutaisi, the people there could have been anywhere in any other capital in Europe - with the notable exception of the stray dogs.
Talking about the street dogs, they are, in a way, part of the society, with people feeding and taking care of them, Their ears are tagged - and in a red-yellow-green color code, they are marked if vicious, mellow or friendly. I had seen quite a few red ones, but none of them seemed vicious, minding their business, which usually meant sleeping.
My Airbnb room was excellent, a spacious, brand-new apartment room in this facility with altogether three apartments and a spacious common kitchen. I packed, tidied up and went for an evening walk.
I had been to Tbilisi on my earlier trip and liked the city back then and liked it even more now. The apartment was in the old town, the most picturesque part of the city. I went for an evening walk, entered the main cathedral, where praying women were singing wonderful songs, Later, a priest appeared, he started chanting and the ladies replied with their song. It was quite a magical interaction.
Now came classical sightseeing. I crossed over to the other side on the modern glass bridge that I had visited on my first trip, then took the funicular to Sololaki hill next to theNarikala Fortress - I did ride up there in 2016, not not on the funicular, but by bike.
At the top, I visited the Mother of Georgia statue, this 22-meter aluminum lady enjoys a spectacular view of the city.
There was a cat sunbathing, being pretty much oblivious of the pretty statue behind it.
The path to cross over to the fortress was closed due to renovations, so there was a huge detour that led me first down on the other side of the hill where I had ridden up from and it took me through an arboretum, where even an entry fee had to be paid. Alas, my phone died there, so could not take any more photos, but I remember seeing a pond full of frogs.
From the bottom, there was a foot path up to the fortress, I went for it it and it was barricaded off. Having seen people on top of the fortress, I thought I would get in and went by a guard, who did not seem to care. It was now on medieval walls that I was climbing, having a wonderful view of the city in the setting sun. Some of the walls were rather crumbling, so I took extra care not to slip, but was worth the effort to make it to the top. Having charged my phone for a few minutes in a kiosk, I was able to store them in my memory - I mean - in my camera roll.
Here I got a call from Florian, explaining he would be arriving only the following evening, not in the next afternoon as originally planned. He explained he did not want to ride a marshutka, as he thought it to be dangerous (he was not quite wrong, see my trip from Kutaisi). His plan was to take a train from the coast of the Black Sea, which would arrived only at night. This in turn meant we would not be able to catch our train to Yerevan the following evening and would have to wait an additional two days, as these trains ran only every other day.
I descended back to the town and had a dinner on the main square of the old town. After dinner, I had a nice view of the lit city.
It was a nice day and was looking forward to the following one.