Saturday, June 1 - Day 12

New month, new feeling - my cold was pretty much cured out, thank God. It was a very unstable weather, so we decided to call off the hike to the lake, as we could have easily been caught in a thunderstorm at 2,200 meters, not a preferred option. The host at our not-so-grand hotel was really very friendly (he was actually from Romania) and for a reasonable amount, agreed to drive us to Kazbegi.

Arriving there, we went back to Spar - and I got evidence of just how large my nation, Hungary, really is. In the store, I struck up a conversation with a traveling (what I thought was) couple, where the man turned out to be from Hungary. He told me he was traveling around Georgia with this woman from another country as friends and that she was going mightily on his nerves. Well, the Spar store in Kazbegi seems to be a good place to meet Hungarians.

I suggested Florian to try hitch-hiking, but when the taxi drivers saw this, they came, attached us and gradually lowered their prices to a preferable level. Our goal was actually Borjomi, a town in the middle of the country - to get there, we had to ride by Tbilisi. We agreed on a reasonable price, this was convenient and would not take the entire day with marshutka, so we spared the hassle of transferring in Tbilisi. If I recall, it was relatively expensive, like €40 per person, maybe Florian knows better, for the 250 km ride, but it was quite a clever investment.

It was a rather uneventful drive (luckily), only a cow tried to hold us up.

We asked our driver if we could swing by Gori, the birthplace of Stalin, also known as Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili. There was a large museum dedicated to him - containing a number of photos, very few of these with English explanations and in rather random order, plus some of his belongings, like his uniform, the office furniture he used, etc.. In front of the building is the train he used to travel around. Opinions do differ - Florian enjoyed the museum, I did not - as I have seen most of these photos earlier - and without a guide, it all seemed a bit confusing. We later learned that taking a guide would have been free of charge. - but then our driver was waiting for us outside.

As for myself, I found the large park right next to the museum more interesting, here very much motivated kids were dancing to the tunes of Georgian folk songs - all dressed in different folklore dresses

We made the rest of the journey to Borjomi, when we checked in two separate places. I really liked mine, it was a pretty hype room, with lots of dark wood, light brown curtains - quite cool and trendy. The only downside is that the glass entrance door of the room opened directly to the street, on the ground floor - quite of a strange concept. One has to draw the curtains to keep out curious eyes.

We went for a walk in town, there were lots of young people stralling there.

For dinner, we found a restaurant next to the former railway station - it opened that very day - so we were kind of guinea pigs. I played with the baby child of the owner.

Well, all that we did that day was to change our location by 250 km, form Juta to Borjomi - in some countries, this would take two hours, in Georgia, we required an entire day.