Today I arrived in Tbilisi. It was probably the scariest day since I started traveling.
Where to start?
Before arriving in the country, I was already unsettled. My plane was hours late, and I didn’t know how that would affect my first day. Upon arriving at the airport, I went to passport control and adopted the strategy I’d practiced in dealing with Russian bureaucracy: I placed my passport down and stoically stared at him without smiling or saying a word. In turn, he also stared at me without saying a word or doing anything. I wondered if I did something wrong.
Eventually he called someone else over and talked for a while in Georgian, saying something about “American.” He let me in without a problem after that, and he lightened up after I asked how to say “thank you” in Georgian (I already forgot the answer).
Immediately after leaving the airport, a bunch of taxi drivers started advertising to me. I remembered from Russia never to fall for this — the taxi drivers always target naive foreigners and demand exorbiant sums before letting the passenger out. I didn’t want to fall for the trap, so I knew I had to take a bus. I looked at the side of the first bus and realized something terrible I somehow managed to never think about before: Georgians use a different alphabet, I know nothing about it, and there’s no English translations.
Above: nice Indian girls who helped me.
I got on the bus and thankfully found a group of Indian students studying in Georgia who are fluent in English. I asked if the bus went to the center of the city. They asked where I wanted to go. I said, uh, I don’t know — just to the center. Nowhere really.
I didn’t bother to look up anything about the city at all before coming. Also not very smart.
The plan: someone on CouchSurfing.com (a social networking site for travelers) agreed to host me at her house for a few days when I first arrived. So, I should come to the country, find the center of the city — shops and an easy place to meet, buy a new SIM card for my phone, and call her to let her know I’m in the city and arrange a place to meet.
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Above: mountains and buildings out the window of the bus.
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The drive from the airport was beautiful and shocking. Tbilisi is a city in the valleys, surrounded by picturesque mountains. It is also filled with some of the most extreme poverty I’ve seen. Buildings I passed by had a state of dilapidation I’d expect in Afghanistan.
Another shock: the “George W. Bush Highway.” I wish I had time to snap a photo, but the bus moved too quickly. That’s right — believe it or not, the Georgians loved Bush enough to name a highway after him. Bizarre, huh? Since Bush took office, the United States has given tremendous support to Georgia for the sake of gaining advantage against Russia in the former-Soviet states. This is what eventually led Georgia to belligerent foreign policy that escalated to a full-on war with Russia in late 2008. They thought Bush and America would ride in to the rescue. So much for that idea. Apparently they’re not too angry to rename the highway, though.
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Above: remnants of the Soviet past. Notice the USSR star atop the building.
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I didn’t get to the center of the city (“Freedom Square”) until around 7 pm, when I desperately started searching for a phone shop. I only found one, and it was just closing and the owner refused to sell me a SIM card. He told me it was too late to buy anything — all shops were closed.
He was right.
By the way, almost nobody here speaks English. Almost no one. Thank God I learned some really basic Russia over the past nine months. Everyone here speaks a little Russian.
At this point, I started getting the nervous. The sun was setting and I had nowhere to sleep for the night — I still hadn’t contacted the girl from CouchSurfing.
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This has to be continued later. I’m using wireless internet in a McDonalds and they’re closing now. Will write tomorrow I hope.
