Armenia

We return to Tbilissi with a guy who sells watermelons and gives us one. Then, direction Armenia.
We cross at night. The policemen have ridiculous hats. Armenia is poorer than georgia, we don't know what to expect. At 1AM we hitch a ride with an armenian family with a million kids. They give some on the way, to the sister, to the Babushka. We end up with only one. They host us and want to pay for abus to Yerevan.

Fortunately, we talk them out of it. They are poor, the house has only two rooms and the bathroom is just a sink, no shower. You pour water into a cup and wash yourself with it.
No hot water either. It's not the first time that happens and I think it's the new bathroom standart in here.

We leave our watermelon there.

The next day we look for internet. Plenty of open Wifi but no internet connection unfortunately. We exchange some money and get a coffee and raspberries.

Wine region

Written on a rainbow gathering, some bob marley music playing.

The Kacheti region is where georgian wine is from. And georgian wine is supposed to be very good. If you ask me, it's less disgusting that french wine but you shouldn't ask me since I don't like alcohol.
We were hitchhiking to Telavi with a guy who decided to ride the 30 kilometers even though he wasn't going there.
"You sleep in a tent and you eat bread with cheese?" he repeated Ilona's words after she explained our situation, "are you serious? We are going home."
So we went home. He owned a huge garden with a vinyard, strawberries and god knows what other fruit and vegetables. He also had a plantation, hectars of peaches.
"No one buys them here, we send them to Ukraine". When the russians let them, of course.

We had a barbecue a shower and a wonderful dinner. Wine and vodka was flowing by liters. Georgian don't taste wine like french do, smell it and then sip. They just drink glass after glass.
But anyway why would you want to sip wine, is it boiling hot or something?Each family has its Eldar and today's Eldar was also present and as always, a true democrat.
He told us that he wasn't used to drinking and I rejoiced to have found a potential ally.

"I really can't drink, never more than 2 liters." Yes two liters of wine. We later learned that armenians are able to drink the same amount of vodka.

I don't count the days I go to bed drunk. I'm just glad that so far, I kept the food offered to us inside my stomach long enough for my body to process it.

"This is Babushka. She's 86." Babushka had a spine like a roman bridge but was still active and great in the kitchen.A millstone fell on her back thirty years ago and she miracoulously survived without any permanent damage.

The son was a free fighting champion and he looked that he could smash a bull into the ground. 15 years old and 110 kilograms. Ilona absolutly wanted a picture with him. The conversation shifted towards Abkhazia, sad stories, I can't write all of them.

"So why the hell do you let the Russians into georgia without visas?"
"We don't hate the Russian people, they are innocent. The Russian government is the creator of this war and we georgians can see the difference between man and government."

Such openness was mind-blowing, I did not expect this.

"It wasn't only Russians anyway. Armenian soldiers were shooting us too."

Outside, a giant storm was coming and we were lucky not camp in a tent this time. The experience would not have been pleasent.
TchetcheniaWritten on a rainbow gathering, some bob marley music playing.
The next day, cultural change, we are heading towards Tchetchenia. Tchetchenia extends into georgia and forms an interesting cultural mix.
In the minds of our fellow european citizens Tchetchenia would not be the best place to go but I can assure you that our experience was quite allright.

The region is poor, no work whatsoever. Taxis are so common that you barely see a normal car. At last, we hitch a ride with three tchetchens who shake down an apricot tree so we have a ton of apricots.
We pass through villages very much reminding those of Bosna and Herzegovina. There are no mosques though. Instead, christan churches are turned into muslim places of worhip, the corss is replaced by the moonish sign of Islam.

"It's like taking the georgian flag and painting russian stripes on it", says Ilona whose religious background is a little hurt. And she might be a little right, but who in this reagion can affort to build a real mosque?

We continue into the mountains with one of the tchetchens. He's 26, like me, his parents are dead god kows why and he finds us a great place for a tent. He's silent, he just builds us a fire, we light it and he leaves.

And tomorrow, Armenia.

Tbilissi, city of lights and hills

Written on a rainbow gathering, some bob marley music playing.

The Kacheti region is where georgian wine is from. And georgian wine is supposed to be very good. If you ask me, it's less disgusting that french wine but you shouldn't ask me since I don't like alcohol.

We were hitchhiking to Telavi with a guy who decided to ride the 30 kilometers even though he wasn't going there.

"You sleep in a tent and you eat bread with cheese?" he repeated Ilona's words after she explained our situation, "are you serious? We are going home."

So we went home. He owned a huge garden with a vinyard, strawberries and god knows what other fruit and vegetables. He also had a plantation, hectars of peaches.

"No one buys them here, we send them to Ukraine". When the russians let them, of course.

 

We had a barbecue a shower and a wonderful dinner. Wine and vodka was flowing by liters. Georgian don't taste wine like french do, smell it and then sip. They just drink glass after glass.

But anyway why would you want to sip wine, is it boiling hot or something?Each family has its Eldar and today's Eldar was also present and as always, a true democrat.

He told us that he wasn't used to drinking and I rejoiced to have found a potential ally.

 

"I really can't drink, never more than 2 liters." Yes two liters of wine. We later learned that armenians are able to drink the same amount of vodka.

 

I don't count the days I go to bed drunk. I'm just glad that so far, I kept the food offered to us inside my stomach long enough for my body to process it.

 

"This is Babushka. She's 86." Babushka had a spine like a roman bridge but was still active and great in the kitchen.A millstone fell on her back thirty years ago and she miracoulously survived without any permanent damage.

 

The son was a free fighting champion and he looked that he could smash a bull into the ground. 15 years old and 110 kilograms. Ilona absolutly wanted a picture with him. The conversation shifted towards Abkhazia, sad stories, I can't write all of them.

 

"So why the hell do you let the Russians into georgia without visas?"

"We don't hate the Russian people, they are innocent. The Russian government is the creator of this war and we georgians can see the difference between man and government."

 

Such openness was mind-blowing, I did not expect this.

 

"It wasn't only Russians anyway. Armenian soldiers were shooting us too."

 

Outside, a giant storm was coming and we were lucky not camp in a tent this time. The experience would not have been pleasent.

TchetcheniaWritten on a rainbow gathering, some bob marley music playing.

The next day, cultural change, we are heading towards Tchetchenia. Tchetchenia extends into georgia and forms an interesting cultural mix.

In the minds of our fellow european citizens Tchetchenia would not be the best place to go but I can assure you that our experience was quite allright.

 

The region is poor, no work whatsoever. Taxis are so common that you barely see a normal car. At last, we hitch a ride with three tchetchens who shake down an apricot tree so we have a ton of apricots.

We pass through villages very much reminding those of Bosna and Herzegovina. There are no mosques though. Instead, christan churches are turned into muslim places of worhip, the corss is replaced by the moonish sign of Islam.

 

"It's like taking the georgian flag and painting russian stripes on it", says Ilona whose religious background is a little hurt. And she might be a little right, but who in this reagion can affort to build a real mosque?

 

We continue into the mountains with one of the tchetchens. He's 26, like me, his parents are dead god kows why and he finds us a great place for a tent. He's silent, he just builds us a fire, we light it and he leaves.

 

And tomorrow, Armenia.

Borjomi, party

Borjomi is touristic place nothing to do there unless you like taxi or people who say: "hotel?"

Our daily budget has fallen under 1euro/person and we are still alive and well without paid accomodation or transport.
We are checking the state of our iranian visa periodically so we went searching for some wifi. We found one in a luxury restaurant where a bunch of people were celebrating their 10 years of graduation. Plenty of delicious food everywhere and we were invited of course.
"we are drinking to love", says giga, the guy who was holding the toast. I was supposed to make a statement about love in front of an audience I knew nothing about in the middle of georgia. And love a subject I tend to disagree on with a lot of people, especially the marriage oriented georgians.

Statement done we drunk to love, then to peace, to air, to trees. Two of the guys fell hoplessly in love with Ilona and she had to explain to them that no way in hell. Quite pitiful actually.

Then we went away because the waitress kicked us out because I went running around looking for Ilona thinking something has gone wrong when she was just explaining now-way-in-hell to the two guys.

For some reason also Ilona thought the girls hated her but the reasoning behind that was so fucked up that I won't even try to go into details here.

Drink to the wind!

So we went away but before that I ate a piece of their wonderful cake. The food was priceless. Third night in a row I wasn't sober but it was worth it.

Wandering with a weirdo

Written on beach of a huge lake in armenia, I think we are on a privite property of a luxury hotel.

We met that guy in a bus who took us for free to a city called Vardzia witch turned out to be another Vardzia, not the one we were looking for. We were sitting on bags of flour or whatever compressed like parisians in the city underground.
He didn't speak a word of english, that was expected but also not a word of russian. He told us to follow him into the mountains to se something we had no clue what he said because he was speaking georgian.

On the top of the hill Ilona told me that he has been eying her for the better part of that trip and since we had no idea where we were headed she was starting to loose patience. I didn't notice anything but girls know that stuff better. Anyway we went down the hill with him and suddenly the most romantic mountain plains appeared before us with a river and whatnot, the only not romantic thing in a 50km radius was that guy who had stopped eying Ilona but didn't leave us alone for a minute still rambling some gibberish in georgian, god knows what.
That guy for instance was not a democrat at all.

However he had a nice cabin in the woods with a well, a garden and everything one could dream of, once one has wandered in the forest of course.

Cabin in the woods

Before that cabin we ran into a guy who spoke Russian and had a huge garden with beens. That guy was pretty easy going and had a good chance of being a democrat. We tried to lose our weirdo guy to stay with him but without success. He said something to the democrat in georgian and he went away.
It was obvious he wanted us for himself. In a strict sense, we were being kidnapped. I didn't mind that much because the nature was stunningly beautiful but Ilona who very much values her personal freedom was quite spoiled by the kidnapping part.

The cabin has everything, even a well with nice clear water

A stream was running from the mountains through the prairies where cattle was wandering around. Two guys with horses rode in and gave us each a horse to ride on for a while.

Two guys gave each of us a horse

At night there were three bed in the cabin.
"No fucking way", said Ilona, "not in the worst nightmare"
The weirdo brought 2L of an insanely strong and disgusting cha-cha, some kind of local version of a spirit, home made and not very well probably.

We drunk three full glasses of it with his old uncle also who was a democrat but didn't have much of a say. The weirdo was shouting drunkingly in georgian drinking to peace, to friendship, to georgia, to cows, to water, to trees. When we realize he was never going to be out of imagination and was probably going to drink the full 2.5L of his disgusting stuff with us, we both realized it was time to run away.

We told him that since we were very much in love, we would like to build our super-romantic-paladka (tent) near the river. The weirdo argued that the cabin was merely 50 meters from the river but we stuck to our story. He waited until we finished building the tent and finally went away. We heard him shouting drunkingly into the dark.

Of course we disn't stay at the spot, as soon as he went away we changed the tent's location, we hid it about 200m away.

The morning after the weirdo guy went looking for us pretexting we have lost our drinking horn. He woke us at 5 in the morning rambling something in georgian. I told him to let us be and surprisingly that worked.

We slept until 9 AM and the weirdo was waiting not too far from our camping site. Besides, a horse and its baby were wandering around in the grass. That was beautiful and cute, I wish I'd added them to my album of cute little things.

We went swimming in the river, the georgian democrat next door brought us honey from his bees. Wonderful!

Plains in the mountains and a river, everything one could dream of

After a while we decided to go back besides the rambling of the weirdo guy. The balance of power slowly shifted to our side and he looked like a poor little thing abandonned by his mother.

He stuck with us until the crossroads giving us his disgusting cha-cha and a bottle of pears. We through out the cha-cha as soon as he dissapeared from sight.

Sopo and Kutaisi

We leave Zugdidi, too much police, too much saving us from harmless georgians. That day we arrive in Kutaisi where we sleep near a church. Pretty cool place. We notice that it's been around three weeks we are together and still not getting on each others nerves. Probably because we're both tolerant characters and also because of the weather which has been kind to us so far. Not too much rain (except of the beginning) and still no horrifying heat as we expected with summer coming.
We leave for Sairme as Eldar and Maka have advised us and sleep in a church that is being costructed. The concrete is still fresh. There is a waterfall right next to us.Pretty romantic if we were sexually compatible I guess. But we're not. Still very romantic.
We are woken by construction workers a bit too early. We rush to Sairme again and then Kutaisi. We are low on food and everything again and it's raining.
In Kutaisi we stay with Sopo and her husband.
Sopo is an amazing and without any doubt hyperactive woman. She's a badass lawyer, it's weird to realize that she actually earns half of the french minimal salary. I like her a lot and I think she likes us. When she realizes that we are not a couple nor plan to be she tells she'll find me a pretty georgian girl.
Not sure how serious that proposition is but enough to go to her sister's dentistry clinic and point out one unearthly beautiful female being doing an internship there:
"that one is single", she says.
The georgian girls are all so amazingly beautiful that I would almost reconsider my ideas about relationships.
Because there is one problem with georgian women: they are as stunning and faithful as they want to marry. And they want to marry a lot. For life. Forever. Kill me now!
If someone could somehow change the love mind of georgian girls and outprogram marriage out of it then georgia would be a dream country.
On the other hand, georgian marriages are amazing, I would do five of them, just for fun.
That's one big difference we have with Ilona. Each time she sees herself in that glorious day and I'm just thinking: "nicely done F., you avoided that one!".
Chances are there was some wedding cake left. So I celebrated my 26 th birthday on the road. Unbelievable.

Birthday celebration in Kutaisi, Georgia

I must make a note about georgian families. So far they were all composed of a husband, wife, some children and a random guy who comes from god knows where who knows very good russian and is wise and socially active. In Ozurgeti that role was that of Eldar, in this family, it was a georgian living in russia bordering abkhazia.
That guy is usually a first class democrat altough Sopo and her husbands were pretty badass democrats too.
The next day we visited Sataplia and Sopo and her husband paid for our tickets. 6 lari each, a fortune for us. Our budget is closing in on 1E/pers/day.
After that their son who spoke very good english told us to go to Vardzia so we went.

Zugdidi and Abkhazia

In the morning, Babushka show Ilona how to bake Katcha-Purin and we're on our way. Not exactly because Vacho and Eldar wanted to show us an anciet monastary. The view was really beautiful. When the sky is clear, said Eldar, it is possible to see Abkhazia.

Cooking lessons in Georgia

And that's a monk!

The monk gave a small bag to Ilona. We also recieved gifts from our adoptive family: a drinking horn for me and a wooden hand made box for Ilona. The good family drove us to a hitchhiking place and stopped a car for us. The goodbyes were brief. What are they good for anyway? Democrats don't bother with goodbyes

We arrived in Zugdidi shortluy. With the police.

First, two officers stopped to chat with us, kind of friendly tough I am always weary of Police, these people are known to carry more guns than IQ. After a while we were silently greeted by two scary dudes from criminal police who told us to get into some police vehicle. The car was civilian-looking and the dudes driving it seemed to be detectives or something, they didn't wear the uniform. They didn't speak much for a while and I wondered if we aren't in some kind of trouble until one of the guys gave us a telephone with an english speaking friend who asked us:

"do you like Georgia?"

What the fuck? Afterwards she said that the police guy was a good guy and told Ilona to tell him something in georgian. It must have been some kind of obscenity but it made him laugh and he asked if we wanted something to drink. He bought us each a bottle of Fanta and sent for another police car to see us to Zugdidi.

In Zugdidi the police found a place for our tent in front of the police station where a guard was keeping an eye on things. What the fuck?

Riding with the Police

The downside of all this was that local cops seemed to follow us around everywhere to make sure we don't get killed by georgians Babushkas.

We continued north of Zugdidi towards Abkhazia, on of the two Georgian regions occupied by Russian forces. We probably cannot enter abkhazia but we might see the border.

Our last ride, the guy towards the border goes the extra few kilometers just for us. He likes Czech Republic he says, he even has a Czech handgun. He shows the weapon to us, it's similar to those carried by Czech Police.

"It's in case I get into trouble with the russians, all sorts of crazy people in the border region"

On the border, we cannot pass but the guards seem to be moved by our hitchhiking story and my interest in the Abkhazian conflict. They dispatch an officer to guide us to the border. It's an improvised border, a fence and some baricades on the road. Two georgian soldiers with automatic weapons are resting in the area. We walk pass them and are now in no man's land. The officer tells us to stop: no further. I ask why?

"There is a sniper on the hill"

"A what?"

"A sniper. If we go further we are in range of the sniper", the guy tells me in a calm voice

There are people walking between borders, carrying bread or various supplies.

"These people, are they in range of the sniper?" The situation seems a bit unreal.

"Yes, they are."

"And does the sniper shoot at people?"

"Sometimes he does."

The conversaton goes on as casually as possible. I, however was kind of taken out of my confort zone.

"Why?"

"Why?" The guard looked surprised, "how can you know what goes on in the mind of the russians?"

Border to Abkhazia:"If we go any further, we'll be in range of the sniper"

We don't have to stay here any longer, we back down towards Zugdidi in the direction of Kutaisi.

Side notes for our parents:

We were never in range of any snipers or guns of whatever type nor did we taky any risks that could have put our lives into danger. This visit to abkhazian border was reasonable and safe, no different from a touristic visit of for example, the border of North Korea.

Our adoptive family

Written in a cabin in the woods, while waiting for the rain to stop near Sairme, Georgia

Second day with our hosts. We go on a picnic near a stream, it's green everywhere. Green is the color of Georgia. I swim in the water, climb the rocks, it's fun. Nata, the 13 year old girl doesn't want to get too wet. She's been playing princess the day we saw her. She avoids cows and dogs, it could do in France but how the hell does she survive in Georgia?
She seems to like Ilona a lot though.

Ilona and Nata, at last she got into the water.

In the evening we go fishing. It's a real success this time, I caught 5 of them. Eldar hung them on a grass string through the mouth, it was quite disgusting especially with the blud flowing with the fish which was still alive. I'm still too sensitive for the world or so it seems.

Ilona trying to catch a fish

Ilona processed the fish with the help of the older lady we met first. We had another amazing dinner, visited the neigbours again and since these good people didn't have time to show us everything, we'll stay for another night.

Eldar gave Ilona a georgian sim card so they'll be able to call us and check if everything is OK every day we stay in georgia. In armenia, he said, the roaming charges kick in and they won't be staying in touch anymore. Obviously.

Eldar is the communicative one. He isn't only socially active, he also has a great georgian wisdom. In that sense, he is a true Georgian Democrat as would Zurab, the georgian truck driver say.

You may wonder what I mean by democrat in the georgian sense so pay attention closely for this word will be widely used in the future and has become an essential word in our vocabulary.

If a person is helpful, has an intelligent view on things but forces his viewpoint on us then he might be of great counsel but he is not a true democrat.

If a person has no clue about what they are talking about and still give us plenty of solutions that are not really usable then he might be of good will but this person is still not a true democrat because a true democrat has to have both feet on the ground to keeo living in a democracy. If a person loses touch with reality and constructs a democracy based on an idealist understanding of reality then his democracy will get invided by the nighbouring Russia and there will be no more democrats.

A true democrat is a person who knows how to be helpful and informative but always leaves the full choice to his counterpart. And that kind of person is Vacho or Eldar.

It is important to note that in Georgia, unlike un Turkey, we were always given a choice. We can stay but we are always free to leave whenever it suits us. They don't try to convince us to stay, they just state some arguments about why it would be better.

In the evening, dinner is amazing, as always. Georgia keeps its promises.

Vacho, Eldar and me

Ilona is crazy about the Hatcha-Purin, the local food, a kind of pizza wih cheeze inside. So tomorrow, before they leave us on our way, granma will teach her how to bake them.

First steps in a peculiar country

Ozurgeti, first morning in Georgia. We are pretty much alive, the georgians didn't kill us. In fact, they've already invited us home. Twice. But you don't sense the turkish gentle naiveness. They are kind but you don't fuck with the georgians. Ozurgeti is a small town, connected to the rest of the country by small roads with cows on them. The whole country is full of cows randomly crossing, sleeping or walking on the streets. Drivers just slalom around them.

Georgian roads are a safe haven for cows

We are greeted by and old lady, a Babushka, she says in russian:
"Chodte ke me domu", come to my home.
We refuse, hoping to reach lanchkhuti this afternoon but not a single car stops.
Nata, the 13 year old girl walking with her repeats in english "come to our home".

So we go. We are greeted by Vachan and by Eldar, then the grandmother, the grandfather and god knows how many people. They bring us a shitload of food and are looking for a translater who speaks english.
They only find german which is good enough. Maka speaks perfect german and even some english. She's a strong spirited woman with strong opinions, she likes to talk.
Meanwhile, Maka's husband also comes and even the mayor of the village is summoned to take a look at us and at our trip.

"Come to my home", says the woman in black. Suddenly, we are greeted by all the neighbours

The mayor doesn't talk much, others talk to him. We go and drink coffee and say hi to the mayor's wife. Then we take a tour of all garden of the local community. We don't even notice the cows anymore, they're part of the landscape.
"Today you stay here", says Vachan, "we'll show you around you can go tomorrow"
Even Ilona doesn't have the heart to refuse.
They take us to see the wonderful nature around the village with the stream full of fish and fallen logs as bridges.

Crossing the river

They tell us about their country, how they were isolated by the russians and how they have no choice but to rely on themselves both as a country and as individuals. Incredibly brave nation and brave people.
The words of Zurab the democrat now start making sense. It's not sheer paranoia and suggesting that on my part was just being naive.
From the georgian point of view, the Russian threat is a reality. they share a huge border and are the personification of david and goliath, as far as countries are concerned.
Georgia is neither europe nor really Asia and doesn't really fit in anyones closet. Especially not in the russian's. And when Putin decides something Georgia takes the full blow of the consequences and no one will help because basically, nobody cares about them.

So their world is basically very influenced by Russia and they are right to fear a swing in the mood of the giant and lunatic country. In Europe, Russia is far away, we like to joke about them. But here in Georgia, everyone is affected by their every move. Because who knows what will happen tomorrow. Do not forget that five years ago, russian troops were marching on Tbilissi and the country was this close of dissapearing from the map. Think I'm exagerating? You should come here.