Georgia part 2

The night before leaving Georgia I decided to get up early in order to check some roads and go hitchhiking, but the same night I went to sleep late which resulted in me getting up late… Anyway I got up, saw the beautiful sky, etc etc…and I went to check my road for the day, I wanted to go to Marneuli, a place in the south of Georgia in my way to Armenia. While I was checking Mathias woke up and we decided to go and eat something, it was another hot day, but this time I was carrying everything, so walking only 3 streets down resulted in me being soaked, I had an Omelette, that was supposed to last until the next day, and the time to say goodbye to a new good friend came, we hugged and I walked towards the metro station (underground) to leave the city centre, then I walked a lot, and all the taxis(I am using a hyperbolic expression) of Tbilisi stopped to ask me to go with them wherever I was going (and some of them got upset when I said no…) I arrived to a good point and at this moment of the day it’s near 5pm, not a good sign, as it is a journey that usually takes 6-8 hours. I asked 2 cars that were stopped, one was full and the other wasn’t going that way, and the story of the day started when I asked the third car…so sit down and read.

I asked a man for a lift to Marneuli and the guy said to me “this is not America, people are going to hurt you, they are not going to pick you up” I said thanks but anyway I was going to wait for a lift, the guy was still there and he came and said to me “look son, you can come to my house have a shower, have something to eat, I guess you are tired, tomorrow you can leave in a bus” ( I don’t know if you understand the situation… he had told me that there are bad people around and now he wants to take me to his house, so how am I going to trust in him?) So, I said yes, and he asked me to put my rucksack in the boot and the conversation started…

Man: Where are you from?       
Emilio: from Argentina.
Man: oh, I have a son in Denmark and he has a friend from Argentina, so you speak Portuguese?
Emilio: not really, so from where in Argentina is your son’s friend?
Man: ehm… where are you from in Argentina?
Emilio: Jujujy
Man: oh, like my son’s friend
Emilio:….
Man: Do you work or study?
Emilio: Study.
Man: What do you study?
Emilio: Theology.
Man: oh, like my son!
Emilio:….

At this point I was feeling uncomfortable and also because he was driving in the opposite direction to Tbilisi, he drove that direction, around 10 minutes. ..

Man: can I see your passport? I’ve never seen a Portuguese passport, do you have one?
Emilio: I have, but I am Argentinian.
Man: Oh yes, show me (and he stretched his hand)
Emilio: ok… (I didn’t have any option – I gave him the passport)
Man: oh… very nice, very nice…
Emilio:….

He drove into a forest, and there was nobody there, he stopped in front of a company which worked with wood, I asked him why we stopped there (I was a bit afraid at this point), he told me that he was going to collect his wife, so he picked his mobile phone and dialled a number, I don’t know Georgian, Russian or any of the languages here, but I know when people say Argentinian, and he said it twice, when he ended the call, 10 big guys appeared! I thought…I am going to die, this is the end… as I couldn’t escape, only a miracle could save me… well, it wasn’t a miracle exactly, when the guys were coming in direction to the car a lady appeared, and she was the man’s wife! They took me to their house and he ended up being the boss of Tbilisi Electricity Company, the company in charge of providing all the power to run the electricity there.

They welcomed me with Georgian tea and typical bread, then he was calling me son, I prepared my Mate and showed them a photo album, they both said that my mom looked like a Georgian lady and my mom’s name means “I am not in it” in Georgian. The lady prepared dinner and he joked that it was crocodile meat, then when I said that in Argentina people eat crocodile they were serious, and I enjoyed. I played my charango and he wanted to try as well. They were quite happy that evening, we talked about the Soviet Union, and the Russians. Somebody knocked at the door; it was a Muslim guy asking for money, he gave him money, and then when I told him that my plan was to go to Iran and Iraq he said to me “SON, DON’T GO! They are going to kill you! You are a Christian, they will chop your head”, I smiled. We had a lot of interesting chats about a lot of things, I even helped him to water his plants (it took like 30 minutes – so you can imagine) and at night he took me to the city for a while. Then I went to my part of the house (that was another house) and I re arranged my things for the next morning.

I am so blessed to meet this kind of people, I like to learn from them, I like to hear their stories, and I want them to hear mine, I find that language sometimes is not a problem (sometimes I say), that sometimes the opposites get on really well and there is nothing to fear, but also I find that fear to the unknown is a big problem, it shouldn’t be like that, the unknown is something we need, well at least me. I believe that some people are rotten but there are a lot of good people out there ready to help you. Sometimes the “bad” people can be good, and vice versa. In this search/journey I am finding myself in the people I meet, we are so similar and so different, but that is good… if only we could all learn this… (sigh)

Georgia

I think my “time” in Georgia started in Istanbul, actually at the airport. I don’t know you, but I haven’t decided if I am spontaneous or a planner, sometimes I like to plan (actually most of the time), but planning the trip to Georgia was something that happened suddenly. Anyway I want to paint the situation at the airport like this: I am an Argentinian with Spanish nationality who lives in Scotland but coming from Amsterdam, connecting plane in Turkey talking in Spanish with a Georgian lady. She and another guy she met at the airport are really kind to me and they offered me help and gave me some tips on what to do there, as it was a sudden plan I don’t have a clue of what is going to happen here. The guy who doesn’t speak English or Spanish offered to take me to a nearby town to show me around. We took the plane that came an hour a half late and we arrived at Tbilisi, I wait for my luggage and sadly I found out that my tent and sleeping bag were lost, at least the tent arrived. By that time my helpers were gone but it was acceptable as it was near 6am and the sun was waving in the horizon. I went to the tourist information inside the airport and I met Matthias a Danish boy who came in the same plane. A taxi driver was waiting for us to take us to the hostel Matthias booked, I decided to go there as well, but the taxi driver understood that I wanted to take a van to Armenia, he drove to the “van station” and then he was kind of swearing when we said that I wasn’t going there, a small problem with language barrier. Finally he took us to a place “near the hostel” and asked us to leave there and pay, that was fine… I was a bit asleep so everything was fine, at the end he smiled, shook hands and gave us his card to contact him.

We walked through an old narrow street and we finally found the hostel. A young lady appeared and opened the door for us. She showed us where we were going to sleep. I was in a room with 5 more guys and Mathias was sent to another. It seemed to me like an old movie, all these guys sleeping there and the warm atmosphere is quite dense, but I like it. I tried to sleep, but I could only managed 3 hours and something as the room was quite hot by 11am, I washed my face and went to change some money, Oh man, I didn’t have a clue how to cross this wide avenue, and I was not in the UK to start walking so the cars will stop, so I did this big avenue in 3 parts, yeah, it was wide. I have only seen Russians and Ukrainians on TV in the Olympics and Putin on the internet, well… Georgians look a bit similar, but in my mind there was always an idea of people from this part of the world being like giants, but that wasn’t the true, As I always say, I love being anonymous, I walked but it seemed that I am not that anonymous as they look at me while I walk, somebody talked to me, and I answer in English, and the person said, oh I thought you were Turkish, and 5 other people did the same… As I walked I felt that Georgia was a new place for my soul, and once again this nostalgia (that is usually coming to me) appeared again. It seems that I’ve been there in the past, but I don’t remember it, but at the same time is new...

I am still making my mind with lot of things, I haven’t decided about many issues, I know little about some things, and II know nothing about many. I learnt things by faith, I learnt things by sight, I think both are fine… anyway I walked quite a lot during that day, and I saw a lot of things. Georgians are people who are very proud of their Christianity (they were the first nation in the world to declare Christianity as their religion), there are many churches and only one mosque, there are streets that seem to have been at war yesterday but there are streets that have nothing to envy cities like Zurich or Oslo. As a Georgian girl said, they live in the middle of two worlds, they are European but they are also Asians, Eurasia… all the time new concepts are created to divide people, they tried to be like the Western world, but they know they are far from it…

At night I met Mathias to walk a bit more (at that time I pretended that my legs didn’t hurt), we ended up in a street without lights with old ladies asking things… so we returned to the light, we looked for a place where to have a drink, and we ended up in 2 streets full of foreign bars, pubs and restaurants, we decided to stay in “Marrakesh Bar”, I ran to the bathroom as I have drunk 2 and a half litres but I never went to the bathroom during the day, but the door was locked, somebody is in there, as I waited besides the door I looked around the place and all of them are not from Georgia, I looked also through a small wall and I saw 2 girls in a very bad state that I will not describe now, I went outside where Mathias was and the prices were really high there, so we ended up in a Georgian kind of bar, I asked for a typical dish and I had my “khinkali”, I only want 2 but the lady there wanted me to eat 5 (more money) I said no, and she was offended… anyway, we were talking and a girl who was behind us started talking to us, Sioban, an Israeli girl who is traveling with Nadab, they met in a traveller website and that was the whole story, she knows Argentina! She went to Mendoza, and she tried with me a bit of her Spanish (better than my Hebrew), the place was going to close so we headed to another place (before that I paid, and the lady asked me for 1 lari for service… and she was still offended!), we met some Georgians on the way and they joined our walk, and we ended up in another typical Georgian bar, Mathias asked for “Khinkali” to share and Nadab drank and drank chacha (a kind of vodka), and he became a bit happy =) at the end we decided to make a move, we exchange hugs with the Israeli guys and we went with Mathias to look for another place that they dance Tango at night, but it was closed (even though it was supposed to be a 24 hours place). 

Khinkali!!!

We went to the hostel and that was how my journey started in Istanbul with Georgians, continued with a Danish and finished with Israelis… as the motto of Liverpool FC “ you will never walk alone”…

Some random pictures...

Superman!!!!!!!!!!

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Dedicated to Mathias

oh yes, I understand the translation....