🏡 New home
When we arrived in Tbilisi. I tried to figure out where the city centre is — you know where the tall skyscrapers buildings hide the sun. The answers seem to elude me because from what I can gather there is no specific city centre.
Tbilisi have 4 main area’s:
- Historical centre
- Prestigious centre
- Residential centre
- Suburbs — North & South
So where are we now? We are between the Residential centre and the Northern suburbs. According to nomadlist their student area. To be honest, when I hear residential or northern suburb it doesn’t scream student. Also now being here for 3 days not sure about the accuracy of that statement either.
The biggest surprise with my limited viewpoint on the residential area is that it’s still super vibey. People walking at night, convenient shopping and the metro are 5 minutes away. It’s like each area is their own “city” area.
🥾 6'o clock out on week 6
We kicked off week 6 with a hike just outside of Tbilisi. We visited a fortress, 3 monasteries and 14km’s later new Georgian lingo. Yes, this was the earliest we had to wake up since being in Georgia. We woke up at 5 am — the city was beautiful, calm and we saw the sunrise — that’s been a looong time. We met the local hiking group at a popular meeting point — at the big bicycle in Rustaveli.
Our friend Iri told us about the hike and joined for the day. It’s super helpful having someone speak the language. On the bus ride there it felt like I was going down a musical memory lane. They were playing “I’m a barbie girl”, “Hey macarena” to It’s my life and Georgian tunes”. What was really awesome was to hear the South African song — Jerusalema which is also popular here.
This group was predominantly local with one polish person. So you guessed the conversation was pretty limited at first I got a “waka waka” and “Bryan Habana” from one of the locals when I mentioned South Africa. Later on, something interesting was happening. They started speaking English to us. While all this time I thought they only speak Georgian. It’s funny, I don’t know why yet they might be conscious of their English speaking level. I mean no offence to us but they think we are natively English — which ya all know we not. We even got invited to teach kids English in a village outside Tbilisi this month.
Let’s get to the actual hike
We were a group of about 15–20. All different fitness levels even a 5-year-old and a lady in high heeled boots. So you can imagine it wasn’t the normal Table Mountain hiking speed. Nonetheless, we covered about 14km’s that day.
The terrain was mostly gravel and rocks. Even though the flatness I had my first fall — embarrassingly not even 5 meters into the hike. 😂 The incline wasn’t too steep but there were some tricky parts that were narrow to move on. Right now it’s the beginning of spring but the trees and bushes are still dead from the snow. You do, however, start to see the first flowers covering the ground. We could see the caucus mountains from our hike and just behind them lies Russia. It’s unreal how close they are and small this country really is.
The last stop was the Shio-Mgvime monastery. Rich in history been destroyed multiple times and beautiful. At this point, it was 6 pm and the best part was going to the bathroom as this was long overdue. The fact that it was my first experience with a pit latrine didn’t bother me at all it was such a relief.
Spending an entire day with locals inevitably pushes you to learn more words especially when you heard them often during the hike. Words like modi-modi and chkara-chkara meaning come here and quickly :)
🌲 Long weekend
From our first Georgian haircuts to a public holiday in the city. Daniel got his long-overdue almost ready for a man bun haircut. Of course, he misses his Bangladeshi hairdresser who gave him neck cracks. (Which I’m still not sure he is medically allowed to do) Now he has an Iranian hairdresser (no neck cracks to my relief). At the age of 21, his plan is to go to Hungry and then end up in Spain to study. It’s pretty normal here for most people to be well-travelled in the surrounding areas and Europe and speaking multiple languages.
When I was taking the metro and walked to the salon I saw a crowd of people across the riverbank in the road. The city is the busiest I’ve seen it since we arrived. Why? It’s a public holiday, Independence Restoration Day. They do take it seriously, I’m mostly used to the city being quiet on public holidays back in SA. Here they actually celebrate the public holiday in public. Yes keeping up with public holidays ain’t my strong suit but I’ve now added these to my calendar to be in the loop.
🧔🏻 Daniel’s shenanigans
Some of you might know that Daniel hiked Lions Head in South Africa 25 times over 100km’s and he then injured his Achilles heel. Well, let’s say he’s gotta weak spot. On his way to the metro, he got in a few seconds too late which led to his entire ankle being locked in between the two doors. Soon he realised oh this ain’t trains back home you can’t just pull your leg in or easily open the doors. After a struggle, the locals started helping him by trying to pull the door open. After a mission, they got it open and he slid his foot back in however the person’s hands got then stuck. In the end, everyone’s hands and feet were where they belong inside the carriage.
Oh, what you thought I’m done — nope Daniel brings for much entertainment hence not needing Netflix. Did I not mentioned that on our hike Daniel thought it a splendid idea to chill and sit on a grave. In his defence, it didn’t look like a grave. The fact that we were at a monastery surrounded by graves and everyone else either sat on benches or grass, we never thought to wonder hmm why’s no one sitting with us here.🤔 Luckily our friend came up to us when she saw this and said he shouldn’t be sitting on a grave that’s obviously disrespectful. Meanwhile, he already sat there for at least 10 minutes so enough time to offend the other local hikers unknowingly. 🤷♂️
🌃 Lovin’ city livin’
I want to say we have always enjoyed city living but the truth is the first time we moved to Cape Town Daniel wasn’t that eager at all. Saying it’s way too busy until we lived in Cape Town city and that tune changed quickly. So needless to say we were excited to experience a totally different city on a totally different continent with a totally different culture.
As an ol’ farm girl, you would think what ya doing in the city girl? However the first time I started living in the city I felt that same freedom I did as a child on the farm. How do I even make that relation? The independence of walking everywhere just like on a farm, the social life like the big family I grew up with. Being in nature (which is easy to find in Cape Town, mountain and ocean, and Tbilisi city parks, lakes and riverbank). That’s just me — for now, who knows how I feel over a few years.
Winning & losing moments
I’ve mentioned winning and losing in my previous posts. Today we had a winning moment. I’ve bought 3 things (body lotion, Vitamin B12 and Facial scrub) while neither of us understanding each other. We’ve definitely enhanced our body language skills.
We also had a loose situation, while we now ask in Georgian the problem is the Georgian response to that. As most of you know we can only count to 3 and know about 30 words/phrases. So when Daniel asked the lady at the shop “Raghirs” (what’s the price) she said 5 but in Georgian and we ended up still not knowing the answer to what we asked in Georgian. 😂 Needless to say, we need to learn to count beyond just 3 and that same lady is now teaching us to count every time we see her.
👋 That’s the [week]end
That’s it for this week. I’ve just come from an “unofficial” 5k park run and I tell you people here love their sports. From basketball to soccer and tennis it was refreshing to see the activeness.
K’argad
Anina & Daniel
