Here we are in this foreign country we now call home. What a whirlwind of emotions when we arrived. As I write this I’m sitting in a hotel room three days into the 8-day quarantine. I feel calm and excited to explore the city of Tbilisi.
Why Georgia?
I’ve wanted to work remotely outside of my home country (South Africa 🇿🇦 ) since my first job flew me out to Thailand for three months.
My original plan was to head out to Portugal in 2020 on their remote visa. As we all are aware COVID-19 had other plans for everyone.
A month before COVID-19 hit South Africa I attended a remote work meetup in Cape Town. I met the founder of Work Wanderers who told me about Georgia. Intrigued by this country, which to be honest, I had no idea where it was. That evening I researched Georgia and I was totally hooked!
What caught my attention was the fact that South Africans’ didn’t need a visa. You can stay for up to a year — although when COVID-19 hit that changed and you require a Visa. Which of course didn’t stop me from pursuing my plan to work remotely somewhat like a nomad.
💡 Digital nomad travel options: Countries that issue Remote Visa’s
How did we get into Georgia?
Georgia 🇬🇪 has a program called “Remotely from Georgia”. With this visa citizens from 99 countries can apply and live in Georgia for up to a year.
That’s exactly what we did. In January 2021 we had all our ducks in a row and applied for the Visa. It took 3 days for approval and 5 weeks later we landed in Georgia.
💡 Networking tip: Join the South Africans in Georgia or Remotely working from Georgia Facebook page (it’s a bit annoying if you don’t have Facebook as it seems that’s their main social media platform)
The 5-week preparation
We were ecstatic when we received our visa confirmation! We also realised this is it we are doing this! That same day we booked our flights and accommodation.
Our biggest life savour was our first planning session at Grumpy and Runt with doughnuts and coffee. We planned out each week’s task and who is responsible for completing the task. Like Daniel (my husband) would like to say we need to do this like you would eat an Elephant “small bites at a time”.
💡 Planning tip: Use a Trello board it’s super simple and easy to keep track of the tasks especially when some were time-bound — like selling our car.
Fighting Flights
Chasing dreams doesn’t come without some challenges :). Friday the 26th we headed out to the airport to catch our flight which then moved to Saturday the 27th. Which in normal circumstances isn’t that of a big deal. However, we had done our PCR tests the day before which will then expire by the time we arrive in Georgia.
At the time you are of course stressed out and your head is running through all the possible solutions all at the same time.
I will never forget the moment when a staff member from the airline started counting 72 hours (which is how long your PCR tests are valid for) up to the new arrival time. We had to check if our PCR’s would still be valid with the new arrival time.
While she was counting from the 25th (when we took the tests) to 29 Feb (not a leap year) and Daniel stopped her and said Feb doesn’t have 29 days so our PCR tests are still valid. Somehow 29th (or correctly 1 March) didn’t count as a day 😂
Also retrospectively our flight arrival date was the 28th (although it was still over 72 hours) we were totally not doing well on the math side of things.
Once we arrived back that evening we had dinner and started a new plan of action. The following morning our minds were clear and we organised a PCR test and personally took the PCR test directly to the lab. Yes, we handed it over to the medical person doing the test. We received our test within 2 hours, printed it out and headed back to the airport where we then finally checked in.
💡 Stress tip: Don’t do maths at the airport when you all frenzied 😂
First impressions?
After a 10 hour flight from Cape Town, a 4-hour layover in Doha and a final 2-hour flight to Tbilisi we were pretty tired. We landed in this image that reminded us of when we watched Chernobyl, minus the nuclear situation.
The airport
The airport was uber tiny (think tad bigger than George airport). The police serious and very much intimidating — they will speak to you without any facial expression. Very different if you are used to the South African Police.
The police
Obediently we followed the officer through passport control. They carefully looked at you and your passport before asking you questions. All the while you are sweating with heart palpitations at 10 degrees temperature. Finally, a feeling of relief when she said “Welcome to Georgia “ once again no facial expression.
The driving
We got our bags and headed out to our transport taking us to our hotel. The drive to the hotel was surreal our minds couldn’t catch up with our physical reality yet.
Besides the fact that they drive on the right-hand side, our driver had a right-hand steer and apparently, that’s pretty normal here to have both. Let’s not even talk about driving rules. Up to this point, I have no idea how our driver knew how to drive. Some places there were no lines, stop or road signs — all the while he was laughing and telling us he is a great driver.
The hotel
Let’s start with the most important topic — toilet paper. Yes, toilet paper that thing everyone fought over in 2020 as if we going into an apocalyptic world where no toilet paper exists.
In our layover in Doha, we had baby soft 3ply toilet paper — spoilt. Here we had one roll (which in my eyes is more like half a roll) and feels like perforated paper…. 🧻 Now I’m still not sure if we use too much …. or if Georgians doesn’t use enough…. but we got a refill of two rolls (honestly 1 roll in my opinion)
While it’s only our third day in the hotel the staff here are very accommodative especially with our plant-based dietary requirement. With some ideas shared with the chef from Daniel, we finally got oats for breakfast instead of boiled potatoes and cauliflower 🌱
I’ll end this writing with a refreshing observation from our hotel room. An ambulance picked up a drunk person and where bypassers helped this drunk person out of the road onto the sidewalk. These strangers also called the ambulance and waited with him until the ambulance arrived. Now I don’t know about you but where I am from there is no way an ambulance service is picking up your drunk — a**
Might be the effects of this countries history. Where people see themself as part of a community and helping others. Instead of our individualistic lifestyle back in SA.
Till next time (შემდეგ ჯერზე)
Anina & Daniel
