Hello 👋 One Month in Georgia 🇬🇪
I wanted to write this post earlier but it felt like a big milestone and the scene wasn’t quite right yet. So I will start with this quote instead.
If you don’t know this about me, I love quotes. I even keep a list of them — you never know when you might need one. Like now :)
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” William Faulkner
It’s a Saturday and raining outside. I had some coffee with a traditional treat while on a video call with one of my South African friends in the park. Later we had a Georgian friend over who bought us our first taste of Georgian wine (it’s good and this coming from another wine country 🍷 ). With a great meal from Daniel, dessert from a local bakery, sharing stories and playing Monopoly Deal this was a good celebration. But I’m jumping ahead of myself.
As seasons change life changes
Is this really a milestone? It’s easy to go to another country many people have done it way before us, or doing it right now and many more after. For some it’s like doing shopping online for others it’s going to the mall during Christmas time. Either way, we didn’t choose the most convenient time to do this, did we now, and for that, we heard this one phrase the most often “Why?”
I wish I had a more catchy way of answering this, as to me it seemed obvious. We pursue to grow, experience and explore.
Yet you ask did you really need to go while it’s still COVID-19? Yes absolutely, because the year 2019 and much of life teaches us that anything can change at any moment in time. It’s wasn’t a matter of “why” but “how”. Life doesn’t stay the same, even if we are in the same place, house, community, city or country. We decided to leave the known to venture into the unknown and let the new season of our lives be a change we chose.
Hello, spring 🌷?
Yes so technically it’s spring. The flowers are indeed starting to bloom and it sure is a beautiful sight to see against the backdrop of winter.
Is it still cold yes, is it warmer than when we arrived also yes. So yes, seasons are changing and you can feel it. One thing you can say about Georgians is that they love celebrations.
→ Celebrating Nowruz
Remember our friends from the Hygge event (from ‘nina in Tbilisi post) they have invited us to a traditional Nowruz celebration where they celebrate the beginning of spring on the 21st of March. Influence from Persia but nonetheless indeed a special tradition. It consists of table decorations, food, traditional tea, good conversations and playing games.
→ Cathedrals, Kinkhali’s and Kojori
Last Friday we were preparing for our weekend hike in Kojori with a local friend (the one that brought wine). We needed to get ourselves gloves and mittens as Kojori is about 25km’s outside of Tbilisi and higher up and thus colder. We knew we weren’t prepared for that, not on a hike! So we did what any nomad would do — get in touch with your local friend.
Our very first friend George took us on our first subway ride or metro as they call it here to Station Square which is a massive market underground. This was deep local territory and English isn’t high up on the languages they speak. Who can blame them between Russian and Georgian I’m not sure which one is more difficult.
With his help, we got gloves and took the deepest subway in Georgia 60 m deep with a 120m escalator. Now when we say this is our first subway experience — South Africa have trains of course — on the contrary, Gauteng has a really good system called Gautrain. What we don’t have is an underground train system that's safe, reliable, on time, affordable and connects to other public transport. We simply tapped our newly purple bank card which we also used on our bus to Kojori.
Then came our hike in the snow. There is almost no words or pictures that can describe this magical and special experience. We met our friend — Irina at the metro and headed to Carrefour (local supermarket) for some snacks and headed to the bus station which took us to Kojori. We went from 12 degrees in Tbilisi to 3 degrees in a matter of minutes but we were geared for this!
We got lost, made a dog friend, found our way, walked past a church, and into the beautiful hills to Fortress Azeula. We met a few other groups, had hot chocolate and snacks before heading down or should I say sliding down 😂 At the bottom we walked a bit through the village until the bus picked us up and headed back to the city.
In sunny Tbilisi that week we took a good walk to the Holy Trinity Cathedral. Spectacular to see up close and extraordinary big. It’s 87.1 m in height and an area of 3,000 m². After all the stairs and uphill walk, 😂 it basically overlooks the city we went for our very first Kinkhali’s and they were amazing!
Celebrating 🥳 our one month
On my way to spoil myself with coffee and a treat — I felt proud when a local spoke to me and asked the time and I could somehow answer her. Yet did a dog ate half my treat and bumped over my coffee while I was on my video call also yes. So life isn’t perfect sometimes a dog eat your treat and you have half a cuppa coffee left. (I have to say when it came to saving my coffee or treat I went for coffee 😂 ) This is life, if you try to avoid challenges, failures, or the unknown you are also avoiding, growth, experiences and exploration.
So like Daniel say don’t be vanilla …. but if you wanna be vanilla be the best (swear word redacted) vanilla.
Here is to our next 30 and many 30’s more 🥂
Anina & Daniel
