Good and Lost

I found a bus company with a route into Georgia in the morning of the 4th and bought a ticket. The only available bus was a direct from Trabzon to Tbilisi, meant to arrive in the Georgian capital the next morning. That meant that the dropoff in Batumi would happen half an hour or so after midnight–which only added to my nervousness. Entering a new country where you don’t speak the language alone is always a bit nerve-wracking; arriving in the middle of the night is even more so.

Nonetheless, I spent the day working in a cafe in Trabzon before heading to the bus station to await my ride. It was there that I had my first introduction to the Georgian people. Two young men, very large, an older woman, and a middle-aged woman were engaged in active conversation. I could tell immediately that they weren’t Turks by the way they acted with each other; in Turkey, virtually the only time you ever see a man and women talking is when they are a couple, and then in low, inaudible lover’s tones. These four were all talking actively, including the older lady, with the casual touches and expressions common enough in the west, but almost unseen in Turkey. The language, too, was different, with undertones of Slavic pronunciation and perhaps even a hint of Greek’s melody and rhythm, but in the end unlike either. I would find shortly that Georgian is part of the Caucasian language group, of which most dialects are now only locally spoken. As such, it has little or no relation to either the Indo-European language groups or the Slavic ones, and was almost entirely new in vocabulary, grammar, and alphabet–the written script is full of curls and loops, and bears none of the relation to the Latin alphabet that either Greek or Russian does.

Fortunately for me, most of the older people in Georgia speak Russian, a language I speak, if only just. The bus left Trabzon at exactly eight o’clock and headed east and north along the Black Sea highway. It was dark as we approached the border, and storming. High white-capped waves rolled in out of the fog to break into surf at the cliff edge of the road, and when we stopped for food just before the border, half of the power in the place was out, causing a line of passengers to blunder into the toilets with cell phones and lighters held aloft for illumination.

I’d just read a story about this exact border crossing in which the travelers had resorted to bribes and sweet-talking to get across, so I was a bit apprehensive. I was relieved to find that even in the last few years the situation has improved immensely, and my American passport was greeted with raised eyebrows, grins, and heavily accented welcomes. The rain was coming down in sheets as we waited on the other side of the crossing for our bus to come through.

It was only twenty or so kilometers to Batumi from the border, and we finally arrived in the city a little after one in the morning. I had my face pressed to the window, already looking for hotels, as the rain still poured. We finally pulled to a stop on Tbilisi Moedani, a main square in a run-down part of the city, and, at this time of night, none too friendly looking. A kind fellow passenger took me by the arm to a nearby taxi and explained my situation to the driver, who drove me to a nearby hotel–and only charged me five lari (about three dollars) for the trip, an act which immediately endeared me to the Georgian people, after my experiences with taxis in Syria and eastern Turkey. The hotel room was small and cold, but cheap and very clean, with wood paneling and even a small desk, and I went to bed that night quite happy.

It was raining the next morning, but nonetheless I was determined to see the city, and so booked two more nights at the front desk. Then it was out to see the sights, my coat pulled tight around me, my camera under my coat to keep it out of the rain. My first impression of Batumi was of the run-down post-communist sort I’d seen in Bosnia and Serbia, with cracked sidewalks and roads so broken and full of water it would take a four-wheel drive vehicle to navigate them (indeed, I saw a disproportionate number of humvees, SUVs, and trucks on the city’s streets). But as I drew nearer to the seafront, this decay gave way to high, grand buildings and wide boulevards and, against the seafront, an expansive park full of fountains, groves of bamboo, and little cafes that had been closed for the winter. I reached the seafront and stepped out onto a wide black pebble beach that stretched in both directions; I understand Batumi is a prime destination during the summer for Georgians and Turks looking for sea and surf.

That day the rain didn’t let up, so I headed back into town and stopped in at a small restaurant for dinner. I ordered khachapuri, as it was the only Georgian dish I’d heard of, and received an enormous bread bowl full of cheese, a half-cooked egg, and two slabs of butter. I don’t mean slabs in the American sense of half an inch off the end of a butter stick–i mean two-by-three inch thick chunks of homemade, freshly churned butter, melting into the bread as I ate. I hadn’t eaten anything all day, and still I wasn’t able to finish the meal. I walked out satisfied and with a bit more understanding of the girth of the first two Georgian men I’d met back int the bus station in Trabzon.

It was raining when I woke up the next morning, so I spent a few hours reading. When I looked outside again, the clouds were breaking, and for the first time since the Sumela monastery, bright blue skies were showing through. I lost no time in collecting my camera and notebooks and heading out into the city. Sunlight always improves a place immensely, in my opinion, and Batumi was no exception. With the driving rain gone, I could see that what I had mistaken for simple decay on the roads and sidewalks away from the seafront were in many cases construction. While much of the city still had that haggard, half-vacant post-Soviet look to it, most of the city was in a state of rapid reconstruction; for the first time in a good long while, Georgia is again a stable, independent state, and is doing its best to rework it’s image. I suspect we’ll be hearing much more from this country both as a tourist destination and a player on the global stage over the next few decades. It has been in the past, as well–this city in particularly was the home of fabled King Medea, from whom Jason and the Argonauts stole the golden fleece. In the central square of the city there is a statue of Jason and the fleece, set high on a pedestal above the pedestrians far below.

I walked back down to the sea front and around the harbor district, taking pictures here and there, and, as it got dark, stopped in at another restaurant for another Georgian meal. Previously, my favorite cuisines were Syrian and Greek, but if what I’ve had so far is any indication, Georgian is moving head and shoulders ahead of the pack. This time it was bread with Georgian wine and a plate of badrejani, a grilled eggplant dish topped with a garlic and walnut crust and garnished with pomegranate seed. With my first bite, I realized that this was quite possibly one of the best dishes I had ever eaten–the smoky, spiced topping combined with the smoother taste of the eggplant, and accented perfectly with the sharp sweetness of the pomegranate. The wine, too, was excellent. Georgia is, if archaeology is accurate, the birthplace of winemaking, and has its own tradition stretching back over seven thousand years. This was a slightly sweet white wine, heartier than most European and American varieties, with less refinement, but more flavor; perhaps very much like Georgia itself.

I watched the sunset on the harbor. To the north, the high white peaks of the Caucasian mountains rose up from the sea, and on a nearer, lower peak, a centuries-old castle turned gold in the fading light. This, I think, is a country I can get used to.

Related Posts

• Homeward by Bus and Train
• Up the Black Sea Coast
• Into the Capital of Georgia