Daily Archives: December 1, 2023

During this trip I come across five different alphabets – Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Georgian and Armenian. Being able to decipher what is written has been very useful in several trips. When reading timetables, menus in the restaurant, addresses in maps, or buttons in different machines. Apart of Latin/Roman alphabet, I manage well the Cyrillic.

I learned it during the first world trip we spent almost 3 months in Russia and that remained and has been useful occasionally.

Greek has some similarities to Cyrillic plus is useful to remember the mathematical symbols learned at university.

The Georgian is supposed to be easy to learn, and will be a task for the next visit. The Armenian is a bit larger (38 letters), and somehow it seemed to me that several people writes in Cyrillic. SMSes are sometimes sent using a Latin transcription.

Other alphabets I tried was in South Korea, where I learned how to read Hangul. In that language each symbol is a syllable with two to four letters and each letter try to imitate the mouth movements.

I tried to learn to read Hebrew and some Japanese, but without success.

Recently just saw this map of Turkey, which shows it is surrounded by countries with different alphabets.

Definitely this is one hit of my trip.

08:30

I get up after a third night on the sofa at Tamo’s apartment. I take a showed and redo the backpack before she appears from her room. While she prepares the breakfast, I take again the dog for a walk, still using the stairs. On the way back the dog gets with full confidence in the building block door number 2. We climb the stairs and only at the top floor I realize we are in the wrong place. Go down again and climb the 8 floors up via the door number 1. Good morning exercise.

09:45

I say goodbye to Tamo. It was a really nice stay as I feel she is used to couchsurfers. I want to keep contact and look forward to having her visiting us in Switzerland.

10:25

I’m on the train direction Batumi. I go for the boat. A big uncertainty fills my spirit. Is this the best choice? Would not be better the night train to Yerevan and from there go home? When will the boat arrive Bulgaria? Will I have time to catch the last train Saturday afternoon to Sofia? I’ve already accepted that I will get home on Sunday morning, beyond the my self-imposed limit.

The train this time is half empty, I move to a place where I can see better outside and in the same direction as the train.

11:00

My calculations say that the boat will leave Batumi, the best case, tomorrow at 11:00 and will get to Burgas after 50 hours, midday Saturday. I hope disembarking will be fast to take the 14:30 train to Sofia.

13:30

I decide to get out of the train on the first stop, 3h away from Tbilisi. It is Kutaisi Airport. Using marine websites, I can see that the boat is stopped in front of Batumi and I don’t know when it will go inside the port. The risk to miss the train on Saturday is too big and I will be the whole boat trip full of stress.

Now I want to take the 20:20 train from Tbilisi to Yerevan.

I take the shuttle from the train station to the airport and there I see a bus to Tbilisi. The agent says it will leave in 25 minutes and trip time is 3h30, 4h max. I buy the ticket and get in. The bus leaves 35 minutes later. Google Maps says a trip time of 3h30. Little time after it stops for 20 minutes at a gas station. Again, I’m stressed and unpowerful. I know there will be crazy traffic getting in the city. After 3h30 travel time we are in the outskirts blocked in the traffic. The bus stops to let people out, but I see it is same time to walk to the metro or go to the centre. I was wrong. The last 20km take 2h.

19:30

The bus arrived to Liberty Square in the centre of Tbilisi. I run to the metro to get to the train station. The night train will leave in 40 minutes, and I still do not have a ticket neither food. Luckily the metro is very fast. At the ticket office they do not accept cards and I need to get money out. The next ATM does not allow to choose the amount, I’m obliged to get 100 Lari. With the ticket in the hand, I go down to the station’ supermarket looking for food. There is nothing that I could call dinner food. I get some biscuits and a can of beer. In front of the supermarket, I see a bakery kiosk and get a pastry and a hotdog. It will be my meal of the day. The train does not have a wagon-restaurant. I go back to the station, look for the platform – in the soviet countries the directions are always a problem.

I’m back to a Russian train. I’ve a 3^rd class ticket: an open wagon. There are not so many passengers and I share my 6-person space only with an old Bulgarian tourist traveling to Yeveran to take a flight back home. I feel much better now, I’m back to my comfort zone.

22:30

We stop at the Georgian border. We need to get out of the train. I should not forget that I’m travelling with the Swiss passport and cannot say that I’m from Portugal. People get confused when someone has two nationalities.

23:30

Armenian border. We don’t need to leave the train this time. Three police enter, check the passport first by hand and then on a computer with a reader. Later come the customs officers and they go directly to the people in the space next to mine. It looks like the ladies there have goods far beyond the allowed limits. The discussion in Armenian is quite loud and takes long. Only at 00:50 the train moves again and with the help of the wagon personnel it calms down. I fall asleep.

08:00

Today I will make an excursion to an old city made from caves and carved in stone, then to Stalin Museum in Gori and two Unesco heritage monasteries. I go out early, Tamo is still sleeping. She lives near Didube metro and mashrukta station. It is a big confusion: van drivers shouting the name of the destination, street market, shops and one narrow entrance to the metro. There is added road construction (basically, they did holes, removed some asphalt but nothing is going on), no sidewalks and no crossings. I take the metro to the centre. The metro in Tbilisi is like in Russia: the tunnels are very deep, one metro comes every 2/3 minutes, and they travel fast.

The meeting point is the travel agency. There is a young, party spirit. The excursion group has an American girl teaching English in Georgia, a South African couple and a Egyptian, the three living in Dubai. Our guide is nice, speaks very fast. We drive direction Gori, few dozen kilometres out of Tbilisi.

The Stalin Museum is old, done in Soviet style with many photos and maps but very few explanations. The house where he grew up and his personal train carriage are in the garden of the museum – the museum building was already built by Stalin, other houses were destroyed. Later we visit the monasteries. One of them I find impressing. In the old capital of Georgia, Mtskheta, it is the second most important Georgian Orthodox church after the one in Jerusalem. Several people are praying inside.

After one hour in traffic, we are back to the travel agency office. They offer us wine (home made, so it is served from plastic water bottles). I drink two glasses and say goodbye.

19:00

I meet Tamo for dinner at a modern nice café/restaurant with windowed walls, not typical in this country. She tells me to try Khachapuri Adjaruli. A dough dish like Balkans Pide, with an egg in the middle. After dinner we go for a walk. She takes me to the “Mother of Georgia”, a big statue on a hilltop of a female with a cup of wine on one hand and sword in the other – to receive the good and bad guests. Eva sends me a message with an article about the snowstorm that touched Bulgaria and Romania. From that moment on I cannot stop thinking about the best option for the end of my trip.

08:30

I wake up and look for a towel to use after shower. The bathtub is small with preformed seat for half of it. The boiler is over the taps and there is no place to stand. I shower seated. When Tamo wakes up, she prepares breakfast with cheese and eggs, and accepts that I take Sisi, the dog, for a walk. The lift does not work, meaning 8 floors down and up. She works from 10 to 19h, it is somehow the office working hours here.

12:00

I’m at the meeting point of a walking tour, but nobody shows up. I see there is another tour starting on the other side of the Liberty square – the center point of Tbilisi. This time the tour guide is there. The tour is ok, going around the old town Tbilisi. Like in Skopje, stray dogs follow the group and bark to other people getting nearby. The weather is not cozy at all: windy, rainy and cold. The tour ends at the sulfur baths and as I’m freezing, I go inside to the public bath.

Upstairs I pay to an unfriendly woman at an old guichet while she is on the phone. She gives me a paper receipt to give downstairs. I enter the men’s section and two dunk guys in front of a  table with a mess of food and empty glasses are there. I give my ticket and 3 Lari to rent a sheet that will be to cover and also serve as towel at the end. Inside the baths the people are naked. There are several showers in the middle to clean oneself – I don’t have soap or scrubbing glove… -, the sauna is next to the toilet (which is hot like a sauna), there is a small pool of very hot sulfur water and few marble beds to lay down. It is a mix of Turkish hammam with Japanese onsen in a Soviet environment and state of degradation. I do circuit from one element to another. Some people try to talk in Georgian to me. When I go back to the changing room, as my sheet is completely wet, I wait to naturally dry. The drunk guys offer glass of tea to other people. After a while they also offer me (they have only 3 glasses that rotate). It is not tea, it is schnapps – Chacha, I learn. I say I’m from Portugal and he makes me a canapé with some paté. A bit later another glass, this time with sprite. I ask for a photo and they want I do with one of them.

17:30

The cold is much more bearable after the bath. I stop in a café, take banana shake I quickly go to see the cathedral before heading back home. Tamo is doing some home work and cooking. I try to decide about the rest of the trip and the options to return home.

21:30

After diner I do the dishes and then we play Codenames. It is not easy to play this English word game, with some ‘lost in translation’, as each of us has a difference reference for words definitions.