Riding the Tbilisi Metro

Watch it or read it or both

The Tbilisi metro is a beautiful thing. It’s a lifeline, it’s one of the few things that keeps Tbilisi chugging along, from falling into utter chaos and collapse. And it’s a miracle it still runs, despite the electric bugaloo that is Georgian politics. I can’t imagine the nightmare this city would be if it were only left to overcrowded suicide mobiles (marshrutkas) and einsturzende autobuses.

This woman prefers death by traffic to riding a suicide mobile ("marshrutka")

It was a mere accident of creation as well. It didn’t come about until the 60s, and for the sole reason of NATO expansion and unbridled Western aggression. You see, back then, Soviet policy was only to build metros in cities that had over one million people. Everyone else could have trams, trolleys, and marshrutkas (lucky them). Tbilisi at the time didn’t have a million people, but Georgia was on the front lines of NATO, sharing a border with Turkey. And that was the argument made: we need underground shelters for the people and military. A very good argument, since everyone remembered how amazing the Moscow metro worked out during World War II.

Into the underground city...

And so Tbilisi got a metro.

Riding the Tbilisi metro is interesting. It’s like a time capsule. It’s like the rest of the world moved on, but goshdarnit, not the metro. It still costs a measly 50 tetri a ride (which at once I’m glad, but also I wonder how it continues to operate), the escalators always look like they’re about to fall apart, where other metro systems have succumbed to Capitalist marketing mayhem on their heavily contended advert real estate, the Tbilisi metro stands true to its Communist roots and barely an advertisement can be seen (again, one wonders how it continues to operate) – that doesn’t mean adverts don’t have their place, but rather even the placards hung for ads often stand empty and broken. Overcrowded train cars, even at weird times like 10 pm on a Sunday, light bulbs that haven’t been replaced for thirty years, train cars that seem to bounce along the tracks, fat ladies in booths at the escalators whose only job is to do whatever the hell they’re doing that usually involves sitting on their cell phone browsing Facebook.

So much unused ad space! City Hall wtf are you thinking?!

When a city says it’s too poor to install a metro (*cough* Denver *cough*) I instantly think of Tbilisi. Not only are they too poor to have one, but by all logic they’re too poor to keep it running. But somehow it keeps going.

It’s like a metaphor for the city itself. The city is always on the edge of collapse. Not because of economics, or because of war or conspiracy theories. But because of the local culture, the absolute “I don’t really give a damn what happens outside my door” culture. It’s what I see America turning into. This urban hellscape doesn’t happen because of a failed economic system, it happens because of a failed morality.

And fellow Georgians, all this said, and I still do love living here.

And I’m still thankful that the metro exists. God I’m thankful for that.

How to Ride the Tbilisi Metro

For the newcomer and the visitor, here’s a short guide on how to ride:

1. You can recognize a metro entrance because there are usually 5 guys standing in the doorway shouting “Telavi!” “Kutaisi!” or other random cities. They don’t move out of the doorways. They assume everyone going to the metro actually just wants to hitch a ride with them. Also, if you’re handicap, you might as well give up and just take a taxi, this metro, like Tbilisi sidewalks, are not for you.

Maybe you want Akhmeta instead of Rustaveli? No?

2. You will instantly be harassed by dudes with trench coats that have a metrocard and want to swipe theirs for you. They’ll charge you the price of the ride. I’m not sure how they make money on this scheme, but ignore them because there’s clearly some funny business going on. Probably the police haven’t cracked down on them because they also can’t figure out why these guys prefer doing this to just effing getting a job at the local minimart. Does that honestly pay more? And if it does, gah, I’ve never been that pro minimum wage before, but I’ve been leaning that way lately.

3. Once in the metro, you have to buy a card. You can buy them where it says “metrocard”, big orange sign, not to be confused with the Bank of Georgia vendor that is in nearly every metro station as well. Don’t be embarrassed if you do confuse them, everyone does one time or another. Go up to the lady and say, “Minda barati” and throw down a bunch of lari. The card costs 2 lari, and every ride on a metro or bus costs 50 tetri (lari-cents) and marshrutka rides cost 80 tetri, so calculate how much you need.

This is the correct window

4. Swipe the card at the turnstile.

5. Ride down the escalator and hold on. These things are steep and fast. Apparently the Commies didn’t have safety regulations way back when, that kind of thing is clearly part of the DC/Brussels nightmare conspiracy. There will be a sign that says which cars go where, read it while you ride. Otherwise you have to go to the center of the hall and look at the wall to figure out which direction is which.

Hang on!

6. When the train cars come, notice what the locals do and follow. This means that you should push to get on the car before people get off. The more you’re in the way, the more you’ll fit right in and nobody will suspect you’re from abroad.

7. Make sure that you know how many stops you’re going. On rare occasions, the voice announcing the stops has just come back from a Georgian feast and just calls them out at random. And though this is rare, it always happens when you aren’t paying attention.

8. Getting off. This is my favorite part. I like to play the game Metro Chicken. When the doors open, people will try to rush on. This is where I like to stand firm. If you don’t let me off, you’re not getting on. Will they miss the train and you have to go to the next stop, or will they move aside and let you get off?

9. Ride up the escalators.

10. You’re free! Enjoy the rest of your day in our beautiful city.

If you enjoyed this list, make sure to subscribe to get some more insights into Georgian life or just enjoy the ride. And if you're looking for a tour, check out my audioguide of Rustaveli here on VoiceMap.

Bedoba: Your Lucky Day

Today Georgians have a special tradition. It’s the Day of Luck, or “Bedoba”. Whatever you do today is how you’ll spend the rest of the year—though often in a more symbolic day. It’s sort of like a more concrete set of resolutions: You make your resolutions, do them all today, and by luck they’ll stick goshdangit.

Georgians on this day tend to stuff themselves with sweets, especially gozinaki, a kind of walnut or hazelnut brittle. It doesn’t mean that you’ll be eating sweets for the rest of the year, but rather that the rest of your year will be sweet. Likewise, you should do some work today to have a productive year, spend time with your loved ones to have a loving year, and so on.

Last year for instance, my wife and I spent Bedoba in Munich with a 10-hour layover. As a couple of Christmas markets were still open, we spent the day sipping hot wine, eating sausages and schnitzel, and visiting T.K. Maxx for some cheap, decent quality clothes. Subsequently our year was full of wine drinking, Teo got sent to Germany twice on work, and we got a baby (not sure where that fits in).

Sipping on mulled wine in Munich, circa 2019

And that’s why today I’m writing this blog—I’m hoping this year will be productive. I’ve got lots of professional plans, from writing to music, not to mention raising a newborn baby, so my plate is pretty full. That means today I’ll be writing a blog, working on my upcoming Facetious Guide to Czechia, writing a bit on a short story, working on a song, practicing accordion, and last but not least take my baby to a Christmas market.

Last year's Tbilisi Christmas market (2018-2019)

Which leads me to another thing about Georgian culture. The brand of Orthodox Christianity here still uses the old Julian calendar, the same one we used to use until a pope changed it in the 1600s (Pope Gregory, hence the “Gregorian Calendar”). As the Julian calendar didn’t account for leap years, Christmas kept drifting off, and everyone realized it was going to eventually be a summertime festival rather than a winter solstice festival. So Pope Gregory added a day every four years (except on years with multiples of ten or something like that) and fixed it. By that time though, the One Catholic and Orthodox Faith had long since splintered in pretty solid and unfixable ways, so the Eastern Christians (Orthodox) still looked at this new calendar fairly skeptically. Eventually they’d add a leap day themselves to fix it, but not for another couple of hundred years, which meant the Orthodox liturgical calendar is quite a few days off from the Gregorian calendar, and their December 25 is our January 7. To add to the confusion, the Soviets had changed the calendar of every day use to the Gregorian calendar, aligning it with the rest of the secular world. So even though Georgians might refer to Christmas as January 7, it’s actually December 25 on their religious calendar (but still the 7 on their secular political calendar).

At the Tbilisi Christmas market (2018-2019), smoke from barbecue

All that to say that Georgians—who have long seen themselves as spanning Eastern and Western culture in a variety of senses—have found double the reason to party. They’re beginning to embrace the rampant commercialism and materialism that goes along with Western Christmas, which includes the standard Germanic Christmas carols at the beginning of November to Instagram moments with an alien creature known as the Santa Claus (traditionally they have a guy named Tovlis Babua, or Grandaddy Snow, who does the same thing but usually dresses in blue and wears a traditional Svan hat). So now Western Christmas is a Georgian reason to party, and it kind of opens up their Christmas season. Their newly styled Christmas/New Years markets start on December 25, with a Christmas/New Years tree lighting, and they go through the New Years and don’t end until Georgian Christmas on January 7. Which actually acts quite nicely and perfectly for tourism to boot and that for Westerners, even the New Years “season” is quite festive.

Tovlis Babua is quite a different guy than Santa...

Traditional yarn toys for sale. Krokodil Gena from the Cheburashka children's show pictured

So guys, make your resolutions. And plant them in the ground today on Bedoba by doing them and getting off to a proper start. May your year be sweet and full of love!

Borjomi: Ruins of a Resort

You can watch the blog instead of reading it here

Borjomi was the bizarre wonderland of the Russian tsars. I say “bizarre” because if I was the supreme ruler of the Caucasus, than it really is a peculiar place to choose. It’s certainly a beautiful place, but kind of on a second tier of beautiful places in a region that abounds in beautiful places. And the thing that’s really made it famous, the springs, is a far cry from something I’d spend two weeks and a large guard to get to and hang out at. But it became the local Romanov go-to vacation resort, and as such, what once was a military garrison town popped up palace after palace to cater to the affairs of the Court and the hundreds of attendants and secretaries that would follow along.

First impressions

When I first went to Borjomi 10 years ago, I saw what appeared to be the ruins of a resort town. Something of a town post-collapse, mites and beetles hiding underneath the remains of what must have been a glorious Soviet getaway. But in the weirdness that was Soviet and Russian culture, it was all ruins of a strange children’s kitsch, as though some factory in China were busy making slight alterations to Disney characters to make second-rate themed amusement rides for developing countries. And though that’s still very much the case now, back then it was even weirder, what with all the vines and vegetation that was then growing over everything (now it's only growing over half of everything).

Random corner near the park

The parks are filled with falling apart buildings, old hotels and past-Pioneer lodges, swimming pool projects that were never finished, half-planned dreams that were never even half-realized. But around these crumbling concrete aberrations there is still life. A small bazaar of Chinese children’s toys here, Russians having a faux-supra with rot wine there, some Saudis piling onto a jeep to ride the nature trail over there. Sometimes a new guesthouse sprouts some life like a hopeful seedling trying to break free through the shadowy undergrowth.

I do find this kind of living ruin a bit charming, and it certainly is a quiet escape from the bustle and hubbub that Tbilisi can get to be. The town is snuggled in a valley in the low Lesser Caucasus, following the Mtkvari River north and south, and going up a gentle gorge along a rapid spring perpendicular to the river. There’s a nice boardwalk that follows the river, with several bridges spanning the way. It forms the main artery of life for the town, where the locals wander and gather and live primarily. Most of the towns shops and amenities can be found here, as well as a growing number of guesthouses.

Still a few fancy hotels along the tourist route

The gorge features a whitewater spring as well as the premiere boardwalk of the town. It was along here that tourism was originally oriented. Indeed, it’s a cozy and beautiful stretch, almost a walk in the woods along a river except for the woods on occasion being broken up by high dollar hotels, palaces, and glamorous buildings-that-once-were. Truly, at every turn it’s hard to tell if Borjomi is a town coming up or coming down.

a river runs through it

The founding of a resort

Borjomi was “discovered” (in much the same way white people discover things everywhere where people are already living) by the Russians in the 1810s (indeed, Georgians have been living there since practically the dawn of time, but to be fair the Ottomans had basically murdered or forced out everyone living in the valley, so perhaps “discovered” is an okay enough term). Russians, like Europeans anywhere during that time, were obsessed with the fad of “curative waters”. When Russians had finally annexed Georgia and gave the Ottomans a romping, the soldiers who were garrisoned there found some curative waters of their own. They set up some baths and had a party.

But then the governor discovered the party. The Russian Viceroy Yevgeny Golovin brought his daughter there, which triggered a whole array of Russian nobility to flood the valley and brought the place back to life, with palaces, resorts, and several mineral water bottling companies, giving Borjomi its current fame.

Because of the huge attention then brought on by the nobility, it became a destination of sorts for Russians. Many just wanted to get out of the cold, wintry hell that was (insert Russian city name here) and relocate to somewhere inhabitable and friendly (give or take an Ottoman or two). Some came with the military and decided to stay, having now a Georgian son or daughter. Whatever the case, it was quickly Russified and by the turn of the 20th century there ended up being more Russians than Georgians even.

Modern times

Even today, Borjomi is very much a Russian town. Russians still flock there, despite it being something of a forgotten paradise, enjoying the Chinese trinkets available in the rows of souvenir shops, and the broken, run-down amusement park left behind by the Communist overlords of days past, the swings and ropes dangling in the wind as if still played on by the ghosts of an economic Chernobyl. And though more Georgians live there these days, they’ve kind of given up on being Georgian and many continue speaking Russian as the main language, indeed it’s more useful business-wise with all the tourists. When I try to speak Georgian to local staff, they mostly ignore it and continue speaking Russian. The assumption being that I’m a tourist in Borjomi and the ONLY tourists in Borjomi are Russians (unless of course, my wife were clad in a niqab), so I must speak Russian (of which I do, but that’s beside the point).

Chinese trinket shops (and some local honey) line the walk

In every way Borjomi is truly set to be a tourism paradise if it just can get out of its post-Soviet spell of sluggishness. From Borjomi, it’s a short train ride/drive to Bakuriani, one of the main Alpine ski resorts in the country. Across the river is Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park, one of the better developed hiking zones in Georgia (granted, whoever made the trails there needs to learn about switchbacks). About 2 hours away is the cave monastery of Vardzia, one hour to Rabati, and a score of other historic monasteries, and all up and down the valley in which Borjomi sits there is littered monastery and castle after monastery and castle.

So why is it still so… sleepy?

I brought my guests there this last time around, and nothing was open before 10. Literally nothing. Which meant not even a coffee or a croissant (if you’re lucky, you might find a Mobile Coffee van lingering about in the morning mists). The restaurants for the most part are still focused on only serving the Georgian “peasant food”, that is, khachapuri and khinkali, neither of which are local to Borjomi, and each restaurant isn’t that much different from the next. Price and atmosphere are really the only variations here. Do you want faux-fancy, with white everything? Then head to the rail station and stop at Rcheuli or Metropoli. Do you want faux-folk? Old Borjomi is a good choice (probably the tastiest option) or Inka. Everything in town though seems leftover from a previous Age, a general feeling of malaise… or waiting… Hanging about town gives you the constant feeling that something is going to happen... and then nothing ever does.

Borjomi Park

Crowning the boardwalk in what once was a beautiful square and now is a beautiful parking lot, there’s a long children’s park most of which I’ve described that follows the river. There are some neat things, like a children’s ropes course (not that it functions) and some bumper cars. There are a lot of things that don’t operate anymore too, like a rollercoaster, swimming pool, and whatever the heck the permanently under reconstruction building was.

The main thing to see in the park is the Statue of Prometheus, which sits at the base of a 20 meter waterfall. It’s surprisingly easy to miss. However, as you walk along, you’ll pass over a bridge and then there will be a little sitting area on the left. The statue is on the opposite side of the river.

Prometheus, who was chained to a mountain in the Caucasus

Past the developed park is the nature trail. It’s a pleasant walk, except that you have to jump out of the way of the occasional 4X4. I’m not sure why Georgians seem to want to develop tourism around people who don’t want to walk, but that’s the thing, so better to just get over it and stay on your toes.

Also near the entrance is the famed "Borjomi spring" where you can fill up your own non-carbonated Borjomi mineral water. For some reason, you're not allowed to bring 5-gallon jugs, but anything smaller is fine. You could even bring 5 one-gallon jugs if you wanted to.

fill up your jugs with this self-prescribed hangover medication

There's a nominal fee of 2 lari a person into the park.

You can also ride the Soviet cable car up to another amusement park above the city, which has a ferris wheel, some lookouts, a couple of cafes, a monastery, and a long walk along a auto road to come to the springs from above.

Borjomi Springs

I mentioned before the sorry state of the springs. But now they’ve renovated it. After about a 45-minute walk down the river, through the children's park and down the hiking trail, you’ll find yourself at a modern swimming pool with changing rooms and fairly clean squat toilets. The entry is 5 lari a person, on top of the 2 lari you paid into the park itself. There’s a little bar too, but prepare to pay exorbitant amounts of money for anything to drink.

Don’t expect hot water though. It’s not a “hot spring”, but a “mineral spring” (smells of sulfur, like the baths in Tbilisi, but not hot). The water is lukewarm at best. I actually think they should just install some water heaters and fake it. We went in autumn, and it was barely enough to knock the chill off. So best time to partake in mineral water activities is in the summer.

The future

Borjomi could do more to highlight its connection to Bakuriani, making the jump from train to train easier (for now you have to go across town, with no clear public transit—there actually is a modern bus that follows the river, but you’ve got to figure that one out on your own). Update the train, currently it’s just an elektrichka that clugs along—why depend on marshrutkas when you HAVE A BLEEPING TRAIN LINE?!!! The recreation area can be tended a bit better too. Though it’s great they’ve made the effort for a family inclusive environment, half of the playground equipment in the main park isn’t maintained or used. Clear it out. Make some places for romantic getaways (don’t forget how babies are made in the first place!).

Rent from the best company in Georgia, Family Cars

My ultimate dream though is to be able to take a canoe down the Mtkvari from Borjomi to Tbilisi. Really, my dream is from Vardzia to Tbilisi, but I realize that might be stretching it. As it is, it’s not really a near possibility, but I’ve got my fingers crossed… We also ran into a lot of bicyclists, but that’s got to be a nightmare route, contending with the drivers on the narrow Borjomi road. Now a bicycle/hiking path… okay, the sooner I get back to drinking some wine the sooner I might get my head out of the clouds…

#Borjomi #holidays #touristicsites #southgeorgia