Batumi, Tbilisi, Kezbegi

After arriving in Batumi we stayed in the town's first and only (for now) hostel, called... Batumi Hostel! For what it lacked in an original name, it made up for in friendliness and typical Georgian hospitality. There we met the two Georgian owners; Irakli and Lasha, as well as a friendly American who had practically moved in with them at the Hostel; Logan! He has quite an interesting and well written blog so check it out!

By just wandering around the town we were given a few insights into Georgian life. As we inevitably got lost in the backstreets of Batumi, Logan asked a local for directions to a nearby restaurant. Within 1 minute he was surrounded by 7 Georgians. All of them were frantically arguing as to what Logan was saying (they only spoke Georgian and Russian) and then, after having deciphered what help was needed, began a heated discussion as to which restaurant was best for us.

After the chaos subsided, they all waved us on our way, leaving us all quite humbled by the lengths to which these Georgians went to helping us, despite not speaking or understanding a word of English. I suppose Charade skills can be useful afterall!

Sam gets attacked by Logan with Sanita (A Latvian girl also staying at the hostel)

Further down the road we saw this:

Apparently it is actually quite common for a neighbourhood of residents to just go outside onto a street corner and... well, just chat! Catch up with friends that you havn't seen for a while, meet new people... It again highlighted the social nature of Georgians and I felt that was pretty cool!

An interesting fountain in Batumi

Georgian letters are pretty difficult to read...

There was also a significant police presence around the town. Turned out Sting was playing that night and the President had flown in to watch the gig, subsquently all road traffic got shut down in the centre later on. Because he can do stuff like that, why not?

Central Batumi that evening

We then went for some (awesome) traditional Georgian food. These are Khankali, basically meat AND soup, inside a dumpling. Boom. There was also a very precise way of eating these so as to not spill any of the soup, or burn yourself whilst eating it, as it was insanely hot!

That evening we got our first experience of a Georgian 'Supre', the traditional and intricate method of drinking many Georgians regularly use at social events.

This will be covered in more detail by Sam later, but simply, there are A LOT of various 'toasts' which, at least for the first five toasts, are done in a particular order as directed by the 'Tamada': Irakli.

The drink of choice was the famous 'Cha-Cha', a homemade brew unique to each Georgian family. At roughly 65% strength, it didn't take long for us to get suitably merry and begin to call numerous toasts for the most ridiculous of reasons.


The next morning (or afternoon, whenever we woke up!), we strolled around the now relatively quiet town now that all the police had left. We visited the beach near the Turkish border and later that evening Batumi really came to life.

The beach at Sarpi - cliff jumping videos to come soon!

Interesting architecture

A big fountain show

...and why not go Segwaying?

We hadn't eaten lunch and were desperately looking around for something to eat before we got our night train to Tbilisi later on. We came across a very modest kebab vendor. Little did we know that this was going to be one of the highlight meals of our trip so far! This guy created the biggest kebab I had ever seen. I will let the pictures justify the awesomeness of it...

The mystical 'double' kebab

It was longer than my arm. Incredible.

We thought we would splash out the extra $4 so that we could upgrade to 1st Class - Travelling in Style!

 

Fantastic interior design.

NIGHT TRAIN: Batumi - Tbilisi
Our first experience of Georgian trains was quite a shock.

We turned up to the train station with 5 minutes to spare until the scheduled departure. So of course we hurried along to our carriage and hopped on, quite satisfied that we hadn't managed to miss it.

After chatting for a while we realised that the train still hadn't left yet and it had been 20 minutes. Just then we noticed that the platform was crowded with people getting off the train and heading for the main train station building.

Sam went to ask one of the train officials what was happening and got the brief response: ''Train Broken! Come back tomorrow!''

Ok, so we asked around again and understood that our train ticket would be valid for the train tomorrow or we could refund it and then 'theoretically' make our own way to Tbilisi via a bus or shared taxi. So Sam waits in what resembles more of a mob than a queue for the ticket kiosk whilst I waited on a bench with the bags.

Half an hour later an announcement was made in Georgian and suddenly some people started rushing towards the train. I asked someone what the announcement said and apparently: ''The train might be working now!'' We waited another 10 minutes during which time there were two more announcements. We decided to try our luck and just sit on the train and see what happens rather than hopelessly try and wade through the horde of disgruntled passengers who still occupied the area around the ticket kiosks.

As we got onto the platform, the train started to move slowly. We figured: ''Oh cool the train is working now! They must be just giving it a test run.'' Well, the train didn't stop, but just continued at walking speed. At this point, I was about to jump into the open doorway when a screaming train attendant ran down the platform towards me and jumped in front of me onto the train and pulled the emergency brake.

The train stopped and we piled on whilst she was shouting something down a telephone to some unfortunate employee. Less than a minute later the same thing happened again and the train was moving, despite most of the passengers still in the train station trying to refund tickets for a train they thought wasn't leaving. But this time, the train didn't stop and suddenly, we weren't looking out onto the platform any more! We had left the train station and were slowly accelerating our way towards Tbilisi, missing roughly 80% of the passengers!

Our carriage, which had originally been completely full, now just had us and another couple at the other end of it.

The hilarity of this confusion overwhelmed the seriousness of it. At least we made it onto the train!

Tbilisi was much more humid and a fair amount hotter than Batumi, we stayed in the incredible Why Not Hostel, run by Misha, probably the craziest Polish guy I have ever met, who took us out to sample the Georgian drinking culture as well as the infamous homebrewed 'Cha-Cha', with a bit of Georgian Wrestling thrown in for good measure!

Downtown Tbilisi

The unlicensed bar we regularly hung out at!

We decided to climb the large hill overlooking Tbilisi, it was an incredible sweaty hike but the views were worth it.

Apparently the cablecar was out of order.

Sick views though

Charlie arrived the next day and whilst waiting for our Azerbaijan visas to be processed we took an overnight trip to Kezbegi in the Caucasus mountains!

Charlie in his natural element.

View from a monastery in the mountains.

View back towards the monastery

When we got back the Hostel's driver, Irakli, took us in his British VW for a tour of Tbilisi, and to see a really impressive and recently built Church. It was HUGE.

Driving in style

Church posing picture

Impressive interior

That evening we (just) caught our night train to Baku, Azerbaijan!

Georgian (Drinking) Culture

How to drink if you are Georgian


It is interesting how alcohol has, become such an important consideration, whether by its presence or conspicuous absence in local culture. During the first part of our trip (which we can refer to as BC (before Charlie)), we found no country where alcohol was as much ingrained into culture as Georgia.



In Batumi, we experienced our first taste of this. We were staying in a little hostel run by Georgians Irakli and Sasha. We had been told about the Georgian way of formalized drinking called A “Supra” or "Supre". This term originally just meant a feast, but has come to also mean the method of drinking. Irakli and Sasha were kind enough to put on one for us in the hostel’s front room. Misha (our Polish friend from the hostel in Tbilisi) also regaled us with his experiences of Supre culture in the mountainous region of Svaneti in the north of Georgia. Subsequently, this is my understanding (incomplete and flawed as it is) of the nature of a Supre and the culture surrounding it.



Supras are used in all situations, weddings, funerals, birthdays, promotions and anything else worth celebrating or commiserating (a happy Supra is a "Kepi" and a sombre one a "Kelekhi"). Subsequently Supras happen almost every night without fail, and if you know the host of the Supra in any way, you will be invited, you can normally be sucked into a Supra even if you know no-one, just by virtue of proximity. Such is the intensity of this regime that Misha, after living in a village in Svaneti for a few months, was almost afraid of going outside, in case he was invited to a Supra. When we asked why he didn’t just refuse, he explained that it is rude to refuse, especially when the host says something like “what, you won’t drink with me? My brother just died!” (which happens more often than you would think, because to a Georgian, their friends, cousins and acquaintances are all “brothers”).



A Supra is traditionally done at a meal but at least with some snacks to attempt to soak up some alcohol, we had some smoked cheese and sausages, and some bread. At a Supra, either everyone drinks wine (produced locally) or Cha-Cha (the local fire water, produced from the left over solids in wine making). Toasting with beer is considered to only be done with your enemies.



A Supre consists of a series of toasts. The ‘Tamada’ (or Toast master) runs the Supre, and if you don’t agree with the Tamada, you can leave. We were lucky enough to have Irakli as our Tamada, as he is apparently considered to be one of the best in Batumi, (even though he is only in his 20s). It is the Tamada’s responsibility to start the toasts, he needs to be eloquent and intelligent, and must also be able to stay sober. He will stand, say his bit, everyone will touch glasses and then he will drink, then it is open for another person to make a comment that follows on from the toast, the remaining people touch glasses and that person drinks, this continues until everyone has said something and drunk, (although you can just say “I agree”, if you say this too many times, the Tamada will pick on you). There is also a ceremonial role in which a member of the Supra is apponted to refill all the glasses. I was given this roll by Irakli, and although he said that it was second in prestige to the Tamada, I have a feeling that it is the roll that you are supposed to give to an over exuberant adolescent.


There are a few toasts that must be given, the first being to "peace and friends" (which probably sounds less hippie in Georgian) the second to "Our mothers and fathers" (as apparently, the most important person in any Georgian man's life should be his mother). The Third toast is to the dearly departed, a common opening line to this being; "people are never dead as long as those live who remember them". After this toast, everyone must be silent until the 4th toast, which is to "Our God" (this is from the fact that Georgians, as Christians, have always faced adversity from their Muslim neighbours). From there on, the Tamada generally freestyles his toasts, and people can even ask him if they may make a toast themselves. However, to make a toast you must never just say, for instance, "I like beautiful girls", you must phrase it: "To all the beautiful girls in the world". There can be more than 20 toasts, and the Cha-Cha we were drinking was 65% alcohol, so we were fairly inebriated by the end of the night. Despite the vast amounts of alcohol consumed at a Supre, it is considered bad form for a Georgian man to appear drunk, and worse for a women (who are normally required to only sip their drink at each toast) to even appear tipsy.


Irakli explained to us that so ingrained was this tradition to Georgian culture that good drinkers in a community would be comparable to good footballers in England. Despite this, out and out drinking competitions are rare, and are only really done by the younger, immature generations. And although Supras, for all the world may seem like an excuse for a piss up, he explained that they were actually primarily aimed at promoting conversation, that is the reason for the many toasts. It seems that, although the forced drinking may conjure images of the first week of university. It is not just a drinking game for old men, it is a tradition aimed at promoting interesting, and important conversation, and I personally love the concept.


It is undeniable that Georgian men love drinking, but they also have a big soft spot for wrestling. In Tbilisi I was to find out, first hand, that they like to combine these two past-times. While sitting in an unlicensed bar with Misha, a man walks in and sits down with his friends.However this was man was no ordinary man, he looked like he'd been brought up on a diet of wildebeest and steroids, he looked like he had been born and raised in a cage. In short, he was massive. We were later to find out thet he is only known by the name "Shark" and that he plays for the Georgian rugby team. Believing his size to be noteworthy, I mentioned it to Misha. Misha says, "So, you want to wrestle him?", "No" I reply. Misha explains how, in Georgia, it is considered a normal occurrence to challenge a man to a wrestle if you feel like it, and that it was a completely normal thing. In all honesty, I didn't believe him, but when he then got up talked to the guy and in less than 30 seconds negotiated a wrestling match.It was obvious that this was actually a reasonably normal occurrence. I found myself being herded outside, as Misha explained that he would be wrestling Shark, while I wrestled his friend, who was now doubt smaller, but still noticeably bigger than me, and as I found out later was trained in judo. We had to remove our shirts, as was the rules, and that was how I found myself in a shirtless wrestling match in a car park in Tbilisi.

I would have liked to say that we won, but in short, we got owned. It was ok though, afterwards, we went back inside and continued drinking with the Georgians, who turned out to be awesome guys. after a few more hours drinking and a late night kebab, I woke up in the morning wondering why my jaw hurt, I believe that the pictures explain more than words could.

Night trekking around Mount Kazbek - Kazbegi, Georgia

Seb and Sam look onto our challenge

As we watched the sun slowly going down over the majestic Mount Kazbek, we continued to march/stumble closer and closer to our goal. We were determined to reach the snow near a neighboring summit, something that, in our delusion, seemed to be achievable before night fall, it wasn't.

Having arrived in Tbilisi only a day previous, I and both Seb and Sam were still feeling the effects of my initiation into Georgian drinking culture. 

I arrived at Why Not Hostel at around midnight and drank vodka (my thanks to Misha,  the legendary owner of the Hostel and great troll hunter) until around 4. The following night seemed to continue along those lines and it was that morning that we decided to take the 4 hour journey up to Kazbegi to seek mountains.

Therefore, arriving at Kazbegi around 4pm, having had very little sleep, and no food, armed only with a bottle of water and a small morsel of food from the local bakery, we took to the mountains.

9 hours later we sat down on the balcony back at the guest house where we were staying, and looked up at the silhouette of the mountain that we had just climbed. We were foolish to say the least, but it felt incredible.

As it transpired, when we eventually reached to snow area, which looked so much closer than it was, the summit was a very short climb above it. As the decision was made to climb, the shadow of Mount Kazbek was beginning to block out the grassy path that we had trekked up to that point. As we reached the point where climbing on rocks became rock climbing on a very unstable almost vertical scree slope, the sun was no longer in sight, but the summit was.

The view, even in the twilight, was incredible. Out of shear relief, joy and lack of food and water, I decided to get naked. A liberating feeling, but then we realized that soon there would be no light and we had to descend back down the same treacherous slope.

The most hair raising moments were when one of us managed to dislodge a rock further up the scree slope and watch it tumble towards the other further down. It became a great game until the rocks got a bit bigger. 

Then even when we made it back to the grassy path, with only the light of a dying I Phone and the moon shrouded in mist, it became disturbingly easy to walk of the edge of the ridge and down a 1000 meter drop. 

However, with choruses of Disney's Mulan (primarily 'let's get down to business' - 'be a man') we made it. At one point we passed some campers on the flatter land before the road to the town. As we emerged out of the darkness, with very concerned looks, the campers asked us if everything was okay, to which we answered in unison ' yes thank you.' 

Minutes earlier we had been discussing if anyone had sent out a search party for us, but clearly when we made it....it was all part of the plan.

A huge thank you, however, must go to Kjartan Aarsand, the Norwegian who accompanied us on the first leg of our climb, but wisely decided against the second. Staying in the same guest house as us and waking up at 11.45, with us still not back, he decided to go and look for us. Luckily he saw us on the way back and provided us with a banana and a couple of oranges and some beer...hero. 

We agreed that we do not regret the naked night trekking, but in the future the views would be better during the day.

Having joined Seb and Sam only a few days ago, we are now in Baku and are preparing for our boat trip tomorrow to Turkmenistan. Hopefully the boat will behave, as there is no timetable and it has been know to be delayed for days.

Seb will blog about the rest of Georgia and Baku soon, but now we are off to the oil fields where the James Bond Film 'The World is Not Enough' was shot. Apocalyptic vistas...but who knows what will greet us as we cross the sea to the East. 

Me on the Summit

The Easy Part

The Snow

Me and Sam with Mount Kazbek

The Summit 

 P.S.

The President (for life) of Turkmenistan banned Opera and Circus because it was not Turkmen enough.

He renamed the months of the year after members of his family.

He built a giant golden statue of himself that rotated in order to be permanently facing the sun.

: )

Ankara, Erzurum, Trabzon, Sarpi, Batumi

We were running out of time and we needed to get over to Tbilisi in Georgia in time for when Charlie was supposed to land on the 5th. This meant we had to speed our way across Turkey in 5 days (about as quick as you can go in Eastern Turkey!)

View Turkey in a larger map

 I took a night train to Ankara to meet Sam who had successfully acquired his Uzbek visa and had stayed with the friendly couchsurfer Idris.

Ankara had a distinctly more functional feel to it than Istanbul, so unfortunately we didn't take that many pictures... We just stayed for that day before taking a night train across Turkey to Erzurum. However we did came across something that all cities in the world could benefit from:









TRAINS AND BUSES

Trains are cheaper to take than buses in Turkey, but are slower and generally less frequent. You have much more leg room in trains but in buses you have a 20 channel TV and free coffee and tea. Both have air conditioning. Due to the vast distances within Turkey, night trains and buses are a great way to cover the longer trips, especially during the cooler nights. Our train trip from Ankara to Erzurum, roughly half the length of Turkey, was supposed to be a 17 hour train. It took us 25 hours. The running joke in Turkey is that when the Germans were paid to build Turkey's railway, they were paid per kilometer, which explains the completely random curvaceous nature of the rail track. Sometimes you could look straight out of the window and see where you had previously travelled only a moment ago but in the opposite direction...! There is a food carriage, which serves affordable and decent food, but it is important to at least bring a large supply of bottled water...

The landscape changed a fair bit during our trip...

Whilst eating in this food carriage we met a Turkish guy named Ahmet, he was from Sivas, in central Turkey. He spoke enough english for us to get by and helped to translate the rest of his friend who spoke very little english. After eating with them for a bit we discovered that they were actually the off duty train drivers of the train!

They invited us up to the front of the train where we sat for hours chatting away, playing Backgammon and drinking tea. Awesome!

We then stayed a night with Ertuğrul, Zafer and Atakan when we arrived in Erzurum (Couchsurfing). We had a ridiculous amount of awesome Turkish food, followed by beers and vodka over Backgammon. And then MORE food, where (bearing at this time Sam and I definitely were not sober) for some reason Sam challenged me to a chilli contest.


So we ate 10 chillis each. And yes we definitely did pay for this mistake in the toilet during the following days...

 
 

The next day Ertuğrul took us out and about to show us Erzurum, which was very interesting but very hot! It is worth noting that Palandöken (2600m), Turkey's biggest ski resort, is only 10km from Erzurum. You can fly to Erzurum on Turkish airlines for relatively cheap I am told, so it could be a prefect place to plan an alternative ski trip! Here is (another) mosque, but this one is very old. Can't tell you exactly HOW old but it has a different design from a lot of the other ones so it was interesting to check out...

This is the Çifte Minareli Medrese. It was originally built as a mosque by the first Turk civilization: The Seljuk Turks, but was only half finished. The reason? The Mongol invasion of the late 13th century wiped out the Seljuks and ended their civilization. Pretty cool eh? Well, not for the Seljuks anyways...

We then visited a fortress that was originally created by the Byzantines. Climbing up the restored watch tower, we got some insane views of Erzurum and the surrounding landscape...

After Erzurum we took a bus to Trabzon, on the Black Sea coast, mostly because it seemed to have good links to Georgia, but also because we heard the road over the Kaçkar Mountains had some awesome views, which it definitely did. Rolling green hills turned to dusty, rocky mountains which then turned to humid, green mountainous forest. I didn't get any good pictures that could totally justify the landscape but I'll put them up on Facebook later... 

Our bus from Trabzon to Batumi, Georgia, was certainly an interesting one. From sporadically changing lanes on either side of the road to actually stopping in the slow lane of the motorway to pick up passengers, there were a few questionable traffic decisions that only we seemed to care much about.

After arriving in Georgia, home of one of the oldest languages in the world, we managed to find a great hostel, also the first hostel in Batumi. I'll put more info about this in the next blog...

Here are some pictures of us visiting the beach near Batumi on the Georgian-Turkish border!