Plucked too early from sleep, like unripe fruit, still hard–too firm, sour senses, bevelled awareness. Collecting thoughts and belongings I roll off the train bunk half in half out of jeans and dreams. Dreams of moments ago still trying to play out, flashing at me trying to claim themselves as part of reality. Open the window in the corridor. Tbilissi is close. Georgian cold black night air blasting into my face. Fresh. It prises my eyes open and restores my awareness. Ripened and ready, as good as the morning shower, this is my door to the new day.
I was awake early enough to see Tbilissi getting dressed for the day. Starting pitch black pricked with florescent bulbs here and there, then the first appearance of its curves revealed as the outlines of its hills appear in silhouette, the lonely looking early risers; silent and solemn on the platforms watching another train pass and then the metal, rusty, oil stained, sharp and ogreish they cut their way out of the blackness, their once bright colour can no longer fully shake the night’s black.
We ease to a halt at the station. Stark cold with the pale grey first morning light doing little to enhance the vast concrete cavernous station. With almost no signs and those that are there in the georgian alphabet. Finding foreign alphabet used for signage in asia has never been too concerning but the georgian and russian characters seem to intimidate. I followed the crowd off the train down into a dark opening below looming concrete and emerged in Tbilissi, it looked not much different to the starkness of the platform. I found the metro, still no signs or maps, i took the address of the hostel to the ticket office. one of those situations arose where there is no point being understood if you’re not going to understand the answer. With the que behind me swelling, she gave up on our futile communication and just handed me a token to the underground. I go clueless through the turnstyle and down the longest escalator I’ve ever been on, dirty ancient wooden steps churn endlessly downward, the person in front of me sits for the journey. At the bottom i look for clues but there’s little to look at, only 3 signs in georgian, one over each platform and one above more stairs down the center. A train pulls up and its doors open beconing adventure. The thought crosses my mind before i turn and take the ride back up the escalator to find a taxi.
The hostel had described itself as being in the very heart of the city, so i was confused to be dropped off by the taxi, in what seemed to be a deserted industrial suburb. I dropped my bag off at the hostel and headed straight out to explore, heading down hill until i hit the river where I crossed over a grand old bridge. Along the bridge there were a few old Georgian men setting up a market, each carefully arranging their wares on a rug in front of themselves. Each had a wee collection of goods for sale that was amazingly close to a pile of rubbish you might see blown into a corner of a street, just without the rug underneath: a spring, a desert spoon, a porno (featuring a woman and a horse on the cover) half a jumper lead, 20 identical biro pens a book mark… the list goes on.
Eventually finding a restaurant i sat down and ordered a beer, not because i particularly wanted one but because it was all that i could point at to order. I love ordering a beer in Georgia, you have to ask for a bee-waar, beware the Georgian bee waar. Next came the challenge of ordering food, i managed to get a menu, i was the only one in the place except for the 2 waitresses, they stood back and watched me open the menu letting out a giggle when i was confronted with nothing but 4 pages of georgian alphabet. Potato was the only Russian word i knew thanks to delia’s description of the russian alcoholic’s noses as картофель or potatoes, so all I knew i was getting was картофель, other than that it was a lucky dip, quite exciting.
The old town of Tibilissi is the new part, with flash upmarket bars, most of which were very empty for a Saturday night. It’s a very hard city to explore as many streets and alleys looked like certain dead ends, but often not, it’s often hard to decipher where the vacant construction site ends and where the street starts. Most shops and bars are under the buildings down a small, uncelubrious set of stairs decorated with rubbish and signage is minimal. I was rounding one such corner when I came across a bar, in english it proclaimed itself as Tibilissi’s home of rugby and to my good fortune the All Blacks were on the screen against Italy. So from here I spent the night knocking about with ex pats. I moved onto another bar with Luca, the Italian with a proper english accent who was working on the BP pipelines there. the bar ad a lot of US army who were posted there, amazingly stereotypical, adrenalin overloaded balls of muscle, triceps the size of haggis that were more often than not raised above their shoulders with yells of “yea!”. Impossible to hold a conversation with, no time, too much yea-ing to do. I talked instead with a cool little turkish man, a Sean Connery mini me, like me he just smiled and laughed a lot, there was more smiling and laughing than out basic conversation warranted.
By the time i made the walk home i’d had a belly full of beer and did some drunk texting. There’s normally folly enough in the drunken texting, but not until the next day did it occur to me how lightly i’d gotten off with strolling into a pile of rubble. Tbilissi is full of holes. It seems half the city is below ground, massive under-road crossings, sometimes 2 levels deep and all in the grim eastern-concrete-block style, often full of peddlers selling knitted socks or with a set of scales waiting to weigh you for a small price. This is just where you can go but it seems the whole city is built on a whole sub-terrainian plan, probably most cities are, but the crumbling nature of Tbilissi reveals its cavities. Often you would come across portions of the foot path that had entirely imploded leaving vast holes, just there, un-marked or fenced, just exposing Tbilissi’s bowels. Culvets boarder massive drops down to more culvits with more holes revealing a sort of desicrated Escher scene. the murky thick atmosphere snaring up from the dark holes made me think of Dostoevsky ’s Notes From Underground.
I asked Luca about the war, he had been in the city 5 years and i was curious to know about how he was affected in the capital. The people just lived their lives as normal, what could they do, they have nowhere to go. at least as an ex-pat he had options but decided to stick it out with his Georgian friends. the markets were still full and normal, likewise the bars, though the atmosphere was sombre and on edge. At any moment a bomb could rock everything. It wasn’t until a bomb hit very close that he evacuated his family to Azerbaijan, I got a good insight into Georgia from Luca, the dated infra structure, the poverty and how it effected Tblissi; hijackings were once prevalent until cars were installed with GPS, things now were very good, not in the 5 years he’d been there had he seen any trouble (save the war) even the grafitti was a very new thing. He talked about the frequent power cuts and even just now as i write this the power has gone twice in the wee bar that I had to stop in on the way home, The rain was getting ridiculous, though it made for a beautiful walk. The street lights (while working) reflected their orange sparkles on the antique cobbled roads; warm colours to counter the rain. The many bold and intense bronze sculptures of Tbilissi looked so proud in the sparkling rain affected light.

If ya have a wee gander to the left under projects we have a new section FARMERS FOLK MIX TAPES where you can download a mix tape made up by the Farmers, we will put new mix tapes up every now and then so be sure to check there, your sony walkman will appreciate it.

Shannon.