Goodbye Borjomi, Goodbye mi friend!

This is the end. As always there is an end. So from my side this end was yesterday. Yesterday I went away from Borjomi, in the fronteer I had to pay 20 dollars. Fucking capitalismus! So in that boarder, instead of have also the prices in the currencies of the boarder too there is only in dollars?? puag. Anyway, I give 40 lari, where I could have give 25, because I had the two options of money. But no, as always I don't think. The bank man looked at me nice, because he would not give me any lari back or equivallent for the extra money I'm sure I payed. So after running in the rain twice, because of having to put visa to say goodbye to Georgia and visa to say hello to Turkey, thinking on when I cross my beloved bridge over the Rhin between Germany and France like nothing and here with nationalists flags of the same colour and tall metal fences, we entered the new country. I changed churches for moschees in the landscape, but the flag was still present every where.

Why do we need flags to know where we are? I know I'm in the world, the rest I don't care. Then from 9 in Borjomi till 7 in Istanbul I only heared Bony M and Greek traditional music. So please, Greek people, stay away from me for a while or I'll bite you, jejeje. I ended quite far from the center, but I didn't wanted to take a taxi, I found a shopping center where only the guard was open and let me get some money from cash withdrawal. Then a man with a bus, who only speaked turkis said he take me to the metro station but he stopped at the end of street, making endless questions that I could not responde. So I apologized, went out and found a woman with her dog. He resulted to be another spelled sepharad descendant. And I ended in a taxi to the Sultanhamet neighbourghood.

The agressivity of the Marschrutka drivers

We went in the morning to the botanical garden, which has a nice waterfall. It looked to me like beeing in Italy again and they even had Pinsapos, an special tree from Spain. Then we went to a big lake to have some bath, where Stefania was kind of disturbed by a young guy which first words where: I don't like piercings in the girls (who asked you for opinion, turd?)And we saw what I would like to call the "Religion-stargate cube". A massive cube telling the religious story of georgian on the top of a hill (or that seemed to me, but I didn't research more about it), which could be the christian version of the famous interconnect portal of the Stargate film. Then when comming back to our "homestay". A man came inside the Marschrutka, say something to the conductor and this got so angry that wanted to spell the man from his out by kicking his face when he was already laying half outside of the car, after the previous punching and neck-graving fight. We where all shocked, I thought, what can possibly say a man in 3 seconds that leads to this gratuite demostration of violence? coming back at the place, the hosters learned from our lonely planet book, that they could ask 30 lari to the next buch of tourists instead of 20, like they did to us. What they don't seemed to realize is that you need an improvement on your bed and sofa, not window, fool of ugly&scary dolls, not to mention there was almost no blanked room. But they where nice persons to stay at.

Queen Tamar-ta of Sakartvelo.

We got up really early, arround 6, well I sleep a couple of minutes more by Gio the ranger and Omart where destroyed, after having party with local shepperds the night before. But we had a long journey for us. We came up to the shepers place where they had a truck fool of goat cheese and there where like 10 dogs. Then we continued and ended at another shepher's house, where I was the only woman amoung 10 guys, except for the russian poster of britney spears hanging on the door. I though, yeah, somehow realistic that britney had the remote idea to cross this paramount through one day. Well we cook some of the mushroms delicatessen, the ones that are the most difficult to find in their opinion I guess and some fried cheese. But they just through all kind of rubish direct after their table on the front door, which for me was like to say. Come on, I know here up you cannot take a recycling track, but still some autos reach hear, why don't you just accumulate it somewhere together so that you don't have to see this shit every meal. But they seemed not to be disturbed from that views, even when the further views, where the ones of gorgeous mountains. We left and they gave me the rest of the mushrooms in a plastic bag, which whe had to hang from my bag even when it was pouring oil. Then I had to throw away my bag twice, to save some terrain level, so the mushrooms passed to a happier life in the middle of the meadows. We saw some frog eggs, that looked like tschurtschela to me (tschurtschela is something traditional here, basically nuts covered with some cooled grape juice like caramel). Some other shepherd gave the ranger a pair of homemade nunchaco. I wondered why possibly you need that in the middle of nowhere, maybe for beating "kung foo panda" And then we entered a place where the brown bears like to eat framboises, there where rests of their digestion every 10 meters. Also some archeological founds, about how the Georgians used to put the wine. In the museum we read that they re-used some burials for that, so I was wandered if that could be the case. Then I falled inside the river why crossing it with my big bag, so we had a bunch of laughts. I called myself queen tamar, cause that day it was really nice to see, how they where all concerned about what I should learn, like the names of trees and they gave me flowers, so I ended with a bunch of things in hand. Last but not the least, I saw my first live viper. I like snakes, but seeing how difficult was to differencite her from the stone, made me thing I should mind my steps more next time I trek around. We ended pushing the car, till the petrol station. They wanted me to stay seat in the auto, cause as a woman I should not do such an effort. But I gained the sex battle, jumped out of the car and share a funny moment of running after a lada niva.

“Te quiero puta” (ramstein) or 2 days trekking in Abastumani... by Marta

So after sleeping 4 hours I met Tango. Who happened to be with two friends, one of them called Omart, his girlfriend lives in Madrid, cause she plays the violin and works for the church. Another called Nikos, but I’m not sure after 2 days about his name. It started as always with the Marschrutka driver, after assisting to a punching action in Tblisi, here the man started to shout every second because of the trank door. In Abastumani, a really nice place, cosy with Rusian style houses, old sanatoriums and a hollywood style name at the top of the hill, we met Gio the ranger, who will be our helper for the GPS action. I was alone there with four georgian boys, the nightmare of every mother for its daughter?. Indeed it was great, we spend the whole way up stopping for little rest, which make it not so difficult and I learn a couple of new mushroms that are eatable and I found even the spanish ones (by that I mean the only ones I'm able to find myself, hear they are called fox-mushrooms). And after a big bag of mushroms we found the place to sleep, the hut, from where you could see the Abastumani observatory and where I was tried to be invited constantly to a "chota, chota" chacha, which I regreted one after another. Then one only know the words of "te quiero puta" from rammstein of Spanish, so we constantly said that and even called people so that I could tell them bad boys in georgian (Ajurebo). Anyway, as 3 of them were "drunked young guys without girlfriends" it was inevitable that they wanted to give a "try-o" to see if they could get something from me, by trying to blink their eyes at every possible eye-contact. But this time no church proposal arouse. By the way, the so called toillets here (vamos lo que el comun de los mortales denomina letrinas) are a hole in the ground and that want didn't had door, which is the best view you can have at some signaled events that take place inside them hehehe.

A short Visit to the cementery by Marta

After resting a little from coming from Tblisi, my neighbourg Zura called me for a walk. We met a pair of friends of him, with a Lada and they asked if we wanted to go to the local church and afterwards to the Park. First in the church, we almost parked inside, although it was a really tiny place. And they introduced me to a couple local ways of behaving, like that woman should enter after man or that they cross different and what means the fingers by crossing. We came to visit the grave of the father of the guy. It was almost dark, so it is impresive to see how beautiful the moonshadow in cementery was. Then we came to the big wheel, all with the auto and afterwards to the rollercoaster and the pirate ship. Yeah, I bet hear people could take the auto to the toilet too. The attractions are though really primitive and sound as if they where about to broke. I watched a film from Guillermo del Toro when I came back home:Devil's backbone.

Linda: country of marriage-craze

Yesterday Marta sat down with her notebook to write the annals of our Georgian stay history- this time on the topic "How many times we have received marriage (or other less decent) proposals up to now". After an hour or so of intense recalling we ended up with a list of 26 (!) cases. All that in just two months. A lot of choice, ain't it!

All that despite our age that shocks most of Georgians (so much! can't be! and not married!), despite the fact that I am vegetarian , and we're not drinking wine (so what do you do in restaurant then?), have starnge religous views (flying spaghetti monster church mixed with buddhist)don't want any children yet (most women have children very early here), like to travel around alone (and not stay at home to serve the husband) and will never perceive all my husbands wishes as coming from God!

Linda: Top of the pops with Sikvaruli modis!

This is the one that makes Marta and me break out in a dance in the middle of a street, in park, on bridge- anywhere we happen to be walking- singing out loudly "sikvaruli modis, sikvaruli shndeba, sikvaruli arahotesh tamtarteba daaaaaa" !!!!

This is the one that we spent hours on trying to learn and even understand lyrics.

This is the one that hightens our mood and therefore is being exploited at our home.

This is the one that we hear in marshrurtkas on different routes.

This is the one- Sikvaruli modis by Nino Chkheidze! :)