Met Anni at the airport – after about 5 months – we headed with the train to Leiden, the town where she lives. Trains in Holland are kinda expensive – and not expansive as I usually write: I first thought they were perfect-always-on-time ones, but that’s not the truth even here. We reached our destination in around 15 minutes and we needed other 15 to walk home: Leiden is a pretty nice town, with hundreds of bikes and the typical dutch houses with a very particular roof.

We still didn’t know, but Anni’s house would have soon been the main problem of the holiday: situated in a attic, it has with two rooms, a little kitchen, and a bathroom that is not usable by those who are more than 80kg; I placed my stuffs in the “free” room, which was rented by someone else since few days before, and after a fast lunch we went to visit the town. I know, you’re probably wondering why the house was so problematic, but of course I will go on in chronological order so that you won’t stop reading ’till the end.

Leiden – and as I could see later even other towns in Holland – is full of fast foods: I’ve been eating burgers for days and looking now forward for a delicious italian lunch at home. We visited Leiden on the very first day, while Monday was dedicated to The Hague: we had plans to meet my italian friend in the evening to watch our Italy playing against Paraguay all together. The Hague is slightly different from Leiden: still very calm and nice, it was full of Dutch dressed in orange because of the match vs. Denmark; we went near the screen to see the result twice and both the times Holland scored a goal: they must thank us.

However, we realized that visiting The Hague from the morning to the evening was quite too much, so we decided to head to another town for a couple of hours: our choice was Delft. It needs very few time to move from one town to the other and also this time we didn’t need more than 15-20 minutes. Also Delft is nice, small and with a very beautiful square where Anni decided to show off her ability to wear tights in the public: memorable her “what I do now?” when she realized it was not the simplest thing to do without having people watching at you.

Time to go back to The Hague, we met my friend – Luca – and with his other friend we went to a pub waiting for the football match. Even if not fast-food, I had again a burger there: awesome lifestyle. Better not to comment the result of the play (and neither the reaction of Luca when we scored a goal).

Amsterdam was the destination of our third day: I imagined it more confusing and messy, but it is not really so; it was indeed more full of people, walking mainly in the main roads – full of coffee and sexy shops, actually – but still it can’t be compared with the mad places I love (did anyone say Tbilisi?). We found out there was a photos exibithion in a church, so we decided to go back again to visit it.

But let’s spend a couple of words on the church: as most of the others in Holland, it was house of exhibitions and shows: most probably dutch god likes to have fun. The second nice thing of it was the location: just at the beginning of the red lights district, it was surrounded by sexy shops selling all the stuffs you would need for a night of fun. We then had a visit in the red light district, which at that time was (unfortunately ) not fully working; however, at any time you might find a girl that would please you – which is not so different from what happens elsewhere, actually.

In the evening, Anni had to go to some lesson at the University and I had two choices: joining her for a 4 hours lecture about management (or marketing or whatever) or visiting The Hague again where Luca was experimenting cooking lasagna; no need to tell which my choice was, just it was very good. Haarlem was the next destination: we went there again by train, without any particular enthusiasm, but we found out that is probably the best town we visited during the week. Full of life, people all around, small and beautiful.

Let’s open a little bracket before talking about Thursday: Anni’s neighbours. We visited their house few times in order to try to get internet at our home, since it has not been working for a week already: strange people indeed, with a dog just apparently evil, a cat and some reptiles including two wonderful snakes some meters long. Running from their apartment, an ethernet cable was supposed to connect us to the magic world of the Net, but since it wasn’t working, we tried to ask to the owners to come and check what was wrong.

Finally, Thursday: in the morning we went again to Amsterdam to visit the photo exhibition; apparently the day was calm, but it was the longest and craziest day ever: back from the capital, Anni invited me to attend a Business Club meeting with her professor and some her classmates in a bar in Leiden. They accepted my attendee in the secret meeting – that reminded me Fight Club and they also asked me to give a brief introduction of me: “Hello, I’m Davide Cassenti, from Italy, and I’m here for holidays. I’m attending the Business Club meeting because otherwise I would have been home alone.” was without any discussion the best introduction of the day.

Quite boring for an IT as me, the meeting lasted about an hour and after that Anni went to work, while I decided to visit the whole Leiden by walking. Everything looked fine and even fun, until I got a message from Anni saying the owners saw my stuffs in the forbidden room (everything is forbidden there) and got angry for this. She finished working earlier and we went home together; here we found the big surprise of the week.

The owners not only got angry with us: they removed everything from the room, including my suitcase, computer, clothes and everything. In a minute I became like a vagabond, with only my camera and nothing else. The house is small, so I didn’t need so long to realize that they really stolen all my baggages; and I got mad. We first tried to call them to get explaination about that, but since they didn’t want to talk to us, we decided the best thing to do was to go to the police. And there, we got the second surprise.

The first thing you would expect to receive in a police office is help: this would be normal in every country of every continent; we explained the situation and what we got was just a simple answer: “let’s wait tomorrow: they might have done it just to scare you”; and I got double mad. How the hell can a policeman tell you that everything is just a joke, without even ask us names or documents? I still am wondering about it, since I got shocked and had to go out still without anything. The evening ended with a drink in a bar: we were too nervous to go home and the little walk helped us to get back to normality – if we may call it so.

That night I was so nervous that I couldn’t sleep more than few hours: at 6am I was already awake, waiting  for the moment to get my stuffs back. When Anni woke up we called the owners, asking for them, and they just told us they would have brought them in the evening, but that I had to pay the room that I used. We decided to avoid problems, so we agreed to wait few hours and we continued our trip, trying to have anyway fun in a gloomy Friday. We took a train to Alkmaar, town famous for the cheese one hour far from Leiden. I liked the city a lot: somehow it reminds Venice, even if our city still has something particular that makes it different from everything else; we unfortunately missed the Cheese Market that is held every morning in the town, but we visited a shop where I bought a very interesting wasabi green cheese (yes, the cheese is green) and some others: if anyone would like to taste, you’re welcome.

The next day is today: waken at 7am, was time to get the plane back to Italy. The best thing of today’s flight was the fact that I used an Alitalia airplane: thanks to the italian as primary language, I finally understood what the pilot says just before landing – and I was very happy. Pleasant flight, I cannot tell the same about the weather: more gloomy and rainy than the cold Holland. Thanks God a delicious carbonara saved my day.

I probably don’t remember everything, but looking at my photos – yes, I am not lazy to take photos at least – I can see what’s new here: first, my sister had great results in her gymnastic competition; we’ve been in Mortara, a small town not far from Pavia, and she did the third best result. Wonderful.

There has been Easter under the rain and Angel’s Monday, surprisingly sunny and hot, spent at Belgioioso’s castle where a Fantasy show was held. It was more an event for kids and big fans of collectible card games and similar, but even for the very normal people it came out to be very nice and interesting: they prepared some exhibitions inspired to the most famous fantasy stories – such as The Lord Of the Rings – and tens of kids and actors in costumes were playing them.

In April I had few days of vacation in Budapest with my friend: I flew there with WizzAir, which turned out to be a nice flight company, and spent few days in a really great hotel, cheap and in the downtown. The city is really beautiful – and hot. It was really interesting how the people think abuout Italians and english language: one morning, in a bar, the barman asked us something and when I said I was Italian he explained me that usually we just say “one espresso!”; I would probably had too, if I liked coffee. Anyhow, what he asked us was some nail polish remover for his friend – a boy – who had nails painted: we didn’t want to investigate more about it.

The flight back was awful: we had to leave the hotel at 4am took the plane and landed in Bergamo in the early morning. Seems to be fine, if you don’t consider that from that airport is then impossible to go back to Pavia: the first step is to go to Milano; then, for a misterious reason there are no trains during the whole morning and the only solution is to take the metro and go to take a bus somewhere else. Big congratulations to our Ferrovie dello Stato.

Panorama of Budapest

In May I had a really nice weekend with my georgian friend Nana. I invited her because there would have been a Georgian party in Milano – she’s in Italy of course: she was my guest for a couple of days, so we decided to take a visit to some other places too. On Saturday we have been to Sirmione, a wonderful town on the Garda lake and then a quick visit to Verona.

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

We had then to run back home to see the final match of Champions League at my friends’: but we couldn’t resist without drinking something, so we had to stop at McDonald’s McDrive to order a drink. I do not know if “2 big Fanta” is a sort of magic sentence or if they thought we were just hungry, but we asked it and surprisingly found a BigMac, two salads, two cokes, a sweet and chips in the bag they gave us: we’re lovin’ it. In the end of the day, let’s don’t forget the crazyness at home due the victory of Inter in the Champions League.

The next day we’ve been at the Georgian party, organized by the association Con la Georgia nel cuore: very well, with photos, talks, tasty food and shows. We missed some of them because we preferred to take a visit to Milano, but I’ll definetly will attend those parties again when they’ll be repeated.

Now I’m in Bologna, returning the visit to Nana: arrived yesterday, we’re planning a ride to the seaside soon, even though the day is not the best ever. However, we’re brave enough to take a swim; probably.

The train is quite comfortable, but late: it needs about 3 hours from Milano, then you can visit the whole city by walking. The first thing that immediatly you can see when you arrive during the Carnival is the number of people: I was there during the New Year’s day, but the crowd last Saturday was really something different.

However, after a good lunch in a restaurant on the Grand Canal, the visit of the city was great: hundreds of people with amazing dresses, crazy costumes and beautiful masks are all around; by my side I was wearing my top hat and then a painted black mask made by a woman that had to stop eating her sandwich when I arrived (what can I do, I just arrived in the wrong moment).

Whenever you find a square you are sure to find lot of people in costume ready to pose for your camera: San Marco’s square was full of  all kind of them; in the same square a show was also on going, but it was hard to see it with such a crowd.

After a look at the city from the high tower – the San Marco’s campanile – the time to go home came; actually, i was even late. If you ever think to take a taxi in Venice, don’t even dare: they asked 60 euro for a 10 minutes ride to the station; probably it would have been faster, but walking – with 60 euro in the pocket – was a better solution. Pity that it was too late to catch the train.

Thanks God, the man at the station was kind and changed the ticket for the next train for free: after other 2 hours in Venice, it was time to go home. I think everyone looked at me as a mad guy when I was walking around in Milano with a mask drawn on my face, but I did not care so much.

Great day and wonderful colors, this Carnival worths a visit and even more; next year should go there with a great costume: any suggestion?

Pavia is a small but nice city in Lombardy: counting aroung 70.000 inhabitants, it was the capital of the Kingdom of the Lombards between 568 and 774; if you ask anyone who visited it what was the first thing they saw, the answer can be various: the Visconti Castle, built on 1360 as a fortress, the Certosa Monastry, the towers, the bridge. But if you ask Anni, she will tell the cemetery (and don’t ask me why she had such wish).

After this must-see place, we had a walk around the city ’till midday, when we met my friend Elisa to go to Milano – where another friend of me, Marco, would have met us as well. Before going there, we decided to visit the Certosa monastry: parked the car (for 2,50 €) we discovered the place was closed. Wishing to kill the parking attendant, I had at least saved some other tourists that were going to pay as well by informing them that the place would have staied closed for other 2 hours.

Marco met us there and together we went to Milan – with a stop at his place to get some home-made chocolates. I am not a big fan of Milan (both city and football team), but I guess there are much better places than Spizzico – an italian style fast food – to see; but we are different kind of hungry tourists and that was our first choice. After lunch it was already quite late, so the only thing we saw was the Sforza Castle with its evening light-show.

Running was our favorite word these days: after Milan, in fact, we had to run as fast as possible because we had planned a dinner near Piacenza with some of my colleagues; we arrived there just half an hour late, which is a great result for a georgian and we had really great food in a restaurant that opened just for us. Time to sleep came and we went back home, ready to leave for Venice the day after.

Swimming in Venice

The adventure begun on December 30th: my father took us to Pavia’s train station, where we got the train to Milan and then the one to Venice. Frecciabianca; that’s the name of the train (white arrow): brand new, looking nice both outside and inside and giving you the idea of speed, it just lacked water in the toilets and space for suitcases. And of course, it was more than half an hour late.

We were still on the train when I got a phone call from a strange number: it was our Venice hotel, saying me they did some mistakes and our room was not available; I was going jump out of the train, when the woman informed me that they already solved the issue by booking another room in the hotel next to them, for the same price and explained me how to get there. When we arrived, the first impression of Venice was quite normal: instead of the bus, out of the station there was a boat waiting for us to go to the Lido island where our hotel was; just the ticket price – 22 euro for 3 days – was quite impressive.

The hotel was very nice, even though quite far from the city; put down our baggage we got ready to go back to Venice. Once there, we discovered that it is not such a normal place as it seemed at first: narrow roads along the canals, no cars and most of all water. Everywhere. We felt like prisoners trying to escape from the police that was blocking all the roads. After few minutes we realized that without rubber boots it would have been impossible  to walk around: pity that the boots shop was under 30cm of water. Without listening one old man’s suggestion to take off shoes and walk barefoot in the water, we found another little shop and we finally got our precious footwear.

From that moment, everything became different: Venice is simply amazing, a totally different world. We visited the city only walking – except using the boat to go from/to the hotel; in the evening we decided to go to a restaurant: the woman working at the hotel said us there was one about 5 minutes far from the hotel – by bus – so we decided to walk there; after an hour, we realized that maybe her idea of 5 minutes was different from ours, so we took a bus and finally got our dinner after a very long day.

Quite strange fact happened in the hotel in the evening: we were back, Anni got a shower as soon as we arrived and I got a rest meanwhile; when she came out, she turned on TV and in the exact same time someone knocked at our door: a man told us not to make noise, because they were going to sleep in the room over ours. Puzzled, we informed him that we didn’t even talked yet, since we just came, and the answer was quite extravagant: “Oh really? Well, it was just an advice, we are going to sleep so don’t make noise.„ We agreed, still perplexed.

Visiting Venice doesn’t need any particular map: we have been there three days, saw many things and spent the New Year’s night “swimming” in San Marco square, where the water was high exactly at midnight. Weather was nothing really amazing, with clouds and some soft rain time by time, but we anyway had fun and enjoyed the place a lot; it was January 2nd (and happy New Year to anyone reading) when we left the raining Venice to go to the sunny Florence. Useless to say that the train was again late.

A little day in Florence

Florence is a very beautiful city; unfortunately, after seeing Venice, it looks much less cool than it is. We spent there just a day and an half, this time using a map not to get lost around museums, bridges and nice churches. We spent the evening walking and the day after we begun the real visit. The famous Uffizi didn’t impress me that much – but I am not such a big art lover, but the city is really nice. A must see is Piazza Michelangelo, on top of an hill, where the view of the whole city is really worthy; we also met my another georgian friend – again Ana – and we spent a nice sunny day in the city of art. However, one day to visit Florence is enough; the morning later we took the train to Rome; once again, under rain. Once again, late.

The Rome of Julius Caes… no, Biagio Antonacci

Just before leaving Florence I decided that it was better to buy a new suitcase: considering we would have came back by plane and the maximum weight allowed was 15kg. This however made some more issues on the train, since again there were not much space for the suitcases. However, we arrived safe and Rome is always Rome; the hotel was nice and the temperature about 10 degrees more than Milan.

We met strange people during the three days there: the first morning, during the breakfast, we couldn’t find any place to sit, so we decided to ask someone if we could stay at their table; I was going to sit when I heard “yes”, but I had to stop when the man looked horrified at the ham in my plate adding “but we are vegetarians”. Ok, nevermind, let’s find another place: the old French couple (they said ouì when we asked to sit) in a near table seemed perfect; although they were not French, but Spanish, and it seemeed that the man knew Russian and was very worried about the health condition of the first Georgian president Shevardnadze.

Despite these strange situations, we walked a lot in the capital: for the first time I went up to St.Peter’s cupola, after an agony 551 stair-steps long; despite I was almost dying, it really worths: the view from the top of the Vatican Basilica is really impressive. We’ve also been inside the Colosseum – but unfortunately we didn’t see any gladiator killed by lions there: maybe next time.

The last day in Rome was sunny: after visiting the Colosseum we were quite hungry and we stopped in the first pizzeria we saw along the road; it was full, but they found a table for us, so we ordered our lunch. It was clear that something was happening there: it looked like everyone knew each others – and sometimes they also thought we were in their group, asking us if we wanted coffee or stopping at our table. The first thing I thought was that they were celebrating a birthday or the Epiphany, but the truth was much more terrible: the man sit next to our table suddently weared a mask and everyone clapped; then someone else made everything clear: they were members of Biagio Antonacci’s fan club. It was in that moment that we decided it was better to go.

Time to go home

We left Rome after 3 days and at the airport we had to open all our suitcases because one bag was more than 15 kg: putting as more things as possible in our hand baggages, that looked like camping bags then, we managed to go on the plane, which landed also 10 minutes early. We were very tired, but not as much to refuse my granny’s invite for a dinner: after delicious ravioli, meat and potatoes – and chocolates, but only for Anni, and already finished – it was time to go back home and sleep. Time to go back home for Anni the day after.

Ok, I forgot to talk about our fights, if we call them so, and the thoughts about killing each others during these days, but it will be in the next episode. At last, the trip was very nice, full of adventures and crazy moments. An advice for anyone who will ever want to have a vacation with Anni: keep some chocolates always ready with you and she will be happy and with a great smile - and let’s hope she won’t read these last lines.

The first step of our trip is the big bus station, or marshutka station to be more precise, called Samgori, inside the capital: here we found a nice – at least we thought so – black marshutka that was going to go to Sagarejo, a town one hour far from our destination. From there, we would have taken a taxi to go to the monastery.

Our Black Marshutka

After a fast walk around the station-market to buy some food and water for the trip, we found our seats on the minibus and at 11am we started our trip. Now, I know I often complain about georgian driving, but it really seems that they find the drivers as a surprise in the Happy Meal®. They use to say that math can explain everything, but I really can’t understand how that marshutka was still alive. The life of a marshutka, as other car, depends on the use: if you hit a hole in the street, the life of your car becomes shorter. Let’s use some math:

Suppose:

h: holes in the street where the marshutka entered

K: a costant

L: life of marshutka in days

We will have, considering the number of holes tends to infinite in a georgian road and the driver was hitting ALL of them:

As far as I remember from my study, despite the value of K, the result is always 0; but the marshutka, even if slow and driven without any ability to choose the right gear, did its job perfectly. I am amazed. During the trip, also, Natia managed to get the drivier to bring us to the monastery, wait for us and take us back to Tbilisi for just 70 lari (we were 5): things begun to turn in the right direction.

The marshutka, that was a public transport ’till Sagarejo, was quite full of people, but after we left that town, it was all for us – with another friend who joined us there and in about one hour we reached Davit Gareji. The road to go there is really beautiful: the street is surrounded by hills, without trees and in beautiful autumn colors; they call it a desert and it really seems.

Panorama of Sagarejo

Davit Gareji is a complex built in the rocks, founded in 6th Century. The place was crowded, with many school children and their teacher explaining them everything about the place. It was really a surprise, after several kilometers without anything, to suddently see the monastery and so many people having fun and watching be beauty of the complex. We had a nice day there, visiting the monastery, then we went back to Sagarejo, where we decided to have a lunch.

Panorama from Davit Gareji

Having lunch there was a terrible idea: we ordered some mtsvadi, the tasty meat prepared in Georgia, and some Megruli Khachapuri and they both were awful. Definetly, I would not suggest anyone to visit that place, unless for the funny translations in english they had on the menu: we were wondering why a pig was sucking, as well as what kind of cigarettes does a smoking sulguni like. But we didn’t investigate to much: at 5pm our black marshutka took us back to Tbilisi. Of course, without avoiding again all the holes in the streets.

Smoking sulguni

We asked informations about how to reach the Lilo Market, which seems to be the bigger and less expansive ever, but we realized we needed more than half an hour to get there, so we opted for the always nice one in Vagzlis Moedani. We didn’t find anything special there, except couple of presents, so we went back home with just few stuffs.

In the afternoon, Natia came to meet us at our house: thinking where we could go, I suggested to have a walk to the Turtle Lake, a small lake over one of the hills that surround the city. There are two ways to get there: a long, boring road with a bus or a more interesting funicular that starts from the city and goes up in few minutes; we decided to take the second, for just 50 tetri (less than 0.25 €).

Tbilisi's Funicular

Despite the uglyness of the funicular, Natia informed us that, after it falled down once, they decided to check it every month; no need to write our last wishes then, the trip was much less scary than you can imagine before the ride: in less than 5 minutes we arrived at our destination. The view up there is simply fantastic, as usual when you go up around Tbilisi.

Panorama from Turtles' Lake

We were feeling some more cold than down in the city: the place is anyway very beautiful, nice views and few pubs where you can spend some time with your friends. Just for information, be careful when you ask to add some milk to the tea, since it costs more than the tea itself. We had to go back to the city before 7pm, when the funicolar stops working: however it was already dark and I decided to make another panoramic photo of Tbilisi before getting on the cabin.

Panorama from Turtles' Lake at night

Me and Anna spent the rest of the evening in a nice restaurant in Vake, taking some food we liked and trying something else we never heard before: we discovered it was a very good plate of meat and potatoes, really delicious. Too much food, however, which turned into a terrible stomach ache who made me sleep very badly at night and didn’t allow me to go out of the town as I planned today.

Philarmonia's square in Tbilisi

It was long ago when me and my friend Anna decided to spend some time in my favorite country, sharing a flat and an experience which was new for her; and it was when everything was planned in our minds that things began to be bad. Each time you laugh while reading the Murphy’s Law – anything that can go wrong will go wrong – you should think twice: it was on the exact day we decided to book online the tickets that the webmaster of the bank’s site decided it was time to make some maintenance.

With no idea how to put the necessary amount of money on the credit card – those awful rechargeable ones – we tried all the possible links, with no luck, until I had the brilliant idea to check if the Bancomat could help us in such a complicated mission. After a little walk to this magic device, able to give you money by simply writing a numeric code, we found out that yes, it was allowed to move money on the credit card: bingo.

If you think the before-flight problems are over when you got a ticket, you don’t know how in Georgia renting a flat works, since the best way to have a cheap, nice and comfortable one is basically fond on 2 rules:

• having a friend;
• having a friend of this friend with a house to rent

We were already happy we found and booked a nice apartment, quite noisy but in the downtown and for a very interesting price, when we were informed that the people currently living there decided suddently to delay their leaving: it was less than a week before the flight. Without finding a way to solve this situation – which means logically that the owner had to tell them to go away, since we had already booked the flat – we begun to search on many georgian real estate websites to find out another place where to stay. But I forgot the above law: again it came out to be right, since we got a great apartment in the downtown, for the same price, by a friend of my friend Nana.

Time goes fast, or slow depending on your vision of the Life, Universe and Everything, but finally the time to flight came: we reached the airport quite in advance, and we begun to be worried about the weight of our baggages. Since the maximum allowed was 20kg, we were scared they could be very strict on this rule and asking us (much) money to check-in our suitcases. Remembering again mr. Edward Aloysius Murphy and his funny and true law, we had issues about this as well. In the very beginning, everything seemed to be fine, even if her suitcase was about 4kg more than the allowed weight; but it was when the man in the check-in desk saw Anna’s hand baggage and asked her to check the weight that he started to be bothering, saying it was too heavy and the plane was full.

Now, I wonder why if I pay 9 euro for each extra kilogram the problem magically disappears; thanks God, anyway, he decided to be kind and leave us bringing that terribly huge hand baggage in the cabin; and wonderful, he didn’t ask to check mine, which had some extra kilos as well. The problems didn’t finish, because he asked me to show him the credit card I used to pay for the tickets: I already knew we would have had to discuss again. Thanks to the ingenious system of virtual credit card, I could not provide the one with the same number they had on their screen – since it basically exists only in some hard drive around the World. As living in the middle age, this man had to call God-knows-whom and make us lose again time to find out that it was possible to do such amazing things with the modern technology.

With our boarding pass finally in our hands, we could go to take the flight; which, of course, was one hour late. During the first flight I believed Turkish Airlines began to hire people who loves roller coaster as pilots for their planes; and he also seemed to love very much the beautiful view of Istanbul at night, since we turned around the city, up and down, for about 20 minutes before finally landing, with one hour and an half of late; it was time to run to the second flight.

Run was faster when we saw in the monitor “Tbilisi: last call“. We arrived at the right gate and we saw it closed. Nobody was there, except a queue of people and different flights written on top of the gate, included ours. We asked to someone where they were going to go and we found out the call for Tbilisi’s flight was not started yet: full of tireness, we had finally a nice talking with those people, Alexander and Diana, and spent another half hour waiting for the second, late flight to our destination.

It was 4am when we finally landed in Georgia and the first thought when we exit the door was that the night was terribly cold. Nobody was supposed to come to the airport except some Anna’s friends, who were not sure and were not there, and Alexander, the man we met just couple of hours before, offered us a lift home by car; in twenty minutes we finally arrived home, in a very nice road in Tbilisi’s downtown, where my friend Mzia and her lovely little sister Maya were waiting for us (a.k.a. sleeping in our comfortably beds).

The first impression entering the house was marvellous: we just let the 2 ladies go back home, without seeing the whole house yet, and we decided to have a little walk out to buy some drink and food; there are several 24h markets close to the house: everyone was looking at us, buying things at 5am and talking in another language, but we could manage to come back home and take a better look to the new flat.

If the first impression abut the house was gorgeous, the second was even better: having a grand piano in the living room, considering there also are 3 living rooms, it’s simply fantastic. A bathroom, a second toilet, a big kitchen and two bedrooms completed the flat: we didn’t expect this house at all, since we were just informed that the place was “good, you will like it“. With finally a smile in our faces, we get ready and had the first long sleep in our new palace.

In the first game, one guy had to eat as more agnolotti as he could, but without using his hands: a girl, in front of him and with a bend on her eyes, had to take them with a spoon and give them to the partner. The winner had all of them (45) in just 2 minutes and 15 seconds.

The evening concluded with music and the dance competition, with a little accident for my contrada, some professional dancers showing their performances and lot of music.

Sunday morning started very badly: the sky was covered by grey clouds and a little rain started to fall while people were putting decorations in the streets. It looked like the day would have been spoiled by the bad weather, but at midday the Sun came back over our heads: we finished to prepare decorations and we take out our beautiful reproduction of an old church that was there many years ago; at 3pm the last games started.

There are 5 contrade in Portalbera and in each of them there was a different game, the first one in the contrada dei Rili, the orange one: some children had to take some water from a pool with a sponge and put it in a bucket. The 2 girls representing the home team won against lot of little boys – and this will let them joking at them for long long time.

We moved to the contrada dei Pioppi, the green one, for a game titled il percorso della pace (something like the peace course), a obstacle course in the playing field of our little town. There were some protests here, but at last the game was won by the home team.

Time to go to the contrada del Castello, the pink one, for a game for the older people: some old women had to make the longest wool ball in 15 minutes. I believe I would never be able to be so fast. The forth game was in the contrada del Cassinotto, the blue one: a child’s scooter race around the little contrada.

The last game was in my road, in the contrada dei Santi, the red one: a 3km relay race, with 3 runners per team. Our team was last, but my sister was the youngest player of this game and did a great performance: her first race, lot of supporters screaming her name and a little fright when she arrived, feeling little bad for the tiredness. Nothing serious, after the race we were ready to watch the last game, the most traditional and old one: the palo della cuccagna.

The goal of this last game is to climb over an high pole in the less time. Not everyone could get on top, but this game decided the winner of the competition: the Rili, with a good performance in this game.

My contrada did not a good job in these games, but we didn’t lose completely: a second competition was the one for the best decorations and the best allegorical float, which was won by us. Do you agree?

There are several games, distributed in different days, and the first one today was the football tournament, with an additional rule: each team must have at least a player under 18 and one over 40. We won both the matches we did: the first was easier, 8-1 the final result, while the second a little bit harder was won for just 1-0; in any case, after the first day, i Santi are on top of the league. To know the winner we must wait until tomorrow, for the second day of the tournament.

In the evening, some other games were played: the musichiere, where people should listen to a song and guess the title, pictionary, played by my parents, where you must let your partner guess some words by miming or drawing them, and chi cerca trova, where people had to guess some objects’ names by solving some puzzles or crossword and find those tools anywhere in the town. Pretty funny, we won the first two games, but unfortunately lost in the third one: the final result saw i Santi at the third place. But it is not yet finished!

I always say that running is a bad habit, and I have to confirm once again: just couple of meters far from the bus’ door, I put my foot in a very bad position and I felt a pain as I never did before. I had two terrible minutes – or maybe it was just few endless seconds – where I couldn’t even see or hear well for the pain, feeling as I was fainting. I was anyway able to sit on the bus and to write an sms to Mzika to come to help me.

With her help and a taxi, we reached the nearest hospital, in Vake, and there I’ve seen things that you people wouldn’t believe: first of all, I had to walk along a stairway, with my friend’s help – funny, uh? – and once inside, the first thing that shocked me was the silence, the absence of any form of life; I knew hospitals here in Georgia were not in the best conditions, but it was just awful: finally we saw a nurse – neither young lady! – and I had a ride along the horror-film-hospital corridors over a sort of bed drove by Mzika, destination: x-ray room.

Going along those corridors looked really like an horror movie, one of those that Tarantino would love, but the x-ray room was even worse: just looking at the places you would feel better. Anyway, I got that x-ray scan and doctor told that everything was fine: some rest, some medicine and less walk and I would be soon be able to walk – no run anymore – again. Oh yes, Georgia is also this: I love this tiny little country!

X-Ray room in Vake's Hospital