Stalin

Friday, morning. We’re thinking to go to Gori, the town where Stalin was born on December 1878. The town is less than 100km far from Tbilisi and with the new road built it is possible to reach it in less than an hour. Marshrutkas leave the capital from Didube bus station and in the early morning we are there, looking for one of them; however, when we arrive at the station, we immediatly see a car with a sign: Kazbegi.

Despite we are fed up of mountains, Kazbegi sounds really a nice place to visit: there you can find one of the most famous churches in Georgia, Gergeti, located 2170m high on the mountains. The idea looks good, so we are asking the old driver how long and how much would it be to go there: he says 2.5 hours and 120 lari, two ways. Not so much, but the man looks more a zombie than a real person and we are not that confident on his ability to drive there: despite he follows us for 20 minutes, trying to persuade us to go with him, we finally get rid of him and find a marshrutka going to the same destination.

Forgetting about Gori and Stalin museums, we are sitting on a 10 lari marshrutka which will leave soon to Stepantsminda, formerly known as Kazbegi. It’s in this moment that the role play game adventure begins: for those who doesn’t know, an RPG is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting; usually the characters are strange elfs, dwarfs and any kind of mythological creature and the people sitting in the bus with us are not that less strange.

In the first row of the marshrutka there are some georgian girls: I’m surprised to see they are the most normal people around us, so there’s no need to spend that much time to talk about them; probably the only reason why they are here is to translate to the driver what others are telling in english.

Behind them there are four americans: three of them might look normal, if we don’t consider that the girl is going to Kazbegi with her MacBook Pro, but the fourth has the most ugly combination of clothes and mustaches ever; we might give him the nick name Untrendy Stalin, just to remind our initial plan was to visit Gori. We will know later that one of those four – a chinese/american guy – is also an incredibly polite one, working as a volunteer teacher in Georgia.

The third row is not less crazy: there is a guy from Holland who is talking for a mysterious reason in russian with the american teacher; I first thought he didn’t know english, but I then heard him using the language with others in the bus. Next to him, there are two people: a woman and a jewish man: this last one looks kinda normal, with just the traditional kippah on his head and a pray book; however, when he starts to dress up as a priest to read it we begin to be a bit worried about the company in the marshrutka.

Finally, our row: I would not consider me and Mzia that normal, but next to us there is a couple that is absolutely less than us. The girl is georgian, very silent and calm, while the man is a foreigner, with a strange haircut and a terrible english. It is when we are on the road that he shows off his nationality: he’s italian, complaining about the driver. He is probably in Georgia for the first time, since the driver was not that bad – compared with the usual marshrutka ones: while we are going up on the road, very good and safe, this man starts to scream that he wants to stop to the next village to take a taxi; of course, telling the driver all the bad words he knows in the best language in the World.

His terrible and angry english is translated in polite and calm one by the american teacher and this polite translation is once again translated in georgian by the girls in the first row. However, since I am kind, I suggest him to avoid going down and spending money for a taxi, since anyway he wouldn’t have found anyone driving better. His angryness seems to have made the driver being a bit more careful anyway, but the swears go on until the end of the road. Good for Mzia to learn a bit better more bad words.

As I said, the road is one of the most beautiful I’ve seen in Georgia so far: almost completely paved, it goes up on the mountains without giving any sense of fear. When we arrive on Stepantsminda, as soon as the marshrutka stops, some women coming from the town are already opening the door, looking at the strange people inside and screaming “house, house!“: they could at least learn some more word in english, in order to get tourists at their place, but they seem to have a good success; as it is in our tradition, the italian angry man accepts to go with them only when he is sure there is a kitchen where he might cook himself.

The road to Gergeti church

View from Gergeti

Survived at the first trip, we are ready to visit Gergeti: the village – or the church, which is what we are interested in – is about 7km far from Stepantsminda, but is located 500m higher. We ask a taxi driver how to get there and he says the road is broken and he cannot bring us to the top; however, if we pass the broken road by foot, we would be able to find other cars that might do so. We do accept to go there with him, but when he asks us 20 lari for the 2 minutes road we get quite angry and decide that is better to do the last (and longer) part by foot.

The road is nice and calm, even if very tiring: we are not in a hurry, so we calmly go up arriving at the church in about two hours. The view is really amazing: the weather is nice, sun is shining, and you can see the whole Stepantsminda town and beautiful mountains all around. The only problem is that the church is under repairment, but anyway worths to be seen.

Gergeti church

There is a shortcut to go back to the town: taking it going up would be crazy, since it will bee too tiring, but we decide we want to take it to go back. It’s faster indeed: in about one hour we are back where we started to walk; this time we decide we also don’t need a (20 lari) car to the bus stop and we go on by foot.

The marshrutka that goes to Tbilisi looks less strange than before, but again some weird people are with us. There are two girls, with a very british accent, some georgians, two turkish guys. Some minutes before we leave from Tbilisi, one of the british girls goes down, searching some food: as soon as the driver turns on the marshrutka, the other one begins to scream to stop, that her sister is down and she cannot leave her alone; she is really terrified by the idea, but the driver calms her down saying he’s waiting for the missing people.

Along the road, one of the turkish guys is trying his luck with a red-hair georgian girl who is sitting in the first row; without success, he also tries with the british sisters, but considering how polite they are, it seems a battle lost in the beginning. They are so kind that one of them sits on the other one’s knees in order to let another man sitting in the overcrowded marshrutka.

As it happened in Tusheti as well, we need to stop to change a broken wheel: thanks God this time is quicker, but the road back takes longer than the outward. In about three hours we are finally in Tbilisi and, as the tradition says, there is only one thing to do after a trip in the mountain: running to the pizzeria, as fast as possible.

Panorama of Gergeti

The idea is clear: from Tbilisi, the best way to reach Tusheti is by going to Alvani, a town 2 hours far from the capital. Reached the bus station before 8am, we discover the first Marshrutka would leave at 9: too long to wait, the road will be long and tiring, so we decide to find a taxi. The taxi driver is asking 150 lari, a price that looks good for us, but before we can take it, a man is stopping us, telling he could help more: his name is Mamuka and he has a jeep in Alvani and he is available to take us there with his Marshrutka, then go to Omalo with the car: perfect! We just did not know how much hospitable he would have been next.

In Italy I would never trust someone who says this – and nobody would probably offer anyway – but in Georgia seems to be quite common: jump on his Marshrutka, we immediatly start our trip, destination Alvani, where he lives and he will get his car. Along the road, it looks like this man is very kind: he offers us to be our guide around Tusheti – where he has several houses in different villages – and bring us back to Tbilisi the third day, all for 500 lari (a bit more than 200 euro). Everything looks more and more amazing and we accept: we already had booked the hotel, so it seems we have everything.

The road to Alvani is long, but good: in a couple of hours we arrive at his house, where his mother and some other people are taking a cocktail break in the living room; of course, as the georgian tradition wants, we are forced invited to join and take food and drinks as well. The situation was kinda strange, with those quite-old women drinking on the sofa as they were 20 years old, but after half an hour we are ready to take the jeep and go to Omalo. The distance this time is not so long, just 70km, but the road cannot really be defined so: the more you go far from Alvani, the less large and clean the way is, going up around high mountains 200 or 300 meters sheer, without any protection to make you feel at least a bit safe.

The amazing road to Omalo

Car crashing along the road

Anyway, there is not that much time to feel scared, since the landscape is simply astonishing, the best I’ve ever seen: mountains covered with dark green trees, huge fields, rivers and several waterfalls are all around the 5 hours long road. Omalo is 1800 mt above the sea level, but to reach it the highest point is 2900 mt: we have a stop at the peek, eating some watermelon and taking amazing pictures and fresh, but few, air. After that, the last 20km are missing to reach Omalo: our hotel is a couple of km far from the rest of the village, alone in a wonderful green valley; it is made of wood and looks really inviting and beautiful.

Hotel Tusheti

Our driver seems to be very popular: everyone at the hotel knows him and they are all very friendly. We enter the hotel and discover one strange thing: it looks like most of the people are locals, staying at the hotel for god-knows-which reason. Anyway, they assign us one of the rooms and after we put down our stuffs we have the first surprise: there is no toilet inside the hotel. There are two small ones outside in the yard, as I heard only in my granny’s stories; the washbasin is also outside, in the open air: considering we are spending quite a lot, 50 lari per person, we begin to feel disappointed. The shower is even worse: it’s in the third scary bigger building in the yard, it has no electricity and water is warmed by a fire which is tuned on when the owner wakes up – later than guests, probably. Gosh.

The candle light shower

Outside toilets

Trying not to think about the bathroom issue, we wait the lunch: again, disappointment. The food is less, some old bread and not so tasty cheese, some rice with chicken, some vegetables: nothing so special and the price for food only was 25 lari. We are hungry – and angry, actually – so we eat as much as possible, preparing to go out for our first journey around the region. Mamuka will bring us to visit two villages in the afternoon, Shenako and Diklo, few kilometers far from Omalo: and it is now that the hospitality of this Tushetian man begins to be too much.

The roads to go to the villages are not worse than the one to reach Omalo: the small paths made of ground, surrounded by marvellous landscapes, are not a problem for the 4×4 car that we are using and in few minutes we arrive in Shenako. Along the road, every person met looks to be a relative of our driver: we are stopping every 100m to greet someone, who looks to be a cousin, the best friend or the aunt of Mamuka. We also meet some women with lot of kids – again, somehow relatives – that join us in the car to go to Diklo. The car becomes a school bus, with kids screaming and crying: thanks god the road is not too long and we survive.

Diklo

Other than the friendship, something that captured us about Tushetians is the level of superstition that they have: just before reaching Diklo, one of the woman starts to say that they must get down the car, since it is “forbidden” for women to pass there. It looks like the weather would be terrible for three days if a woman does it, and it is clear they really believe it; however, our driver doesn’t really care and we reach the village without stopping. Again, in the village, there are forbidden places for women: one of those is a small church on top of the town – which Mzia visited anyway; some people are even screaming at the women who try to pass in the forbidden places, showing off again how much they believe to these stories.

Dartlo

Church forbidden to women

On the way back we are again carrying kids, back to the village down; when we are back to the hotel, food is not ready yet, even though we alerted them we were coming back at that time. We are again disappointed by the dinner: same things as the lunch, cold, few and not so tasty; also, as the legend says, it starts to rain: maybe women shouldn’t really pass in those forbidden places or, most probably, it is raining so much in Tusheti that men should find someone to blame. The rain is strong and the toilet is in the muddy yard: better to wait the morning to go there. Disappointment.

The following morning me and Mzia are up quite early: outside is cloudy and clouds are at our level. The place seems unreal, as hidden in the fog, beautiful and magic; it’s cold, very cold and nobody is awake yet. Our other fellow traveller, Natia, is also sleeping as a child in her bed. Waiting for the World to wake up, we took a little walk around; breakfast time comes – no need to say we were not so happy – and later our driver arrives, ready to bring us around for the second day of the trip; of course he is late and the reason is simple: he was asleep. Simple and correct. The destination for today are two: Dartlo and Parsma, where there would even be a huge preparation of khinkali for the third day of the khinklaoba festival. Once again, we are stopping every 100 mt to greet some of the driver’s relative or friend.

Behind the clouds

Dartlo is another nice village, with old buildings in a wonderful nature; after the visit to it, it’s time to go to eat khinkali. But this time, hospitality begins to be too much. Parsma is not as nice as other villages: we need to walk a bit to reach it and we are welcome in one of the – ugly – houses; to say the truth, we are not really so welcome, since one of the woman starts to complain – trying not the be heard – that the house is not a restaurant to host everyone. Outside the rain starts again to fall: we begin to be a bit worried, since the road to that village is even worse than the one to Omalo; meanwhile, our driver has disappeared somewhere out with friends and relatives, not caring about us inside; and khinkali are not yet ready.

It looks like the real reason why the man was so kind with us was that he needed – or wanted – to visit all his relatives in all the possible villages in Tusheti: finding someone who would pay for that is even better, and here is when we join the story. The day is really terrible: we have been waiting around 4 hours for the khinkali, doing nothing inside the small kitchen of the strange house in Parsma. When the rain finally stops, we can take a walk outside: the khinkali are made by anyone in the village, in a small gazebo with the photo of Pelè – power of globalization; tens of people, who probably didn’t see a shower for 10 days, are helping the cooks to make the food. Nice. The eating moment is even better: there is no table, plates are put on the ground and people sit there, ready to eat as much as possible. I just have one khinkali – which I admit was good – praying the Lord and all Thy Saints not to get sick for that. Congratulations to Natia who, not to be unpolite, was brave enough to eat 7 of them.

Making khinkali

Preparation of khinkali

Kid eating khinkali

Due the rain the evening looks to be very close: impatient to go back in that awful road, we have again to wait the driver who is thinking about his business, joking and playing with his friends. One of the man at the “table” even says that Georgians are the most polite and hospitable people in the World, who would always invite guests for a dinner: apart that I would also do that, but one thing he is not considering is if the guest does really want to be invited. However, after another hour of doing nothing, the time to go back finally arrives. At the hotel we meet some italian friends, just arrived from a long trekking in the Caucasus mountains, guests in the same hotel (if I can call it so). This is our last night there and we agree with the driver to come at 10:30 in the morning: this time we refuse his offer to visit another village before going back to Tbilisi, fed up to see his family members.

After a better dinner, thanks to Francesco who gave me a fantastic chicken Simmental, me and Mzia decide to take a walk out at night: clouds are surrounding the hotel and with the light we could see the microscopic drops all around us. We are walking inside the clouds, almost in total darkness: very beautiful. After a freezing night, again we wake up early: just to inform, in the hotel the electricity was available only at night, so no possibility to turn on a light at that time. Anyway, we decide to go to the village, Omalo, couple of kilometers far, to buy some food in a shop. It seems incredible, but there is really one market, where we can buy the product of globalization: sneakers, nuts and some buscuits. At the hotel they also gives us some tea and coffee for breakfast – without asking more money – and there we get disappointed for the last time: the other italians there have potatoes and spaghetti, after we’ve been given awful food for three days.

Again, our driver is late, and when he finally arrives there is a news: we are probably going to take some other people in Omalo to bring them to Alvani; he tries to ask us if we want to visit Omalo first, but since we’ve already been we say no need: it seems like he wanted to go just to take them, but thanks God no other passengers in our car. Something else is changed in the plan: he is not going to bring us to Tbilisi, but to Telavi – close to Alvani – where we can take a Marshrutka driven by his friend for free. Not a big deal, maybe even better, but again we are not so happy that someone who is getting money to do a work is doing whatever he wants without even asking us if it is ok.

The road back is terribly stressful: we are stopping every time we find a car to greet someone, the wheel of the car gets broken and we need to replace, we meet other friends of the driver to join, we stop again to help someone else who also has problems with the car. I am mad, but still trying to be calm: it’s nice that nobody understands my nice words in italian, otherwise I would look quite unpolite. When we arrive in Alvani, again we are forced invited to have a drink at the driver’s house; finally, after some time we are in Telavi, sit on the Marshrutka which will bring us in Tbilisi in a couple of hours.

We are stressed, although the place was the most beautiful ever; we are also tired, after a week of mountains – Svaneti and Tusheti in a week, incredible; but me and Mzia cannot avoid to end our day with a great dinner: a huge pizza and a good fruit salad with ice cream bring back the smile in our tired and stressed faces.

An amazing landscape

So we are three, me, Mzia and Zhana, ready to go: the good thing is that there are relatives in Zugdidi, the capital of Samegrelo region and the town where the Marshrutka to Mestia goes from; the even more good thing is that, despite it was late night when we arrived there, a traditional georgian-gaumarjos table was ready to welcome us in the region I like to define the Sicily of Georgia; the bad thing is that, as would happen in Sicily, the food is much, very very much; the worst thing, anyway, is the climate in Zugdidi: hot, hot and more hot, with an humidity probably higher than 100%. My sleep was anyway quite good thanks to the fan that they kindly gave me – as the guest – to refresh a little bit the room. In the morning is time to take the Marshrutka, which should take just 3.5 hours to get to destination.

Along the road I got a bit disappointed: there’s an huge reservoir in Samegrelo, a sort of big lake surrounded by mountains, but after that the panorama is not as good as I expected. It is indeed wonderful, but after my visit to Shatili last year I cannot say that is the best I’ve seen so far. Perfectly on time, about 5 hours later we finally arrive at our destination: Mestia, the capital of Svaneti. It looks like the guesthouse we booked is not in the center, but in the end of Mestia – which sounds like the end of the World: when the Marshrutka stopped in the center we felt like we jumped back in time, 50 years ago without any De Lorean at 88 mph. It was simply awful: I really can’t find any other word to describe the town – or village.

After a 10 minutes stop in the desolated and dusty center, our Marshrutka finally reaches our destination: it sorted out that the end of Mestia was 500m far from the center and thanks God it looked much better and cleaner. Irma, our host, was a nice woman and the guesthouse, at that moment empty, was simply great. Big – even too much – all hand made in wood, it was just perfect for us: we had three meals a day and a huge room for just 25 lari each. With our belly full, we finally go to have a walk in the town: terrible, let me say again. The village with the traditional Svaneti towers is beautiful, can’t say no, but everything else is either under construction, dusty, with a lot of garbage and animals’ “censored„. We have even been in the middle of a sort of sand storm: never ever I would have imagined that in Svaneti, over the Caucasus where you expect fresh and clean air.

View of Mestia

Back home in the evening we got another nice dinner and we got ready for the second day: destination Ushguli, the highest inhabited village in Europe. At 8 in the morning the car – kindly called by Irma – is ready to go: the driver, a Svanetian man, is driving a famous Lada Niva, a car that would be able to go wherever in the planet – and even outside maybe. The 1.5 hours that the driver estimated became 2.5 – as usual here: the road is long and full of holes and inside the Niva is not that comfortable. We stopped few times along the road: first to visit what I would define puddlake, a lake that was more similar to a puddle; then we stopped to see the Tower of Love, a Svanetian tower that was built just on the border of the river because of some love story that ended badly. The panorama along the road was definetly better: totally different from the landscape you can see on the road to Shatili – which I still consider the best – you can see great mountains with lot of trees; far away, the mount Ushba with its particular double summit was looking was cleary visible.

The puddlake

The mount Ushba

Ushguli would make you forget about Mestia: the village is in an amazing area surrounded by the mountains and it is very beautiful. Here you can again see lot of towers, nicely integrated with the village; however, the place is full of tourists – well, not as much as Rome or New York, but still many of them are there – and you can even find a bar and a car washing: impressive.

Ushguli, the highest village in Europe

After the visit of the village and, of course, a huge lunch, our car is ready to go back; however, before going home, the driver suggests to go and visit the source of the river, which is an glacier 30 minutes far from our lovely Mestia. We agree, but as usual the time gets multiplicated by 3: along the road, a jeep is stopped avoiding us to pass, without any driver; we spent half an hour trying to find the owner and even an alternative road in the middle of the trees, when the owner finally appeared and went away: unfortunately we couldn’t see who they were, since we were in that alternative road at that moment, but finally we were able to continue to our destination. The car couldn’t reach the source: when it stopped, we had to pass a scary long bridge over the impetous river and then start walking along a path in the wood. We wondered why the driver didn’t alert us that, after the short drive we had to walk for an hour, up and down, to get there; the most terrible part was even that the last part was on the rocks, hard to walk on. At last, we arrived: the view was quite good, but nothing so special; after some time it was time to go back home before the darkness.

Scary bridge

The source of river Enguri

We planned to stay 4 days, but after we saw Mestia we decided that it was better to go back home one day earlier: taking our bags in the not quite but almost early morning, we headed to the center of Mestia – if we can define it so – waiting for a Marshrutka. Bad news: all of them already left and none will come later; the only way to go home is to find a car that would bring us to Zugdidi. Looking around and asking hundreds people, we finally saw some guys who needed someone to fill a minivan to go there: good, we thought, here we are. Once they asked us and we confirmed our destination, they tried to find the owner of the car, which apparently was sleeping and too lazy to wake up and get some money: mission failed. Thanks God, those guys found out that a Marshrutka was coming from Zugdidi in few minutes and would have taken us back. The Marshrutka driver on the way back was just awful: with a 6m large road, he liked to drive on the left side, just few cm far from the edge – hundreds meters high over the river. Also, he didn’t miss any hole in the 5 hours long road and he probably won a special prize for this.

Despite all, the trip was really nice: Svaneti is indeed a very beautiful place and it looks like Mestia is going to be repaired and turned into a fashion-touristic town. I usually dislike this, but in this case I think it will be a really good decision, considering its conditions right now. I just hope they will make a better system for allowing tourists going up and down: probably the funicolar I heard they are making from Zugdidi to Mestia would be scary, but definetly interesting to take.

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.