We bought traintickets (19 lari p.p.) from the postoffice, got us some breakfast and took the bus (1 lari p.p.) to the Butanian trainstation for our departure to Tbilisi. The trainride took only 5 hours and we reached Tbilisi in the evening around 10 pm. We were still exhausted so we took some rest the next day. The weather was not nice anyway, so we didn’t mind staying inside. What we didn’t know was that staying inside would be the only thing we’d do the rest of the week. The weather sucked every single day with pouring rain only. There was not much to do in the city and for some reason most of the people were agitated on the streets. They always had this strange pokerface with no expression at all, soulless which made you think there was no life inside of them. We had difficulty keeping ourselves occupied and were really bored. We already knew that you don’t need to stay longer than 2 or 3 days in Tbilisi, but we were stuck because of the bad weather. Our main goal was visiting the mountains of Kazbegi, but it was too cold to go up there. That’s why we had to wait for a week to have at least good weather over there. We did visit Gori and Kacheti (famous for its wine-producing) in the meanwhile. Farhang wanted to visit the museum of Stalin in Gori so we took the minibus (2 lari p.p.) to get there. The funny thing was that you have to pay entrance of 15 lari p.p. for having a guide included (you need it because everything is written in Russian/Georgian language) but yet you have to push them to walk you around since they don’t really feel like doing something for you! But once having that fixed, the tour around the museum was really interesting. You also get to walk into Stalin’s personal train (extra entrance fee though) which was his standard transportation vehicle since he didn’t like flying.
We also did a daytour around Kacheti. We got to know that it’s best to get a taxi which drives you around in Kacheti to visit several points worth seeing. So we got one for 10 lari p.p. to bring us to Telavi first. Once we were there, we asked the same taxidriver how much it would cost to drive us around in Kacheti area. He asked an amount of 80 lari which seemed reasonable. He would drive us to Gremi, Nekresi monastery, some lake I don’t remember where and after that we drove to a winecellar to do a wine-excursion. We learned how Georgian wine is made and at last we could taste Georgian dry white and red wine. We realised we were no wine drinkers since I could only take some sips for having a disgusted facial expression afterwards. I ate some apple and cheese appetizers to get rid of the wine taste in my mouth. Our last stop was Sighnaghi, which is famous for its Italian charme. They call it a city for lovers. It was almost getting dark, so I was bummed for not being able to see the city in daylight. The taxidriver would first bring us back to Telavi and from there we would get another cab back to Tbilisi. But the driver assured us that it would be easier to get a taxi from Sighnaghi back to Tbilisi which would be faster. He was right about that, but he also said that for his own benefits; he wouldn’t have to wait for us in Sighnaghi. He assured us we would find a taxi back for 20 lari to Tbilisi. Since there would be no minibuses going back at that hour we wanted to be sure about this. Somehow we believed the guy, his information seemed accurate to us. Around 7 pm we got there, but it had become dark and cold. And after walking around for some time, we realised there was not much to do; everything was closed and there were almost no people on the streets. We decided to just drive back to Tbilisi, but when we asked a taxidriver to bring us, he asked an amount of 80 lari! We all know that awkward moment we realise we’re fucked. There were no minibuses and all those taxidrivers asked huge amounts of money. We decided to hitchhike and it was going to be our first time! We made an awesome deal with a taxidriver to bring us to a main road; he would wait for 30 minutes and if we found someone then we would have to pay him only 10 lari. Otherwhise he would bring us for 50 lari to Tbilisi. Seemed fair. So we finally started our adventure of hitchhiking! Some cars stopped, but either there was place for only one person or they weren’t driving towards Tbilisi. After some time another car stopped and the people got out to get some fresh air. They started looking at us while talking to the taxidriver who was helping us with hitchhiking! Eventually the taxidriver told us we only had to pay 20 lari, since those other persons he was talking to earlier were willing to pay 40 lari for apparently also getting to Tbilisi. We didn’t get to know whether they came with us in the taxi because they felt sorry for us and wanted to help us or just because they also needed to be in Tbilisi (they didn’t speak English). Anyway I was just glad to be back in our guesthouse after a long day.
Recommendation? No, not really. And I think it’s clear why, no extra information needed.
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