Georgia & Experiences

Money: Lari
Visum (Dutch passport): no visum required
Daybudget: 30 euros (pp)

Transportation

The main public transportation in Tbilisi are buses, metro and marshrutkas which are minibuses. The minibuses are not only widely used in the city itself, but is also the main transportation to other cities/regions in Georgia. The distances are not that great, so it is doable. If such minibuses drove in Holland, there would probably be space for only 12 people. But since we’re talking about Georgian minibuses, they always made sure around 19 people fit in before they decided to departure. Taking the marshrutka is cheap and fast, but also reckless! The marshrutka drivers are not the only problem, all drivers ride insanely. At first we were terrified, but we had to learn to embrace it eventually. It’s just how they drive and there is nothing you can do about it.  Always be careful when you cross the road, even when there’s a crosswalk because the cars won’t stop. Private transportation is also possible if you can afford to rent a car (and willing to risk accidents, insurance trouble, etc).

Accomodation

There are many hotels in Georgia, but when you have to live low-budget it is quite difficult to find good hostels or guesthouses. On booking.com many hostels have superhigh ratings which you shouldn’t believe. Most of the time it isn’t representative for what you get at the end. First things first, accept you won’t have a private bathroom most of the time when searching for low- or midbudget hotels. For hostels and guesthouses it was out of the question as well ofcourse. Absence of hot water and central heating were another problems we encountered during our stay. Here is a list of accommodations we stayed at with a short review:

Where	Name	Score
Batumi	TJ+ Hostel	Central location, simpel rooms, not really clean, cold shower, no sheetcovers, terrible beds, quite cheap  *
Tbilisi I	Family Guest House Old Street	Good location, nice spacious rooms, clean, shared bathroom, friendly hostess, midrange price ***
Tbilisi II	GIS Guest House	Not centrally located, nice rooms with private bathroom, good price ***
Kazbegi	Nata-Mito Guesthouse	Ok location, simpel but clean room, hot shower (difficult to find in Kazbegi), good price ***

Food

We had difficulty finding restaurants with good food. There were days we just weren’t able to find anything so we went to the Macdonald’s or Wendy’s. It was like Farhang said: ‘I have difficulty having a grip on the situation here’  which was really true! When we finally found an area with some restaurants with reasonable prices, we did try traditional Georgian dishes like khinkali (dumplings), khachapuri (sort pizza with cheese filling), red beans in claypot, borscht soup (which is actually Ukrainian but also very popular in other parts of Eastern/Central Europe)  and loobyani (pastry with mashed beans filling) but those were not really extremely tasty (Ok I liked the borscht soup because it reminded be of my mom’s homemade soup, but that was really the only time). We experienced the Georgian cuisine being influenced by as well European as Middle Eastern and West Asian food traditions like standard European dishes, but also some kebab- and dough dishes. The dishes were mostly prepared with lots of herbs and spices (they do go all crazy with the garlic though), but still not perfectly prepared; the meat was dry or the khinkali having a very thick dough layer and meals not being complete because of receiving only some kebab with bread (no sauce or vegetables included most of the time). In short, we didn’t like Georgian food. The cuisine is just a mix of several cuisines, with lower quality of food.  We experienced it as a cuisine with not many variations between the dishes and at a certain point it just gets boring.

People

No disrespect, but the people in Georgia are definitely not the nicest people on earth. We experienced them as agitated, unfriendly and uninterested people. Not only on the streets, but also in many situations we had difficulty analyzing people’s (facial) expressions and attitudes. At supermarkets, shops and restaurants the service sucked quite big time; they don’t know how to say hi, welcome, thank you or bye. You get totally ignored even if you try to make contact. Even when you say something nice or give a compliment, you don’t receive an appropriate reaction. They just don’t engage easily with foreigners and aren’t interested at all.
The only time we met some happy Georgians was in Kazbegi in a local bar/restaurant (totally drunk though). There was this group of friends who were out for dinner for some special  occasion. They asked the owner to put on some music to dance on and they went totally nuts which was supercool to watch! Also some other people joined them and here and there you could spot some Georgian folklore dance movements. That was the only time that we saw some smiles and joy on people’s faces. We asked at our hostel why we were experiencing the people like we did in general and the guy said it could be the bad economics. Hmm. Many poor people in Africa you might think, but still famous for their amazingly beautiful African smiles. So we don’t buy that one.

Things we noticed during our stay in Georgia

1. A lot of people smoke. I think it was even worse than Turkey. We couldn’t breathe normally after a taxi ride. I believe our lungs needed couple of weeks to recover after Georgia.

2. Great winedrinkers those Georgians 😉 Drinking 3-4 liters of wine at a wedding is normal. We noticed it’s a tradition to toast while standing before you start with a new round of full glasses. If you love wine yourself, go to Kacheti! Cha cha is their home-made grape distillate, with no specific alcohol percentage but may easily be above 60%! This may explain the many drunk people on the streets (even during the day) and most of the time they’d invite you to join them haha

3. Police everywhere! On the roads their lights/sirens were on most of the time just for visibility and you would always hear them correcting traffic users while driving around (not that it really helped). It was shocking to hear that it wasn’t even safe to travel in Georgia 8 years ago. There were robbery, kidnapping and murder (also travelers involved), but the situation has changed a lot since the new president. The presence of the police everywhere is probably a part of it.

4. Many elderly homeless people on the streets, begging or selling small stuff. It was very normal for the locals to give money. Something we hadn’t seen somewhere else where homeless get ignored most of the time. We also saw people fighting over the bill several times (what Afghans always do!) so these examples definitely show the generous side of Georgians.