Article and photos by Louis Herman
My trip to Georgia (known locally as Sakartvelo) this January started with a quick flight to Trabzon from Istanbul, since the ticket was only 100 TL and flights to Batumi are nearly double the cost. Plus, I had never seen Trabzon so it seemed like a great idea to kill two stones with one bird.
However, I have to say that Trabzon is unforgivably ugly, and the only redeeming factor is probably the delicious pide. Eventually, I found a place to stay for 50 TL for two people called Hotel Can, which seems expensive for the wintertime but it’s way cheaper than the other hotels around the Meydan, or city square. It even had internet and a small balcony!
Escaping this disappointing city – which has managed to colonize one of the most beautiful tracts of land I have ever encountered with concrete rectangles – is simple enough, we took a small bus run by Prenskale, a bus and shuttle company operating out of Trabzon, for 25 TL per person to the Georgian border, which is about three hours away. The Prenskale office can be found in the city center, or there is also one at the bus station, which is accessible by minibus from the city center. The bus does not take you across to Batumi, but it’s simple enough to cross customs by foot and search for transportation on the other side.
Entering Georgia, there are many taxi drivers who will accost you with propositions of a ride into town for 10 Lari (the local currency). Don’t take them up on this offer; there is a city bus just 15 meters away from the taxi rank which goes directly into the center of Batumi, and costs only 50 Tetri (about 30 cents US), and takes about 20 minutes.
I like to consider myself more of an ‘adventure tourist,’ and it’s my policy never to book hotels in advance. It’s more enlightening to wander the city upon arrival and see what you find. This sometimes ends in me sleeping in the park, and other times results in finding a decent place to stay for very little money which may not have been advertised on the internet, or at least not in English. So it was in this wandering state that I escaped the city bus at a likely-looking spot and walked downward, which I presumed (correctly) would lead me towards the waterfront. Being hungry, I stopped at a bakery which was wafting the most delicious scents and found some empanada-looking meat pies which turned out to be as good as they smelled – and cheap! Two pies and two teas was 3 Lari. The shop girl spoke enough English to say “potato” and “vegeterrible, ” referring to a lentil patty on a bun disguising itself as a burger, but was little help in finding a place to stay, although she did point me in the right direction, which turned out to be back from whence I had come, to almost directly where the bus has ejected me on Chavchavadze Street, and a small hotel called Iliko. For two people a room was 35 Lari and the shower was hot, and the TV was all in Russian.
In Batumi, try the Ajarian Cottage at the corner of Chavchavadze Street and Akakitcereteli Street for Khinkali. These are giant dumplings stuffed with various ingredients often involving pork and cilantro. The best! Eat at least ten and have some Chacha with it, which is a vodka sort of drink made from the dredgings at the bottom of the tank after the wine-grape-stomping process. If you are weak, try Natahktari beer which is a local brew and extremely delicious. The hospitality of the Georgians quickly becomes evident as, if you are as lucky as me, you will be forced to down a few shots of some sort of fire-liquid with the neighboring table of imbibing twenty-somethings.
If it is warm and sunny, the beaches are probably lovely, but for the winter, Batumi was fun for about a day, shopping in the old bazaar for exotic foods like cilantro, and swiss cheese, and getting kicked out of the train yard by a toothless and drunk security guard while searching for the passenger station. Unable to find a train station and as we had to promptly leave our hotel room as it was after check-out time and we’d forgotten to set our watches ahead two hours (time zones! pffff), a minibus to Tblisi seemed like just the right thing.
For about 20 Lari you can hop into a minibus (marshrutka in Georgian talk) on any of the main streets and find yourself hurtling at frightening speed into opposing traffic on snowy roads, while attempting to overtake the rambling lorries on blind mountain turns. As we zoomed along next to sheer-drop cliffs into freezing rivers hundreds of meters below, our driver put on his favorite tunes (in this case, Tupac). The only assurance of safety was the assumption of the driver’s sense of self preservation! The most impressive part is not that I survived the journey, but that my girlfriend managed to sleep through a large portion of it!
Arriving in Tbilisi after dark and in the cold, I decided to break several of my travel rules and 1: choose to seek out a hostel who’s brochure I had previously snatched at the border crossing and 2: take a taxi whose persistent driver offered to take me across town to the Nest Hostel for “just 10 Lari, 10 Lari, 10 Lari.” Fifteen minutes later, I gazed through bleary eyes at this hostel-commune and the entourage of Chinese who had invaded all but one room. Forty Lari for the two of us sealed the deal, and through the pervasive smell of spaghetti with some sort of Slavic hotsauce that the fellow residents had dined on, and after gobbling a sandwich of delicious pork sausages purchased downstairs at the shop, I plugged in my iPod to charge on the one working wall socket and laid me down to rest.
Needless to say, the next day started rainy and cold and with the immediate search for a new place to stay. There is a Marriott just on Freedom Circle… how boring! Some other hostels near there are in the mid-40 Lari per person range, and thus wandering down the sloping city towards the river, I came across the futuristic-looking public services building where citizens are able to do all their municipal duties all in one place. They also have a good coffee shop inside with free WiFi. Hours of exploring later, the Lucky Hostel jumped out in front of my peregrinations and considering it a sign of improving chances, I secured a private room with private bath for 40 Lari for two people. The woman who runs the hostel does not speak English, she is from Egypt and if she speaks anything other than Arabic I don’t know about it. Home for the following four days, it turned out all the other guests were Arabs.
To see the sights, I advise taking the téléphérique up to the big metal lady with the sword on top of the hill. It costs 2 Lari per person, plus one additional Lari for the plastic RFID transport card, which will also work for subsequent subway rides after refilling them at one of the machines just inside any of the subway stations (subway rides cost 75 Tetri per person).
Other places to visit in Tbilisi include the National Museum (5 Lari per person); a walk around Marjanishvili neighborhood; a walk down Rustaveli Ave; the waterfall; and the outskirts via the underground to get a view of the post-Soviet-degeneration apartment blocks.
Returning to Batumi is easy. Just take the metro to the Station Square stop and turn left out of the building, directly to a huge shopping mall looking things that is the train station and you can buy tickets to Batumi – sometimes called Makhinjauri as that is the terminus station for the railway. The train goes at 8:00am and arrives in batumi at 1:00pm. It costs 23 Lari per person. There is also a night train. The only problem is that Makhinjauri is not really in the center of Batumi, it took me approx. 1 hour to walk to downtown from the station, and about 15 minutes of that trying to shake off the pestering trail of “10 Lari, 10 Lari, 10 Lari” taxi drivers.
Things to eat:
Khachapuri: cheese bread
Mitsvadi: like a shish kebab
Khinkali: huge delicious dumplings
Chanahi: the best soup I ever ate
Shoarma: Doner kebab in a saucy and delicious European style
Shashlik Kebab: grilled meats
Lobio: red beans in a clay pot
Ostri: like Turkish guveç, a meat casserole
For pictures feel free to browse my Google+ galleries Batumi , Tbilisi and Trabzon
Great article Louis! Might try to visit too!