The gathering of the newly emerged Russian diaspora in Armenia was divided into two camps. The first planned to leave for Georgia, while the second was simply trying to figure out what to do next, from Armenia. I, however, had no intention of going to Georgia. Troubling news was coming from there. Some banks refused to work with Russians altogether, while others demanded a scary document condemning the Russian state to be signed. The unequivocal support for Ukraine expressed in rallies amidst calls from Ukrainian politicians to open a second front frightened me. The prospect of being in a foreign country under Russian bombs was scary. Therefore, I decided for myself that I definitely would not go to Georgia. However, time passed, the Georgian government stood against any confrontation with Russia, and I had good reasons to travel to this beautiful country.
There were two reasons, and correspondingly, there were two trips. The first was dedicated to the wedding of my girlfriend’s friends, where she was supposed to be a witness. It turned out that citizens of any country can get married in Georgia in just one day. It is enough to find witnesses, translate passports into Georgian, and come with a statement to the Palace of Justice. And the second trip was right before my flight to my sister, and in those days it was more convenient to fly out of Tbilisi than from Yerevan.
Perhaps the easiest way to get from Yerevan to Tbilisi is by minibus. Tickets can be bought either online or by approaching a driver’s parking spot. In the latter case, the ticket will be 1.5 times cheaper, but you may run into a situation where all seats are taken.
The minibus ride takes 6 hours, including all intermediate stops. There are only 2 stops, one at the border and the second somewhere in Armenia, halfway through, where you can take a short walk or buy something. On the second trip, the driver stopped at a booth near Lake Sevan where they sold smoked sig fish. hree large smoked fish cost 1000 dram, which is approximately $2. We didn’t want to buy 3, so we decided to bargain for just one, but our fellow passenger simply gave us one of hers after hearing our discussion.
On the first trip, we were traveling with Russian IT specialists who were hauling a bunch of suitcases for a full move, while on the second trip, our fellow travelers were exclusively locals. Perhaps they were even more outraged at our interrogation at the border than all the programmers from the first bus combined.
The Georgian interrogations are literally a polite gathering of all the information about you. They ask where you work, where you are going, whether you have friends in Georgia, and who they are. It’s worth noting that not all Russians are interrogated, only IT specialists. In the customs queue, a security officer selectively asks what your occupation is, and if you say you are a programmer, they ask you to stand aside and wait to be questioned. There are no special rooms for these procedures, so they can talk to you right in the corridor or in a cozy little room - an office. One of the fellow travelers even asked why they were being interrogated, and they were told that they didn’t understand what was happening, there were just too many programmers traveling with lots of luggage, so they were recording information about them.
Like Armenia, many people from Russia have come to Georgia. You often hear Russian spoken by people who look familiar on the streets. In our hotel, there were five rooms, and we were staying with Dasha, an architect from St. Petersburg, a family of a programmer and an economist Sasha and Lyuba from Chuvashia, and the owner of a web studio Grigory from Batumi. However, the latter moved to Georgia with his business several years ago. By the way, I pitched Nitsy to him, and maybe he will sell our web widget to one of his clients.
Each of our neighbors has their own story of how and why they ended up in Georgia. In particular, one couple told us that they drove to Georgia in a new car that they bought on credit to save their savings. They managed to accumulate debt before the central bank raised interest rates and car prices. The difficulty of traveling to Georgia by car is that ferries are closed and a special permit was required to cross the land border. Now this restriction has been lifted, but at that time you had to present either an invitation for treatment or for work. The guys told us about Telegram channels that were ready to arrange such restrictions, but they managed to obtain their permit thanks to Sasha’s employer, an international corporation with an office in Georgia.
The hotel itself turned out to be a kind of co-living space - several rooms and a common kitchen where we met our neighbors. The hotel owners appeared at random times of the day, usually at night, to bring friends and have fun in the kitchen. One day the owner came during the day, looked at us and said, “You’re all family here, I’ll quickly smoke in the restroom and go.” By the way, because we couldn’t find the owners, we only paid for the hotel after a week of staying there.
The main stereotype about Georgia that I believed before visiting was the stereotype about the Russian language. It is that you cannot start a conversation with locals in Russian because you might accidentally encounter aggression, and those who are more comfortable with Russian will ask you to switch to it themselves. This rule seemed doubtful from the very beginning when a customs officer asked one of our fellow travelers about English. The phrase “Can’t you speak Russian?” convinced everyone that we should start the conversation in Russian right away. Our first attempt to start a conversation in English also ended unsuccessfully. When checking into our first hotel, we communicated with the receptionist in English, and it was painful due to the language barrier. It turned out that he didn’t immediately recognize us as Russians, and attempts at communication in English continued until someone said something in Russian. The receptionist immediately brightened up and switched to Russian. In general, often, salespeople in stores react with a puzzled look to an address in English and continue in Russian. Perhaps the impressions are biased because both times we stayed in Avlabari, a district that is considered Armenian. Of course, not everyone here knows Russian, and sometimes it won’t be possible to communicate using it. And sometimes it’s really inappropriate. In the end, we found two rules about language. If you go to a place with Ukrainian flags, you should only speak to the staff in English. (Visitors usually speak Russian to each other, and no one cares about it). Well, for all other places, you need to say “Gamardzhoba, can I speak Russian?” “Can I speak Russian?” everyone know it, even those who don’t know the language, and if it’s not possible, they will tell you no and suggest speaking in English.
By the way, about Ukrainian flags. They are really prevalent here. The theme of Russian aggression is visible almost everywhere, from those same flags in support of Ukraine to graffiti about the occupation of Ossetia. However, all of this does not mean aggression towards Russians. Where we are from we were asked only twice. The first time was by a cotton candy salesman who turned out to be from the Russian city of Armavir himself. And the second time was by a papakha salesman. A real stereotypical Georgian, sold us two papakhas made of real sheepskin, which I brought as a gift to the States. He was, by the way, upset when he found out that we were Russians. But only because he wanted to meet Belarusians and find out why they don’t like Lukashenko, “he’s a normal guy, what don’t they like about him?”
And the city itself. Tbilisi is built around the Kura River, which divides the city into two almost equal parts. The city itself is a chaotic interweaving of history and modernity, which makes it interesting to simply wander around the local streets. On a local hill stands a semi-ruined ancient fortress, which can be climbed in any direction, limited only by one’s own sense of self-preservation. From the fortress, you can descend past cascading low-rise buildings to the river, and walking along the river, you can encounter modern glass buildings and Soviet-era panel buildings of varying degrees of pomposity.
And of course, there are stray animals. There are a lot of them here, mostly dogs. They are all vaccinated, microchipped, and well-fed. It’s not always possible to feed such a dog simply because it may not seem interested in eating. But it may come up to you and ask to be scratched, and then follow you around until its doggy business calls it in another direction, usually towards someone with a bag. One of the dogs almost stole my beanie from the bag. She managed to gnaw through the bag with hats without being caught, but when she realized that she couldn’t steal anything from the bag, she went chasing after another stray.
