We enter Tbilisi with a pleasant plan. Mario, whom we met a few days ago in Gori, has offered us a place to stay in his shared apartment. One night turns into two and a week later into four. In the shared flat we meet Alessandro also from Italy and Yannik from Belgium. We feel very welcome and enjoy the cozy atmosphere and the conversations about God and the world.
The city offers a lot and so we spend our time here among other things at the Nutcracker Ballet, with wonderful walks over the Mtatsminda hill, in cafes, at the flea market, at a rugby game (Georgia vs Portugal) in the Micheil Meshi stadium and with wanderings through the different parts of the city. We also engage in a few purposeful activities. So our bikes get a decent service and we organize the visa for Iran.
Tbilisi can be explored very comfortably. The old-looking metro takes you with deafening noise but unerringly in the underground from A to B. The cost of such a ride in the underground is very high. A trip underground costs just 30 centimes. If we have to go fast or there is no metro or bus within reach, we call a “Yandex” cab via the app. What a convenient way to get from A to B in the city! The city map in the app shows which drivers are currently in the vicinity and how much the desired route costs. If a specific vehicle is booked with a click, you can follow the journey live on the map. Payment is made either directly in the app or in cash. The prices for this incredible service are reasonable here: For one franc, you can be driven across the entire city; spot landing included. The system is very close to the idea of self-driving cars, which achieve a much better utilization rate than all the permanently parked private cars!
Tbilisi is an interesting mixture of old and modern. Various striking buildings have been erected only in the last 12 years and impress with unusual architecture.
On our last evening in the city, Yannik and Alessandro take us to an event: we take a metro, then a bus and find ourselves on a gloomy hill on the outskirts of the city. The lights twinkle below us and we walk along a cemetery even higher up the hill. What are we actually looking for? We all don’t know exactly. We are looking for a mysterious sound event in an empty water tank. A group of alternative people from Tbilisi and all over the world organizes there every few weeks a mystical meeting literally underground. Soon we discover a fire on the side of the path with some friendly figures. “We’d rather stay up there, it’s a gnarly climb to get in!” says one from Germany. We don’t linger long by the fire, and a bit of barbed wire later we’re standing on an overgrown dome in front of a chimney-like hole, along with other strange, friendly people. A look into the opening confirms: It really does go pretty far down. And there is something going on down there! Candlelight flickers somewhere in the enormous hall, voices resound, guitar sounds and drums ring out. We descend the long, thin metal ladder and find ourselves 9 meters below inside the huge, disused water reservoir. Somewhere on a sea of cloth, shells, crystals and incense sticks are arranged, someone is tooting from a didgeridoo, some are dancing in circles and others are singing, humming and whooping. The acoustics inside the huge sphere are fascinating. We sit down on the raised outer rim of the spherical space and blithely experiment with our own voices.
As a steady djembe rhythm is heard, many begin to dance- with their own giant shadows on the curved wall!
We decide against a Sunday evening illumination and head back home to cook Älplermaccaronen for the rest of the troop in the WG.
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