Georgia on my mind

The travel community is split on how they prefer to suffer: hot and dry like in Cappadocia or hot and humid like by the Black Sea. I haven't decided yet which team to join and am postponing the choice until my arrival in Thailand.. Batumi, at any rate, belongs to the latter form of heat and stands out as Las Vegas of the Black Sea coast, quite different from the cities I have traversed so far. European architecture from the 19th century, interspersed with concrete buildings from the Soviet era and modern skyscrapers that are partially under construction and partially operational. A few travel companions riding in the minibus to Mestia tell me about their hotel in a gigantic glass new building and the elevator there that simply stops on one of over twenty floors that is still under construction - completely raw and without windows.

The transfer from Batumi to Mestia is similarly wildly organized. Apparently, I'm the only one who has been given the correct meeting point. A British couple waits a few blocks away with incorrect information. Two Germans were even promised that they would be picked up from their hotel. They are on the phone with the visibly annoyed driver, who doesn't speak a word of English and hands me the phone to translate. After everyone is accounted for, we set off from Batumi with a 45-minute delay.

The two friendly Brits, Danny and Glyn, are currently traveling in their 11th month of their gap year; they congratulate me on my one-month anniversary. Today is August 1st, and time feels elusive to me. I don’t even know what day of the week it is anymore, and that’s a first for me since I usually fixate on monthly dates and times.

After we change drivers and vehicles at a transfer station, the roads become narrower, steeper, and more serpentine; the landscape greener and the gorges deeper. Slowly, we reach the Caucasus, and the driver who standardly doesn’t buckle up (since Romania, I haven’t seen anything but seatbelt-less taxi or bus drivers) alternates between playing Buena Vista Social Club and Georgian pop music blasting through the car...

In Svaneti, so-called homestays are widespread; privately operated guesthouses for adventurous hiking tourists who prefer a warm welcome but spartan conditions. Often, one has to share the bathroom with the family, a leashed cow grazes in the front yard, and the Wi-Fi password is '1234567890'. My hosts are an older couple who greet me right upon my arrival with potato salad and coffee. Mixing sign language, Georgian, and English gibberish, they assure me that the door to the kitchen is always open and the small mixed-breed dog, Micky, just wants to be petted when he barks at me.

It seems I did everything right with the booking. The only downside is that I have to walk about 3 kilometers to get to the actual town center of Mestia each time. So, I try hitchhiking once, and at least for this short distance, it works better than in Turkey. When I’m getting in, the driver points to the seatbelt: 'Police!'. I would have buckled up anyway, but here the motivation is more about not wanting to confront the law than it is about avoiding death.

While I am reading Bram Stoker’s 'Dracula's Children' – a small paperback that I appropriately bought in Romania – a fierce thunderstorm breaks out in the valley of Mestia. Spooky weather as if ordered. When did I last see real rain? It was probably in Germany. The temperatures are back to normal, and I enjoy the pattering downpour... until it occurs to me that I now have to walk around the house outside to use the bathroom.

On a hike that unexpectedly extends from originally planned 15 to 30 kilometers due to an unplanned detour, I encounter Viktor from NRW, who, like me, has taken on too much. We take a break and swap stories about our respectively miscalculated hikes and the breathtaking viewpoints. With a view of Ushba, the highest mountain in the region, my line of sight sometimes extends all the way to Russia.

Our two-man self-help group for overestimation meets up again in the evening, and Viktor turns out to be a total Georgia fan, who has also traveled to Iran at least just as many times. We wonder why the many street dogs never bark at pedestrians, but they more often bark at cars of the Suzuki Carry type. A car brand that is overly present here and serves the Swans as a means of transport for everything from hay to firewood to building materials. Viktor’s theory is that some of these small transporters may have already hit or run over some street dogs, which has imprinted that behavior in the packs. Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome for Dogs.

Mestia is a small place, and so I coincidentally run into Danny and Glyn from the minibus from Batumi again. I recommend they watch 'Dede', a drama about the Svanetian 'tradition' of kidnapping women. When I strolled through the town on my first day, I noticed the cinema that shows this film five times daily in seven different languages. Without much fuss, the operator sells me a ticket, and a minute later, I am sitting in the improvised basement cinema space in one of many beach chairs in front of the screen. A Polish couple, who were coerced into buying tickets shortly before me, are the only other guests so we watch the film with English subtitles, but simultaneously in Polish dubbing. Polish dubbing means that one single speaker covers all other voices over the original audio. Like in the Eastern Bloc in the 80s, I think, but I can quickly tune the speaker's voice out and immerse myself in the film. With stunning landscape visuals, it pulls me into the Svaneti village communities of the 90s and tells, alongside the main story, about ghost beliefs, the Caucasus war of 1992, and family feuds in Svaneti.

The reason that the many medieval watchtowers are so close together is not only that Mestia has often been attacked by various powers but also because blood revenge between families was not uncommon. Nowadays, however, it remains peaceful, and the only competition among the tower owners is purely economic. Some of the numerous towers can be climbed for three Lari (= 1 Euro), and so I climb a total of three. Each time, you have to go up four or five stories via wooden ladders that are guaranteed not certified for safety and can then step out through an open hatch onto the roof with rotting wooden shingles, rusty nails, and the obligatory Georgian flag. I admire the panorama and count a total of 37 such towers in the valley.