Tbilisi

We pulled into Tbilisi on a Friday night. Roy and Mikhail, two other tourists on our bus, were staying the same hotel that Brian and I had booked. We weren't sure how to get there, and didn't have any Georgian money (Laris) yet. The plan was to get off the bus, find an ATM and take a taxi.  Roy and Mikhail seemed very relaxed and confident about it all.

We got off the bus in downtown Tbilisi (in front of Dunkin' Donuts) and they froze. They fumbled. They pulled out a Lonely Planet guide book to look for a map. The four of us had just gotten off a tour bus, standing with suitcases on a busy street and thumbing through a guide book. International tourism 101: this means we were fresh meat. Taxi drivers circled like sharks while we debated what to do (cue the Jaws music). I found and ATM and came back to find one shark loading my suitcase into the trunk of his car. He wanted to charge 20 Laris to take us to the hotel. Granted, 20 Laris is like 8 euros, but I felt like we were getting scammed and the driver had a crazy look in his eye. So I said no, 20 Laris was too much. I grabbed the suitcase and found another guy to take us for 10. We might have still overpaid, but it was my best bargaining moment of the trip.

I kind of like bargaining cultures. Prices are never negotiable in Germany, so I find it a little exotic to haggle. But after a few days, the challenge lost its luster. By our last day of the trip, I basically gave up and ended up buying some dried fruit for double what I probably should have paid. With my wits about me, I could have saved like 75 cents.

After peaceful, dusty Yerevan, Tbilisi was all bright lights, big city. It is bigger, busier, noisier. Tbilisi is long and steep, hemmed in by the hills on its edges with the wide muddy Kura river in the middle. Its streets meander, twist and climb. While Yerevan is still struggling to get up from its past, Tbilisi seems to stand on its own two feet. There is a charmingly decaying old town (which I like), and plenty of massive glass and concrete Soviet buildings (which Brian likes) and even more modern areas. There are beautiful parks to rival those of any German city. There are restaurant streets for tourists and well-to-do Georgians, and construction projects in Tbilisi seem to actually get finished, most of the time.

Tbilisi feels like a city with many layers. Like Yerevan, Tbilisi has been beaten, occupied, ransacked and colonized through out much of its history. But it was always an important trade city and a main stop on the Great Silk Road linking east and west. That legacy seems to keep Tbilisi moving forward. After nearly 200 years under the Russians, Tbilisi seems to be alive, growing, moving ahead. Unlike Yerevan, it's ready to take in tourists from many different places. Speaking of tourists, we never ran into Roy and Mikhail again at the hotel. Hopefully they weren't eaten by sharks.