Category: Tbilisi

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School in Georgia

Schoolshock

School is an issue, that is disliked by many young people. They say it is boring, annoying and badly taught. But at least they accept it and do it for their future. But Georgia is an exception. My first day at school has begun with a shock. It was quite loud, but I told myself it was because of the first lesson. Quite irritated I had to admit that no teacher knew about my attending to Georgian school. I really thought it was clear, but the information seemed to have stayed in the principal’s office. Maybe the teachers just forgot.

First day of school

But back to my first school day. The helpfulness of the other students was incredible. There was a girl called Kira. She helped me from the beginning. She told me when I had to be where. Except in English. In English, I was in the starters class because I didn’t find my room. I already complained about the volume in the first lesson. I asked the girl next to me, she was called Ellene, if it was always so loud. She said it was just because of the first three days. After two weeks I stopped wondering how long Georgian three days were…

My first best friend

I just told you about Ellene. She got my best friend very fast. She was the second person that helped me so much. She translated a lot for me and helped me with my homework. The only problem was, that math here is much more advanced than in middle Europe. Not even Ellene could help me out here.

I am in a group

Ellene has two very good friends. Salome and Ana. This three girls totally adopted me. In the breaks and in English they saved my life. In English mostly when the teacher started cursing in Georgian what happened quite often.

Boys…

Did you recognise, that all people I told you about were girls? That wasn’t an accident because boys in this school haven’t impressed me at all. At least not positively. They always talked, screamed around or threw paper through the classroom. Have teachers finished speaking? Doing homework? No option. And what are tables for? For that:

The drawing is definitively wonderful. If anything Georgians are artistic. I know the boy who has drawn this. He always draws monsters and machines. Mostly in manga style. I was very stunned when I saw a mixture of machine and dragon in his math pad. But except of that he is rather unintelligent.

Interior

The whole interior is a little shabby but everything works. I think it also looks quite old because everything is painted and scrawled. In many places there were cut off edges or broken hooks. But everything worked like it should. Everything that would be white in Switzerland would be yellow or beige here. The tables are only as high as the first grade tables in our schools. At the start it was uncomfortable but I got used to it very fast. It actually was quite comfortable in the end.

Classes

The classes were very different to each other when you look at quality. In Chemistry, I got extra papers in English. In Georgian the teacher didn’t care what I did. But nothing we kids did seemed to matter to her. All the other kids slept, talked or played on their phones. Here in Georgia the students lay their bags on the table. No one cares if it is allowed or not. In any case, the Georgian kids like to have their heads on it or their phones inside. In the second variant, the school bag is open. Most teachers don’t care.

Exams

How much should you here while there is an exam in the room? Pens on paper? Nervous toddle with the foot? OK. That’s normal. Speaking? Discussing? Angry teachers? Solutions from one end of the room to the other? Yes, here it is. But mostly I was astonished of the two students coming in with Christmas decorations around their shoulders, pissing off the teacher. And all that in the middle of an exam. After the English exam, three girls discussed with the teacher to give them higher grades. And most astonishing, the teacher did it! I think it is funny on one side but on the other hand it is disrespectful. I decided not to interfere, but I will neither forget it.

My way to school

I need about 30 minutes to go to school. I go from our flat to the next Metro station, two stops and then right to school. So when I need about an hour to prepare, and not know how long exactly it will take me, I get up at seven leave home at eight and am at school at half past eight. I go to my classroom and look which lessons I have. If I have to go somewhere else, I go there. Now I unpack my school stuff and begin reading a little until lesson starts. Mostly there are seven or eight students in the room by then sometimes even just three. Just for you to know we are a class with about 20 students. This to pictures are from a place near our school:

Learning

The Georgian language is extremely beautiful. Especially the writing. But it is not easy at all. It neither is learnable. I can write German words with Georgian letters, but not Georgian words with German letters. Imagine you sit it a café and all people around you speak Georgian. It will sound beautiful. Like a little whispering singing that silently flows through the room. But since I am in Georgia, and I am here for five months now, I just learned a few words and I can count to thirty. I couldn’t go through this city without help. But to be honest, I didn’t learn anything in school. At least nothing about school stuff. I just learned about a completely different culture to ours and found three real friends.

Conclusion

It doesn’t matter what I have taken from school here, some part of me will stay in this city. I will never forget Ellene, Salome, Ana and Kira and I will never forget how lucky I am to have the infrastructures from the EMS in Schiers.

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Shopping in Tbilisi

The question about Tbilisi’s beauty still haunts me and I did not yet achieve a satisfying answer.

Today I will show you a few corners of Tbilisi you can go to for some great shopping. On the one hand there are these huge shopping malls like Tbilisi Mall in the North, Galleria in the city’s center and East Point near the airport. Here you can find all the well-known middle European chains like H&M, OVS, Zara or Jysk. That’s about it with the familiar trade chains. The biggest seller of groceries according to western European standards is Carrefour an originally French chain.

Textile wise you can find a large supply of Turkish tender, which shows a quite acceptable quality. The offers at H&M, as well as OVS seem to represent the excess of our corresponding shops although acceptable while the children are still growing. Finding clothes made of natural fibers such as wool, cotton or silk are hard to be found. In each mall there are quite a few sellers of an interesting choice of relatively eccentric Georgian fashion, probably produced in one of the many sewing rooms along Tbilisi’s streets. The offered creations are often daring and sadly of a similarly low quality as the off the hook products at H&M. Threads are not cut off, seams are not straight and the fabric often appears rather flimsy. Once again I get the impression that over here good ideas are around, started and in the end are not carried out until the end but are still sold. It is as if people give up during the process of creating. On the other hand some of these shops might simply be eastern European chains, which we do not know.

Then there are the big markets. Especially at Station Square they cover a huge area outside and inside massive concrete halls spanning over an immense square footage. You can get anything here. It just affords a measure of bravery and patience to dig into this turmoil, but sometimes you are rewarded with some extraordinary gems.

Observing the chaotic appearance of these market areas it takes a while to realize, that there is a kind or order there bundling different products like clothes, plaything, or fruits in specific areas. This way you find only tomatoes in one region, turn around a corner and find yourself in the middle off stall after stall advertising toilette paper only to reach washing powder across the road in about 10 stalls. There aren’t eve any differences in pricing so that it remains pure chance which trader gets the deal. The stalls themselves present their tender in a veritable mess.

Was wirklich cool ist, ist, dass man eigentlich alle Produkte, die als Schüttware verkaufbar wären auch als solche bekommen kann – also Nudeln, Mehl, Zucker, Salz ebenso wie Nüsse, Bohnen, Linsen, Trockenfrüchte und Waschmittel werden in riesigen Eimern zur Verfügung gestellt und per Schaufel in Tüten gefüllt und abgewogen. Dies ist sowohl auf den Märkten als auch im Supermarkt Gang und Gäbe. Unschön wird das nur, wenn die Eimer nicht geschlossen sind und ein paar Kinder meinen, mit ihren verrotzten Fingern im Mehl Sandburgen bauen zu müssen. Da greift man dann doch lieber auf die bewährte Abfüllung zurück…

Dörrobst in allen Varianten

Auch der Umgang mit Fleischwaren ist hier sehr viel lockerer. Gleich am Eingang zum Lebensmittelmarktgebiet ist eine Fleischzeile. Hier werden ganze Hühner präsentiert, man kann Schweinefüsse kaufen, Leber liegt offen auf dem Tisch und Schweineköpfe lächeln einen (un)glücklich an – die werden auch manchmal noch ganz liebevoll von ihren Anbietern rasiert. Die Qualität wird direkt vom Kunden mit dem Finger getestet, eine Kühlung ist nur in den seltensten Fällen vorhanden. Fische schwimmen im Aquarium im Hintergrund und werden auf Anfrage eben “geangelt”. Man riecht absolut nichts. Ich habe mich trotzdem noch nicht getraut, hier Fleisch zu kaufen.

Der Fleischverkauf im Supermarkt gestaltet sich auch anders als bei uns. Man sieht direkt in die “Fleischküche”, wo Rinder- und Schweinehälften von der Decke baumeln. Durch das Einteilen der Fleischstücke vor den Augen der Kundschaft, sieht man tatsächlich einmal die Arbeit, die dahinter steckt. Alles Fleisch schmeckt hier intensiver, was sicher auch daran liegt, dass das Vieh kleiner ist und man den Kühen und Schweinen gerne auch auf der Strasse begegnet, statt in grossen Bauernhöfen oder Zuchtbetrieben.

Unvergorene Milchprodukte sind vergleichsweise sehr teuer und der Genuss von Milch eher unüblich. Vergorene Milchprodukte sind dann wieder eher finanzierbar, was sicher daran liegt, dass man davon ausgeht, dass Joghurt, Kefir und Konsorten hier in der Gegend erstmals aufgetaucht sind und damit traditionelle Lebensmittel darstellen.

Und dann gibt es noch massenweise kleine Verkaufsläden überall in der Stadt verteilt. Von Blumen über Obst und Kleidern bis traditionelle Süssigkeiten findet man hier eine buchstäblich bunte Auswahl an Köstlichkeiten.

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A first trip into town

We took our first exploration into town on our 2nd day. It was supposed to be dedicated to get to know the town an help us to regain our orientation. Tbilisi is situated along the river Kura stretching out up the surrounding hills like so many arms.

When we arrived in Tbilisi, we entered from the north which we did not expect and as as our senses were occupied by everything other than our sense of direction we lost this probably at this moment. Thist means: While Ulrich is fighting to get back his unerring sense of direction by trying ceaselessly and still failing every so often, I gave up on trying to get my bearings about our geographical situation. It is a very strange feeling if you are not sure about your orientation on the planet anymore. Now I know that there are many people traveling to Tbilisi are suffering from the same problem. For these few months I will probably have to reverse to orientate myself by using landmarks instead of a general feeling of direction.

Well back to our first trip into town: Due to the good experience in Budapest, we decide to take a ride on one of these Hop-on-Hop-off Buses. We leave our car at the office of Georgia Insight and start walking. It is very busy in town despite it being Sunday.

As you can see on the pictures our first trip is rendered interesting by all the information about fascinating and contradictory history. Of course we are only shown the nice areas of Georgia’s capital city but luckily the intercom on the bus is damaged so that we are accompanied by a sort of private tour guide who is willing to answer at least a few of our questions.

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Is Tbilisi a nice city?

Today my friend Christian posed this question to me on WhatsApp. The answer is too long. I decided to simply add another chapter to our blog and try to explain our experiences bit by bit. Tbilisi is stunningly beautiful and absolutely ugly.

My first impression of Tbilisi was absolutely stressful. After a long day driving we arrived in the early evening in time for rush hour, when dusk just started to fall. Ulrich in front I at the rear in the camper, huge amounts of chaotic and ruthless traffic and the first exit took us through a switchback with 12% inclination… Urgh!

On our way to Agaraki – a newly developing quarter for the rather rich – the satnav takes us through settlements of very obvious poverty. The roads’ condition is such that I would suggest that here those massive SUV’s are just about adequate.

Before moving into this vast town we are allowed to stay on the outskirts for a few days and take our first explorational trips from up here.

I believe we have to look at two layers of telling about Tbilisi and its beauty. Firstly there are the “touristy” impressions which we experience when visiting all those places of interest and then there is the layer of making this city a kind of home to us and trying to live a “normal” life owing to the fact of our long stay here.

We are here for over a month now and to be true it seems to be a disgrace of me for not telling you earlier about our stay here. So let’s get started…