Tbilisi by train

Hi. It's been a while.
I went to Tbilisi (the capital of Georgia) last Thursday for a few days because my host cousin Esma had to pick up her Dentistry certificate. She just finished school last month. Esma has an apartment there because she (and a other cousins) have studied in the capital for the past eight years. We stayed inside a lot because there was a ridiculous wind storm. I didn't mind because it was nice just as a change of scenery.

Tbilisi is like many large cities. It has a lot of people, lots of taxis, a McDonald's even. I enjoyed the independence of being alone in an apartment with someone my age. No one told me to dry my hair or wear slippers inside. We ate pilmeni (like a potato ravioli) a lot because it's easy to make- boil from frozen- and it's vegan. The religious Georgians are fasting right now for a holiday I don't remember.

The trip was full of really bad luck. We took the train there on Thursday morning. It's supposed to be a six or seven hour trip, but the train broke down twice and we didn't get in until 5:30 pm after leaving at 9:15 am. I just slept a lot and listened to the American/Georgian couple have arguments that they thought no one else could understand.

The next day we returned to the train station to buy our return tickets. There were many lines with about ten people in each, so I didn't think this was going to be a problem. No. That's wrong. It was a problem. Apparently, each person takes about five minutes to buy a ticket because the venders are slow as hell. Esma said it was because they don't know how to use the computers. Finally we got to the front of the line, and straight out of a movie, the woman slams her window shut and says "I'm going on my break." Okay, so there was a notice posted that she got her 20-minute break at 12:10, which it was, but it was so rude and she was so slow! We waited for the 20 minutes because it would have taken longer to get in a new line.

Then we went to pick up Esma's certificate. What a surprise to find that everyone in that office goes on break from 1-2 pm. So we waited in the building for an hour (it was cool inside and very hot outside) and talked to Esma's friends/classmates.

The next day we went out shopping for clothing for a cousin's wedding next week. When we got home, the weather turned from hot to crazy windy. So we were stuck inside and listened to music and ate the few potatoes that were left.

We took the night train back because Esma doesn't like wasting the day on the train. There are cabins with four beds- two bunks, kind of. There were three of us- me, Esma and her friend- so there was a random woman in the room with us. She seemed nice enough, even gave me a very hard peach to eat. It turned out she was a snorer. The air conditioning had been on, but some woman complained that it was too cold. So I lay in a jolting train for hours, not sleeping, sweating and listening to a woman sing, fart, whistle and gurgle through her nose and throat. At that point I had enough and climbed down very very carefully and found my backpack under Esma's bed and got out my iPod. It was the first time I've used it in Georgia and if that was the only time, it was still worth bringing. I slept for two hours.

So that was the bad luck, but none of it except for the snoring seemed so bad at the time, and seems like less of a deal now. I ate good fasting food, climbed on some old church ruins, met some cool people, didn't spend any money, and got to talk to Esma a lot, proving my Georgian language abilities.