Freitag, 8. August 2014

Getting to Georgia

Getting from Erzurum to Batumi poses some unexpected challenges to me. First of all the bus ride is the most breakneck trip I've ever been on and the only time on this trip when I was actually worried if we'd make it to our destination as the senior driver sped down the steep and narrow sandy road along the steep cliffs, mostly above a river/dammed lake. Spectacular landscape anyway, and I even took some pictures!





I also need to change the bus once more at this company's headquarters in Artvin. It's not a problem, but it still makes me a bit nervous when suddenly everyone leaves the bus and I need to figure out with no one speaking English or German that it's just what everyone has to do in order to continue the trip as this is the regional bus hub. After a while there is another change in the landscape. Sand and rocks that show impressive traces of how they were folded up in colorful layers by the tectonics that formed this region give way to very green and round, yet still steep hills. Tea plantations! As I am an addicted consumer of black/green tea this looks like heaven to me! (No photos once more, though, the camera ran out of battery and the charged one is in the trunk...) 
The final destination of the bus is Hopa, some ten kilometers from the Georgian border. Apparently there is no bus leaving to Batumi or even the border town of Sarp (Turkish)/Sarpi (Georgian) anymore today (I suspect there is, but my Turkish is not sufficient to figure that out, the taxi driver, however, is keen on driving me, of course). With all the ATMs broken down I guess I get ripped off a little, but Euros are welcome to pay for the short ride along the shore line.

Sarpi border crossing point is quite busy and I really have no idea where I have to go and if I need to do some paper work first or not, from the information I read before I think I don't, but can I just pass by this official looking window...? I try hard to switch my brain to Russian and do manage to confirm my information: As a German I just walk in and get in line for the border control.
So I join a huge crowd of Georgians heading home from shopping in Sarp(i) markets. I feel just a bit weird in my violet and blue clothes and my bright green backpack among all these men (and, mostly, women) in black. There are some problems with the laptop, but finally the young guy at the desk makes it work again, asks me to step back to take a photo, and then I get my entry (by car...) stamp and enter Georgia!
A young women tells me where the marshrutki to Batumi leave and also helps me to get me and my huge backpack on one when what looks like 30 people try to board the mini bus. Squeezed into the back of the bus we reach Batumi, now I only need to find my couchsurfing host Christy which proves to be a bit difficult although I got a working mobile now. There seems to be a bit of confusion even among taxi drivers concerning some names of some places in the city, but once a Georgian friend of Christy's talks to the old taxi driver on the phone in Georgian I eventually I meet her and some Georgian and American friends on their way to a restaurant. After seizing the chance to freshen up a little I join them in enjoying one of the most iconic Georgian dishes, Khinkali, a kind of dumpling with various fillings while we exchange impressions of Georgia and other parts of the world.

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