Very Warm Welcome To Why-Not-Country: Batumi

Once more I feel so lucky to have found a fantastic host, we connect instantly and always have something to talk about, be it Georgia or our home countries or other countries or living in a foreign place and how places turn not so foreign, about finding the right place, both geographically and metaphorically.

She works during the day I set off to explore the city by myself on the first day and I find it both very accessible and great fun to walk around as it looks to me like a happily unrestrained expression of freedom and a bit of craziness. That is not the whole story, of course, but the huge colorful and blinky buildings and sculptures are surely what surprises me most after having noticed the raging building mania along the seaside - and the neatly renovated boulevard between the sprouting blocks and the pebble beach.

The newer part of the Boulevard...

...and beyond

The old Boulevard...

Art between land and sea

One of the most astonishing buildings is the not yet functioning technical university that holds a small Ferris wheel near its peak.Some features of new sights and buildings are even more impressive with all their colorful lights. In the warm and early darkness I get to see a lot of it as Christy and I both like walking while talking and enjoy strolls around the illuminated city. 

Technical university building and statue of Medea holding the Golden Fleece

I really like the Alphabet Tower, as weird as it may seem, but when you think about it, what a beautiful thing to have a language an script you cherish so much that you build a cheerfully illuminated tower close to a much frequented beach to celebrate it! I managed to learn most of the Georgian alphabet and really enjoy being able to more or less decipher what the small curly letters mean. I also love how quotations are inscribed on one of the promenades and how another colorfully illuminated sight also illustrates a work of literature, one dealing with a bi-cultural relationship at that. Not far from the Alphabet Tower there is the moving double statue of Ali and Nino, the main characters of a novel of the same title. Set in Baku in the wake of the 20th century it describes the love of Georgian Christian princess Nino and Azeri Muslim nobleman Ali from his perspective. I will write some more about it when I am in Baku. The statues of a man and a woman move toward each other, drift through each other and part again while changing colors. I guess everyone can take their own metaphors from that...

More light and art in Batumi at night. Rainbow colored to the right: The Adjarian ministry of justice

I had contacted another couchsurfing host before Christy. Ruslan couldn't host me, but he is happy to meet for a meal and show me around his hometown. He has his own law firm and is active with some different youth groups and so he can give me detailed insights on many topics of Georgian history, politics and the recent changes taking place in the country.

We are joined by Christy for another very Georgian dish: Khachapuri (a kind of yeast pie filled with Georgian cheese) and Georgian lemonade. Cheerful company of three untypical people, as we find out: A Georgian who doesn't wear black, an American who speaks foreign languages and a German who doesn't drink beer.
When we talk a little about the countries I already visited on this trip I mention the Bruce Lee statue in Mostar and how at least one of the explanations how it got there was someone suggesting it and people answering 'well, why not?'. Ruslan really likes this approach. Georgia, he says, is a why-not-country, too. This phrase holds some potential to characterize countries, I think and add Germany is more of an I-can-tell-you-exactly-why-not-country. Maybe some things just take a bit longer that way... One of the things I love so much about travelling is how it refines my perception in ways that also make me see other parts of the world, including my home in a different light or in more detail.