Chaczapuri trip part 3.

After visiting David Gareja's monastery we took our final turn to get to the best region of Georgia, Kakheti (region of wine)!! We were staying in a small village called Signagi that apparently is famous for having secong longest wall in the world, right after the Chinese Great Wall. I bet you didn't know that! Neither did we :D The village was stunning but also very dangerous! The view of the mountains is better during summer, we were unlucky to have heavy fog but still :)

The dangerous part of the village was not snow, slippery roads, Azeri people... but the small stalls were old women were selling... SOCKS! Everybody went crazy over them! The high score is 10 pairs of big socks, 3 pairs of small ones, 2 pairs of shoes and some part of jewelry...

The great wall that I told you about was being visited during the building by the queen Tamara who imprinted her hand on one of the walls

Well, the wine was definitely great and we found this one restaurant that would give you first glass of wine for free! Of course what is one glass of wine... In another restaurant we got a whole bottle! But they forgot our order... Anyways, everybody was extremely happy to finally be able to eat some pork :) And I was happy that after so much travelling I was able to find the Ajarian chaczapuri!

Going back to Baku was not easy.. Both because we didn't want to leave Georgia and our amazing guest house and because we had to wait 3 hours in the freezzig cold at the border... At least we could dance a little, sing and create plans for creating our own country...

Chaczapuri trip part 2

After visiting Vardzia we wanted to finally head and stay in Tbilisi. Well, staying in a mountain village has some disadvantages like the fact that the earliest marshrutka was leaving in about 2 hours... Remembering the freezing morning we didn't want to wait that long even in the sun, it was just too cold. People working there luckily had somebody that would drive us to Akhalsikhe from where we took a marshrutka to Tbilisi. Here I realized how friendly and open Georgian people are. For solid two hours a man, Zuran, sitting next to me was telling me a story of his life. It was amazingly interesting but after an hour I got tired and was dreaming about a bed... Well, we talked the whole way and you know what? True love does exist. Zuran told me a story of how he met love of his life and how hard it was for them to be together since she moved to Russia. There was no telephones, no internet, they only wrote letters to each other. Imagine how hard it was when they where moving.. But they always found each other again, and saw each other after many, many years still having feelings for each other. It was beautiful what he told me and I will never forget it. Especially that it doesn't have a happy ending. Zuran's married, has two children and the woman lives in Italy right now. They still see each other every now and then but they can't be together. A movie scenario, I swear.

Well, we finally got to Tbilisi, found (not so easily) our hostel and tried something my friend was warning me about: czacza. Czacza is some kind of Georgian vodka made out of grapes. Very strong. The bartender was so nice he gave us lemons to eat while drinking, without them we'd be dead :D But I know people who can drink up to 11 shots of czacza so who knows, maybe one day I will try ;)

Tbilisi is not that different from Azerbaijan. That was my first impression. It's still South Caucasus, that's for sure. The center of the city is not as rich as Baku's but at the same time it seems more friendly and... real. And if you want to go out in Tbilisi you will find plenty of places to go to and what's more, PEOPLE that actually go out! After checking out some places we decided to get some hookah and wine and finish the evening just chilling.

Next morning we started out sight seeing tour of the city. We saw some monasteries, castles, took the funicular, ate chaczapuri for breakfast, lunch and huuuge New Years Eve dinner with our Georgian friend. Maybe it's the New Years but surely Tbilisi knows how to party ;)

Our trip finished with visiting Sighnaghi, a village in Kakheti region - a famous region of Georgian wine. A must on our list! We were lucky to get a private marshrutka that stopped in differenct monasteries on the way to Sighnaghi. Never have I been hiking in winter and I must say that was an interesting experience although I would recommend good schoes that preven you from slipping on ice and snow :) Even though it was definitelly worth to see:

David Gareja monastery

David Gareja aka David the Builder was one of the thirteen Assyrian monks that came to Georgia to spread Christianity in the 6th century. There's still a fresh dispute over the monastery complex between Georgia and Azerbaijan since it's located very close to the border with Azerbaijan.

to be continued

Chaczapuri trip part. 1

After a few Christmas dinners and farewells some of the international students decided to go on a trip to Georgia! It would cover the New Years Eve and more than just Tbilisi. So our excursion began!

Living in the South Caucasus it would be impossible not to have any problems and they all started even before we left Baku. Well, apparentely the Baku-Tbilisi night train was not an option for us since there is a gender segregation and we'd be all spread around the train. That's why we had to take a bus, which was in fact cheaper (12 AZN) but not as convenient. We left slightly after 11PM to get to Tbilisi around 10AM. From there we immediately took a matrioshka (a name we now use for a marshrutka since some people can never learn new words!) to another part of the city from where we took a taxi straight to Kazbegi, a village up in the northern part of Georgia, very close to the Russia border (and South Osethia...). The mountaious view was incredible!

It was also our first opportunity to try chaczapuri and chinkali - two most popular Georgian dishes and as we soon found out, our daily meals! It was also a beginning of our obsession with the socks they were selling over there. Sock and 3kg of tangerines - what else a tourist might need?

Our trip was quite intense, we wanted to see as much as we could during the week of our stay in Georgia and for that reason next morning we took a marshrutka back to Tbilisi to change to another one that would take us to Akhaltsikhe, the town 20km away from, this time, Turkish border. From there we needed to get to Sabara's monastery and here we realized how popular Georgia is for Polish people. They were everywhere! As soon as we got out of a marshrutka a taxi driver came up to us offering his ride. How excited he got when he found out there're 2 Polish girls in our group! Nodari had a lot of stories to tell on the way to the monastery: mostly about tourists from Poland. As many stories as our stron fear of falling from the snow caped montanious road! Luckily we had to push the car only once, and we fell on ice only to land on our feet :)

Later Nodari showed us a good place to eat, and again we stuffed ourselves with chaczapuri, chinkali, kebab and his homemade wine that he gave us as a present! If you heard about Azerbaijani hispitality, forget about it! Georgians really know how to do it!! After an amazing meal we visited a castle in the center of Akhaltsikhe from which we had an incredible view on the whole town.

We finished our trip with Nodari at his house where he wanted to share with us some more wine - of course in a Georgian style!

From Akhaltsikhe we took a taxi to see Vardzia. On the way we stopped to visit some more castles and monasteries only to get to our final destination when it was already getting dark. We decided it's best to find our guest house and start sight seeing the next morning. What happened was, it turned out the guest house we read about in our travel book was working only during the season, in the summer. They wouldn't even host us because there was no hot water in the place. That's when we had some troubles with the taxi driver who turned out to be a great philosopher saying we shoul've have listened to him before and trow our book away since a book from 2012 (!) is apparently too old and wrong. Well, eventually he helped us find another place to sleep for which we were very thankful because it was freezing cold outside!!

In the morning we wanted to get a marshrutka to Vardzia, the place we wanted to see before. Well, we should've known that if a bus is scheduled for 10AM it will be there no sooner than 1030AM... For a solid half an hour we were trying to warm ourselves by dancing on the street. At least the sheep had fun - we were freezing! It was worth it though, Vardzia - a city in the mountain, was incredible!

to be continued