Clash of trains

In todays clash of trains we have two extraordinary contesters:

• The Georgian Railways with their night train from Zugdidi to Tbilisi

The train.

In the compartment.

The corridor of the coach.

• The Armenian Railways with their night train from Tbilisi to Yerevan

The train.

The locomotive.
Note the bad state of the platform in the Tbilisi main station.

The corridor of the coach.

In the compartment.

Both railways use the same sleeping coaches from the soviet times. They also use the same classification system:

• 1st class:  2 beds per compartment
• 2nd class: 4 beds per compartment
• 3rd class:  6 beds per compartment

The first round is the price. Only 25 Lari for the 1st class in the Georgian train beats 79 Lari for 1st class in the Armenian train. These are 3 points: 3:0

Second round is comfort. The Georgians renovated the coaches while the Armenians use original ones. This gives an extra point for the Armenians for living history and one for the renovation for the Georgians: 4:1. The Georgians offer power plugs and a TV. Unfortunately they doesn't work. This is a penalty point for Georgia: 3:1.
The beds are in general quite hard. While the Georgians modernized the whole coach the Armenians simply provide a mattress as only improvement. This is very simple but helps a lot. This is an extra point for Armenia: 3:2. It was very cold outside and the Armenian coach was pre-heated while the Georgian one was completely cold at the beginning. The Georgians later turned the heating on to full power leading to more than 30 °C in the coach. To come back to an acceptable temperature they opened all windows while the train was running through the rain. In fact the feet were grilled while lying on the bed while the head was cold because of the open window. These are two penalty points for Georgia: 1:2.

Last round is service. The Armenians provide a bistro and there really cheap drinks and snacks. They allow you to walk through the train. The Georgians don't have a bistro and you are imprisoned in your coach. Even if there are 30 minutes before the train leaves, you are not allowed to get out of the coach once you entered it. So one point for the Armenians: 1:3. Because of the missing heating I asked the unfriendly conductor to turn on the heating but was rudely pushed by her into my compartment and she then just closed the door. I made the mistake to ask her if there are any working power plugs. I also mentioned that the nice flat screen TVs do not work. I got no reply but was vituperated instead. I have never been treated like that since a long time and therefore lost my countenance. So we yelled at each other a while. I yelled in English she yelled in Russian - somehow funny nevertheless. The Armenian conductor never smiled but was OK. So one point for Armenia: 1:4. The border control took almost 2 hours, one on each side of the border for only about 50 persons. That sucks as one cannot sleep, is not allowed to leave the coach and the toilets are closed. The Armenian railway is not guilty so no penalty point despite it was very inconvenient.

To calm down I shot some melfies.The thing with the melfies is
  that effects are important and also what else one can see in the mirror.

I bought this beer in the bistro. This was the first beer I drank in the
Caucasus that I didn't like. It has a very special taste that the Armenians like however.
It is therefore the market leader in Armenia.

So the winner is the Armenian railway with 1:4. Congratulations.
Your price is nevertheless too high since a bus to Yerevan costs only 30 - 50 Lari and it takes only 5 hours (including the border control). Therefore I fear that your night train will not survive. At least you should encourage the border police to work much quicker if you want to have a chance to compete.

Could I sleep? In the Armenian coach yes, but it was too short because of the boarder control. In the Georgian coach I could not sleep. I was so tired that I slept most of the following day in Tbilisi so that there was no advantage to take the night train.

Zugdidi

The plan was to go from Batumi to Mestia in the Greater Caucasus. To go there  took a marshrutka to Zugdidi. Unfortunately a guy entered my bus whose smell was a delight mixture of sweat, pee and "old man" - and I had to sit besides him, damn!. Some similar guys came in and all drove to Poti without having any luggage. I have no other explanation than that they are poor harbor workers who simple only have one set of clothes and even sleep in them.

Zugdidi is an unexpected larger city of Georgia located very close to the border with Abkhazia. Therefore many refugees of this very cruel war lives in Zugdidi and its population therefore grew quite rapidly.

There is much life going on in the streets and there are some nice parks, restaurants and parks. The Dadiani Palace museum is located in the largest park. It was unfortunately Monday and therefore it was closed. The market close to the bridge over the Chkhoushi river is a very nice one.

The railway station where also the marshrutkas start and end.

Inside the market.

 

I like that they drape the fruits so nicely.

You know already that I like soviet reliefs.

The park with the Dadiani palace to the left
and the Niko's palace to the right

The palace hosts now a branch of the Georgian national museum.
At the  right is the Vlakerni Virgin Mary church

I nice avenue in the park.

At the entrance to the botanical garden

It is impressive how much was built in the last 10 years.
This is the backside of the town administration.
The park around it is a special one with many water plays
on concrete plates. It looks more interesting than
on this image (the weather and light was too bad that day)

Somewhere in the town.

Another nice one.

Many such large houses are currently built.

In the center of the town.

The beginning of the main boulevard.

Along the boulevard.

The plan was not to visit Zugdidi but to go to Mestia. But nobody else wanted to go there so that the marshrutka driver sent me away after 2 hours of waiting. Then I found a private shared taxi and heard about heavy snow in the mountains making hiking impossible. Moreover the road was blocked with snow the day before and while waiting in the taxi it was packed full with big canisters of diesel. They didn't want to fix the canisters despite I tried to explain that they can become very dangerous if they are not fixed if the car has for example has to do a full stop. This fact was for me the final issue to stop the trip to Mestia. Now I know that this was not too bad because this way I had the time to go to the beautiful Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Batumi Botanical Garden

One of things one should do when staying in Batumi is to go to the botanical garden. It is located about 9 km to the north of Batumi directly at the coast. There are two city bus lines from Batumi to the garden, one ends at an entrance at sea level and one passes an entrance at the topmost point of the garden.

As I wrote the weather was bad but I didn't want to miss the garden. In fact, when I arrived there the fog didn't allow to look more than 50 meters in advance. Fortunately the fog level decreased a bit with every minute so that it was possible to see the highlights of the park.

In summer this park must be very beautiful and also a point to refresh a bit from the heat. Its climate is very special. Many trees have bryophyte at their bark because of the high humidity. The park is located at a cliff of the coast and it covers also a valley behind the cliff. So there are basically three areas within the park (cliff, down the valley, up the valley) and even in March one can see the differences in the micro climate. Only the plants at the cliff are evergreen ones.
However, I am not an expert with plants so just watch the photos:

The upper entrance with buildings of the Batumi university.

Heavy fog but somehow nice.

The Camellia Japonica trees already had blossoms.

The garden is very proud of its bamboo trees.
These are trees of the type phyllostachys pubescens.

 

The spring has begun.
 

This is colchian boxwood which can reaches ages of 500 years.
It is one of the plants that naturally grows here (in the Colchis).

The garden has some nice picnic spot.

The small river of the mentioned valley.

This is the former railway station of the garden.
It is only used for special events like weddings.

 
 

A tree fallen over a small river.
You can use it as a bridge, but look closer...

It is the mother of many "trees". If you can't see the fallen
tree one would think that this is just a bunch of normal trees.

It is amazing what mother nature can do.

Here too.

I didn't know that one can cut some types
of trees and they renew themselves like this.

View at the coast line to the north.
 

Another view.

Batumi - a surreal city

The Marshrutka ride from Kutaisi to Batumi was like a ride back to winter. Starting at more than 20 °C and sun it ended at 9 °C and fog. The next days it even got worse with only 4 °C, rain and wind. However, it is March and it was clear that such days will come.

Batumi is a surreal city because it consists of 2 parts which doesn't fit together. The eastern part is the harbor area. The living houses there are ugly. The other side of the city is the beach, party and casino area with skyscrapers buildings. Countless hotels, expensive bars and restaurants, party hostels and a wide beach promenade with cycling lanes and a large and nice park.

I know that people from Batumi are reading this, please forgive me. The thing is that I in general don't like cities with an industrial harbor and I also don't like places with mass tourism. Unfortunately Batumi is both. But of course there are many people all over the world who like it and come here every summer to relax and to party. So please get your own opinion and imagine that the weather is of course perfect in summer.

Typical road in the center.

A street with nicely refurbished old houses.

A former cinema.

The nice side of this square.

The opposite side with houses from the soviet era.

A crazy building with a ferris wheel in it.

When I entered the tourist information office the lady there was a bit surprised to see a tourist and gave me the advice not to come to Batumi before mid of April because this bad weather is typical before. I went down the streets and noticed that the whole beach city is waiting for tourists but there aren't any. I was the first one in my hotel for weeks and therefore the whole building was completely cold. Also 2 days with the heating at maximum couldn't change much. This was no problem since I had my sleeping bag with me. I could also use the kitchen to cook some of the nice frozen pasta they sell in the supermarkets.

The Batumi cathedral. So I was wrong when I once
wrote that churches all have the same basic design.

An interesting solution.

At the beach.

The beach promenade.

Many roads have cycling lanes but nobody is cycling.

Batumi is much more expensive than the rest of Georgia. I understand this but I don't understand the lower service quality. For example in Tbilisi I can rent an excellent mountain bike for 15 Lari a day. Here in Batumi they wanted to have 20 Lari for rusty bikes without fully functional brakes: "No problem, brake with feet". There is also a public cycle renting system with good bikes (the green ones) but one could only rent them for 3 hours. The idea was to cycle to the botanical garden which is 9 km away from the center and including the visit one needs more time. But renting the full day is only possible in the season.
In Georgia on can currently rent a taxi with driver for the whole day for about 50 - 60 Lari. In Batumi however, they wanted to have 100 Lari just for an half an hour drive to the Mtirala national park (just one direction).

Cycling lane along the promenade and city bikes.

Illuminated palms.

One of the huge hotels with a casino.

Just modern architecture.

This tower is part of complex called "Circus" which should represent Venice.

I noticed that many people in Batumi spoke Russian with each other. One reason might be that Russian is still the lingua franca in all former soviet union countries. The personnel of the hotels, shops and restaurants comes from different places like Armenia and they therefore most probably don't know Georgian.

I wrote some about the beach part. The harbor part is not very nice since there is a lot of industry. The most disgusting place I have ever been is the central bus station of Batumi which is in this part. The smell of urine is not the problem but the smell of the people. I would say that every second there did not was himself for weeks. One restaurant was packed with man in old clothes. I entered it since I was hungry and I had some time before my bus left. I was never disgusted that much before because everybody smelled heavily and different. The roof of the bus station building is partly collapsed and at the upper floor there are people living. Others sell furniture there and also smelled. It seems that they have to sleep besides the furniture.
I write this to illustrate the extremes of Batumi.On one hand clean and chic sites but also ugly places. I hope that the municipality will soon take a bit of they money they make with tourists to improve the situation in the harbor area. I mean all the cycling lanes in the beach part were not cheap an in the harbor area not even the sidewalks are paved and one has to jump over large puddles.

Close to the harbor.

Dito.

Ground floor of the bus station.

Upper floor. Note the open fire.
The people around it seem to live there.