Welcome in the land of the Lari

Yes, I finally made it to go to vacation. One month longer at work and I would have gone crazy.

Thus Gnarls Barkley - Crazy fits perfectly.

But where to go in March? One option was to fly to a tropical region e.g. to Latin America to polish my Spanish. But that would have been the easy way. I therefore decided in favor of Georgia.
The flight from Frankfurt via Warsaw (using LOT airlines) to Tbilisi was also very cheap.

I arrived here last Sunday very early in the morning. A friend of mine living in Tbilisi ordered a taxi for me to drive me to a hostel. Unfortunately the driver tricked me and I had to pay (50 Lari) twice as the official maximum price. So welcome in the land of the Lari (1 €= 2.3 Lari). (I write here Lari because its sign is brand new and therefore not yet available in standard fonts.)
It rained at 6°C and the hostel was closed. I also had no mobile access ("your location is not supported") and could therefore also not call the owner. But hey, I am in vacation and have time. I stored my luggage on the stairs of a house and started a first trip through Tbilisi.

It turned out that the hostel is directly at the famous Rustaveli avenue. This street was the heart of the Russian quarter. The vice king of Georgia in the 19th century was the governor of the Russian tsar and the avenue was therefore built as a boulevard with beautiful houses showing the power of the Russians. I'll write more about that in another post.

A House along the Rustaveli avenue.

The former building of the Georgian parliament.

The Kashveti church

I am still impressed that so many buildings are illuminated the whole night long. As soon as I find the time I will make some more night images.
I was also impressed that even at 8 in the morning the city was almost quiet. No buses no cars, even the McDonalds was closed. Now I learned that life starts here between 9 and 10. The official bureaus are the first at 9 and the rest follows until 10. Well, that fits perfectly with my intrinsic time!
At 8 in the morning I could ring the owner of the hostel out of bed and he said I cannot enter it until 14.He kindly allowed me to sleep in the living room on the floor.

As I only had 2 hours that night I slept most of the day and then run around wildly to get an overview where I am:

The building of my hostel.

Its backside.

Most of the old houses in Tbilisi need a general refurbishment. Even the beautiful buildings along the main avenues are only repainted. Of course Georgia had hard times and other problems than to refurbish old houses. They now start doing this slowly and it will be interesting to come back in a few years and to see how it will look.

Even beautiful houses are abandoned in best locations.

Still at the Rustaveli. The building with the tower is
used by the Georgian National Academy of Sciences.

The opera and ballet theatre is currently under renovation.
 

View from the Rustaveli up to the TV tower.

Also at the Rustaveli are some huge hotel buildings.
The church in the middle is the Holy Trinity Cathedral.

A first view over the town.
 

Later on, in the hostel I met Amanda from the US who live in Prague but had to leave the Schengen Area to get a long-term visa for the Czech republic. Yes, the world is complicated. We went out to a bar she found in the Internet and ate beans in the pot:

Skeptic Amanda with her beans.

Since then many things happened and I could at least write 10 posts. Please forgive me, I cannot write down everything right now and I need some sleep to be fit for the cycling tour tomorrow to Mtskheta.

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