Walking in Tbilisi - From the central train station via Chugureti to Avlabari

Tbilisi is a city with many contrasts. There are nice parks, clean streets and renovated houses but also kilometer long streets with ruins. For me it is important to see all sides of a place and of a country and therefore go there where tourists normally don't go.

You will now see some "ill streets" so Moonrock - Ill Street is the perfect soundtrack for this post.

I took the metro to the central train station to find out if there are some suitable connections. The building itself is a shopping mall with lots of large electronics stores. Even the entrance to the platforms hidden by doors without windows. So trains are no longer important in the station. The platforms and stairs are in a horrible state. The reason is that the railway tracks will soon be removed from the city. In future the trains will pass Tbilisi using this new track at the north.

There are many unused coaches and locomotives.

The train station.

This is the stair to the platform of track 2/3.

 

This is the local train to the airport.
It runs twice a day, at 8:00 and 17:20 which is is not very sensible
since most international flights start and arrive deep in the night.

I had a few hours until a meeting in the old town and used it therefore to walk there. This way I crossed the Chugureti district. This consists mostly of houses with only 2 floors. Especially in the northern part many of them are in a bad shape:

A typical street.

This is not an exception. Many houses here look like this.

Note the "pedestrian-friendly" construction of the downspouts.

One could now argue that it would be nice if they would be renovated. But one has to face the reality: more than one third (some say even a half) of the Georgians live in Tbilisi and therefore there is pressure to build apartment buildings. The existing houses are in this sense a waste of land. They are also not that beautiful that they are worth it to keep them. Personally, I would agree if they would be replaced by new apartment buildings.

In the southern part of  Chugureti the houses are a bit nicer with more decorations:

 In the Kiev street.

At the crossing Tsinamdzgvrishvili / Mazniashvili street

The few renovated houses look nice.
I noticed that especially the renovated houses are unused -
maybe they are simply too expensive to rent.

Down at the Mtkvari river the inner city looks like this:

The public service hall.

The Narikala fortress.

Just crossing the street and entering the inner city would have been too easy ;-). I therefore walked up to the presidential palace.

A nice small park close to the Baratshvili statue.

The statue and the view to the Mtatsminda hill.

In the Elene Akhvlediani Rise. The blue color was real -
the light close before the dawn was amazing

In the same street.

The presidential palace is the beginning of the Avlabari neighborhood. The houses around the palace are in a very bad shape. Even houses directly at the palace are more or less ruins.

In the Niko Lomauri street behind the presidential palace

The presidential palace from behind.