I put on my rucksack and followed Babar as we headed off to
the sulphur baths. He told me to take a towel from the hostel, as it would save
me two laris not hiring one at the baths. He was worried it might be closed as
it was Christmas Day, but a few of the shops and restaurants on Rustaveli
Avenue were open. He changed £20 on the way for laris. The first bureau only
took euros, dollars and roubles, but the second took pounds. Every other shop
seemed to be a money exchange. The rates were given outside in neon numbers,
but I soon found it was rarely what you got inside.
Babar said we’d stop on the way to get breakfast at
his usual haunt. It was a small kiosk in an underpass and was run by two women.
It specialised in khachapuri – Georgia’s famous cheese-filled bread. The walls
were painted bright pink and there was a coffin-like black oven.
A woman in an
apron was at the far end rolling out dough into circles and squares and filling
them with cheese. The baked breads lay on silver trays at the front of the
kiosk. Some were shaped like Cornish pasties. They were golden brown
and looked delicious.
Babar asked which ones had potato in. The woman
serving pointed at a tray containing flat oval-shaped bread. He ordered two.
They came in plastic bags and were two laris each. They were delicious and we
ate them as we walked. They were like cheese and onion pasties, but much better
because there wasn’t the grease of pastry. It was a superb breakfast and a hearty
introduction to Georgian cuisine.
I read later there are a dozen or so regional types of
khachapuri, defined by the shape of the bread, cooking method, but most
importantly by the type of filling – everything from minced meat and trout to nettles,
spinach, beans and mushrooms. The ones we had, stuffed with buttery mashed potato
and cheese, were called khabidzgina - specialities of the Russian-occupied South
Ossetia region to the northwest of Tbilisi, a cooler climate where potatoes
grow in abundance.
Khachapuri apparently gets its name from two Georgian
words – khacho (cottage cheese) and puri (bread). Most are filled with chkinti,
a curd-like cheese, and a salty, elastic-like cheese called sulguni. The yeasted
dough is similar to naan or pizza in taste and texture. There are numerous
recipes, but most contain flour, fermented milk (a yoghurt-like liquid made
with kefir grains), eggs, yeast and a little salt and sugar, although there are
simpler versions with just flour, water and yeast. It is such a staple of the
Georgian diet that economists use a Khachapuri Index – inspired by the Big Mac
Index created by The Economist magazine in the 1980s – to monitor inflation by
tracking the price of its ingredients.
Khachapuri has such a special place in the country’s gastronomic culture that every family seems to boast its own secret recipe, and no feast is
complete without it. However, despite being one of Georgia’s national dishes
and certainly its most common food, historians are unsure of its origin. Some whisper
– to the fury of proud patriots - it might not be Georgian at all and may be a
cousin to pizza. Indeed, the round, thin Megrelian varieties topped with
bubbling cheese certainly resemble pizza bianca. Food writer Dali Tsatava, a
former professor of gastronomy at the Georgian Culinary Academy in Tbilisi,
points out that Roman soldiers travelled through the Black Sea area, bringing
recipes for something that resembled pizza. She says tomatoes did not exist in
Europe until the 1500s, so it was just cheese and bread, not unlike khachapuri.
The only regret I had was not trying the Gurulian
khachapuri which are only baked at Christmas. They are half-moon shaped and
contain boiled eggs smoked in the chimney for a couple of days. We walked
another 10 minutes as Babar told me about his plans to buy a property in the
city. He took me down an alley and pointed at a house for sale that he’d looked
at on his last visit. He said the owner had shown him round. Every time he
asked the price, she talked about the square meterage and how central it was.
“But how much is it?” he’d asked in exasperation. Babar
shook his head and laughed. “She told me it was one million dollars! She didn’t
even bother to calculate the price in euros,” he said. “She thought that by
joining the EU, she was going to become a millionaire. You can buy an apartment
here for 10,000 dollars! Put it this way, you can buy the President for 22,000
dollars, so use that as a yardstick when they talk about prices and work
downwards. One million dollars! I just thanked her and walked out.”
We headed south to the ‘old town’ Abanotubani
district, on the bank of the Mtkvari River. The sulphur springs had apparently
been discovered in the fifth century by King Vakhtang I of Iberia (present-day eastern
Georgia) when the area was just thick forest. He had been hunting with his
falcon or hawk, depending on the tale, when it took a pheasant and both birds
fell into a hot spring and died from burns. He liked the springs so much, he
cleared the forest and built a settlement around it. Tbilisi (meaning “warm place”
in Georgian) became a popular bathing spot with merchants travelling the Silk
Road between Europe and Asia, and the city grew from there.
We got to the baths and headed in. I don’t know what I
was expecting. Babar said there was a scam going where all the travel guides
and tourist information leaflets directed you to the private baths that you
hired by the hour – not the far cheaper public ones. “It’s top of the list on
Tripadvisor, the private rooms. But they don’t mention the public ones and it
took me a long time to find them. They should tell you about these things.
Tripadvisor should tell you. What else are they there for if they don’t tell
you?” I nodded and smiled and thought about mentioning how people used to pay
for editorial content until the internet took over and changed everything. But I
was here to enjoy myself and I didn’t want to dwell too long on what a dead-end
job journalism had become.
The private rooms were in brick-built huts, curved at
the top, like brown Daleks. A group of tourists had climbed on to the roof of one of them. There was a small park and the public baths lay
beyond. We walked down some steps and paid at a kiosk. The cost was five laris
each. At the bottom was a long, steamy room full of lockers. The gatekeeper was
a fat, angry-looking, bald man who demanded to see our tickets. He asked where Babar
was from. “Pakistan,” he said brightly. “Pakistan,” the man repeated, nodding his
head gravely. He tried to make us pay for towels but Babar said we’d brought
our own. The man said something to the crowd in the room. Babar asked about
lockers and the man waved his hands in a shooing gesture and said: “You lock, I
don’t open.”
We undressed, wrapped our towels around our waists, and
headed into the steam room. It was a dome-shaped building decorated in mosaics.
The air was so thick you could barely see more than 10ft. Hot water poured from
taps in the ceiling. Some men shaved, some lathered. We showered then sat in a
deep bath. The thing that hit you first was the overpowering stench of egg from
the sulphur springs. Once it got into your pores it didn’t leave you and I
could still smell egg on my skin a day later. But the water was hot, and after
that chilly breeze outside, it was wonderful sitting in that steaming tub.
There were two masseurs at work. Large men lay down
like slabs of meat on marble platforms and the masseurs got to work, scrubbing
them hard with soapy towels. After a few minutes in the bath, I showered again
and went into the sauna. There were soggy leaves everywhere. Some of the locals
liked to beat themselves with nettles to get the blood flowing, another
hangover from the Romans. Or maybe they were just beating away the stench of
egg.
Babar said he was going to have a massage for his bad
leg. He said it was the main reason he had been to Georgia so many times. He
had steam massages in Birmingham, but they cost far more - normally £30 for 30
minutes, but he bought them in blocks of 20 massages for £500. The masseur was
a friend and offered “mate’s rates” and wasn’t too happy about the extra
discount, but Babar would point out that it was money in the bank, and besides
he had to pay interest on the £500.
I went back to the locker room. A side room was open and
I could see men in there smoking cigarettes. If I’d known Georgian, I would
have seen the sign said “staff only” or “keep out” or something similar. I
rolled a cigarette and went in. I heard a shout behind me. One of the masseurs
was walking towards me aggressively. Behind him was the fat gatekeeper. I saw the
resemblance for the first time. They were definitely father and son. I held out
my rolled cigarette for inspection. “No smoking in here,” said the masseur. “No
smoking!” said the gatekeeper.
I got changed and was about to head out for some air. Near
the stairs was a barber in a tiny dungeon. I asked the gatekeeper about a
haircut, but he made a scowling face and pointed at my hair. He was a hard
friend to make. He shouted something to the customers towelling themselves near
the lockers. It was something like: “Can someone speak to this idiot in
English?”
A shy-looking man answered. There were a few words and
the young man said: “You need to dry your hair or the machine won’t work.” I
thought it was another attempt to get me to pay for a towel. I went to speak to
the barber, but through sign language and broken English it turned out that no
matter of towel-drying was going to convince him to give me a cut. It would
foul up his clippers. I thought about how British barbers charged extra for a
wet-cut and why he couldn’t just manage with scissors. He said next time I
should get my haircut first, then go for a steam bath afterwards.
I walked outside and waited for Babar. The barber came
out a minute later and looked horrified. He gestured for me to put my hat on. I
thought at first it would help dry my hair and I could return for a cut, but he
was just worried about me getting a cold after going from the heat of the steam
room into that freezing wind.
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