Georgian Food: A Culinary Journey In Tbilisi (Part 6)

(Read part one of trip HERE)

It took a long time to get back to Freedom Square and the road that led to Mariam’s shed. On the way, I walked down an alley to a kebab shop that specialised in Iranian and Afghan dishes. I sat at a table near the door and ordered a “chicken on the bone kebab” when a fight broke out. Two large men burst into the restaurant, yelling and baying for blood. One of them looked like a Viking in a blue puffer jacket, the other was equally broad and had a red pug nose. A Georgian man finishing his meal looked at them and shook his head. The other customers looked on nervously.

A scrum formed and the restaurant staff – five or six Arabic men with large bellies, making up in weight what they lacked in height - slowly pushed the pair backwards towards the sliding glass door. The shouting went on for several minutes and finally the intruders were pushed out of the restaurant. The owner locked the door. “Georgia!” he said. The waiter returned to finish my order and made an apologetic gesture about the noise.

The dish came in an unnervingly quick time to cook chicken on the bone. There were bony pieces from the back of the chicken, and a couple of wings and drumsticks. The meat looked nicely cooked on the outside, but was red and jelly-like close to the bone, and had the gamey smell of pheasant. I figured they’d had too bad a night already to complain. I ate the salad and the naan bread and then thought what the hell and ate some of the whiter chicken meat. I paid and headed off to Mariam’s shed. It was 1.20am. I’d arrived at a similar time the night before and the iron portcullis that led to the courtyard garden and noticeboard of compliments had been open, but this time it was shut. I pushed a few times but it was definitely locked.

I began to think about all sorts of horrible possibilities, knowing my bag and passport were inside. I knocked a few more times and pressed my ear to the gate but there was no sound from within. Next door was a basement bar. Three customers came out to smoke. I asked one of them for help. He was an olive-skinned man in his early 20s and spoke good English. I asked if he could see a buzzer on the gate. “A bell?” he said. I nodded and in our drunken state we felt round the gate. He turned on the light on his phone. But there was no bell or knocker, only the name Hostel Mariam with a phone number underneath. It was printed on A4 paper and stuck to the door with sticky tape.

“You live here?” he asked. “How long?” I told him it was my second night. “You have your clothes here?” He shook his head and clicked his throat in disgust. We both knocked again on the iron gate. My knuckles were getting raw and the banging made very little sound. I shoved the door a few more times. The night before, the gate had been wedged open with a brick and I was wondering whether the brick had become wedged under it, but it was definitely locked.

I started getting a horrible anxious feeling, and the winter air seemed to bite much harder. The thought of spending a night on the street wasn’t a pleasant one. The man blearily examined the gate again, then typed the number on the wall into his phone. I thanked him a couple more times. The phone kept ringing and cutting off as he made disgusted shakes of his head. He was definitely on my side.

Suddenly there was an answer and he started babbling away in Georgian. His tone slowly got aggressive. It wasn’t a good sound to hear. After a minute, there was a pause while he flicked away at his cigarette. There was a barrage at the other end. It sounded like a dragon breathing fire. “Is it a woman?” I asked. “Yes, it’s an old woman,” he said. “But I don’t know what she do. I think she’s lying. She says you only have a small bag there and you move out.”

He dialled the number again, crushed his cigarette with his foot, and then lit another one. A voice came back on the phone, and his tone got more aggressive. He checked with me again. “You sleep there?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. “You have your clothes there?” “Yes,” I said. Then the phone went dead. He swore and began to redial. “What happened?” I asked. “She says you check out. She not come to the door. She has a bad heart – it’s hard for her to get up. I think she’s lazy.” He tried the number again but there was no answer. I was already thinking about the park bench I’d sleep on. Without my passport, it would be very difficult getting a hotel. Then I thought about Babar’s hostel and whether there might be a spare bed there. Did they still keep the door open when Babar wasn’t turning up in the middle of the night?

My new friend, and I really don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t been there, tried the number a few more times and finally got through. The conversation quickly turned into an argument. I could hear a hurricane coming down the phone. He kept checking with me that I “had my clothes there,” and kept shaking his head. Eventually he said: “I think she’s coming.” I thought I could hear distant noises from inside the courtyard, but after 10 minutes just put it down to hope. Then finally the door opened and there was Mariam, her orange hair stuck up in rollers like a medusa, hailing a torrent of abuse.

She was leaning on her stick and rubbing her back much more than I’d seen her do before, making whimpering noises interspersed with full-blown rages of hate. I stepped through the gate, afraid it would shut again, and for a minute she swore at the young man and his friend who had wandered up to watch the spectacle. She slammed the door shut and clenched her fist, making hammering gestures in the direction of my nose. She carried on shouting and I did my best to rectify the situation. I helped her as she hobbled back through the courtyard to my shed door. My bag was on the table outside, underneath the vines. My toothbrush and toothpaste were on a chair next to it. She’d cleaned out my room. I panicked, thinking about my belt pouch containing my passport and money that I’d hidden under the mattress.

Mariam continued to rant at me, pretending to hammer my face with her right fist, as she gripped her stick with the other. I kept telling her I hadn’t said anything about checking out. Her punching motions got closer to my nose. One slip of her walking stick, and my nose would be as flat as a khachapuri. Eventually she unlocked the door to the shed and we walked in. I kept saying “no check-out” as she continued her attack. She said nothing about the English being “number one” this time, and the only thumbs-ups signs were the ones directed at my face. I realised she was probably mad.

She pointed at the beds and I pointed to the one I’d slept in, and she turned back the cover. While her back was turned, I checked under the mattress and found my belt pouch. Nothing appeared to be missing. The cash seemed to be about the right amount and the passport and bank cards were there. I handed her 25 laris for the room, then she left. The shed was freezing. The water jug had a slight sheen to it as though it was about to ice over. I shut the door and found she’d taken the remote control for the air conditioning, which when you put it up to its maximum of 16C was the only way to heat the room. I took the blankets from the other beds and piled them on top of me. I decided to check my emails and realised she’d turned off the wifi as well.

I woke early. There was no banging on the door this time and there was no sign of Mariam in the courtyard. I dressed and wandered out to the other shed to brush my teeth. It was far too cold to shower. I stood outside my shed for a few minutes gathering my thoughts. There was still no sign of Mariam. Normally she would be peeking through the net curtains, but there was no light in her kitchen. I found a plug outside my shed that led to a bundle of wires and managed to put the wifi back on. It also turned on the porch light.

I lay on my bed, shivering and searching on my tablet for hotels. It was still a few hours before check-in times. I went to the toilet. I heard no noise in the courtyard, but returned to find the outside light was off and so was the wifi. The plug had been taken out and the bundle of spaghetti was dangling down as it had been before. I took it as a sign that I was definitely no longer welcome.

I packed my bag and walked past the mandarin plant and the noticeboard with all those cheery messages. I could feel eyes on my back. Mariam’s black cat was sitting on a chair near the gate and was watching me with narrowed eyes. It hadn’t liked me when I first turned up, but now it looked particularly unfriendly.

I pulled the gate open and ventured out into the rain-drenched street. The basement bar next door was shut. At the end of the road was a small hotel with Christmas lights in the window, but I wanted one further away from Mariam. That cat had put the chill into me, and in my bleary state I began wondering whether Mariam had ailuranthropic powers – she certainly had the temper for it.

(Continues...)

Georgian Food: A Culinary Journey In Tbilisi (Part 2)

(Read part one of trip HERE)

It was a turbulent flight and the passengers clapped as the plane bumped to a halt at Kutaisi, the mediaeval capital of the Kingdom of Georgia. A man behind me shouted: “Bravo! Bravo! Bellissimo as they say in Italy!” A woman told everyone to remain in their seats until the seatbelt signs were off. She then spoke for a few minutes in Georgian. It was a soft, pretty language. There was the nasally sound of Russia and eastern Europe, but it was faster and more playful somehow.

A gale was blowing. The airport was modern looking and empty. There was only one other plane – another Wizz Air jet – on the tarmac. The queue at passport control was long and slow. The immigration officers seemed to be asking for every passenger’s life story.

When it was eventually my turn, a woman spent a minute flicking through my passport looking at the stamps and visas. “First time in Georgia?” she asked. I told her it was. She stamped my passport with a year-long visa, then handed it back and said “bye bye”. She seemed surprised and slightly suspicious when I said thank you.

It was past midnight and there was a 30-minute wait for the bus that would take us through the mountains to the capital Tbilisi. I bought a large can of Georgian lager and a bottle of water for eight laris (about £2.50). I wondered how much change I’d have got out of a £10 note back at Luton Airport.

Then I thought better of drinking the beer; thinking about the five-hour bus ride ahead. I hadn’t had time to book a hotel and had no idea what I’d do when I got there at dawn. The bus was packed, mostly with British students. At first I thought they were part of a group tour led by an Asian man in his fifties who walked with a stick. He kept wandering up and down the aisle giving updates on when the driver was finally going to turn the heating down and put the ventilation on.

After another 30 minutes or so, the bus left the airport. We climbed slowly up through the mountains and I caught the occasional glimpse of the sheer side of cliffs. There was no yellow hum of city lights, just the twinkle of distant villages, like lakes mirroring the starry sky above. The roads were empty and we passed through endless hamlets where nothing stirred. Occasionally we’d crawl past a roadside café, but apart from the houses, the only buildings seemed to be gas stations, brightly lit and ghostly. There seemed to be so many that if you ran out of petrol you’d have less than a mile to walk to the nearest. I noticed the number of police stations too. Plush glass buildings with all the lights on, and the occasional police officer sitting at a desk doing paperwork. It didn’t make much sense. There wasn’t a soul on the road and no-one was up, and yet they seemed to have the police resources to stop a midnight riot in Paris.

Behind me, an English man was talking on his phone to a woman asking for money. She kept saying: “Not good, not good. I worry much.” She said her rent was due and he eventually agreed to wire her some cash and top up the credit on her phone. “Okay I love you,” she said as the call ended.

At some point we stopped at some great monstrosity in the middle of nowhere that seemed to be half food hall and half supermarket. The man behind tapped me on the shoulder. He was wearing a bulging red fleece, black-rimmed glasses and had a grey quiff. He looked like a fat Stewart Lee. He handed me a five-lari note, and asked me to get him a bottle of water. I hadn’t even planned to get off the bus. I was slightly annoyed at first, but then I realised he used a wheelchair. I looked at the note – on the back was a drawing of a man in shorts holding a fish and a bucket. I handed back the note and said I’d get him some water.

The food hall was empty apart from the sleeping staff and our weary bus party. And we weren’t spending from the look of things. After another interminable, spine-crunching journey through the hills, we joined an empty motorway and picked up speed.

I nodded off and woke to the neon signs of casinos and grand hotels in Freedom Square, in the centre of Tbilisi, where someone had once tried to assassinate US President George W Bush with a hand grenade. In the centre of the square was a huge column, topped with a gold statue of Saint George, the country’s patron saint. In the Soviet era, a statue of Lenin had stood there, but it was torn down in 1991.

Everyone seemed to have someone waiting for them. It was 5am, freezing and I suddenly felt very tired and alone. The man with the stick began to hobble off towards a subway. Either he had lost his tour party or he didn’t have one to start with. He was clutching a Lidl plastic bag that presumably served as his suitcase. I wandered after him and quickly caught up. I asked him if he knew of any hotels that were open. There was a Marriott hotel up the road, but it looked hideously expensive.

Babar, as his name turned out to be, said he’d booked a bed at a hostel and I was welcome to follow him there. We walked for 10 minutes down Rustaveli Avenue, which I would find out later was Tblisi’s main street and named after the mediaeval poet Shota Rustaveli, author of The Knight In The Panther’s Skin.

The city was glittering with golden light. There were hundreds of angels blowing trumpets. They were hanging from wires across the road, lighting up the impressive Soviet architecture. The trees were wrapped in fairy lights. Everything seemed to be gold. I asked whether it was always like this, but Babar looked at me as though I was an idiot and told me it was Christmas Day. The Georgians apparently used a different calendar and celebrated it on January 7. New Year’s Day, confusingly also called the Old New Year, was a week later on January 14. I was worried there might not be room at the inn. If not, there were a few 24-hour bars and restaurants I could sit in until it got light, Babar said.

He said he’d stayed at the hostel a couple of times. It was his fifth trip to Georgia. He was planning to buy an apartment and had already seen a few on previous visits. Property was supposed to be cheap in Georgia, but Babar didn’t look like he had a fiver in his pocket the way he was hobbling down the road with an NHS walking stick, adorned with plasters, in one hand, and a carrier bag in the other. I liked him straight away. He had a confident, easy-going nature and told me about his many trips around eastern Europe. He said his mother had recently passed away, and looked close to tears for a second. “She was my strength,” he said. But he was soon back to his cheerful way.

What worried me was the thought of a hostel. I hadn’t stayed in one for years. The last one had been a homeless hostel in Amsterdam after I had my passport and money stolen and found myself pacing the canals with just six euros to my name. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience. There must have been 40 men in that room. And the smell is something I still remember. It was the smell of rancid vinegar. The time before that, I’d been bitten alive by bedbugs, but that had been a particularly filthy place even by Cambodian flophouse standards.

I was still toying with the idea of finding a bar and drinking myself steadily through morning until the check-in desks opened. But it was bitterly cold and I was worried that Christmas Day might mean all the hotels were full or closed. I was even less confident about finding a bar open at 5am. It certainly didn’t look like a 24-hour city. But Babar said I could probably find somewhere to drink. “Not that I’m calling you an alcoholic,” he said.

I was desperately tired. Even the worst bed in the worst hostel in Gomorrah was better than pacing the streets for a few hours, even if the angels were looking down. Babar told me Airbnb had started opening up in Georgia and they were ridiculously cheap. But he didn’t like the idea of staying in someone’s apartment. “I prefer hostels because you meet people,” he said. He was right about that.

(Continues...)