Zakopane

We decide to get out of Krakow for a while, to rest our aching livers.  As fun as being party promoters/ CP/FO (Cheif Party/Fun Officer) / event makers is, you reach that point when you never want to do it again. You don't want to make polite chit chat with people and hear the same travel stories, it feels like every song has been stuck on repeat for the last week, you've worn holes in your dancing shoes and the sounds of other people's enjoyment is like nails on a chalk board.

So we got out for a few days, headed up to the mountains to clear our heads and enjoy the beautiful scenery. It was amazingly beautiful, I wish we could have stayed longer but by the time we arrived it was 6pm and we had to be back the next day. I really wanted to go skiing, but seeing as my travel insurance has lapsed probably not the best idea.

It's currently spring, but something is going wrong in the atmosphere and there is still a lot of snow on the ground. I don't know what unit of measurement is used to write about snow - feet? inches? Silly imperial systems.

The last thing we wanted to do on this trip was drink, so we got a nice friendly game of Monopoly going with some other guests (French gap year student, American girl who was doing her masters in Mathematics and an Australian girl is from the same place as me and knew mutual people. If you know where we lived, it's amazing.) Right from the beginning the mathematician took the game too seriously and I realised that Monopoly is really, never an enjoyable game.

The from Krakow to Zakopane was 20ZL, which really isn't too much, but more than we were willing to spend. So we hitch hiked back. All in all it turned out really well - #1 A man who knew very little English but was super excited I was Australian, he drove us into the centre of town.
#2 A young guy who drove us 7km away from town on his way home for Easter.
#3 A man in his 50's who worked on the charter boats and spoke perfect English because that is what they use on the boats.
#4 (A general rule of hitch hiking, people won't pick you up with kids in the car) This man had his little daughter in the front seat, I think he wanted her to practice her English or he felt sorry for us hitching in the cold on Easter weekend.
#5 A man heading to Katowice for Easter with his family, drove us an hour out of his way, right to the hostel door. A fantastic human being.

I finally got around to doing one of the walking tours. I think mostly I did it because it was an afternoon one and some of the nice guests were going and invited me. The Jewish district has some really cool street art. 

Sharing the same irrational fear

One of the last weekends I spent in Georgia, I got very drunk in a bar in Zugdidi with some friends, there was four of us at this bar, we were the only people there. All night.

As 3AM rolled around we decided it was probably time to head to bed and let the poor bar owner shut up. Engela and Brent wanted to spend some alone time together, went to a hotel. Priyanka and I being stingy decided to go to the hostel which was a 15 minute walk outside of town.

We were drunk and hungry so we stopped and got some food and sat on the curb and ate it. Priyanka decided chips sandwiches would be good feast. That girl is a genius, they were amazing. One loaf of bed and a bag of chips was more than enough drunk food AND we had left overs for breakfast.

After we ate we walked to the hostel, it looked pretty quiet, but it was the end of the semester we just figured there wasn't too many people around because they had already started sending people home for the holidays. There was no one at the hostel. No staff. No patrons. They had shut up for the winter. There was a number to call if there was no one around, but at what was closer to 4 AM they didn't answer.

What were two drunk, traveller to do?

We built a cubby house out of the furniture they had left outside, took all the towels off the clothes line and tried to use them as blankets. It was winter, so it was freezing. We had been trying to sleep for about half an hour when Pri asked,

"Do you think it's cold enough to get frost bite?"

The thing was I couldn't sleep because I was being plagued with the same question. It was a completely irrational fear, it wasn't that cold and we weren't really exposed to the elements. I think in the end we got about half an hour sleep. 7 AM  rolled around, we got up and bailed, we didn't want the staff to turn up and try and charge us for using their furniture (the staff at this place were not very fond of TLG, I would not put it past them to charge us). As we were walking out of the hostel it started to snow for the first time that winter. Priyanka, being from India, had never seen snow before and previous to this day was so excited about snow that I thought she might cry. We were so tired, she didn't even crack a smile and sulked that it wasn't real snow, it was slush.

 We walked to the main road and hitched to Batumi where some friends of ours were, we made it there in two hours - a  record time. It took us four cars and about 20 minutes of walking down some creepy village road. The best ride we got that day was a man in a big, black four wheel drive who pulled over and picked us up. Drove us into into the city and didn't say a word the whole time. It allowed us to nap and refresh ourselves for another night of drinking. Pretty sure he only picked us up because he felt bad we were stuck in the rain.

The Pro's of Hitch Hiking

I will start this post by saying, use your common sense. If something doesn't feel right it probably isn't and you should get out and this is a theory that can be applied to any situation.

In Georgia hitch hiking isn't frowned upon as much as it is in Western society. it can still be quite dangerous and I think everyone I know who used to hitch around Georgia has at least one horror story. But it's free and can be a good way to meet people so we often did it.


My friend and were heading to Tbilisi, from the West side of the country. I started in my town of Senaki and hitched a lift into her town of Abasha and from there we wanted to head as directly as we could to Tbilisi. It was the weekend we had places to be.

The intended root.

 We kind of expected that it would take more than one car to get there, it was long drive (about 5 hours,  give or take depending on the traffic and road conditions.) We had been waiting on the road for about ten minutes when a car pulled up. He was a youngish looking guy, probably about late 20's travelling by himself. he said he was only heading to Samtredia. Samtredia 's the next town, about 25km away but we figured we would jump out and continue on from there, it was progress. When we go to town the guy (we very much later found out his name was Giorgi) said he just needed to exchange some money, he pulled out a very large wad of US money and proceeded to drive around until he found someone to change the money. This was an odd situation to begin with but neither of us seemed to phased by it, we figured at least he wouldn't ask us for money for the lift.

Whilst my friend was in the bathroom he asked me if we needed to be there at a certain time, because he was actually going to go to Tbilisi but he just had to do something first, he needed to get a bag from his parents. As a rule of thumb if someone says they are only going part of the was and then change their mind and claim they are going the full distance it is completely acceptable to be suspicious  They may expect something when they get to the destination because they have gone out of their way for you.

When my friend got back to the car I explained the situation to her, she seemed to think that he was an all right guy so we went with him. On the way out of town he picked up two more people on the side of the road that he seemed to know**. Giorgi then proceeded to drive 40 minutes into the mountains, the opposite direction to where we needed to go. I immediately started thinking that this was  bad idea, he was taking us into the mountains to chop our bodies into tiny little pieces. We would never be heard from again. I only wished that I had a significant other so that I could tell them that I loved them one more time.

We stopped the car at a tiny little house, Giorgi asked us to come inside with him. There was not much we could do outside and I didn't want to be locked inside the car. Before we even got through the gate we were greeted with multiple cheek kisses by a middle aged Georgian woman who dragged us inside and sat us down at the family table. From the other room came Giorgi's grandparents who joined us at the table as his Mother started bringing out brimming plates of freshly cooked Georgian specialities. The Babua (Georgian for grandfather) dashed outside and brought back a bottle of his home-made wine and immediately poured us a glass. From there the toasts started, to family, to friends, to those in the ground, to woman, to children, to America and to Australia.

(Left to Right Deda, Me, Babua and in the front Bebia)

Giorgi had called ahead and told his mother that he had picked up some foreigners and was bringing them to the house. This spectacle was Georgian hospitality at it's finest. We stayed at the house for about two hours until our stomachs ached with amazing food and we had drank the obligatory amount of wine - four glasses, skolled quickly.

Giorgi did not join us for wine, and when all was said and one we hoped back in the car and made our way to Tbilisi. After the four glasses of wine we had a little buzz on and we wanted to keep it going. It was a Friday night after all.  Giorgi stopped in the village market and bought us each a beer. Which set the precedent for the rest of the journey. Drive an hour, bathroom break, buy another beer.

We didn't make it to Tbilisi in record time, but we had way more fun than the other chumps who caught marshutkas. This is both one of the greatest shows of Georgian hospitality and one of the greatest hitching stories.

Actual route taken

** Seemed to know - in Georgia this could be anything from your best friend from high school to your second cousins neighbours mother. 

The Rock Star President and Volcanic Hot Springs

President Saakashvili is a rock star. Originally we were told we were going to meet the president. It was not so. The president was giving a speech (on what I am not too sure, I caught the word school. My Kartuli is not very good.) to several towns across the nation. Before he arrived in was a stage show spectacular of Georgian TV stars, Mingrelian singers, even Miss Georgia. The president's helicopter circled the town square a few times before depositing him off sight somewhere. The speech lasted no more than 10 minutes and then the thousands of people climbed back into the buses, the snipers put away their riffles and normalcy resumed in the town. 

The real fun is what we got up to after. (The 'we' I refer to is Engela and I, because we live so near.) We met up with 3 other TLG folks and discussed plans to go swimming in Poti over lunch. We didn't have any swimwear with us so we convinced the group to come to our town and go swimming in the mountain river. 

The taxi ride down was cramped and relatively uneventful - we did get to practice directions in Kartuli though. The cab dropped us at Engela's and from there we were going to walk until we could flag down a car. The first car to pass, A BMW, stopped and drove us. Life is Grand.

The river we stopped at has a bridge that I would say is close to 10m from the water. We ju as I was assured the water was very deep and we would be fine. 

It hurt so much. I feel like I have been hit by a car. It was totally worth it. You fell for so long it stopped feeling real. To soothe our aching bodies we headed to the volcanic hot springs- this time jumping in the back of a logging van. We lay there until we thought our poor host families would be worried. Hitchhiked back into town and called it a night.

What did we learn from today. Hitchhiking is great.