Two Decades in Georgia
Blog
That’s the anniversary coming up for me on December 1, the date I moved here by train from Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1999. I’ve also celebrated 10 years of marriage to my dearest Lali (May) and 30 years since I set out from Stony Plain, Alberta, Canada, to bike around the world and find a place to settle down.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” There were a couple of times on that train between Baku and Tbilisi, in my early days, that the border guards on either side tried to intimidate me into bribing away their unwanted attention. I averaged about 3 round trips a year for the first few years of the new millennium, to see friends I’d made during my six months in Azerbaijan prior to moving here. Both countries were thoroughly corrupt then, but Georgia eventually surged ahead, goaded on by rose thorns.
I knew that if I gave in once and coughed up some Manat or Lari, they’d expect it every time. So, despite the stress of three or four of them coming into my otherwise empty sleeping coupe in the train, shutting the door, and trying it on, I never gave in to their threats to throw me off the train for having “too much camera equipment” or some other excuse. They’d stomp off with angry promises that “We’ll be back!”, but that was the end of it. Two or three times and they gave up. I had won, somehow. Same with Georgian metro police who tried to rob me a couple of times: calm confrontation won out, and they backed off. Blind luck?
Pulling into Tbilisi’s main railway station, we were about six hours late due to power out(r)ages en route. Some friends of friends who had been assigned to meet me had waited patiently all that time in the early winter’s chill, and greeted me on the platform. This was before I had my first cell phone, so there was no phoning ahead to arrange things.
The station police were there too, of course, eagerly awaiting newbie foreigners on whom to prey. They asked for my passport in Russian and I gave it to them without thinking, trusting them in already dying naivete, then went back into the carriage to fetch more of my considerable luggage. Unknown to me, with my complete lack of Georgian language at the time, my hosts warned them harshly not to press their luck squeezing me as they knew Mr X who was high up in the local chain of command. Ignorance being bliss, I ventured forth into Georgian life with my new friends, staying with them for a few months in that first cold, kerosene-heated winter and forging bonds which have lasted these decades and introduced them to Svaneti. They had rescued me from I didn’t even know what, as I found out later.
Tbilisi then was dark, dangerous, the police not ones to go to if you needed help as they were likely only to make it worse. A Georgian visa took many trips to many locations, needing much persistence; although an Azeri one, multi-entry for a year, was far easier to obtain back then than it is now. I survived a mugging and theft, got a bit street smarter, fell in love with Georgia in a way which I hadn’t managed to in Azerbaijan for some reason; and for a while now have lived here longer than anywhere else in my life. This country just grabbed me and didn’t let go. I’ll never leave unless forced out. After half of my life wandering the world, the wondering is over.
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with nearly 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
By Tony Hanmer