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Arriving at Tbilisi airport, you understand instantly that you’re in a particular place. Georgia. The Caucasus. A feminine customs officer with trendy glasses stamps my passport indifferently. A placid middle-aged Russian-speaking taxi driver drives me previous crumbling Soviet-era buildings alongside an ideal freeway framed by mountains and hills to Rustavi, half an hour from the capital. The vacancy and abandonment are palpable. We see the odd sheep grazing, and different indicators of life, however the taxi driver says: “All of them reside in Tbilisi. There’s virtually nothing left round right here, no person grows crops any extra, there’s nothing left.”
The landlady of the guesthouse the place I’m staying, Marika, is a primary-school trainer who has been instructing since Soviet occasions. She is adored by the schoolchildren and has lived right here all her life. Her husband, Avtandil, works on the well-known Rustavi metalworks in japanese Georgia, which was one of many largest within the USSR. Avtandil is 74 years outdated and wakes up each morning at six to go to the plant.
He’s the brains of the pipes, as his colleagues put it: with out him the metalworks would go to wreck as a result of there is no such thing as a generational continuity. The identical factor occurs in Russia and different post-Soviet international locations with the sort of trade. Salaries are low, even derisory, so nobody needs to spend time studying such pearls of business knowledge.
Marika and Avtandil come to go to us usually. They carry chacha (a kind of brandy constructed from grape marc or fruit), which I’ve by no means tried, together with different wonderful liqueurs – and muffins, which Marika bakes. Apart from singing, enjoying the piano and realizing Georgian and Russian poetry by coronary heart, Marika can also be a wonderful cook dinner.
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With me are Igor from Moscow, Nastja from Mariupol, and Yumi and Yuda from Osaka, a pleasing Japanese couple who arrived earlier than us and determined to increase their keep till the top of April. Marika adores them: they’re well mannered and modest folks, all the time smiling and serving to with the cleansing. In reality Marika dotes on us all, and whereas we’re right here we change into a part of her household, alongside the 2 youngsters and grandchildren she already has.
A time machine
Rustavi has two souls: a brand new one and an outdated one. We reside within the new one, the one that’s teeming with life right now. The outdated city was constructed by prisoners after the conflict. This was advised to me by a talkative fellow passenger on the bus, who spoke Russian even with Georgians. “It was not solely Germans who constructed it, however in fact there have been lots of them right here… I used to show in one of the best kindergarten, however after the collapse of the USSR it was a catastrophe, youngsters had been fainting from starvation. There was no electrical energy, the water provide was patchy, even the meals was unhealthy. What laborious occasions!”
The traces of the decadence of that point are nonetheless seen. Ghost homes with sealed home windows, and so many deserted Soviet buildings that one loses rely. The distinction with the brand new ones is putting, it’s like travelling from one period to a different in a time machine. “Now we have a brand new mayor, a lady, she is energetic. Do you see how town has improved along with her?”, says my travelling companion proudly.
If t…
