Monday, 9 October 2017

 

Start: Luxembourg (L) 11:15

Arrival: Tbilisi (GE) 3:30 the next day

Total: 3100 km and way too many hours

 

On which I learned:

 

that train journeys take just too long

that I really don't like to travel alone

that it's not the size of an airport that matters

 

 

I had wanted to visit the Caucasus for some time now, but the idea to actually go there this October was a spontaneous one. About a week before, I rang up my friend Aarat in London and asked him if he was game to explore the lands between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea with me. It turned out, the timing could not have been better, as he was getting ready to move back to his native India. Instead of flying straight to Delhi, he would squeeze in some ten days for Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. We would meet on Monday evening at the airport in Munich and take the overnight flight to Tbilisi.

 

Unfortunately, I am very scared of heights. Climbing on a ladder is bad, driving over a bridge is borderline and the mere idea of getting onto a plane makes my body go into fight-or-flight mode. Literally. But if Central Turkey and Northeast Russia was just about feasible by car, I simply didn't have the time to spend six days crossing all of Europe to get to Georgia. So it had to be the plane this time.

 

But I didn't want to get into the air before it was absolutely necessary. So here I was at 11:00 o'clock in the morning, heaving my suitcase into a bus that would get me to Saarbrücken. After about two hours trundling along a boring highway, I lugged my things through Saarbrücken central station, looking for the train that would bring me to Mannheim. I found the right platform without incident and soon hauled my stuff into a regional train. So far, so uneventful. Actually, I hadn't gotten that far yet. As the train sped past fields and villages, I brushed up on my Russian with Duolingo. My experience in Russia had told me that I was not nearly fluent enough to have any meaningful conversation in this language, and - my Georgian, Azeri and Armenian being nonexistent - I didn't want to rely on English alone to get by.

 

Almost 2:30 PM and still no Mannheim in sight. This was so boring. I love to chat, point out interesting things and generally share the travel experience with a kindred soul. Germans, unfortunately, are not known for their chattiness with strangers. So there was nothing else to do than watch the landscape rattle by and smile myself into holiday mode.

 

In the end, the train got to Mannheim half an hour late, so I quickly pulled my suitcase onto the platform, dragged it down the stairs, and hauled it onto the escalators a few meters further on. Amazing how many verbs there are for moving your stuff around. In any case, my body was delighted to do some work after hours of bumming about on bus and train seats. Brimming with this-is-my-first-day-on-holiday energy, I looked around. The railtracks were empty on both sides. Hm. At that moment, a creaky announcement through the speakers informed me that the train to Munich would be forty minutes late. Oh. Ok, time for a selfie then.

 

My fellow passengers looked grumpy and cold. But I felt excited and warm inside: in less than ten hours, I would be in Tbilisi!

 

Finally, the train pulled into the station. As this would be a high(-ish) speed train, I'd had to reserve my seat in advance. I had opted for a first class ticket and it turned out that my seat was in a private compartment with four other people, a group of Swiss businessmen, by the sound of them. They were nice enough to heave my suitcase up onto the rack for me, but my attempts at conversation failed here as well. Soon they were busy typing away at their laptops and I reverted back into watching-the-landscape-fly-by mode. I missed my car. I never get bored when I drive. But this journey was just endless, and I had not even really left home!

 

In the end, I deserted my uber-cool first-class compartment to have a walk up and down the aisle, just to give my aching bum and back a break. They say there are dog-persons and cat-persons. After today, I am convinced that there are also train-persons and car-persons and I am squarely in the latter field.

 

At the last stop before Munich, my fellow travellers left and a new passenger took up seat next to me. Turned out, she was from Munich and loved to chat. Yay, life was good again. In no time we pulled into Munich central station and my new friend directed me to the underground train that would take me to the airport. Unfortunately, the airport is pretty far out of town, and you have the choice between a long-winded journey eastward around the city, or an equally long-winded journey to the west. Experienced travellers just simply take whichever train pulls into the U-Bahn station first. For me, that meant going east.

 

 

 

I managed to secure a seat for myself and my luggage. As the underground whizzed through the tunnels, I checked my watch: 6:10 PM. In one hour, Aarat would be boarding his plane in London. For the first time, I questioned the wisdom of going by train when I could have just opted for a 50-minute-flight to the Bavarian capital.

 

No matter, here I was now at the huge Munich airport. As much as I dread flying, I love airports. As Hugh Grant rightly stated in Love Actually, airports have a wonderful vibe of new opportunities and grand choices. All the roads are open to you and not even the sky is the limit. This is of course always true in life, but at airports, you are more forcefully reminded of this pleasant fact. Not to mention the shops. I love window shopping, and as I had ample time before my flight, I decided to get rid of my suitcase and hang out around the stores.

 

I quickly located the check-in counter and lifted my suitcase and accompanying toiletry bag onto the conveyor belt. Smiling apologetically, the lady informed me that I was only entitled to one item of baggage, weighing a maximum of 25 kilos. I looked at my suitcase. It weighed hardly half that and the toiletry bag was really not taking up any space at all. By comparison, the guy behind me was lugging a whale of the suitcase, not to mention the fact that he himself looked somewhat cetacean too. The airline employee shook her head. Nothing to be done about it, I would have to pay 75 euros for any extra luggage. 75 euros for a bag the size of a small birthday cake? She must be kidding. But she wasn't. Instead, she suggested that I either carry the bag onto the plane, which I couldn't do as it contained all sorts of shampoos, deodorants and other liquids that airlines these days are so irrationally afraid of. Or that I squeeze it into the suitcase.

 

Defeated, I heaved my luggage from the conveyor belt and retreated into a corner, there to open my lovingly packed suitcase and proceed to rearrange my stuff so that the bag would fit in. It turned out, said bag was not as small as it had seemed just minutes ago. What is the point of having a separate toiletry bag if you cram it in with your clothes after all? After lots of pushing and shoving and squeezing, I was about to declare defeat. There was no way I could close this thing with the bag bulging up on one side. But ... seriously ... 75 euros? My eyes narrowed. These boots and jacket were taking up a lot of space. I grabbed them, stuffed them into a plastic bag with my water bottle and magazine, gave the toiletry bag one more squeeze, slammed the suitcase shut, sat on it and pulled the zipper close. Done. Beaming with DIY pride, I checked in my suitcase and wandered off to try out some expensive perfume. It was 7 o'clock in the evening and my friend had just messaged me that he was about to board his plane. In less than two hours, I would be with my travel mate.

 

Shortly before 9, I arrived at the flight gate. I loved this posh place, brimming as it was with fancy cafés and stylish stores. I decided to treat myself to an espresso in one of the comfy chairs in front of the huge glass windows overlooking the landing strip. In happy anticipation of a coffeine boost, I strolled to the counter. "Ein Espresso, bitte." The barman shook his head. So sorry, but there would be no more espresso for tonight. My spirits plummeted. How about an americano, then? He pointed to the coffee machine. Everything cleaned up for the night. Oh ok then, so I would just check out another bar. He again shook his head. It turned out, all the bars were getting ready to close. At nine in the evening? I couldn't believe it. Fancy that for a fancy airport. I dreaded to think what we would find in Tbilisi, when we landed there at 3:30 in the night. Let's hope that we would not have to grope our way out through empty, dusky corridors.

 

My phone pinged. Aarat had arrived! Within minutes, we had found each other and I was smothered in a huge bear hug by my ever-smiling Indian friend. We had first met a few months ago when he had been couchsurfing at my apartment during his one-week-to-see-half-of-Western-Europe stint. It had been a wonderful, if somewhat sleep-deprived 24 hours with me showing him Luxembourg city at 7 o'clock on a Sunday morning. If his lively, sparkling eyes were anything to go by, this holiday promised to become a string of equally memorable adventures.

 

He told me he'd had similar troubles with his luggage. As he was essentially moving his whole life back to India, he had crammed as much as he could into a huge suitcase. He had managed to charm his way into carrying way more hand luggage than was usually allowed, and even brought his guitar aboard the plane. We were chatting excitedly, catching up and making plans for the next twenty-four hours. Soon, our Lufthansa flight was ready for boarding. When I stepped into the cabin, the reality of it hit me right in the stomach: soon we would be up in the air, with 10,000 meters of yawning nothingness between me and the solid ground. I felt a huge wave of dread washing all over me. But Aarat wouldn't let me dwell on any bleak feelings. He kept on babbling, introducing me to the finer points of Marathi grammar, the Hindu pantheon and about a million other things. When the plane took off, I had almost forgotten to be suitably frightened. With the turbines roaring in my head, I tried to shut out my friend's melodiously voiced stream of consciousness to be able to focus on my fear. Ah yes, there it was, branding forcefully to the surface. OMG OMG OMG, here we go, now we're in the air!

 

Once the plane was smoothly moving along at high altitude, my heart slowed down to a somewhat healthier beat. The food was surprisingly good, much better than I remembered it from my flights as a teenager during the family holidays. Of course I am a lot less picky now, and I was ravenously hungry too, but I really do think the food was quite delicious.

 

The flight from Munich to Tbilisi took almost four hours, but I wasn't able to sleep. I usually curl up into a snuggly, cosy fetal position for some shut-eye. Sitting upright in statuesque rigour is not conducive to bring me to the land of nod. It didn't help that I felt like I had to sleep, because in Tbilisi, we would not have a hotel. Our plane would land at 3:30 local time, and there are no hotels or guest houses directly at the airport. Being on a very tight schedule with barely 9 days to see three countries, we had decided that we would visit the city as soon as the sun was up and be back at the airport just after noon to take the plane for Baku. There, I had booked us a nice hotel and after two full days of travel, I would finally - hopefully - be able to sleep.

 

 

 

At 3:30 local time (it was 1:30 AM at home), the pilot made a very smooth landing and we stepped out into the fresh Georgian night air. I was in the Caucasus! It was almost balmy, not at all as cold as I had feared. Now the passport control. EU citizens don't need a visa for Georgia, but Indian nationals do. This had been a bit of a conundrum for Aarat. When he had applied for a visa back in London, the computer system had told him he did not need one, as he was a UK resident. He didn't feel too good about this, especially since his residence permit for the UK expired tomorrow and we would have to reenter Georgian territory the day after our trip to Baku, but the people at the Georgian embassy had been most emphatic that there was nothing they could do to convince their computer system to grant him a visa. As far as they were concerned, he did not need one. But just to make sure, they advised him to go to the Georgian embassy in Azerbaijan once his UK resident permit had expired, to ask for a last-minute visa there. This arrangement sounded like a lot of unnecessary hassle to me, but there was nothing we could do about it for the moment. Nevertheless, I breathed a sigh of relief when my friend passed the border control without so much as a frown from the authorities.

 

Meanwhile, I had sent a message to my sister back home, telling her that we were safely back on the ground. It turned out she had followed our flight online, only to briefly panic when the plane's icon suddenly disappeared over the Black Sea. Luckily it reappeared after a while, just to disappear again over the mountains. So there had been a time without radar contact, I assume. Nothing to worry about, but Sonia now knew better than to stay glued to the computer during my flights. If the plane crashed, she would hear about it soon enough.

 

Tbilisi airport is much smaller than Munich. There is one building for departures and an adjacent one for arrivals. The latter sports a hall with just four conveyor belts, one of which quickly spat out our luggage. We stepped through the sliding doors and stood in a narrow entrance hall, which stirred fond memories in me of our former airport in Luxembourg City. Around the hall - my gaze wandered from left to right - there were a tourist office point, a baggage storage unit, some car rental companies, two or three counters to exchange currencies, some ATMs, a café and restrooms. That was it, and it was more than enough: contrary to oh-so-fancy Munich, this bar was open to customers in the middle of the night. "I need a coffee," I declared. "I'd like a cigarette," Aarat volleyed back. Ok. Not wanting to admit that my coffeine addiction might be worse than a smoker's, we stepped out of the building. In any case, I could do with some fresh air to wake me up.

 

In front of the hall, there was a line of maybe six or eight taxis. One of the drivers approached us, offering to drive us into town for 60 laris, which is about 20 euros. This seemed like a lot of money to me for an Eastern European country, even though the airport is pretty far out. "There won't be anything open at this time of the night," I mused. I didn't want to arrive in Tbilisi in the dead of night. Little did I know then that Tbilisi is thriving at nighttime, with friends routinely meeting for a night out around midnight or later. Early in the morning on the other hand, the streets are deserted, as most people only start work at ten o'clock. For a nightowl like me, this city is a godsend. But right now I wasn't in the mood to check out the nightlife. "We should first get some local currency, check our bags and plan ahead," I proposed. "And, cetero censeo, we should get coffee." Aarat, easy going as always, agreed.

 

We went back into the building, looking for a place to leave the baggage. A very friendly guy at the tourist office, who spoke good English, pointed us to a nondescript door. We knocked, and after two or three minutes, a man came out and took us to a tiny room with a few shelves. We were ordered to hoist our luggage onto a rack, Aarat leaned his guitar on the wall and that was it. "Do you think it's safe here?" Aarat asked skeptically. I knew what he meant. All the bags were within our reach, while the attendant filled out a form, non-chalantly turning his back on us and all the luggage. "Let's have some faith in humanity," I declared. Not like we had much of a choice. We couldn't carry all these things with us through Tbilisi. The attendant gave us a slip of paper stating that we had checked in three items, told us that it would cost ten lari per item per day to get them back, and that, for whatever reason, both of us had to appear to claim them.

 

Next on the list: getting money. With unwavering trust in global finance, I stepped up to an ATM marked "MASTERCARD/VISA" and pushed my credit card into the slot. I punched in the code, the amount of money I wanted and waited. The machine spat out my card, but no money materialized. What now? Why did it not work? I tried again. "Your card is not working, please contact your bank," the display read. My heart sank. I had not brought much cash, so this card had better work. But it obviously didn't. Ok, 5:00 AM was not the time to deal with this. I stepped to the bank counter next to it and handed over some euros to have them exchanged. Meanwhile, three energetic ladies had gathered around our ATM. "Wos hot's denn," I heard one of them say. "Hot's jetzt das Geld doch obg'bucht?" asked the other one. Bavarians in Georgia. Get over it, there are probably no banknotes left in the machine. No sinister schemes by the Georgian mafia to pocket your dosh.

 

"I need a coffee," I said, leaving the German ladies to their plight. The open-space bar looked just too comfy and inviting. We ordered at the counter, where everyone to our delight spoke really good English, and slumped onto a bench. The loudspeakers crooned out old pop hits. Welcome to the Hotel California. It's such lovely place.... This is a lovely place, I agreed. Sipping my espresso, I felt I could love this country, with its small airport in the middle of nowhere, providing me with just the one thing I needed now. Well, a bed would have been even better, but I had the feeling that this place was acting as an impromptu hotel as well, at least for those young travellers over there, with their heads on the table. Weathering it out until the first bus to Tbilisi at 7 o'clock in the morning. We decided to spend the time more fruitfully, looking at the map that the guy from the tourist office had given us, along with a whole stack of prospectuses and flyers.

 

At long last, the sun came out and we stepped into the fresh morning air. The bus was already waiting in front of the departures building. We got in, curiously eyeing the ticket machine. When in Georgia... We did as the Georgians in front of us did, and put in one lari coin. The machine rewarded us with two tickets, one for Aarat and one for me. 15 cent each for a one-way busride to Tbilisi. Not quite the 20 euros the taxi driver had asked for. And with the sun shining its first rays over the tarmac, I started on my first journey into Tbilisi.