Family visit

Last week, my family visited me! First, my sister arrived and stayed in my room with me for a few days. I showed her Rustavi and Tbilisi a bit and we went one day to Sighnaghi. Although it rained the whole day, it is still a really beautiful small city and we enjoyed our time there. I find this city extra nice because of the many height differences: on one side of the road, you are at the level of a roof, but on the other side it is the ground floor, while ahead of you, you can enter a house from the second floor. The houses therefore have multiple entries from different levels, and lots of stairs and balconies. The Netherlands is a really flat country, so I am still not used to these kind of cities and find them super beautiful.

The next day, we went to a sulphur bathhouse in Tbilisi together. That was a really nice experience. We rented a small private room for one hour, a really nice one with mosaic ceilings and small chimneys in the round roofs. We were led into two small rooms, one where we could leave our stuff and sit and one where the bath and douches were. We stayed in the really hot sulphur bath and took cold showers, got citrus tea and received a kisi, a a full body scrub where a woman scrubbed us with a rough cloth, fully soaped us up and then just threw a bucket of water over us to clean it off. It was a fun experience.
That evening, my parents and brother also arrived. We stayed in Tbilisi for one day and then took the Marschrukta to Rustavi. I showed them around in both cities, at the office and at my apartment, and we ate a lot of Georgian food. They really liked everything. I was super happy to see them again after almost eight months, but it also felt quite weird, since I know so much of the country and they knew nothing. I was planning everything, translating for them, choosing the routes and restaurants, etc. It felt confusing for me to see the people from my home in the Netherlands mixed with my new home here. After Tbilisi and Rustavi, we rented a car and drove to the cave city Uplistsikhe, and after into the region Racha. There, we found a really nice winery and guest house to stay for the night, where we were offered a lot of traditional food and a wine and chacha tasting in their own winery, which tasted really good. The surroundings were also super beautiful, since we had a view on both the northern and southern Caucasus at the same time.

The day after, we wanted to drive further into Racha to make a hike in the mountains. We chose a route that would lead us across some waterfalls as well, but that was a bit of a mistake. After around five minutes, there was already no concrete road anymore and we had to continue on a really off-road stone and mud path. We did see one super nice waterfall, but after some more time of driving and some quite scary sounds of the car hitting stones, we had to give up and drive back. Trying to get to concrete roads as soon as possible, we chose a different route back. Unfortunately there the concrete also stopped at one point, since they were repairing the road. We had to drive past big piles of rocks and through a lot of mud, while the repair workers drove past with their big trucks. It was a scary moment, but luckily we managed to get through and back on the good road. We found the good (concrete) road into Racha and then it turned out not to be far at all. We made a beautiful hike in the mountains on the edge of a big valley with an amazing view.

After driving some more in Racha, the next day my sister left Georgia already. We drove her to Kutaisi airport and then went to see a monastery and a nice river nearby. The next day, it was Kutaisoba, the city festival of Kutaisi, so we went into the city. After, we drove back to Tbilisi. My family spent the last day there, but I was physically and emotionally quite exhausted, so I slept most of the day. The confusing feeling of them suddenly entering my world here and all the effort of planning everything took more energy than I expected beforehand. However, I am super happy that they came and now know a bit about how I live here!

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