The Road to the Big Good – Conclusion
Saturday 16 May 2026
Tbilisi (Tiflis), Georgia
After an eternity I finally arrive in Tbilisi.
Above: Tbilisi, Georgia
I walk out of the railway station and enter a city that doesn’t seem entirely certain which century it belongs to.
Above: Tbilisi Train Station
Persian influences, Byzantine Christianity, Ottoman history, Russian imperial architecture, Soviet construction and contemporary European aspirations all coexist.
Sometimes harmoniously.
Sometimes rather awkwardly.
But rarely boringly.
Above: Tbilisi
Tbilisi occupies a valley carved by the Mtkvari River, surrounded by hills and ridges.
This gives it a dramatic physical character.
Walk along a busy commercial street, turn a corner and you may find yourself looking up at a fortress or a church or a hillside covered in houses.
The city has a vertical dimension that Batumi, for all its coastal beauty, doesn’t quite possess.
Look beyond the usual tourist attractions.
Above: Tiflis (1837), Mikhail Lermontov
Sololaki:
Grand old buildings, faded elegance, extraordinary entrance halls and decorative staircases.
For its architectural heritage, beautiful old entrances and evidence of the city’s former merchant wealth.
Old Tbilisi:
Wooden balconies, courtyards, churches and narrow streets.
Rustaveli Avenue:
The imperial and cultural grandeur of the capital.
The Soviet city:
Monumental buildings, housing estates and occasionally fascinating examples of modernist architecture.
Dezerter Bazaar:
An opportunity to observe everyday commercial life, rather than the tourist version of it.
The National Botanical Garden of Georgia:
A different perspective on the relationship between the city and its natural environment
Chronicles of Georgia:
A monumental, unfinished-feeling artistic interpretation of Georgian history overlooking the Tbilisi Sea.
Above: Tbilisi Sea, the city’s largest body of water located in the suburbs
Open Air Museum of Ethnography:
A fascinating opportunity to understand the regional diversity of Georgian domestic architecture and traditional life.
The city is a living picture book.
Above: Tbilisi
Let’s not pretend that food isn’t a significant selling point.
Tbilisi offers Georgian cuisine in extraordinary variety.
Khinkali, khachapuri, pkhali, badrijani nigvzit, mtsvadi, lobio and the remarkable diversity of Georgian wines.
And then there is the supra, the traditional Georgian feast, with its toasts, conversation and hospitality.
There is a social dimension to eating in Georgia that is every bit as interesting as the food.
Tbilisi has theatres, galleries, museums, independent cultural spaces, bookshops, music venues and a lively contemporary arts scene.
Above: Rustaveli Theatre, Tbilisi
Above: Dry Bridge Market, Tbilisi
The Gabriadze Marionette Theatre is a particularly charming example of the city’s character.
Above: Gabriadze Marionette Theatre, Tbilisi
There is also a creative energy that comes from the meeting of different generations and cultures.
Tbilisi has spent much of its existence at the intersection of powerful neighbours and competing interests.
Persians, Byzantines, Arabs, Seljuks, Mongols, Ottomans and Russians have all left their marks.
It has been attacked, occupied, reconstructed and reinvented repeatedly.
This is not simply a city with history.
It is a city whose identity has been shaped by surviving history.
Above: Anchiskhati Basilica, a 6th century monument and the oldest surviving church in Tbilisi
And, finally, the people.
I would argue that one of Tbilisi’s greatest attractions is the possibility of conversation.
Sit in a café.
Above: Café Littera, Tbilisi
Visit a bookshop.
Above: Prospero’s Books, Tbilisi
Wander through a neighbourhood.
Above: Tbilisi
Talk to somebody selling paintings.
Above: Dry Bridge Market, Tbilisi
Ask a question.
You may discover something that no guidebook has thought to mention.
That, to me, is the real attraction of travel.
Tbilisi has considerable charm, but charm should not be confused with good urban management.
Above: Tbilisi
Here are some criticisms:
Traffic is a serious problem.
The combination of private car dependency, congestion and inadequate transport infrastructure makes getting around unnecessarily difficult.
Above: Tbilisi
A World Bank study found that some central districts experienced traffic congestion on as many as 90% of days.
Transport is also a major contributor to air pollution.
Tbilisi’s geographical setting is beautiful, but its valley can also contribute to the accumulation of pollutants.
The Georgian government approved a 2024–2026 air-quality management plan specifically targeting particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide.
That tells you something about the scale of the challenge.
Above: Tbilisi
Uncontrolled development is perhaps the biggest architectural criticism.
Historic buildings and traditional neighbourhoods compete with commercial development, high-rise residential construction and increasingly dense urbanization.
Above: Tbilisi
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe has previously identified problems including poorly planned urban expansion, unaffordable housing, inadequate green spaces and unfriendly urban design.
A city cannot preserve its identity simply by putting attractive lighting around a few historic streets.
Above: Tbilisi
The contrast between rich and poor:
Tbilisi is a city of considerable economic opportunity, but not everyone benefits equally.
There is a visible contrast between fashionable restaurants, expensive developments and the everyday circumstances of ordinary residents.
Above: Tbilisi
Tourism can create employment and opportunity, but it can also contribute to rising property demand and the commercialization of neighbourhoods.
The tourist experience can become superficial.
There is a danger that visitors experience a carefully packaged version of Georgia.
Wine bars, fashionable cafés, attractive balconies, picturesque churches and Instagram-friendly viewpoints.
All perfectly legitimate attractions.
But where is the ordinary city?
Where are the people who cannot afford the fashionable restaurants?
What is happening beyond the tourist circuit?
A visitor can spend three days in Tbilisi and leave with a very incomplete understanding of Georgia.
The city can be exhausting.
Noise, traffic, uneven pavements, construction, steep streets and the general intensity of urban life can make Tbilisi tiring.
Its character is part of its appeal, but not everyone wants to live inside that character every day.
Above: Tbilisi
And I would add one more criticism:
Tbilisi sometimes seems more interested in becoming a modern international capital than in asking what sort of capital it wants to be.
Above: Flag of Tbilisi
I take a taxi to the Amber Boutique Hotel with a friendly taxi driver with limited English.
Above: Amber Boutique Hotel, Tbilisi
My good friend and former student Emir made reservations at the Amber on 5 May through Booking.com for seven days (16 – 23 May).
I am told that there are no rooms available despite the reservation.
Clearly, they know how to take a reservation but seem confused as to the need to KEEP the reservation.
I am referred to the Old City Boutique Hotel where I shall remain until the 23rd (GEL 700).
The driver is kind and patient with me and charges me only GEL 20, despite the hotel mix-up.
George at reception, completely bald and unashamed to be so, is very helpful.
Above: Reception, Old Boutique Hotel, Georgia
Above: George’s Doppelgänger Michael Rosenbaum (Lex Luthor), Smallville (2001 – 2011)
George recommends Shatre Georgian Restaurant for lunch on Rustaveli Street for lunch.
Above: Shatre Georgian Restaurant, Tbilisi
As well, he suggests two websites to aid in my job search:
- jobs.ge
- HR.ge
My second Georgian hotel room (203) does not possess laundry facilities, cooking facilities – (The Orbi in Batumi had these, but provided no cookware, no plates, bowls or silverware – pointless, actually.) – but the Old City Boutique Hotel does serve breakfast (0800 – 1100) on the 5th floor with a terrace offering a panoramic view of the city.
Above: Breakfast terrace, Old City Boutique Hotel, Tbilisi
I have tossed my black boots as they are beyond repair.
Damp clothes are hung around the room.
Above: Old City Boutique Hotel, Tbilisi
Following Google Maps, I cross the Mtkvari River by the Dry Bridge where I see a flea market of sorts, a compressed museum of post-Soviet memory – medals, icons, watches, vinyl, Soviet cameras, paintings, objects of melancholy from vanished lives.
Above: Google Maps icon
Above: Mtkvari River, Tbilisi
The Dry Bridge Market is one of Tbilisi’s most distinctive attractions.
It is an open-air flea market, antiques market, art exhibition and social gathering.
And it is not particularly polished.
That’s part of its appeal.
Above: Dry Bridge Market, Tbilisi
Why is it called the Dry Bridge?
The bridge was constructed in the middle of the 19th century, originally crossing a branch of the Mtkvari River.
That branch was subsequently diverted or filled in as the city developed.
The bridge was left crossing dry ground, hence its name.
Above: Mshrali Bridge (Dry Bridge), Tbilisi
The market itself has existed since at least the 1950s, when local residents began selling possessions there.
It expanded considerably during the economic difficulties following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
What can you find?
- Soviet memorabilia
Military medals, badges, coins, propaganda material, photographs, documents and assorted reminders of the Soviet period.
- Domestic history
Old cameras, radios, porcelain, glassware, household objects and things that once occupied someone’s living room
- Art and craftsmanship
Paintings, jewellery, enamel work, handicrafts, textiles and locally produced art
- Older treasures
Silverware, carpets, antique decorative objects and occasionally items of considerable historical interest
The market is sometimes described as a market of memories.
I think that is a wonderful description.
Imagine an old Soviet camera.
It was purchased by somebody, perhaps used to photograph children, weddings, holidays and family gatherings.
Eventually it was sold, perhaps because its owner needed money, perhaps because the family moved, perhaps because nobody wanted it any longer.
Now a tourist from Canada picks it up and wonders about its history.
The object has outlived its original purpose and possibly its original owner.
It has acquired a second life.
The same applies to medals, books, paintings and domestic possessions.
There is something rather poignant about that.
The past never entirely disappears.
The Dry Bridge Market is a wonderful illustration.
Objects change hands, generations pass, political systems disappear, but fragments of their existence remain.
(A word of caution:
Do not assume that everything described as antique is genuinely antique.
Provenance matters.
Also, Georgian cultural-property export rules may apply to certain older objects, so check before purchasing anything potentially protected.)
I wander without urgency.
The air is soft.
My mood introspective.
My eye is drawn to a 1966 KGB map of Canada.
I strike up a conversation with the vendor Tomaz (71), a retied ethnologist.
Above: Georgian vendor Tamar and KGB map of Canada
I buy from him The Travels of Rafail Danibegashvili written in Russian, Hindi and English (GEL 30).
Raphiel (Rafail) Danibegashvili was a Georgian merchant, diplomat and explorer who travelled extensively through Asia at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries.
He deserves considerably more attention than he receives outside Georgia.
Above: Rafail Danibegashvili
He was born in Tbilisi, probably in 1778, although the National Library of Georgia gives 1770.
There is some disagreement over his birth and death dates.
Above: National Library of Georgia
He came from a family of merchant-diplomats.
His father, Joseph, undertook diplomatic missions to India on behalf of King Erekle II.
Above: Georgian King Heraclius (Erekle) II (1720 – 1798)
Rafail accompanied his father on an early journey and subsequently learned Turkish, Armenian and other languages.
He undertook five recorded journeys through Asia, covering approximately 70,000 kilometres over a period of several decades.
His travels took him through:
- India
Above: Flag of modern India
- Ceylon (Sri Lanka)
Above: Flag of modern Sri Lanka
- Burma (Myanmar)
Above: Flag of modern Myanmar
- Afghanistan
Above: Flag of modern Afghanistan
- Persia (Iran)
Above: Flag of modern Iran
- The Ottoman Empire
Above: Flag of the Ottoman Empire (1299 – 1922), now the flag of Türkiye
- Tibet
Above: Flag of Tibet
- China
Above: Flag of China
- Central Asia, including territories inhabited by Kazakh and Kyrgyz peoples
Above: Flag of modern Kazakhstan
Above: Flag of Kyrgyzstan
He crossed the Karakoram and Himalayan mountain systems and travelled across the Tibetan Plateau.
Above: Baltoro Glacier in the Central Karakoram Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan
Above: The Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everest as seen from the International Space Station looking south-south-east over the Tibetan Plateau. Four of the world’s 14 eight-thousanders, mountains higher than 8,000 metres, can be seen, Makalu (8,462 m), Everest (8,850 m), Lhotse (8,516 m) and Cho Oyu (8,201 m). The South Col Route is Mount Everest’s most often used climbing route.
Above: Yamdrok Lake, Tibetan Plateau
Consider the circumstances.
No aeroplanes, no railways across the continent, no GPS, no convenient international banking, and no modern communications.
Travel was a combination of commercial opportunity, diplomatic necessity, personal determination and considerable physical danger.
His later journeys were not simply those of an independent adventurer.
He also undertook missions connected with Russian imperial interests, including diplomatic activity among Central Asian communities.
This makes him a more complicated historical character than the romantic label Georgian Marco Polo might suggest.
Danibegashvili represents an interesting period when Georgia was a crossroads of commerce, diplomacy and competing imperial ambitions.
He was not merely travelling through the world.
He was participating in its political and commercial networks.
Was he an explorer, a merchant, a diplomat or all three?
Perhaps the most interesting answer is that the distinctions were not nearly as clear in his time as they are today.
The world is bigger than our immediate circumstances.
Danibegashvili left Tbilisi and travelled across an enormous geographical and cultural landscape.
His curiosity took him into unfamiliar worlds.
Above: (in green) Asia
I pass a plaque on Atonelli Street that reads in Georgian and English: “An outstanding Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun (1859-1952) lived in this building, formerly the Hotel London, in 1899 during his visit in Tbilisi.”
Knut Hamsum is a fascinating and deeply contradictory figure.
He is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of literary modernism.
Above: Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun (1859 – 1952)
Long before James Joyce or Franz Kafka became dominant names, Hamsun was experimenting with psychological interiority, fragmented consciousness, irrational behaviour and anti-heroic protagonists.
Above: Irish writer James Joyce (1882 – 1941)
Above: Czech writer Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924)
Namsun’s 1890 novel Hunger is still considered revolutionary for the way it depicts the unstable inner life of a starving writer wandering a city.
A struggling writer wanders through Kristiania (now Oslo), experiencing poverty, humiliation, pride and psychological disintegration.
His 1892 novel Mysteries is the tale of how an eccentric stranger arrives in a small Norwegian town and unsettles its inhabitants.
It is an intriguing exploration of human behaviour and social conventions.
His 1894 novel Pan sees a lieutenant living in the Norwegian wilderness, surrounded by nature, solitude, desire and complicated human relationships.
Writers as different as Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and Isaac Bashevis Singer admired him.
Above: American writer Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961)
Above: German writer Thomas Mann (1875 – 1955)
Above: American writer Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903 – 1991)
In 1920, Hamsun received the Nobel Prize in Literature for Growth of the Soul, where a man establishes a farm in the Norwegian wilderness.
This is a meditation on nature, labour, civilization and human existence.
But there is also the darker side to Hamsun:
Late in life, Hamsun notoriously supported Nazi Germany and admired Hitler, which permanently complicated his legacy.
Above: Flag of Nazi Germany (1935 – 1945)
Above: Austrian-born German dictator Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945)
Norway still debates him intensely today.
Above: Flag of Norway
His Caucasus journey came during the height of his creative powers, before that political collapse of reputation.
Above: The Caucasus
In 1899, Hamsun and his wife Bergjot travelled through the Russian Empire into the Caucasus – Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, parts of Persia and Türkiye.
Above: Flag of Georgia
Above: Flag of Armenia
Above: Flag of Azerbaijan
The trip was partly financed by a Norwegian government stipend.
For Hamsun, the Caucasus represented something half-real and half-mythic:
A frontier between Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, empire and tribal life.
He was already fascinated by Russian literature – Dostoevsky especially – and wanted to see the landscapes and cultures that had shaped the Russian imagination.
Above: Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 – 1881)
His impressions became the travel book In Wonderland (1903), a dreamy, subjective travelogue rather than a factual guidebook.
He viewed the Caucasus not analytically but almost as a hallucination or fairy tale landscape.
Georgia made a particularly strong impression on him.
Above: (in green) Location of Georgia
The journey itself took place in September 1899. Hamsun travelled with his first wife, Bergljot Göpfert, whom he had married in 1898, divorced in 1906.
Above: Knut Hamsun and Bergljot Göpfert
He had received a Norwegian government travel scholarship of 1,500 kroner.
Above: 50 kroner banknote (1877 – 1899)
Their journey took them through:
- St Petersburg, Russia
Above: St. Petersburg, Russia
- Moscow, Russia
Above: Moscow, Russia
- Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia, Russia
Above: Vladikavkaz, Russia
- Tbilisi (then Tiflis), Georgia
Above: Tiflis, Georgia
- Baku, Azerbaijan
Above: Baku, Azerbaijan
- Batumi, Georgia
Above: Port of Batumi, Georgia
- Constantinople (now Istanbul), on their return journey
Above: İstanbul, Türkiye
The journey lasted approximately six weeks.
Don’t expect a conventional travel guide.
Hamsun is not particularly interested in providing an orderly description of monuments, historical dates or geographical information.
Instead, he writes about what he sees, what he thinks he sees, what he imagines, and how the experience affects him.
The Hamsun Centre in Norway describes the book as humorous, with lyrical passages about nature.
It also notes his positive response to Eastern cultures and Muslim faith.
Above: Knut Hamsun Centre, Hamarøy, Nordland, Norway
The book was published in 1903 under its Norwegian title:
I Æventyrland – Oplevet og drømt i Kaukasien.
A fairly literal translation is:
In Wonderland – Experienced and Dreamed in the Caucasus.
There is an important clue in the original subtitle:
Experienced and Dreamed.
Hamsun deliberately blurs the distinction between observation and imagination.
In fact, there is a wonderful episode in which Hamsun reads his travel diary to his wife while he is suffering from a fever.
She accuses him of inventing incidents, including an adventure involving a police officer and a journey into the mountains.
His response is essentially that he is an artist and explorer, and that she has no business interfering with his literary achievements!
It’s an amusing glimpse into their relationship, but it also raises an important question about the reliability of travel writing.
Hamsun acknowledges, almost mischievously, that his travel writing contains elements of invention.
Yet perhaps that is part of what makes it literature rather than simply documentation.
And there is a connection with my own interest in noticing:
Two travellers can visit the same place, see the same street and encounter the same people, yet return with entirely different stories.
Batumi was part of Hamsun’s journey.
The published narrative reaches the city, although his account of the subsequent Constantinople leg was published separately.
Think about that for a moment.
Sitting in Batumi in 2026, while reading a Norwegian writer’s impressions of the same city in 1899.
The city has changed enormously, but the geographical setting remains.
What would Hamsun recognize?
What would astonish him?
What would he find disappointing?
Above: Batumi, Georgia
Hamsun describes travelling through the mountains by horse-drawn carriage, staying at roadside accommodation and encountering people whose customs and circumstances were unfamiliar to him.
He writes about the landscape, the altitude, the weather, the villages and the people.
One episode concerns a driver named Kornei, whose horse dies during the journey.
The subsequent negotiations, arguments and eventual butchering of the animal become a surprisingly lengthy and vivid account.
It is not the sort of incident a modern tourist brochure would advertise!
Above: Knut Hamsun
His observations of Baku are particularly fascinating.
He visits the oilfields around Balakhany, travelling on a steamship belonging to the Nobel family’s industrial enterprise.
Remember that this is 1899.
Baku is already one of the great centres of the international petroleum industry.
Hamsun describes the oil derricks, machinery, workers, pollution and the extraordinary spectacle of natural gas burning on the water.
He is both fascinated and repelled.
He also notices the American influence on the oil industry, an interesting observation about globalization at the turn of the 20th century.
Above: Baku, Azerbaijan
Hamsun’s Tiflis is a city in the Russian Empire, not the capital of an independent Georgia.
He observes its streets, inhabitants, clothing, accommodation and public spaces.
Above: Tiflis, Georgia
He also encounters the limitations of his own cultural understanding.
His observations can be amusing, perceptive and occasionally prejudiced.
One passage describes his early-morning attempt to explore the city before breakfast.
He eventually gives up, finds grapes to eat, and returns to the hotel to consult a Baedeker guidebook.
I rather like that image:
The future Nobel laureate having to consult his guidebook to understand the city in which he finds himself.
Hamsun stayed in the then-grand Hotel London, which in the late 19th century was one of Tbilisi’s most prestigious hotels, famous for its ornate staircase, murals and cosmopolitan clientele.
The London hosted European aristocrats, musicians, diplomats and writers.
Above: Hotel London, Tiflis
What captivated Hamsun most was old Tiflis itself –
Not the imperial boulevards so much as the dense, mixed, mercantile city.
He wrote about the Oriental bazaars, blacksmiths and carpet makers, Armenian and Georgian traders, narrow streets filled with workshops, the layering of East and West, and especially the Georgian alphabet, which he found astonishingly beautiful – ornamental rather than alphabetical – flowing, circular, architectural.
Georgians remember him fondly despite the controversies surrounding him elsewhere.
His travel writing helped introduce Georgia to Scandinavian readers at a time when the Caucasus still seemed fantastically remote to northern Europeans.
The building itself still survives – though now residential rather than a hotel.
Above: Former Hotel London, Tbilisi
There is something fitting about Hamsun in Tbilisı in 1899.
At that moment the city itself was in a kind of literary golden age:
Imperial Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Persian and European influences all colliding in one place.
Tiflis was one of those cities – like Trieste, Alexandria or Smyrna – where culture overlapped intensely before the catastrophes of the 20th century changed everything.
Above: Tiflis, 19th century
Above: Modern Trieste, Italy
Above: Modern Alexandria, Egypt
Above: Modern İzmir (formerly Smyrna), Türkiye
There is a philosophical dimension worth considering.
Hamsun was critical of aspects of Western European civilization, particularly its materialism, commercialism and obsession with progress.
He sometimes saw Eastern societies as possessing a greater capacity for contemplation, acceptance and contentment.
The Hamsun Centre identifies similarities he perceived between Eastern cultures and the rural environment of his childhood in Nordland, northern Norway.
However, we should be careful.
His observations sometimes reflect 19th-century European Orientalism:
The tendency to portray Eastern societies as exotic, mysterious, irrational or fundamentally different from Western ones.
His sympathy for people and cultures outside Europe did not necessarily prevent him from stereotyping them.
Above: Knut Hamsun
Hamsun, for all his flaws, had an extraordinary eye for places that felt psychologically alive.
Hamsun’s literary achievement needs to be considered alongside his political history.
He supported Nazi Germany and expressed admiration for Hitler, a deeply troubling aspect of his biography.
I wouldn’t ignore that when reading him, although neither would I suggest that his literary work can be understood solely through his political allegiance.
Above: Knut Hamsun
Hamsun’s Caucasus journey inspired another work published in 1903: Queen Tamara.
This is a three-act play drawing on Georgian history and the legendary Georgian monarch Queen Tamar (reigned 1184–1213).
Above: Georgian Queen Tamara
Hamsun took considerable imaginative liberties with Georgian history.
His play should not be treated as a reliable historical account.
Nevertheless, it demonstrates how strongly his Caucasian experiences affected his imagination.
Above: Norwegian edition of Queen Tamara
At the Shatre, I enjoy a late lunch (1500 hours) of chicken stew, Mexican potatoes and an amazingly delicious lemonade with cream aroma (Natakhtari).
The waiter David asks me why I would want to work in Georgia.
My answer is:
“Why not?”
Why should meaning only be pursued in the obvious centres of global prestige?
Why should reinvention not occur in Georgia rather than London, Berlin or Toronto?
Above: London, England
Above: Berlin, Germany
Above: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
There is freedom in refusing overly scripted geographies of success.
In my wandering I come across signage for “The Diary Concept House“, lamppost ads for apartment rentals, print shops and graffiti that asks “Who wants to live forever?”
Following AI advice in search of lactose-free milk and gluten-free bread I find Carrefour City on Erekle Tatishvili Street:
I buy sliced ham, lactose-free milk, a big bottle of Cola Zero, instant coffee, two cans of Coca-Cola with coffee, sugar and gluten-free blue corn chips.
I am developing a cold.
At a pharmacy not far from my hotel I buy medicine.
The despair of Seat 77 has dissolved into movement, observation and cautious possibility.
I am no longer trapped in transit.
I am participating in the city.
It has been a long day, but maybe it is the beginning of “The Big Good“.
“The Big Good” therefore may not mean instant redemption.
It may mean exactly this:
A place where despite fatigue and uncertainty, the mind begins opening outward again instead of collapsing inward.
That is often how better chapters begin —
Not triumphantly, but quietly, with medicine from a pharmacy, groceries in a bag, conversations with strangers and the first fragile sense that one’s life may once again possess forward momentum.
A place is more than its appearance.
Tbilisi can be beautiful, frustrating, generous, chaotic, inspiring and disappointing.
All those things can be true simultaneously.
And perhaps that is the distinction between visiting a place and actually noticing it.
Above: Freedom Square, Tbilisi
