Sunday 19 July 2026
Landschlacht, Canton Thurgau, Switzerland
Above: St. Leonhard’s Chapel, Landschlacht
While the cat’s away, the mouse will play.
While the wife’s away, the hubby will play.
She Who Must Be Obeyed is spending the next 24 hours in Zürich.
Above: Zürich, Switzerland
I decide to revisit another Wednesday.
Wednesday 13 May 2026
Batumi, Adjara, Georgia
Above: Batumi, Adjara, Georgia
Officially, I am in Batumi to gather information.
Unofficially, I am trying to gather myself.
My plan is practical enough.
Batumi until 16 May.
Tbilisi until 23 May.
Above: Tbilisi, Georgia
Kutaisi until the end of the month.
Above: Kutaisi, Imereti, Georgia
Then perhaps one city will become home for a few weeks while I look for work and recover from the previous year.
Recovery.
It strikes me that I no longer measure cities by museums or nightlife.
I measure them by affordability, railway connections, decent Wi-Fi, laundries and whether I can imagine waking there for a month without growing restless.
That realization feels older than my passport.
Above: Flag of Georgia
Batumi refuses to let me think quietly.
The city performs.
Across the street rises a tower behind something resembling a Dutch windmill.
Above: Adjarian House, Batumi
Above: Don Quixote’s Battle of the Windmill
An upside-down White House appears beside a Roman Colosseum.
Above: Colosseum Marina Hotel and the Senate Restaurant, Batumi
A futuristic hotel follows.
Above: Grand Gloria Hotel, Batumi
Batumi feels less like a city that was built than one that stepped onto a stage.
I wonder if cities, like people, sometimes become uncertain about who they really are.
Perhaps that is why I feel oddly comfortable here.
Above: Batumi
Walking alone has always rearranged my thoughts.
A bronze bull balancing improbably on a piano reminds me of Berfin, my former school’s former music teacher.
Above: Dolce 17 Restaurant, Batumi
Then Mustafa, the shy boy who played Chopin beautifully on an out-of-tune piano.
Above: Polish composer Frédéric François Chopin (né Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin) (1810 – 1849)
A stray Husky beneath a bridge reminds me of no one.
Above: Scene from Batumi
Instead it asks a question.
What is it doing here?
Then another.
What am I doing here?
The promenade stretches beside the Black Sea.
Palm trees.
Grey stones instead of sand.
The threatening promise of rain.
The summer crowds have not yet arrived.
Don Henley’s The Boys of Summer begins playing somewhere inside my head.
Not because I choose it.
Because memory chooses for me.
Birthdays seem to do that.
I think of my cousin Steve.
Above: Canadian athlete Steve O’Brien
Then Dominic, who should have celebrated his 61st birthday three days earlier but never would.
We all imagined adulthood differently.
Above: Steve O’Brien, Dominic Barlow, Mark MacVicar and I – once upon a time in Lachute, Québec, Canada – 5 January 2020
I certainly never imagined spending my own 61st birthday unemployed, wandering Georgia and comparing hostel kitchens.
Yet here I am.
Still walking.
Still observing.
Still curious.
Perhaps that matters more than certainty ever could.
Outside St. Barbara Church sits a woman asking for money.
Above: St. Barbara Church, Batumi
I give her five lari.
Perhaps too much.
Perhaps not enough.
What unsettles me is not the transaction but the realization that I can imagine becoming her far more easily than I once could.
Age quietly alters the questions we ask ourselves.
Inside the church the icons glow.
Gold leaf.
Above: St. Barbara’s Church, Batumi
Incense.
Silence.
Above: St. Barbara’s Church, Batumi
I remain unconvinced that any building can contain God.
But I have little doubt that human beings can build beautiful places while searching for Him.
Above: St. Barbara’s Church, Batumi
The practical business of the day continues.
An eSIM.
Unlimited Internet.
Google Maps.
A traveller’s modern survival kit.
Above: Magti phone shop, Batumi
Near the Alphabet Tower I watch the Ali and Nino statues standing motionless in the drizzle.
Above: Ali and Nino, Batumi
Elsewhere they are famous for moving toward one another, briefly becoming one before separating again.
Today they simply wait.
Above: Ali and Nino, Batumi
Perhaps the rain has paused even love.
Above: Alphabet Tower, Batumi
Lunch finds me in a Turkish seafood restaurant.
My waiter studied in Eskişehir.
Above: Sazova Park, Eskişehir, Türkiye
Suddenly Batumi becomes Turkey for twenty minutes.
Above: Flag of Türkiye
Memory arrives carrying fish soup, Turkish coffee and conversation.
I leave a generous tip.
If nostalgia has a price, I decide it is worth paying.
The afternoon becomes an exercise in hostel diplomacy.
One is closed.
Another feels too transient.
Another feels too polished.
Harmony Backpackers quietly wins my confidence.
Not because it promises excitement.
Because it promises routine.
There was a time when I would have chosen the liveliest hostel.
Now I find myself searching for steadiness.
That realization surprises me.
Growing older is not merely accumulating birthdays.
It is discovering that peace has become more attractive than stimulation.
By evening I understand something I had not understood that morning.
I did not spend the day looking for accommodation.
I spent it looking for the kind of life I hoped to build after everything that had happened during the previous year.
Hostels had become proxies for futures.
Back at the hotel I buy potato chips.
Then cola.
Then, for reasons I cannot entirely explain, a bottle of honey chacha.
The young salesman assures me it causes no hangover.
I smile.
Georgia, I suspect, has been telling visitors that for centuries.
The bottle remains unopened.
Tomorrow is my birthday.
Tomorrow, perhaps.
