In place of socks: A bike, tooth, and Sabaka

At the moment I am sitting at the dentist’s surgery as I must have my tooth repaired. This tooth had already shown the elapsed time, but its condition worsened during our last trip to Armenia, when our new mates hit me with a bike helmet, I mean, they tried to help me put it on. And this article is going to be devoted to the inhabitants of this particular part of Asia.

People were supposed to be the power of the Caucasus. Because despite being poor, they were hospitable. They were supposed to share everything they had, although they didn’t have much. They were supposed to love Poles and enjoy spending time with them – because YOU were once on our side. They were supposed to treat tourists with dinners, invite to their houses, accommodate them without taking money for it and, moreover, give them provision on their leaving.

A lost paradise? Not in Georgia and Armenia as everything confirmed during our trip.

It started already in Tbilisi, when a really nice Georgian was going through our hostel since the very morning and he was trying to find the owners of “the cardboard boxes with bikes lying downstairs”. When he eventually managed to do it, he told us everything about his country and places worth visiting by bikes. We analysed all possible tracks and maps.

We didn’t manage even to leave Tbilisi, when next people appeared ready to greet these madmen on bikes which have surprisingly thin tyres (these tourists must be poor that they cannot afford to thicker ones…). We took a break on a gas station where we wanted only to buy water (not vodka) and it ended up with almost an hour long, constant Brüderschaft* with almost 10 men who were fighting effectively against unemployment in the capital of Georgia by providing vehicles with gas. Interestingly, they were very cosmopolitan and each of them spoke a different “forign” language – one knew English a bit, another Spanish, and the next “hat ein bisschen ‘Deutch’ gesprochen”**. This explosive mixture resulted from the fact that each of them had already worked on another gas station before and they had managed to learn a language of a particular country a bit.

The following day wasn’t better – this time, when we cheerfully arrived at Haghpat monastery, we met a group of Armenian. From far they were already showing a specific sign using their thumbs and index fingers with a break of about 3 cm (that is 25 ml) between them. It ended up on one of young colleagues’ birthday party, which was organized in rain, under a shelter, with barbecue, dancing, and provision for the next day. Moreover, all this was accompanied by more and more interesting toasts.

However, the biggest help we gained from our Caucasian colleagues on the penultimate day of our wonderful trip, which was supposed to be calm and without any sprees, but, of course, this plan failed. After a two-hour riding through Tbilisi and leaving for mountains, we were attacked by a pack of dogs (in Russian “sabaka”) and it turned out that it is possible to ride a bike 30 km per hour uphill, even if it is quite steep. Due to the fact that it was getting dark and we didn’t want to return the same wonderful track, we hitchhiked and we explained to the driver of a bus using sign language that we really wanted to go everywhere but the furthest from there. In the end we set off straight in the direction of Russia. When we were getting off the bus, one of the passengers offered us the accommodation at her dacha in the nearby village.

It was amazing to observe, how the life of women living in this village looked like and how they helped one another. When we arrived at the village, the woman made a few calls and after a while her neighbours and other babushkas appeared in order to bring something for dinner for these weird guests. Our host had brought something from the capital, other women had done some new tablecloths, they exchanged their goods, hens laid some eggs, and the cycle went on. Without money.

And it is possible, indeed…