Monthly Archives: November 2018

different views

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I was staying in a guesthouse that was nice and warm and very close to the cathedral, and it was even supposed to have a view. Only not so much from my room: Outside, it was raining in a determined way: So I stayed in my room most of the day, and only one time […]


churchorama

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There was a monastery on a hill overlooking Mtskheta. It was called Jvari, and I had seen it before, first on the map and then with my own eyes when I reached Mtskheta. So today I took a taxi up the hill to check it out: The view was like something out of an Austrian […]


the end of a journey

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The tiger. He destroyed his cage. Yes. I left the apartment at about ten in the morning: Got the Caboose from her garage, loaded her up, and got on the road. Tbilisi was doing its best to show that it was a big city: I passed a monument of some horse-riding dude: And then, after […]


turtle lake

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Went back to the building that had been closed a few days earlier. And today it was open: It took me a while, but I got done what I had come there to do. Then I waltzed out and into an underpass that was – like many underpasses in Tbilisi – full of art: Y’all […]


to love is to suffer

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Went to the old town of Tbilisi today. Entered it through a little underpass with some graffiti: Then I was in the alleys that felt narrow and grey: I know I keep saying this, but they often reminded me of certain East European capital cities: Maybe Budapest or Prague: Before the restorations: Only some of […]


clouds on fire

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Remember the hole in my pants that I had just gotten fixed a few weeks earlier? Well, now I had a new one in a different part of my pants: I took them to another tailor, and I sighed. Sometimes it felt as though everything was slowly coming apart. When I got back to my […]


messages

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Went to this building today: It was closed. Apparently I had not gotten the memo. Then I walked around aimlessly for a while. There was a graffito on a wall that I found interesting without fully grasping its meaning: Someone had done terrible things during specific years in history? Some of the dates seemed to […]


the couch that overlooks Tbilisi

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Sometimes being up close is good. Sometimes it’s not. Today I decided to scoot back a little bit and get an overview of the city. So I went to this old neighborhood at the foot of a hill: A set of stairs led up to a vantage point above the buildings: And I found the […]


my tree

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There was a tree next to the house I was living in. It stood in a parking lot, overlooking a part of the city, and it had a branch from which I could hang in order to stretch my back. I tried to visit the tree every day: After a while I noticed that I […]


the communist way

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Down in the south of Tbilisi, in Kaspi Street No. 7, there is a building that looks like a bunker or a German university canteen: It is the Joseph Stalin Underground Printing House Museum, and when I went in and asked about the admission fee, I was told to donate 10 Lari: Okay. There was […]


new cathedrals for brand new believers

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Tbilisi has several churches, but on top of that it also has one big fat towering cathedral. It’s this one: The Holy Trinity Cathedral was constructed only a few years ago, and when I went inside to take a look it had a shiny new atmosphere as if it had just come out of a […]


when the lights come on

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The doc had told me to rest, but he had said that regular walking was still going to be okay. I could go to the grocery store and back, to a donut shop, or even sightseeing – that kind of thing. So today I decided to go back to the Mother Of Georgia and take […]


Korean band-aid

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Remember how I have been having problems with my foot over the course of the last year? Well, it’s not actually that bad, but I don’t want to mess it up and cause any serious damage, which is why I’m always a bit cautious about it. So when I noticed an unfamiliar sensation that didn’t […]


speed is your life

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Again I needed to write something. This time it was for my German publisher, they wanted a foreword for a book about traveling. I had been struggling with this text for a little while, until I remembered the way I had written my books before: in the early mornings, with my phone and the computer […]


bike lane

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I had been wanting to stay longer, and I had been meaning to extend my stay, but I had recently developed a propensity towards indecision. And so in the end someone else had ended up renting the apartment, which meant that I had to leave. Luckily, I had managed to find a new place. So […]


(a) political society

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Remember the protest at the Parliament that I had told you about a few days earlier? Well, it was apparently still going strong, and the protestors seemed to have gathered more tents and more people: It often baffled me to think that this was the first truly democratic country I had walked through on my […]


the eleventh day

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November the ninth. I don’t know how many of you have read the start of this journey eleven years ago, but I started walking in Beijing on this day in 2007. It was my 26th birthday. Today I am in Tbilisi, Georgia, and I am 37: So I went and had Lebanese soup and hummus: […]


wallowing

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Tbilisi has at least two high points with a view. One is the “Mother Of Georgia” which is atop a cable car station. The other one is a bit higher, and there is a funicular taking people up a mountain. I went there today: The view at the top was more spectacular than at the […]


hot fighting mom

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I decided to do some more tourism today. So I went to the old part of Tbilisi: There was a park: And in the park there was a cable car that went up a hill, so I bought a ticket (it was actually just a metro ticket) and went up. The view was quite spectacular […]


is this tea?

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Okay, no literature club today. I went and got my fourth rabies shot. Why so many, you ask? Well, the doctors had told me that even though I had previously been vaccinated, I still needed to get five shots in total. So okay. I was still trying to regain my balance. And this might sound […]