clouds on fire
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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 […]
Lev Tolstoy’s Dutch cucumber
Today I did something that I had been missing out on for a long time: I ate some müsli: It was awesome. In totally unrelated news, I have been wanting to tell you about Tolstoy. Up until recently I had never read any of his books, and I think it was because he had always […]
the mushrooms I had made
When I was at the supermarket the day before, I bought milk, butter, mushrooms, onions, cream cheese, tomatoes, pasta, pesto, a lot of fruits, lemonade, bread, nutella, laundry detergent, müsli, and a few other things I can’t remember. So I cut up the mushrooms and the onions: And then I fried them with a bit […]
spirited away
I was going to move to my secret hideout today. So I said goodbye to my friends, got out the Caboose from under the stairway, and then I loaded her up and told her that the road was waiting for us once more: What I didn’t tell her: it wasn’t going to be that much […]
patched
My tests had come back, and the results were good. Or rather: for me they were somehow disappointing, because they showed that I was healthy, which meant that there was no minor problem that a bit of medication would be able to cure. No, I was told, apparently I was just exhausted. And it was […]
hail the mushroom building
It was strange that still, after all this time, I was feeling weak and sickly. This had been going on for a while now – ever since maybe the time when I had made it to Sheki. I wanted to know what was going on, and since I was at the hospital every few days […]