Between Europe & Asia

Today I will be writing about Georgia.

In case you’re not sure where Georgia is exactly, it is to the north of Turkey and south of Russia and right on the coast of the Black Sea, at the foot of the Caucasian mountains (I first thought we were flying to Georgia, USA but sadly no ).

First of all the transport. We had to take 2 planes to get to Georgia! First, we flew from London to Budapest, the capital of Hungary and from there to Kutaisi, Georgia. Then we took a taxi to the place we were staying at, which was a very nice and hospitable guesthouse.

While we were enjoying our stay in Zestaponi, we tried some local Georgian cuisine.

For breakfast, we had some simple, but delicious food, including local cheese and homemade jam.

For dinner, we had some soup (yum) and chicken wings with fried potatoes. We tried some homemade red wine (well my dad did ) and said, it was, quote “very enjoyable”.

My school is very supportive of my fencing and allows me to go to foreign competitions during the school term; however, the studying still needs to be done, so here is me in the evening doing some revision. Before you ask, it is my dad’s glass of red wine.

As we were walking through the streets, we saw lots of trees that grew something that looked like a cross between apple and tomato however, it wasn’t one… We asked the family that owned the guesthouse and they said that the fruit we saw was called  Kaki/ Persimmon. This fruit is very popular throughout Georgia and even the taxi driver had one as a snack in his car! The elderly lady who owned the house, prepared the breakfast and cooked dinner for us, was very generous and gave us a bag full of Kaki to share with our friends and family back at home.

Another thing we noticed straight away was that every single house had its own water tank mounted above the roof. The family we were staying with explained that there was no water mains in this place so every house had to keep its fresh water in the tank.

I almost forgot why we travelled all the way to Georgia in the first place. Well, it was for a fencing competition (what else could it be). The competition was quite small but enjoyable. I made it through to the final and went back home with a silver medal!

Georgian language has its own alphabet that is nothing like the Latin alphabet we use. Interestingly, the town we stayed in is written ზესტაფონი in Georgian language but is spelt in Latin alphabet interchangeably as Zestafoni, Zestaponi or Zestaphoni. We asked which Latin spelling was correct but every single Georgian person we talked to seemed to have a different answer.

The return journey included two flights again, however, this time the stop over was in Katowice, Poland. While there, we managed to have a dinner with my grandma and uncle.

This was a very short trip (we left on Saturday and returned home on Monday) but I found it very pleasant and I would love to return next year.