Going Nowhere

The first two days in Georgia I spend walking, endlessly walking, walking more than I have ever walked or wanted to walk. Most of the time the other volunteers and I wander aimlessly. I’ve never really understood the meaning of that term before now. We walk without a destination, without time constraints, and often without thinking.  Occasionally, we catch sight of a notable church or are given suggestions from a local on where to go, but mostly we just walk.

The first day we all go out together, we try to make our way to Rustaveli Avenue, a popular tourist destination lined with restaurants and shops. The twenty or so of us who set out that night are quite a sight, walking single file in the street when the side walk runs out, or huddling around the one map of the city we have between us.

We walk for about an hour before coming up on some posh looking restaurants and strange brick domes built low to the ground like rolling hills.

“They’re baths,” Someone informs the group, slowly deciphering a nearby sign.

           

Later we learn that they have been built over natural sulfur springs. This is where Tbilisi gets its name.  It means warm.

We make our way through a garden toward a bathhouse with a mosaic front. While the rest of us are taking pictures, some of the group breaks off and heads up a narrow staircase crowded between the bathhouse and the houses next door. From here we forge a path through a maze of back alleys, cobblestone walks, and rubble paths carved through gutted buildings in which families have made their homes. We catch glimpses of kitchens and living rooms with skeletal walls, only rotting support beams holding up the roof.

When we emerge, we find that we have climbed a hill overlooking the old, historic section of the city. Behind us the great brick wall of a fortress rises, the steeple of a church just breaching the sightline of the wall. We follow a wide road through the door in a large wooden gate, and climb to the top of the fortress. We climb the crumbling brick, making our way up stairs so rotted they are barely recognizable as such. At the top the city stretches out before us, the golden roof of the cathedral across the river glittering in the orange sunset.