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June 27, 2006
Looking for curly sperm, horseshoe, curly sperm
TBILISI, GEORGIA -- When in Yerevan, a group of people decided to catch a mini-bus (called a marshrutka) and ride it as long as they could. It didn't sound fun to me, but apparently they enjoyed it.
Both here and in Yerevan, it's hard to know where any of the 300-odd marshrutka lines go, since both Armenian and Georgian scripts are quite cryptic. Indeed, there's no English or Russian on the windscreen destination signs.
Today I wanted to go to Mtskheta, the original capital of Georgia until the 4th century, about 20 minutes from the city. This involves first going to Didube bus station and finding another marshrutka to Mtskheta. At the hotel, I got on marshrutka 39, which the guidebook says hits the bus station, going in the direction of the bus station. It ended up in a Soviet housing project, where I wandered a mile or two looking for a bus station. I took the same marshrutka back to start over. I then got on trusty number 61, which I've taken several times with good success at getting to the old city. It left me in a forest preserve. Three hours after starting, I remembered the Russian word for bus station, wandered out of the forest preserve, and found the nearest taxi, a 1970s-vintage Volga who charged me US$4 for what turned out to be a lengthy trip to the bus station.
The Tbilisi Didube bus station serves the whole country, and it's a giant chaotic mess of hundreds of small shops peddling pigs feet, clothes, smelly fish, gambling, and vodka (to the drivers, one presumes). Hundreds of busses and marshrutkas from around the country terminate here, in no apparent order, with signs in Georgian only. Fortunately Caucasians (as people here are known) have a strong sense of hospitality and responsibility towards visitors. The cabbie, an old grandfather, drove all around the station asking everyone who he could find. Eventually we got me onto a marshrutka, a Ford Ecoline retrofitted to carry 18 people.
It was time to figure out the Georgian alphabet, which I did by giving the letters nicknames. For example, there's დ (curly sperm), ო (McDonalds), ც (thirteen), ი (horseshoe), and რ (cat with tail). Looking for a marshrutka to Didube station therefore would involve finding a destination sign with a six-letter word starting with curly sperm - horseshoe - curly sperm. "Mtskheta" becomes an 8-letter word starting with curly d - round hoe - fish hook.
Incidentally, when I was leaving Mtskheta, a cabbie offered to take me back to Tbilisi for $9. I would have taken it, but by now I knew I could get there for 40 cents by flagging down a marshrutka starting with round hoe - down delta - horseshoe.
Posted by adrianjo at June 27, 2006 01:40 PM