Sweet Georgia

Two things you need to know about Georgia: it’s the homeland of Stalin (a fact most Georgians prefer to forget), and it’s the birthplace of wine.

- Sarah Siese

This ancient country, at the intersection of Europe and Asia, is a former Soviet republic, and its history reads like any good drama. All is quiet on the western front today, following the brief Russo-Georgian war in August 2008, but a territorial dispute continues. Georgia feels, very much, like a country on the frontier.

A mile from the airport, the rusty arm of the signpost points to Moscow. But we’re not in Russia. Well not anymore, or ever, if you ask the locals, who hold their neighbours with unconcealed distain. Tbilisi, even on a sunny morning, is coated in austerity – the outskirts are a maze of grey concrete, punctuated with great statues cast in industrial iron. Elfish Georgian script adorns the capital’s billboards and shopfronts like a child’s playwriting, an exotic pretend kind of prose that merely adds to the mysteriousness. Further into the city there are deliciously lopsided balconies, cobbled squares with golden horses, wide Parisian avenues, abandoned tram carriages selling ice cream and coffee, and an incongruent row of western shops like Zara (does Zara get everywhere?).

Tbilisi is a city of layers 1,500 years old – made, ruined and remade 17 times. What remains is from the Russian empire and Soviet Union times. A mishmash of buildings, crudely built, often ramshackle and basic. Men wear the hardest of life on their faces without appearing hard and women have a matter-of-fact air portraying a life lived day by day. Everyone wears a thick coat and hat: Georgia is a border land dominated by the cold corridor of winds that hurtle along its mountainous spine.