Georgians are excitable fellows. Throw a little money at a pedestrian bridge to connect a park with Old Tbilisi and this is what they finance:

It is, admittedly, a bit more attractive at night:

Residents of Tbilisi, similarly to residents of Yerevan, seem utterly incapable of providing visitors with directions.

Tbilisi has more churches than Yerevan. At least in the city center. They range from the new, expensive, and fancy:

to the old, expensive, and fancy:

to the woefully neglected:

The city’s architecture is prettier and more European than Yerevan’s, which largely feels [is] Soviet.

On the other hand, Yerevan is cheaper and has a downtown area much more conducive to social wandering.

Half the reason I went down was to see the chess palace, which, I was told, is similar to Yerevan’s. It’s housed in a run-down building tucked away in a park in the city center. I did not get past the entry way before a rather sharp woman at the desk told me to leave. I asked if people played chess there and was told they do not. Curious.

Backgammon, however, is played everywhere.

After a British chess enthusiast tips you off to the fact that Tbilisi has a thriving casual chess and backgammon culture, you decide to make a brief visit down before leaving the Caucasus at the end of September. Accordingly you throw together a half-baked plan to stay in Tbilisi from Monday until Thursday of this week.

Just another evening in Yerevan

Monday morning you make it to the bus station without issue and immediately find the Tbilisi-bound van, driven by a pleasant but bored-looking Armenian man. As soon as the van is turned on you immediately sink into despair. The van shakes while idling and accelerates sluggishly out of the parking lot. Once on the highway it seems perpetually stuck in 3rd, even though you have, crestfallenly, watched the driver upshift three times. As you leave town and begin hitting the inclines your concerns rise in proportion to the gains in elevation. Anything beyond the most trivial of hills cuts the van’s speed down to about 15 miles per hour. You know this because you are in the front seat and periodically glance at the speedometer in hopes that your senses are tricking you. They are not.

You make about three hours of slow progress before you begin to hit the serious foothills of northern Armenia. On the first of these the van struggles mightily. On the second the driver pulls over the to the side of the road at the summit. You watch as he produces a large jug of water from under his seat and disappears behind the hood. He reemerges moments later, seeming satisfied, but you are skeptical. Your skepticism is confirmed on the next incline when the driver is again compelled to stop. You watch with a mixture of horror and amusement as the driver retrieves another jug of water, lifts the hood, and douses the engine with cold water, jumping back to avoid the explosion of steam and sizzling water droplets. Pouring the rest of the water into some compartment under the hood, the driver replaces the empty jug in the back. The force of his closing the back door dislodges the parking brake, and as the van begins slowly rolling down the back side of the hill you experience a few seconds of sheer terror before the driver sprints up to the front and jumps in the moving van. You worry at the fact that the engine does not start until half way down the hill.

Backgammon players in Tbilisi

The next incline requires a stop prior to the summit. The driver pulls over at a gas station and asks a worker where he can get water. Pouring water down the hood is, you conclude, the extent of his automotive expertise. The worker motions across the parking lot. After exchanging pleasantries the driver tries to turn the van back on, but it won’t start. Your amusement has now overcome any frustrations at the delay, and you hide a smile as you watch the driver walk across the parking lot with the empty jugs of water, filling them and emptying them twice before attempting–unsuccessfully–to turn the van back on. Finally volunteers are found to push, and the van eventually starts. The driver steers it over to the water pump, puts it in neutral, and then asks that you kindly slide over on the bench seat and press down on the gas to keep the engine running while he fills water jugs. You do so; he does so.

After another thirty minutes of progress the van again pulls over in a small town. As the driver fills yet another jug full of water to pour over the steaming engine and reassures you that help is on the way, you take the opportunity to run into a nearby bakery. You buy potato pirozhki and, as you eat them, ponder what Russian cuisine would be like if dill had never existed. Would it be blander still? Or would necessity breed creativity? A large clump of dill in the second pirozhok renders all speculation merely academic.

Go figure.

This time, apparently, the driver sees need for actual repair work. You watch with morbid fascination as he pulls his repair kit out from under your seat: a roll of packing tape, a spray can of the Russian equivalent of WD-40, and a plastic shopping bag of what could easily pass for junkyard salvages. Screws, nuts, bolts, and various other pieces of scrap metal. The driver walked over to the opened hood and you watch as he sprays probably a quarter of the bottle onto the engine. He tries to turn it on and fails. He repeats the process, this time, you observe, using probably half of the bottle. The engine is feeling very flirtatious today, but stops just short of the hoped for result. You note with some concern that this, to the driver, indicates the need for serious work. He returns to his bag of tricks and you watch eagerly to see his choice of tools. The tape, a strand of wire, a coil, a small kitchen knife, and his trusty jug of water are, evidently, all he needs.

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