Category: Travel stories

So much happened in the little Caucasus nation of Georgia due to its friendly, resourceful people and chaotic public infrastructure, that I just had to share the most quirky stuff. The Georgian public toilets definitely made the list, as logic just refuses to stick within those premises, and I will prove it to you. In a sense, this is a part 2 post following the stories from the Georgian public minibuses, which you can read here, but otherwise let’s get started with my review of the insanity of the Georgian public toilets:

Like in many non-Western countries (but also looking at you, Italy!), the Georgian public toilets were all squat toilets, i.e. toilet holes in the ground. That’s usually not a particularly big deal for men, but for us women it can be a bit more annoying… Fortunately I was pretty used to that type of toilets by the time I visited Georgia, but what I did not expect were all the weird things they had going on at some of them.

Naturally, you had to pay a few lari (Georgian money) to use the public toilets and there was always a stern, black-robed grandma there to show you the ways of that particular toilet. My first encounter was at the bus station in Kutaisi, where the toilets were housed in the lower storey of one of the buildings, inside ancient, high brick arches. There were no curtains or anything to cover the toilet entrance and the toilets were built in two opposing lines, so you could chat to the opposite person while squatting down. Sure, I can deal with that and also with the old grandma staring at me the entire time while I was there. I guess she was trying to make sure I wasn’t stealing the ratty doormat-rug placed before the toilet to wipe your shoes on – that was the only thing that was not attached to the walls, so I assume she was worried about that? She must have thought I was insane when I brought out a piece of paper to wipe myself, as she started wildly gesticulating to put it in the nearby bin. I did and that was the moment logic stopped working and didn’t reestablish itself for a while. She took out my used toilet paper with a stick, offered it to her dog to sniff it and threw it in my toilet before flushing it down with a water bottle. I mean, sure maybe the dog determined it will flush?

Next up was the lovely public toilet in Akhaltiskhe, where they actually had curtains for each individual toilet, but they only reached down to your midriff, meaning they became completely redundant once you squatted down. That toilet had an intricate homemade plumbing system, consisting of plastic hoses and ancient Coca-Cola bottles, which somehow supplied flushing water to all 6 toilets, when the attending grandma poured some water into the first bottle. Quite the engineering feat, I tell you. But they kind of lost me when I realised the water then run into a ditch that once again circled through all the toilets before going down the drain, so they could have just poured it into the ditch in the first place? They also recycled the water used for hand washing into their toilet flushing system, so bonus points for sustainability.

The third one was somewhere in Tbilisi. It was quite busy and probably the strangest one. One of the three attending grandmas acted as a policeman, directing men and women towards their respective toilets. Only, we were all going to the same room, which established a sort of one way traffic, as of course men and women couldn’t be in the room at the same time when either of them used the open squat toilets. So, the grannies would wait for a larger group of either gender to assemble and then send them in, which took a while. But apparently if someone was fussy and in a hurry, they would also send them in, even if they were the wrong gender, so what exactly was the point then? To make it even less logical, one of the grandmas would then unroll a sort of a shower curtain in front of the toilet where the “wrong gendered” person was, but the curtain was transparent, so again… completely baffling, although the locals seemed to think it was entirely logical.

In general though, the toilets were actually not horrible. Sure, they were weird and they didn’t exactly smell like roses, but none of them were truly disgusting or soiled in the way sitting public toilets often are. Their improvised flushing systems also seemed to be quite decent as I never knowingly stepped into any human discharge and my shoes never smelled like I had – massive thanks from me to the toilet grandmas for their hard work. So, fear not, the Georgian public toilets are a wholly survivable experience!

We also experienced plenty of other quirky things I didn’t specifically write about here, from all the stray dogs everywhere, to the junkyard window view and the unintentional candlelit dinner without power in Kutaisi; the accommodation we had in Borjomi; the screwdriver embedded in the concrete wall in our bedroom in Tbilisi, the cows on the road to the Sapara monastery etc., and all of it was just part of the adventure. After all, it’s always good to step out of your comfort zone a bit.

My boyfriend and I encountered many strange and quirky things during our 2018 trip to Georgia and one of them was the minibus/van public transport system. They’re called marshrutkas and they’ll get you almost anywhere around the country for a cheap price, at some point. While they do have an official schedule, their departure times are largely dependent on the mood of the driver and the amount of people wanting to go in that direction, so getting to where you want to go requires a bit of patience. We managed quite successfully actually, so there will be a separate travel tip post on how to do that, but this one is all about the tales from inside the minibuses, because that’s where the real fun happens.

#1: It can be hard getting started

When we first arrived to Kutaisi, we were trying to catch the minibus to Chiatura, a rather unpopular destination with a typically unpronounceable Georgian name. Since we couldn’t find any reliable timetables online, we arrived early to the bus station and started asking around which minibus was the one we needed. Usually that’s the way to go, right, but this time we hit a rather large language barrier.

We didn’t speak Georgian and only I spoke a very limited, improvised Slovene-Serbo-Croatian-ish Russian besides English, while they didn’t speak English or in most cases even Russian and naturally wouldn’t speak to a woman if there was a man present. We couldn’t pronounce the name Chiatura properly and they had no idea what we meant, so we tried writing it down on a piece of paper: turns out, they could only read their Georgian letters and not the Latin alphabet, and we couldn’t read their scribbles either… The whole thing was getting quite hilariously frustrating, to the point where we were sitting in front of the wrong minibus for a while, because we thought that was the one they were pointing at. We finally managed to get the right bus, but its departure time was about 40 minutes later, so we settled in to wait.

The minibus progressively filled with local people over that time and a couple of sellers came by the van with the most random assortment of things. They were selling everything from flower bouquets to toilet brushes and disposable razors (both out of their original packaging), individual batteries, dubiously fresh fruit and FA shower gels. I’m not sure how that paid off for them, but I guess it did, because a man next to me bought a shower gel.

Finally, two very old drivers arrived to take us there. Seatbelts were of course non-existent or even if they were there, most people thought they very unnecessary accessories, including the two drivers. I imagine that they assign two old guys together as drivers for unpopular destinations, in case one of them falls asleep or has a heart attack – not to be prejudiced, but those two had probably met Moses at some point. My theory was further confirmed by the way they drove, as brakes are apparently only to be used in emergency situations and road boundaries or traffic signs don’t apply to anyone, particularly not to those over the age of 60. Anyhow, we survived, which is all that matters.

#2: The goat incident

During one of the longer marshrutka rides at the beginning of our Georgian adventure when my boyfriend was still adjusting to the whole non-Central-European environment, someone brought a goat on the minibus. Mercifully, my boyfriend was asleep at the time, as the van was extremely crowded, smelled like feet and way too hot despite the open windows, which, in combination with the culture shock, was making him a bit grumpy. To be honest, I wasn’t feeling particularly cheerful either and I couldn’t sleep to escape that, but it’s all part of the experience.

So, at one of the stops where two more people somehow squeezed in, a guy brought in a goat on a leash and told it to sit down a row ahead of us. The wizened old white goat wasn’t particularly thrilled by all the people in close quarters, so it kept bleating and shifting until it promptly pooped on the floor of the minivan. The goat owner wasn’t particularly bothered by the poop though, as he casually swiped it up with his hand and tossed it out the window. Everyone else around us was also perfectly cool with the defecating, stir-crazy goat, so I figured I was probably suffering from a bit of a culture shock too.

I ended up feeling like a crazy spoilt European, up to the point where some woman started shrieking at the goat’s owner because the goat was licking her shoes. Luckily, both the goat and its owner got off the bus quite soon and everyone seemed a bit happier for it. Naturally, the whole goat experience was accompanied by the typical farm animal smell meets sweaty people smell, so I was desperately praying the whole time that my boyfriend wouldn’t wake up and curse me for dragging him to Georgia.

#3: Wine is for sharing

Since we were in Georgia, it was only natural that we’d encounter crazy Russians with alcohol at some point, and we did. I believe it was on the road to Tbilisi, when we were sitting near the back of one of the more modern minibuses, which actually had ventilation (amazing how simple things become a blessing as soon as they’re absent). Behind us were a couple of Russian men, which looked exactly as you might imagine: pushing 40, bordering on overweight, dressed in white short sleeved dress shirts and wannabe fancy shoes, loud and friendly with big smiles and limited English.

They enthusiastically brought out bottles of vodka and white wine and started passing them around the bus, which was much appreciated by most of the locals. When they realised we weren’t local, the words “drink, my friends!” in thick Russian accent were repeated an infinite amount of times and half-assed attempts at communicating about our lives were made on both sides. Since I was a woman sitting on the inside seat by the window, I was allowed to refuse the bottles after a few rounds, but my boyfriend had to take it like a man. Next came the loud Russian music played on mobile phones, naturally accompanied by singing, so we got the whole party minibus experience.

The whole thing was so stereotypically Russian, like from a bad American movie, that I had trouble keeping a straight face and the men were almost adorable in their sincere desire to get the whole bus drunk. It finally came to an end when we had to stop for a toilet break and some water, as they fell asleep in their seats after that, like big snoring bears.

The Georgian adventure stories continue in part 2: Logic does not apply to the Georgian public toilets.