She flew in at night, and had a coveted middle seat, so she couldn't see much out of the window. Unfortunately, she missed the beautiful, glittery show of yellow-orange light that is Tbilisi at night. Instead, she said she saw just a few lights here and there and thought maybe they were fires...like fires burning in the desert. My first assertion to her was that Georgians are not Bedouins and that Tbilisi is not made up of roving bands of people huddled around campfires.
 |
| not fires... |
We get to my apartment and the elevator is not working. As I have mentioned before, my elevator costs 20 tetri to go up and is free going down. Unfortunately, there is some coin jammed in the slot of the elevator so it can't accept money and thus won't go up...so I had to make Elyse lug her small but dense suitcase up 3 flights of stairs...
Then, we get home, and there is no hot water. I thought maybe the city had turned off hot water for some reason, so Elyse and I agreed to just take showers in the morning and went to bed. Unfortunately, there was still no hot water when I woke up...but after a frustrating photo-chat with Lasha (who actually knows stuff about the apartment but is on a business trip for the week), I figured out how to reset the pressure on the water heater and fixed it - yay!
So I got a hot shower, but my luck did not extend to Elyse because when she woke up a few hours after I had left, there was no electricity...stories of Tbilisi in the old days (before Misha ~ 2006/2008) say that there were chronic power outages. I've read old articles from people warning visitors to carry a flashlight with them at all times in case the power cuts out when they're out in public. However, nowadays this rarely happens. Last summer there were a few days when we had no electricity or no water, but my neighbors and I chalked that up to the construction going on in the next lot. City-wide power outages are certainly a relic of the past. But of course, the first (only?) power outage of this summer happens when Elyse is home alone on her first day in the city...no power means no hot water, since the heater is electric, and also no wi-fi. So she had to trek through my neighborhood looking for somewhere with free wi-fi. Eventually she stumbled upon some park with public wi-fi, and I was able to give her some vague instructions to get to my work...but she left the wi-fi zone before I could tell her exact directions or how much the ride should cost, so she is about to get a) majorly ripped off b) possibly very lost in the city center and c) enveloped in a torrential rain storm - because it's also supposed to rain the entire time she is here...fancy that.
So now I am at my office, writing of her epic saga, and fervently hoping to hear from her soon...preferably before these black clouds burst.
#watchwhathappenslive
#prayforElyse
#WelcometoGeorgia
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