Strange alphabets and misplaced consonants

Elenka and I were frightened when we climbed aboard the train in Batumi for our five hour journey to Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.

We walked to the top of a very high hill ...

We’d had a “Where’s the toilet?” sign - “სად არის ტუალეტი” - made for us using the Georgian alphabet. The ABCs here are considerably different from the one in Ukraine, but there was way more to it than that. How would we even say the word “Tbilisi” in a way that anyone would understand?

Back in Ukraine the non-English speaking Odessians had been cold towards us. Could we expect anything better in this land-locked backwater? Once off the train we took a cab to the Old Town Square and started looking at our map to try and find our guesthouse. The only directions we had were in GPS coordinates. A guy who was selling day-trips came by and asked in clear-as-can-be English if he could help. I told him my cell-phone was broken and showed him the GPS gibberish. He punched a few buttons on his hand-held device and told us to follow him. Within five minutes we’d found our new home for the night.

Almost everyone in Georgia has been friendly.

The other side of the river

Guesthouses often give us food, wine even. And we soon found that we wouldn’t need the “სად არის ტუალეტი” sign to find our way to the toilet. English is more common here than it is in our neighbourhood back at the Centre of the Universe. We like Georgia so much we’ve decided to cancel our plan to visit Armenia and head to a couple of mountain retreats instead.

Elenka and I have learned a valuable lesson. We’ll never again let strange alphabets and misplaced consonants scare us off.