Love is in the air on a balcony in Georgia

by Lenka Boswijk (Netherlands)

Making a local connection Georgia

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And there I find myself sitting on the balcony of appartment 3 in Soviet flat 17 in my favourite city Tbilisi, Georgia. After a tiring and long flight via Kiev, I feel peaceful and content with the rays of sun on my face. This miraculous country with its soupra's (Georgian dinners which last for hours and are accomponied by endless toasts, music and dance), the hospitality of the people, the fress fruit and mysterious language, has always had a magical influence on me. There is something about the Caucasus region that makes me feel energized. Despite the lack of sleep due to the soupra's, vecherinki (party's) and the unavoidable headache after the home brewed chacha (domestic spirit), there is this positive buzz that makes one feel happy. I enjoyed my first night here on a roof terrace with some local friends. Accompanied by coffee, fresh water melon and deep conversations we stared at the dark sky full of stars. The city breaths love and everything seems to come together. With our coffees we toasted to love in all forms; from man to woman, from mother to child, from Georgian to Dutch citizen, from grandmother to grandchild. Love seems to be in the air in Georgia. People sing about it in folk songs, talk about it and seem to breath it. Let's say that men in particularly are not scared to hide their intention to find one or multiple lovers. I would call Georgian men the kings of seduction, sometimes subtle, sometimes less. Yesterday morning a taxi driver with a mouth full of gold and rotten teeth pointed his finger at my chest while shouting: "I like, I like, I like." Since his English vocabulary only consited of this sentence and "I, good footballplayer", I had a little difficulty making conversation with the old man. I was anyway quite busy praying that he would drop this 'blondinka' off at the gym and wouldn't drive into the mountains to throw her over his horse and bring her to his teethless mother to arrange a wedding. A few years ago it was in this city that I was having dinner with my mother in an old-fashioned Russian restaurant on Rustavelli street. When we wanted to pay the bill, two big pieces of chocolate cake were put in front of us. The waiter pointed to a group of guys in their twenties and told us that one of them had bought us cake. We waved at them and started to eat the cake that was so sweet that we almost ended up without teeth, like many of the elderly you come across with on the streets of Tbilisi. Once we wanted to go outside, one of the guys stopped us. He didn't give me one single glance, but grabbed the hands of my mum and started to kiss them. It has happened more often that I was traveling with my mother in Eastern-Europe and guys of my age started to flirt with her while completely ignoring me. I stand there helplessly, wondering why my mum is so interesting to these young attractive guys. Recently a local told us that getting a girl often happens by first getting on the good side of her mother. This seemed to be the case with 'cake guy' as well. Stuttering and with red cheeks, he asked my mum if he could take me out for dinner. When my mum didn't seem to excited by that proposal, he changed tactics and bluntly asked if he could marry me. Luckily I was wearing a ring that saved us from the situation. It was also a good thing that I was there with my mum and not with my lovely father, who once jokingly agreed on a deal to sell my mum to a sheppard for five Georgian sheep. Smiling by these memories, I gaze over the outskirts of Tbilisi from my sunny balcony. I hear a guy on the streets collecting metal, I see some kids playing on the hill nearby and I smell... The air of love and adventure!