Things to Do on Chavchavadze Blvd: Get a Visa to Azerbaijan

If there is one thing worse than lining up to get into Azerbaijan, surely it is lining up at the Azeri embassy to get a visa to allow you to line up to get into Azerbaijan. And would you believe it, the people I had to line up with were absolutely atrocious.

But as it would seem I decided that the best way to spend my time in Tbilisi, instead of in the fantastic Chardin district paying too much money for beer, Chinese food, and coffee, was to be sitting on the pavement outside the Azeri embassy in direct sunlight with grumpy foreigners and with people who I can only describe as having a poorly-conceived notion of queuing.

A visa to Azerbaijan costs $63. If you're Canadian. If you're from the US you're assumedly richer and can fork out $126. Australians pay $58 or so, and the British somewhere around $80-100. This is at least what I heard. I have no idea if any of it aside from what I actually paid is true.

I wish I had needed to get a visa to the Czech Republic instead because this place looks nice and I am sure they treat you like a human being when you present your application.

In order to get the visa I had to wait to be received by the consul('s assistant probably) and then make my way to some very unofficial-looking Azeri Development Bank to make a deposit in cash and pay a $2 depositing fee. I believe the bank was right next to a bridge at Marjanishvili metro station, which you may reconise as მარჯანიშვილი.

This isn't Marjanishvili but who on earth would know that?  Everything ends with "ishvili" and this doesn't even look like a thing.

I also took this opportunity to visit the Dry Bridge where everyone is selling everything. Markets are always a favourite place for me, mainly because I live for raw capitalism, but it can become pretty disheartening when you're in Korce, Albania and your guide is telling you that this is the market; this was the crossroads of the known worlds and people travelled from far and wide to find such a rich array of goods and then you notice that you can get the same crappy Made-in-China shoes in the markets of Chisinau, Tunis, Tbilisi or Dushanbe. One thing that can truly be defined as an universal inalienable right is unlimited access to really poorly-made and ugly shit from China.  

But back to the Dry Bridge: there were so many used goods for sale. This is where I bought that great Hello! book, several postcards of Tbilisi during sunnier days, and where I regretted not buying a great cartoon map of the Georgian Military Highway, not having yet read A Hero of Our Time its Wikipedia page at the time. I also did not pick up a meat grinder or a engine for a Lada for lack of space. In fact, this place was my Orchard Park (for Kelowna enthusiasts), so you'd think I would have actually taken a picture of it but I didn't because I have been meaning to buy a new camera for several years and it takes about three minutes to actually turn on and then take a picture.