I'm in Batumi, Trick!

Getting into Batumi was partially relieving but mostly exhausting.  I caught a public bus from Khulo for 2 lari which lasted about four hours.  A city bus!  That went from Khulo to Batumi.  I ended up standing most of the way and alternating seats with an old woman because I thought I had bought a ticket and reserved a seat but apparently I didn’t because I was supposed to buy a ticket inside the bus depot.  I refuse to believe that this is my fault because the “bus depot” made little or no effort to announce itself and I had no idea it existed.  I offered my seat to an old woman but she was getting off shortly and everyone made a big fuss and insisted I sit down.  It was kind of pleasant vis-à-vis Azerbaijan where everyone said, “Oh dang, this foreigner is messing up our system” and instead they were all, “Aww, this foreigner is totally incapable of navigating this irrational system we arbitrarily decided to retain from the Russians.”

The ride included a couple of crunk-stops, where I had an ice cream and then caved into peer pressure and drank a draught Natakhtari beer.  I asked another old woman to sit in my seat and watch my stuff. There are so many old ladies out there that you can entrust your life to.  I just don’t understand why old people are so mobile in these countries.  They have easily the least comfortable modes of transportation so why do these old ladies need to be carting around plastic burlap sacks full of cookies and cheap shoes  idea everywhere?  The entire idea behind getting old is that you are finally allowed to sit and watch other people carry around plastic burlap sacks full of cookies and cheap shoes.

Anyway, I made it to Batumi and was unpleasantly surprised to find that all of the streets had been torn up, it had recently rained and the whole city was a sweaty, muddy mess.  It was so humid, and I ended up walking around the city looking for a cheap hostel—fairly difficult—before having the revelation that no matter what the outcome I would be unhappy and grumpy by the end of it so I settled for one that was 25 lari on Pushkin street with no TV and no AC.  No problem.  Baku didn’t kill me, so if you think you can strike me down, Batumi, I will become more powerful than you could ever imagine. 

Obviously when you’re in Batumi you simply must enjoy a Khatchapuri Adjarskii, or Khatchapuri Acharuli, and I did.  You better believe I did.  Batumi really just felt like a swampy mess, like Tunisia, Albania, and Costa Rica rolled into one.  The streets were such a mess, it was rainy and humid and muddy and I had this overwhelming feeling in Batumi that I just needed to GTFO and so I decided to give it the old once over, checked in at the port authority for boats to the Ukraine, and then plotted my journey northwards to Poti, rumoured to be an even bigger hole.*

*This is something an Australian told me in Kiev and I was really upset that he was deliberately trying to taint my image of Poti.  Now I have no idea what my impression would have been of this venerable port town if I had seen it with virgin eyes.  This made me almost as angry as that Cypriot in Constantinople who was so against me going to Armenia.  I really should stop talking to people because I often become so enraged.