After three weeks working on Emma, we were looking forward to a change. In addition, it was just a few weeks before we had our flights back home, the first time after one and a half year. We brought Emma to the guarded parking space of the Mercedes Benz Truck service, secured everything for the next 7 weeks and packed our Black Flash. On the direct way we drove to Katzkhi to the climbing house, where we have already spent a lot of time, but haven't been there for several months. First, we got warmly welcomed by the neighbours and after that from our climbing friends. We had a nice evening all together and this time we slept like the others in the house. The following day we went climbing to Chiatura and luckily, the weather was good. The next four days we only spent with Shako and Irakli, as the others had to go back to Tbilisi. Living together with them went really well and alternately we were cooking and washing the dishes and during the day we went climbing together.
Unfortunately, at the end of the week, it started raining and as the roof was leaking on many places, we everywhere put cups and pots, to avoid a bigger flood. During this time, our neighbour Beso made wine and invited us for helping and watching. Johannes got rubber boots and had to stomp the liquid out of the grapes. As the whole summer was too hot in Georgia (around 3 months without rain and high temperatures), Beso only had 50 kg of grapes. Nevertheless, he gave us some fresh juice for testing, which was incredible tasty. Mzia took as well some litres of the juice, to cook it and eat it later on. Not much was left for the wine. It was still interesting for us to see, how house wine gets made in Georgia.
After that, Johannes had to drink with Beso and as all the old wine was finished and not much money left, Beso made wine himself by using Chacha (Georgian grape alcohol), water and sugar. For one month it changed back to “wine”, according to Johannes it was not the best he ever tested...
The next station were our friends, the monks, which live close to Kutaissi. We nearly stayed there for one week and they were very happy about us being there. Every day we cooked together, we had time to go jogging and walking and in the evenings we played Domino together. The Georgians have a good way to play it, where you have to think and calculate a lot for winning.
On Thursday we went all together with our car to Abastumani, where there is an old observatory. During the trip we first stopped in Sairme, where there are different health resorts and different mineral water free for everyone.
After that, the road was not asphalted anymore and we drove to the top of the small Caucasus, on a pass of 2300 m above sea level. The view was good, so we even could see the big Caucasus.
Now we had to descend 1000 m of altitude to Abastumani, where we had a nice dinner to be prepared for the observatory. It is an old research centre out of the Soviet time and according to some information from the internet, only 2 out of 14 telescopes are still in use. The others are all broken and would be too expensive to repair. We got the chance to see Saturn, the Moon and a beautiful star. Pretty impressed we left the place and started our trip back home, where we arrived at 1 am.
And then, the time was over and we had to pack our luggage. Every gram got checked and finally everything was ready. Merhab and Eldar brought us to Kutaissi, where we bought the last things and from there we took a marschrutka to the airport. We were all happy, when the airplane took off and with a direct flight we flew back home...
