Rain Man…and Boys and Girls

The only place where you don’t want to see any rain is the rainiest place in whole Georgia. The irony of life has never been so obvious.

Last New Year’s Eve we spent in NY; this January the 31^st, we were conquering new heights, the Georgian Barcelona: Batumi.

We arrived at 7 A.M., --IT WAS RAINING—and were showed a seemingly decent “hotel”. My husband had hypoglycemia, dehydration, acetaldehyde intoxication, and glutamine rebound—more commonly known as a hangover. So he spent most of the day sleeping and rest of the day arguing with a waitress—he craved soup. “No Soup”, she declared. “Beer?” he hoped. “We don’t import beer on holidays (?!?!!?!?!)”, she answered, determined to deny any attempts of money coming into her restaurant. “Tea with lemon”, asked my desperate husband. “We don’t make tea”, was her answer. IT WAS RAINING.

After getting some warmth and alcohol, we went to the free concert, with Bocelli, Cirque Du Soleil and other fun stuff. Or so I was told. Cause I’d be damned, if I saw anything. Sandwiched between somebody’s armpits and chests, I longed to catch a glimpse of the concert. I couldn’t hear a note cause some stupid girls kept screaming behind me “oh I don’t like operas, oh, I think I broke my heels, oh…” I take this opportunity to say: I hate you, screaming girls who come to free concerts without even knowing who Bocelli is! Let the all of your heels be broken from now on! AND DID I MENTION THAT IT STILL KEPT RAINING?

At 11:50 we decide that this is lame and spend the next ten minutes sprinting towards the sea. We don’t make it; instead, we jump into the fountain (at this point we are so wet, we don’t care), pose for a pic with champagne. It was supposed to burst out, joyfully splashing us with bubbles. It absolutely refused to do so, no matter how much we shook it and even banged it against the concrete. Then, we wanted to light the cheap Chinese excuse for fireworks, but instead of exploding, the little balls of fire kinda limped through the air, with the saddest sound. Finally, we went up to the sea and decided to fire a rocket thingy. The lighter broke down. AND, ALL THIS TIME, IT IS STILL RAINING.

We went home. Four of our friends were not with us during this whole getting- into- the- fountain- on- 12 o’clock adventure. We thought that they just stayed to watch the concert. Two of them did. In fact, those two people were the only ones, out of all twelve of us, who saw the concert. However, the other two had an unforgettable experience. When we ran to the fountains, they ran to the “hotel”, only to discover that we locked all the doors. Wet and angry, they tried getting into cafes—but were turned down, due to no reservations. Finally, they were admitted to some smelly restaurant, full of men, no females whatsoever. All the food was already served to men and a waitress, feeling sorry for the two wet girls, brought them whatever she found in the kitchen—two pieces of bread and two pieces of cheese! Battling the drunken men who tried to dance with them and munching on stale bread, they greeted the year 2011. AND OF COURSE IT WAS STILL RAINING.

I won’t bore you, how the lights went off in our hotel, leaving us heatless, how we wore each others relatively dry clothes, shoes and socks, how we had an argument with the “hotel” owner and how many empty bottles we left behind—this post is too long already. When we finally got on the train, the night of the January 1^st, we discovered that a lady at the train station back in Tbilisi sold us the wrong tickets. We were in fact, proud holders of tickets route Tbilisi-Batumi, not the return tickets Batumi-Tbilisi. My name was yelled out several times “ Pasumonok, get off the train now!”, while my husband tried to obtain relevant tickets.

And you know what? When the train started leaving Batumi, THE RAIN STOPPED! Only, now we did not care.

the pics: us trying to open the damn champagne. Us trying to launch the rocket thingy