In December 2023, we went back to Tbilisi for the first time since our visit in 2019. At that time, we were crossing all of Asia by train, and so Tbilisi was a natural stop. In 2019, we had a concert at a space called Ikalto Microresidency, and we’d been hoping to return ever since, so we did. Back to the hills where the Ikalto residency stands, we found the same fantastic views, and the very same soviet-era elevator that you need to feed with a small coin for each ride, but this time at the top was an even better equipped music studio (counting up to 11 snare drums!). We had time to make some new friends, mostly among the expat Russian community around the residency which has really grown considerably in the country due to recent events. We also had the chance to discover local music scene a bit, including Mutant Radio and CES.
Eager to experience once again one of our favorite Georgian dishes, the day after we arrived we soon headed downhill for a kachapuri. In the streets, right around the residency we would always find delicious bread freshly baking, and some buffet-style canteens too.
This time around we tried some more traditional foods for the first time: we discovered how much we love dried persimmon! But we also tried tklapi, which is a traditional Georgian puréed fruit leather; we also got completely addicted to churchkhela, even though we are no experts on the many different kinds that you can find around.
Together with Araik, who runs the residency, we also had the fabulous chance to experience a wine testing in a newly opened local shop, and it turns out that we really love Quevri wine! Araik also initiated a regular series of wine nights on Mondays, which were sometimes well attended too. Another musician, Natasha. was living in the house, waiting for her French visa to arrive, and we got to see one of her performances at a venue called Revolution Bar, that ended with one of the stray dogs even joining the audience in a very cute manner. After her concert, we also briefly visited the local makerspace community, where a team was just starting a new adventure in building small synth modules called “Microrack”, and who was speaking grandly about the makerspace in Yerevan, also opened by Russian expats.
Fresh bread and sweets near Ikalto on Christmas
Our Christmas and our New Year’s Eve also were spent in the company of the Russian community, and we got to learn about the foods that they would have eaten at home (including caviar), we shared an improv performance with Araik and a guitarist visiting from Batumi, and we were an audience for another concert by a pianist living in Germany instead, who proposed a classical repertoire in the form of a ‘general rehearsal’ in preparation for an upcoming competition.
View from Uplistsikhe
With a different pair of friends we organized a small trip outside of town, toward the stone town of Uplistsikhe, one of the oldest urban settlements in Georgia, with a long running history that went through many phases. You can even see the ruins of a 6th-century basilica largely cut into the rock. On the way there, we also stopped by Mtskheta, one of the oldest cities in Georgia sitting at the confluence of two rivers, that we could also see from the hill of the Jvari Monastery. The stop on the way back instead had a different flavour: we stopped in Gori to visit the Stalin Museum, which includes the house where he was born (we could only see it from the outside), a large palazzo that contains a historical overview of the figure and showcases items actually or allegedly owned by Stalin, and finally his railway carriage, used by Stalin from 1941 onwards, including his attendances at the Yalta Conference and the Tehran Conference.
Besides this trip, we did not really get out of the city at all, but still we enjoyed some touristic activities on our own: we hiked up to the statue of Mother Georgia, we visited the Dezerter Bazaar, we got to see an interesting exhibition on Abkhazia at the Cinema of the National Archives of Georgia where we would also sneak into for some library time, an exhibition at the very cool Tbilisi Photography & Multimedia Museum, a bowl of ramen at the Japanese punk community of Uzu House, and finally we also saw a street parade with Christmas decorations and many many flags. This time around we even spent a few hours trying to learn at least reading the language, which had its (limited) results.
Musically speaking, we were also very productive! We got to share some new material during a concert at Jazz Union, but the most exciting musical moment was probably the time we spent recording at CES, in the building around Fabrika, where we could make use of a Rhodes, and learn about some locally made tape machines. Tbilisi never disappoints!
