The overdue travel post

 Oh hey it's me.

It's been a while, partly because I've been traveling and partly because settling into Gqeberha has been a bit more of a process than other places.  There are a few possible reasons for this, but they all pretty much boil down to me not wanting to make two or three shopping trips in a single day, and how inadequate one trip is for actually setting up a new home space.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As with some other trips, I took a handful of pictures that have no specific context, so I'm going to link the whole album.  The pictures with some commentary will have it through this post, and the rest will just be free to leaf through or not, as you will.

On Wednesday, 20 August, I boarded a bus out of Batumi heading for Tbilisi.  Near the bus station in Batumi, they were building some new land in the Black Sea for a big luxury hotel.  I'm not sure what part of the process this is, but it amused me.
The cost of a flight from Batumi to Tbilisi was low, but the cost of a bus and hotel was lower.  So that made the decision pretty easy.  I'm glad I did, too - the scenery was pretty gorgeous.  I didn't realize how mountainous Georgia really is, nor did I expect to be going through as many tunnels as there were on the highway between the two cities.  I also didn't expect cows on the highway to be a regular thing.  I took relatively few pictures on the bus, because as you can see, the windows were pretty bad.

The hotel where I stayed had some pretty stunning views on the rooftop terrace where the included breakfast was served.  Speaks more to just how mountainous the region is.

The next morning, after seeing in the Tbilisi airport one of my top three favorite Barry's (alongside Bonds and Manilow), I boarded a plane to Hoda Airport in Qatar.  Qatar Airways, like many airlines outside the US, sort of puts our airlines to shame with the service.  This was a standard flight, 3-4 hours, but it was still a full meal service.  I also didn't expect it to be foggy in Qatar.

I assume that Qatar is much like a lot of the Middle East, especially the Arabian Peninsula, in that it sort of has more money than it knows what to do with so it approves rather large, overdesigned projects intended to flaunt that wealth and draw in more tourism and such.  The airport certainly fits that description with this large central faux forest area.  Beautiful and pleasant to walk through as a change from the standard sterile airports you see everywhere else, but feels out of place somehow. 
The airport also has these self-promo videos playing throughout the terminal, celebrating, I think, the 20th or 25th anniversary of the airport, or maybe celebrating making "Best Airport 2025" or something.  I wasn't entirely clear on it.  But when I say "throughout the terminal," I mean everywhere.  The red circles indicate three screens playing these videos that could be seen from one place. 

I spent about 6 hours in this airport before my flight to Cape Town, which was nearly 10 hours.  I spent another 4-6 hours laid over in Cape Town, which was also more mountainous than I expected, before my little flight to Gqeberha.  The airport had a display case of animal products that were confiscated, which I found interesting...and hard to take pictures of due to the glare.  Wasn't just me, either; as I was standing nearby, I watched four or five more people come up and struggle with it.
I got in to Gqeberha fairly late evening, maybe 7pm, but being that it's coming out of winter down here, it was getting dark already.
A note about Gqeberha: the name is actually from Xhosa, which is one of the 'click languages' of Africa.  Which means that the pronunciation is actually impossible to write out in a way that is clear to readers unfamiliar with the language and how it's written.  So just be aware that whenever you see it here, it probably doesn't sound like you think it does.  You can look up pronunciation videos if you're curious. 

 My stay here is an adorable little tiny home-esque place, what I believe is often called a "mother-in-law suite" because it's a fully contained, separate home on the property of another house.  I later learned this is one of two stays on the same property, along with the home itself.  This is the first time in my nomad travels that I've stayed in an AirBnB where the host lives on the same property.  I imagine it's pretty rare, of course, since most places I look for are fully-contained apartments so I'm not sharing a kitchen or bathroom with anyone.  These hosts also set themselves apart immediately by being the most welcoming, personable, and supportive people I think I've met.  I've known hotel staff to make less effort than these lovely folks.  They helped me get my luggage in, asked if I needed anything, took me around to multiple stores to find a new chair, and more that I can't think of right now.  Spoiling me rotten, quite frankly.

My explorations of Gqeberha have been minimal so far, mostly limited to shopping trips and very very nearby things.  But the little things still intrigue me, like how some familiar companies make different products here, or how some products exist here that I've never seen.

Finally being in an English-dominated area, though, has also lead me to seek out D&D again, and I've found a few people with whom I can play.  It'll be interesting to see if there are any cultural differences in how people perceive the game, how they run it, and so on.  Either way, I'm looking forward to it as one of the things I miss most from the US. 

 South Africa does, however, have these bastards.  These are the Hadada Ibis, and they're really annoying.  They have a tendency to fly over the house at 6am making their ridiculous, ear-splitting scream.  It's not just 6am, of course - they can be heard throughout the day, alongside some very persistent doves.  I think I heard an owl late last night as well.  One of my friends once commented that for those who have an ear to it, one of the culture shock elements of traveling can be how the birdcalls just...don't sound quite right from one place to another due to different species and such.  This is the first time I've noticed it, and it's mostly because these ibises are so obnoxious.

In closing for this post: an amusing sign inside an eatery. 

Wrapping up Georgia

 Been quite a while since my last post.  Which I think I sort of warned about.  Truth is, as I may have said before, being a nomad is just having a different backdrop every so often - you're still living your life day to day.  Still working, still cooking, still chores, and so on.  And among all that isn't necessarily interesting, exciting, or noteworthy stuff happening.

I will say about Batumi that I've warmed to it over the weeks.  I'll probably come back someday, if only to give the city and the culture a fair shake.  Maybe I'll go elsewhere in Georgia, I don't know yet.  But I've definitely come to recognize just how much a bad first impression soured the whole experience.  Maybe it's finding myself in candy bar form.

Probably not that one.

In part, I'm sure it's the walk I took one overcast morning a couple weeks ago.  I hadn't gotten down to the waterfront for more than a brief glance, and I wanted to see more of it further north.  Batumi continues to have Vegas vibes even in its footbridges.  This statue or sculpture or whatever the word is was nifty, kinda making the roundabout more thematic or something.  One thing I've noticed about Batumi is that where Plovdiv had stray cats, Batumi has dogs.  They're a larger animal so maybe fewer of them overall, but still notable.  I don't have a picture of this, but sometimes they sleep just splayed out across a sidewalk and do not care about how much they're disrupting foot traffic.  Almost charming, really.

The waterfront is decorated with some parks, ponds, and such.  I took this picture, one of two at least, to kinda show how the rapid touristy development kinda clashes at times with the older, dilapidated buildings around them, not just in recency of construction but in style and purpose.  These new buildings are meant to show off, to be glaring and obvious.  The older ones were meant to be lived in, even if they're dense.

Then of course there's the beach in Batumi, with bigger waves than I expected (my lack of education showing perhaps), some neat geological diversity, and this dock or whatever that's under construction.

Seriously though.  I did not expect these waves.

 On my walk back, I went around the pond on the other side, finding a bridge to a cocktail bar on a pond island.  A nearby restaurant had some interesting little historical miniatures ("It's only a model").

And home I went.  It was nice to get out, to see more, and not be melting along the way.

During the past week or so, the temperature has been dropping a bit, and the humidity *really* reducing.  I went on another walk that was mostly just getting out in the less awful weather, though I still got some pictures of the diverse attractions dotting the waterfront, this neat archway, and a ramp to the center of the earth.  Good to know that Hades is ADA compliant at least.

 I've gotten out to eat a couple times.  In my last post, I noted how Wendy's here has a pizza side.  I had to try it, naturally.  They call this the "Baconator" pizza.  It's...odd.  I mean, the pepperoni is on point, Plovdiv pizza didn't have that.  But the bacon seems like they just kind of held it up to a heatlamp for a second before baking the pizza, resulting in a very soft, almost worryingly undercooked texture.  And apparently bacon wasn't enough so they have ham on there too.  It's a strange creation.
But it's still pizza and I still ate it.

The other dining experience of note was this tikka masala.  And this comes with what I think is a funny story.

Keen-eyed observers might notice that there's no rice on that table.  Anyone familiar with Indian food knows that typically, at least in American and China, these dishes are served with rice.  This one?  Just bread.  Wasn't really naan, one of the two main kinds of Indian bread, but wasn't quite the normal local bread style either.

But the things get set down, and I just stare at it for a moment.  I know how to eat this with rice.  I don't know how I'm supposed to eat it with just bread.  Obviously I could simply fork up the chicken chunks and then sop the bread in the sauce, but if that's somehow rude or transgressive, I didn't want to be "that guy."  I really spend a not-insignificant amount of worry on whether I'm being "that guy."
So I went up to the waitress, who had proven to have at least a small smattering of English, and said "Excuse me.  I have a very stupid question.  How am I supposed to eat this?"

The question, unfortunately, was a language barrier all its own.  "How" turned out to not be a word she was particularly familiar with.  So we kind of went back and forth a bit, her explaining what I'd ordered and then asking if it wasn't good, and me trying to explain what I'm used to and understand the difference.  Finally, she just said something to the effect of "You can use the bread, and a spoon is okay."

These would be much more amusing, pleasant moments and memories if I weren't a deeply socially anxious person.  Instead, I often leave them feeling like I could've should've would've handled it better, even though I did my best and that's all I can expect of myself.  There's a reason I very purposefully chose an English-speaking country as my next destination.  I really do need a break from the barriers.

I leave Batumi on the 20th, Wednesday.  Bus to Tblisi with an overnight stay there, flight to Port Elizabeth/Gqeberha from there (two transfers, I think).  I'm not "done" with this country, but I'm looking forward to the next.