Georgian Journeys: Poti Anecdotes

Here is a series of anecdotes from my visit to Poti, Georgia at the beginning of March. First of all, Poti is a port city along the Black Sea not far from the border of the semi-autonomous Republic of Abkhazia. This may account for one anecdote:

1. Fulbrighters, Destinee, Shawn, and I, plus an English Language Fellow from Ukraine were walking through the forest. We came across a random door in the middle of the path, nested between two brambly bushes. We found this odd. Just a few short yards later, we stumbled upon some sort of military outpost.

The not very well secured door.

A military watchtower?

What I thought at first was a tractor, turned out to be
some sort of artillery equipment.

2. We had come to Poti with the express purpose of visiting Kolkheti National Park, a place noted for its variety of birds who supposedly winter there during this time of year. We were dropped off by the entrance of the park, but immediately I found the location dubious. The lettering on the park sign was falling off and there was construction equipment laying around. We never did quite find this national park and instead chose to randomly walk through the forest.

Dilapidated park sign

3. We explored an abandoned building.

4. We were walking along a forest path for awhile when Destinee mused: "I'm surprised we haven't seen any dogs." Seconds later, we heard barking and a dog stumbled onto the path. Shawn waved a stick at it and it ran away. Then another dog started barking. We decided to turn around.

5. Upon arrival in Poti, we asked a taxi driver to take us to a good hotel by the beach. He told us he knew a hotel that was in a "perfect" location "by everything". The hotel ended up resting outside the city a ways in the forest by nothing except a lonesome restaurant. The good news was that it was not far from a desolate Black Sea beach.

The Black Sea

We finally saw our birds: seagulls.

Fulbright Sakartvelo "Georgia"

6. In the restaurant on one particular evening as we were having dinner, at a table nearby were a group of boisterous Georgian men. They were trying to sing and harmonize but were doing both rather poorly. After noticing our arrival, they started saying "no problem" several times in English, I think, to gauge our reaction. After enough alcohol was consumed, one man sauntered over to us to propose a toast to our mothers. He then told us he was single and asked for Destinee's hand in marriage. We Fulbrighters hightailed out of there pretty quickly.

7. And lastly, we explored a little bit of Poti itself.