Batumi Trip - August 2011

In early August the police academy director upon the suggestion of a colleague of mine from America arranged a trip for all the foreign teachers, four in total, and few employees, including one of my two direct supervisors, to go on a trip to Batumi, the coastal beach hot spot of Georgia. We would be driven there, stay in a hotel, and basically swim and eat our way around the city.

We left Tbilisi early Friday morning. Two hours into the trip we would stop in Kashuri to sit in a small forest, drink tea, and have breakfast. While we were eating breakfast a convoy of black SUV's outfitted with bullet proof glass and reinforced steel would cruise on by. It was the closest any of us every got to seeing the president of Georgia or at least seeing his convoy. It got me thinking about all kinds of things like...

Why didn't he stop to say hi? He must have seen our police academy van logo.

Man, it would be really easy to attack his convoy if you were any organized well funded black ops or terrorist team.

Is her wearing a suit or slumming it?

Is he going to be in Batumi?

Will we see him at a lunch or dinner just hanging out like one of us? After all, my boss is kind of a big deal and we are Americans, Canadians, and Australians, perhaps it would be good diplomacy to thank the foreigners for all their hard work.

We arrived in Batumi in the afternoon to find out that the president was in fact in Batumi staying at the Sheraton Hotel, but we would be staying at a different hotel. A hotel a bit off the main strip, in fact a hotel without a paved road, a view, or a decent restaurant, but free is free so who cares. Everything was paid for and Georgian people of means like to eat in nice places.

We would eat a couple of times on the water with a seaside view and one time in a plush restaurant atop a fifteen story building with a revolving upper deck and view of the whole of Batumi. There is a South Beach Miami feel to a lot of the higher end newer restaurants and clubs in Georgia. Most things are white and designed for lounging. Bars not only sell alcohol but you can smoke cigarettes, cigars, and shisha or flavored tobacco from hookahs or water pipes at your table. These places are well outside the price range of regular Georgians, but the upper class and elite frequent these places with great regularity. Not unlike China, the middle class isn't big enough yet to fill these places, but will be in the years to come.

We would go to a dolphin show which reminded me of Florida in many ways. In fact Batumi felt like a combination of Florida meets Mediterranean. It has the beaches but they are stone covered, the water is a perfect temperature, but after three meters drops off steeply and you have to tread or swim, guys are renting wave runners, but they are the turbo charged ones you don't see often in Florida, you can drink on the beach, and the backdrop to the coastline are tree covered hills extending all the way into Turkey which you can see from the shore. Like Florida it is a place that families come and where children will remember going. The one or two times daddy was around and mommy and daddy were happy together. We all have these photos, somewhere around five to nine years old where things were perfect, life was simpler.

The two nights we were in Batumi our director insisted we go to Take Five Club behind the Sheraton. Both nights were Brazilian night. Again, a lounge type atmosphere with music playing. The four performers, two men and two women, performed twice each night, for about forty five minutes each set. The show primarily consisted of two half naked women shaking there asses and well built guys doing Capoeira, a Brazilian art form that combines elements of martial arts, sports, and music.

One girl had a great bottom and shook it a lot. The men really liked it. The rest were surprised at the costumes and sexual nature of the dancing. Most people probably never saw a dark skinned person before with black and white features, what I believe is referred to as really "mixed" up. The majority of Brazilians are mixed, small percentages are black, and a quarter or so consider themselves white. Why do people say Brazilians are smoking hot people? Perhaps it has something to do with the mixing of people over the centuries. Half German half Japanese, half black and half white, half black and half Asian, and so on makes for some good looking people.

Here is how the evolution of a Georgian night club evening goes.

10-11pm: Club starts to fill. People are seated in groups of four to twelve. People order food and drinks. People are mostly seated and beginning to drink.

11pm-12am: Heavy consumption of alcohol begins. Show starts. People start dancing on the fringes. Set one ends and the music gets a little louder and people dance in fits and starts. The DJ basically has attention deficit disorder (ADD) because no song lasts longer than 30-45 seconds so the crowd can't really get a groove going and at the same time within one minutes time has this resurgence of energy because they recognize a new song and scream and yell before repeating process. It is quite tiresome if you like getting a groove on. Everyone is dressed well and the places screams upper class and elite people of means.

12am-1am: People are pretty sauced my now. Cigarette smoking increases, drinks accumulate, drunk people want less drunk people to get happier and drink more, dance more, and smile more. The second set begins as people cool off from dancing. The second set finished on a high note with pictures and a nice lead into the dancing part of the night club scene. By now the families have left and the mostly single or divorced people are remaining.

Girls anywhere else in the world would be ripe for the picking but here they are only the marrying kind letting off some steam. Men are hardly present as the only men with money tend to be older and more interested in watching over their flock of girls, mostly daughters, or relatives. The younger guys are getting their drink on together and occasionally girlfriends of these guys are sitting together chatting it up. The dance floor is packed that is, forty or so people packed, it is more of an outdoor a catering hall probably only open a few months a year, then a dance floor as we know it, the surround areas have some girls on ecstasy or cocaine or high levels of alcohol doing there best interpretation of a stripper before stumbling in their high heel shoes.

1am-2am: The crowd has really thinned out. Rush hour as we know it in America where you have about a one hour window to meet someone and have a one night stand that turns into a meaningful relationship doesn't exist in Georgia. What seems to happen during this one hour is one more round of drinks, one more brief bounce around on the dance floor, and the reduction of sugar in your system, the glazed over look in your eyes, and the emptiness that lies behind them showing throw as you realize you are all alone. Couples are going to their hotel rooms together and you are going to sleep along again tonight. Repeat this the second night and that is a typical weekend at the Take Five Club in Batumi.

It really was a good fun trip though. I enjoyed being with the people I was with. We got the royal treatment except for the hotel rooms and transportation to and from Tbilisi, we didn't pay for any drinks and we could drink and eat as much as we wanted. Most people had a good time. It was nice to see my bosses take a break from working all the time. The food was good, the views were good, and the beaches were really nice. I am going back in two weeks on my own, perhaps I will see things differently. We will see.