Buzzy the Bee

Like most mornings, today started with breakfast. At Rooms Hotel, my breakfast included two mini-khatchapuri boregs and the finest advil substitute that the hotel could offer. If I only knew what the day had in store, I may have had a piece or two more of toast. To wash it all down, three cups of cranberry juice - a juice that I exclusively drink on airplanes and in hotels. A quick shower to wash off the stench of cha-cha from the previous night, chased by a parliament light courtesy of Abdulla, and we were on our way to Signagi to check out some churches and taste some wine.

A hangover morning is best paired with quiet. Enter our bus driver for the day, who spoke only one language: yelling. If raucous was a person, our bus driver, perhaps in a previous life, beat him to death and assumed his spirit. A nice man, to be sure, but a character no less. Here is a man who speaks in ALL-CAPS. I am guilty, as I know many others are, of over-using the exclamation marks in emails to show enthusiasm and interest (or at least to avoid the passive aggressiveness of the exclamation mark’s less jazzy counterpart, the period). Our bus driver could not imagine abusing the exclamation mark for trivial electronic communications. He lives it. He is the exclamation mark!

Anyhow, as is typical of “tour group” tours, we went to some holy site, in this case a church, in some far away town in the countryside. Thus satisfying my need to enter a religious establishment once every ten years. As you can tell, because you are reading this, I didn’t immediately burst into flames upon entering the church. Whatever cha-cha was left in my system, however, did feel the presence of God and had its own existential crisis. I don’t know if cha-cha found God, but it summoned some strange demon in my stomach. So I did what any good Armenian would do - I lit two votive candles and ran straight to the bathroom. 

Next on the agenda was a short visit to a sleepy town on the other side of the mountain. As ancient legend has it, this is the town where love went to die. As ancient legal statutes has it, this was the first recorded incident of harassment in Georgia. Maybe I missed the point of the story, but I’m pretty sure the words the otherwise upbeat tour guide used was “love is dead.” I knew it. 

What happened next was so traumatizing that I can only express the events that unfolded not through conventional blog-speak, but by poetry. Here is the not-so-epic tale of the bee on the bus:

Buzzy the bee 

Had places to see

He hitched a ride

And came inside

Our bus to the winery

But make it he would not

Because poor Buzzy got caught

“It’s a wasp! I have an allergy”

Screamed the bus gallery

And just like that poor Buzzy the bee was swat

With one trauma behind us, we set off on encountering a second trauma for the day: lunch. An ideal way to end the day, if it had actually happened. Cha-cha made a return appearance, but was not welcomed by most. Talk about a love no more. What the meal lacked in, well, food, it made up for by providing us with laughs about our desperate situation. Rob’s animal crackers on the bus ride back were the life-saving crackers no one predicted we would need.

Lunch, or the lack there-of aside, the design and architecture of the Khareba winery was something else. The tower on the far-end of the compound provided a great view and a much needed moment of solitude for the introvert in me. The architecture, design, landscapes in Georgia, without exaggeration, are some of the most beautiful I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing. The level of intimate detail that I found so impressive in the post-modern back bar of Stamba hotel, in the center of hustle-bustle Tbilisi, is mirrored equally well in the far-away mountainside Khareba winery. 

I write this blog on the way back to the hustle-bustle of Tbilisi. As I reflect, maybe too bitterly, but all in good jest, about the experience of the day, I look out the window and am greeted with an unbelievable sunset. Purple, pink, orange, and red all melt together behind the mountains. A few specks of light shine in the distance. As blue, then black, overtake the night sky, those specks of light grow brighter. The red sky, like the red wine of Khareba, seem like a distant memory, and I can’t help but feel content. The specks of light now glow even brighter and have multiplied across the horizon. Unlike poor Buzzy, we’ve successfully made it home, to the hustle-bustle, here in Tbilisi. 

-- Avak K., Cohort 4