1. Agoraki… It’s difficult to lead taxi drivers to a house with no address in a rural suburb with no name but the Georgian word for “vacation home.”
2. Distance from one place to another is a matter of transportation when there’s forty-five-minute walk down a dirt road before you even get to the nearest bus stop.
3. Be wary of ordering Khinkali, traditional Georgian dumblings, on a first date. Your ability to eat the khinkali without spilling the broth inside is said to be an indicator of your proficiency (or lack thereof) in the art of kissing.
4. Almost half the population of Georgia is named either George or Nino. That’s not an exaggeration. Check their census records.
5. When the wind is hitting you hard enough to blow tears out of your eyes while you’re walking uphill over a snow-covered ridgeline, you might as well laugh, but when you finally get home, make sure all the windows are closed. Wind in Agoraki has been known to lift a roof or two and there’s no telling what it might do to a window.
6. As we learned from our tour guide, when you’re cold, a little bit of the Georgian “cha-cha” will warm you right up. Granted, that might be true of any drink that’s 70+ percent alcohol.
7. In a country with an 8,000 year old winemaking tradition, toasting is quite the production. Gaumarjos!
8. If you’re looking for a bit of luck in Tbillisi, one of the locals might recommend you try sawing off the toenail of the 300-year-old Griffin statue in the middle of Freedom Square. The city itself has been invaded and destroyed forty times, so you can draw your own conclusions on that one.
9. Embrace interruption: If you’re ever approached by a mysterious man in a small Georgian restaurant while dancing with the elderly hostess, agree to follow him back to his winery for an impromptu tasting. You won’t regret it.
10. Even if there’s a cow on the packaging and you get a pleasant nod from the butcher, you still might not have ended up with ground beef.
11. “Be still and know that I am God.”
