Summer - out of the - city

Listening to Joe Cocker and thinking about this summer I realized how romanticized is this idea of spending the hot days on the concrete. Yes. It has its own charm - being one of the few residents in your city, feeling as if you owned it, while walking half-empty streets.You can slow down your pace and enjoy the space, usually filled with all the hustle-and-bustle.

Yeah.... but really, when the thermometer jumps over 30 (or over 40!!!), I can honestly admit - the only thing I can think about is how to GET OUT somewhere where it's green and fresh, and shady, and you can drink something nice and cool, in the breaks between swimming in the cool water..... mmm...

This year I actually had a chance to escape a little bit. There was no water - but there was green and fresh,and cool too. I went to Bakuriani, a Georgian skiing resort. The main noise raises there in winter, when everyone comes for skiing - but in summer it is a perfect place for families with small kids; and for summer schools, conferences, trainings and seminars. As I don't have small kids, I went there for a summer school. That didn't give me much time to discover all that is to be seen there, but only to get to a place where it's 10 degrees cooler than in Tbilisi (i.e.,~27:)!!!.... it was amazing - I wanted to sleep all the time (because I finally could!), and go for a walks around the village, to breath the air of pine trees... The only drawback is that in such places there is really not much to do. There was only one bar open in summer time, and I didn't have enough time to ride horses (and courage too, actually..). So making circles around the village (that is, ~5 km on foot in a fine circle), buying ice-cream in small local shops or hanging around our hotel (which was once grand, and didn't change much since then:) took all my free time. I managed, though, to get into shoes of many people who decide to spend their holidays with a family somewhere in the mountains. To put it in one sentence: very quiet, very fresh, slow - and takes some imagination to find entertainment for oneself.

For P.S. - sharing a few views of the place:

Bakuriani in winter. Taken from here

....aaaand this is the place in summer:

If you stand in the middle of the valley you can see similar views 360 degrees around. Taken from here.