Whirlwind in Tbilisi, Part 4. Saturday-my last day in this whirlwind trip in Tbilisi. My AirBnB hosts went above and beyond, helping me get my art supply laden luggage down the stairs, and then drove me over to the my appointment with Dr. Irina Koshoridze, Director, State Museum of Folks and Applied Arts of Georgia (she is also a Professor at Tbilisi State University.) It was a lovely visit. Irina told me she was a Fulbright Scholar in New York at NYU for Museum Studies. The Folk Arts Museum is a rare jewel. A former home in the center of Old Tbilisi, it has only been a two years in this location. It needs to be on everyone’s must visit list. The current exhibition is of blue printed tablecloths-part of a long tradition in Georgia (the word for table cloth is Supra-the same word for the classic Georgian feast.) The museum is extraordinary-with beautiful Georgian rugs, ceramics and metal work and paintings.
The taxi guy I thought had been lined up, never materialized. Fortunately a gentleman from the Folk Art Museum came with me to Isani, where cars and Marshutkas (mini vans) hang out and take passengers to various destination. He helped me to find a taxi. The process is a raucous ritual. How it works: car drivers yell out for riders going to their destinations. Once you find a car that is going where you want to be, you sit in the car and wait for every seat to be filled before getting on the road. We headed back to Telavi, a quiet uneventful ride –which is to say, nobody vomited-a frequent occurrence on the twisty roads. Nobody spoke, occasionally someone’s phone would ring. The driver had the radio on low, but cranked the volume when Gloria Gaynor magically came thru the airwaves.