Off Silk Roadin'

Below is a short post about our experiences with Edik, our taxi driver who took us to various interesting places while we stayed in Tbilisi. Taxi drivers are a wealth of information regardless of whether you’re wanting to go play bingo or looking for somewhere to have a fantastic meal, and Edik certainly served us well in this regard. He was quite a character, and if you read on you should come to the same conclusion.

We parked our car and took a day off from driving. Our taxi driver Edik, Armenian 71, family from the Artvin area of present day northeast Turkey – obsessively sought out the shade when he looked for parking. He’d rather park further, walk longer, if the car was a little shadier.

He wiped his brow and talked about shade obsessively, as he did about many other things. When we would get out at one destination or another, and then we’d look for him, we’d have to look around for places of shade, where he might likely be.

Edik had a theory about where and how to honk. When we were driving against traffic on a one way street, he let out a long one. “This is because he is not staying on his side of the road.””You have to reserve some honks for the ladies also, just to let them know,” and as we drive past, “oops, she’s not so good from in front, I regret that honk.””I like it when girls wear black. Black is a color of elegance.”

I asked him about the signs advertising apartments with the adjective “Euroremodel”.

“Da, eto u nas tak seichas delayut” = “Yes, this is how it is done nowdays.””Eto kak?” = “This being what exactly?””Eto znachet vse kak nado, vse kharosho.” = “This means it’s done how it is supposed to be, all good.”

The appartment we were staying in was definately not a euroremodel. (Though we stayed in one soon after.)

He advertised himself further, “You got to go where the cabbies go to eat.” No one knows the city like the cabbies. And he did take us to a good place, “where the intellectuals eat” and we had delicious soup dumplings called Khingali, (the leftovers of which we packed up for Edik’s mother in law.) After endearing us most of the day, visting old town, syngagogue, hill top park where Stalin’s mom is burried, to embassies and banks, he extracted too much from us playing the sympathy card, and we let on, being vulnerable to that.