Alex From Georgia

Before we leave the ‘stans I just have to introduce you to Alex who we met in a small village outside Batumi, Georgia. He is pictured with his daughter Sofie.⁣

He noticed we were English and started up a conversation. He was Russian and living in Georgia. ⁣

The exchange with Alex was possibly the most useful of the trip. He sat with us, helped us order food and then joined us for lunch. He taught us various useful Russian phrases like hello, goodbye, thank you, bicycle, to eat, to sleep, to drink etc. I wrote all these words phonetically on my phone and I can’t tell you how much we’ve referred to it and how easily it made our time in the ‘stans. Because we had a conversation with Alex a lot of the words and phrases stuck in our minds better than when we rely on google translate.⁣

In the second picture we are with the chef who cooked our food.⁣

While we were eating we were joined by an older man who I never managed to picture, but he was a character! If memory serves me well he was 80, but he did not look it!! He was the village barber but he was missing one finger.⁣

He turned to Stew and asked a couple questions – “do you speak Russian, do you speak Georgian?” Alex explained our situation then laughed at the old mans response.⁣

Alex translated: “You don’t speak Russian, you don’t speak Georgian…what the hell are you doing here?” 🤣⁣

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@ Batumi