Six weeks in Tbilisi and why I nearly didn’t leave

I came for two weeks. I stayed for six. This is the thing about Tbilisi that nobody quite prepares you for: it is the kind of city that makes your existing life look like it was set up too quickly.

I had a flat in Prenzlauer Berg I was paying €1,400 a month for. In Tbilisi I found a two-bedroom apartment in the old town for €350. The WiFi was faster. The coffee was better. The wine was cheaper than water in most places I’d worked before.

But it wasn’t the economics. It was the pace.

Georgia runs on a different schedule than Western Europe. Meetings start late. Dinner starts at ten. Wine appears on the table before you’ve decided you want it. No one seems to be in a hurry. This sounds like a cliché until you’ve lived in Berlin for three years and forgotten what unhurried feels like.

I worked well there. Better than I had in months. The old town has a particular quality of light in autumn — golden and horizontal, coming through wooden balconies at a low angle. I started waking up early to catch it. I started taking long lunches. I started talking to the other people in the building, which in Berlin I had never done.

There was a woman called Nino on the floor above me who had a spare room she was renting out for almost nothing. She would sit in the courtyard in the evenings and have this extraordinary quality of not rushing the conversation. I interviewed her once for a piece I was writing. She said something I’ve thought about many times since: “The best thing about having a stranger in your home is remembering that strangers are not dangerous. They are just people who haven’t met you yet.”

I went back to Berlin in November. I’m going back to Tbilisi in the spring.