HONEYMOONING IN GEORGIA

by Marcello di Cintio

Moonira and I learned only one word in Georgian during our visit to the ex-Soviet Republic: taplobistvay. The word means “honeymoon” and, as it turned out, it was the only word we ever needed to know.
The Georgians are a cheerful lot who need little incentive to make merry. The arrival of the morning sun seems all the occasion necessary to drain a bottle of vodka or a jug of the saperavi wine for which Georgia is famous. (Sadly, saperavi is cloying and sweet and about as palatable to western tastes as Georgia’s other famous export, Josef Stalin.) The Georgian arsenal of mirth is always on a hair-trigger, so when two foreigners on their honeymoon show up and mutter taplobistvay in a Canadian accent, things tend to get out of hand.
This happened for the first time in a minibus at the foot of Mount Kazbek, a peak whose profile we got to know well since it adorns the label on the country’s most popular beer. As we waited for the bus to depart for the capital, we mentioned to a man in the bus that we were on our taplobistvay. He left the bus immediately and walked to one of the tiny stalls nearby that sold cheap booze, chocolate bars, chewing gum, sausage links, and hanging bouquets of dried fish. He came back with a bottle of red wine. At his urging, and in honour of our recent union, we guzzled back cup after plastic cup until the bottle was empty. It was nine in the morning.
There were many moments like this, but our favourite taplobistvay-inspired mischief came on our last night in Tbilisi, Georgia’s faded capital city. Moonira and I were searching for a restaurant in the Old Town, but the few restaurants recommended to us were all empty and we were tired of solitary dining. We found a beer hall near the banks of the Mtkvari River. It was filled with noisy men drinking at long wooden tables. Stuffed animal heads adorned the walls. It was not the sort of place Moonira and I imagined for our last Tbilisi dinner, but at least the place was alive.

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