Another from the archives as I try to compress my last couple of years into some short summaries of memorable events…
It didn’t take me long to settle into life in Tbilisi. Albeit a very quiet and not-so-social life due to my working hours at the time.
I’d found a flatshare in one of the more local areas of town. The entrance, hidden away through a tunnel the width of a car, leads into a long courtyard with an array of buildings of all shapes and sizes. My flat was on the top floor and so returning home involved climbing several wooden staircases. Time having taken its toll they had a wonderfully ricketty appearance, holes dotted here and there that allow you (if you so fancy) to peep back to the staircase below. Their uneven character was one of those elements which let you know your house has become your home. Climbing them in darkness, it was only as the familiarity grew that I was able to move with any speed, knowing which one is deeper than the other, or which tips to the side at a certain moment.
My room was accessed by walking through another girl’s bedroom. This concept was a little alien to me at first, as I think it would be to many others, but travelling has let me see first-hand that having any kind of private space is a luxury some may never experience. So it is something I soon allowed myself to adjust to, grateful to have four walls to call my own. Judging by its size and high-ceilinged grandeur, the bedroom I walked through was originally intended to be a living room. Deceptively spacious, the flat was actually two floors and both of these hosted balconies with excellent views of the city beyond. At night a hill on the opposing side of the river could still be clearly seen, lit by a tall brightly coloured ferris wheel in Mtatsminda Park (an amusement park from which you could see aerial views of the city).
There was an incredible variety of character in the neighbourhood surrounding the flat. A nearby park offered an escape from the hub-bub of the city traffic with tranquil green spaces, and which is host to a small theatre that holds open-air music events through the summer. The area also has a permanent miniature theme park with rides which look so rustic I was surprised one day to find that they were still operating!
The city sports stadium stands across the road on the opposite corner to the park and a little way up the road a bustling marketplace can be found with vendors for fruit, vegetables, spices, nuts and random objects galore.
I did find that my location was a little further from many places I would have preferred to spend more time. Though I like to try and experience more cultural and traditional elements of a place, like others I have my comforts, and staying in a place for a longer period makes me want to hunt those things down. In this case, spending so much of my time in front of a computer screen, having the option for a change of scenery from my small four walls was appreciated. Typically, Georgians do not have the coffee shop culture of the west, nor anything similar to those I’d found in Hanoi, so finding a workspace nearby was a challenge. Instead I generally had to walk a fair distance, or take a taxi or Metro (the underground) to a more suitable working location. This was only a problem when considering the time spent for each journey vs. the time I would have liked to be working.
During my searches for work-friendly coffee shops, I soon discovered that Tbilisi is very much an up-and-coming digital nomad hotspot. As the name suggests, a digital nomad is someone who works digitally and remotely, travelling the world with their laptop by their side. As I realised this about Tbilisi, it occurred to me that I was entering a whole new world of travel.
I had left behind the life of a freely roaming backpacker and could no longer work and travel in English speaking countries now that my opportunities for working holiday visas had passed. Currently trying to establish myself online, and enjoy the freedom that working from any place can give, I could also feel the constraints. I needed to consider more carefully the places I could stay, the need for reliable internet on a daily basis, and life with a set working schedule. No more working long hours for 4 or 5 months of a year and then having several months of pure freedom at my feet.
With this change began a change in the people I met whilst travelling, no longer just people on their gap year, fresh out of university, or taking a break from work. I met people who’d often had many years inside an office and at some point, had taken the decision to continue their careers on their terms, the digital era taking away the location-based confines we once knew. So began my discovery of how I fit into this new world.
