Borjomi Adventures - Day One

I wrote the first post in this series of my adventures in Borjomi, but we arrived late at night after jumping off the train after a near five hours of commuting through the villages and mountains of Georgia from Tbilisi. The first thing we did was grab a little bit of food and go to sleep. I woke up early despite this, I tend to wake up early on the days where I'm travelling, almost powered by an unknown amount of energy that isn't really present in the days where I don't travel. It was still quite warm around this time. We were reaching the end of summer but it had yet to really cool off. The surrounding areas of the town were kept tightly within the mountains, with a stream that ran through the middle of it. It caused a really nice breeze in that warm heat. I woke up before everyone else and grabbed a quick coffee. My introduction to Borjomi in the morning was a place of rustic looking stone and steel. Coated in a layer of green from dense forestry. This place felt different to most I had explored previously. It had an odd atmosphere to it. This feeling of abandonment but peace. The feeling that it had been forgotten in time, almost like a fake town that had been quickly sprung up upon our arrival and turned into a living set.

This feeling was amplified later as everyone else got up and we decided to venture out for some lunch and coffee. Walking down the main street of the town and back across the bridge we had crossed the night before. It led across the rail and towards an old square. Old Soviet styled architecture surrounded, but much of the buildings looked empty. Void of any life, with the colours faded in time and the signs of wear evident on their walls. Growth from plants, moss, and mould from the damp environment that surrounded. A relatively common sight around Georgia where this environment feels swampy, and its buildings have been neglected over the decades, in much need of a new paint job and a bit of a tidy up. But that care never comes. Pieces of pillars, walls, and ceilings had pieces crumbling off. Yet this was the main square of the town, where two main cafes resided. One of which was surprisingly good. Our first day in Borjomi was without much planned. After the travels the day before, we wanted something a little slower to just enjoy the environment and take a quick look around. The town was actually smaller than expected, but still felt homely despite that feeling of it all being a facade.

I have a bad habit of forgetting to take photographs of food, so there are none of the gigantic feast to which we had no idea we were getting ourselves into. For a small cafe, the menu was concise but very good. Offering a varying degree of foods to which their portions were absolutely huge. We didn't expect this, but I don't think any of us regretted it after neglecting our stomachs for the past eighteen or so hours. After that we took a deeper stroll into Borjomi. Here you can see those old homes. All stacked around each other in some cluttered fashion as if they've been thrown together and left there. It was rare that you'd ever see anyone coming in or out of many of these homes. It gave the assumption that many of the homes were abandoned, or simply just rented out for short stays for the few tourists here. Even still in summer, the town's general activity was low. The streets were mostly empty, and there really wasn't much of a night life in the town during our stay there. I quite enjoyed that, though. It felt like a real place that had been lived in and wasn't trying to become a major theme park with loud attractions. Still true to its past where it was made for retreats into the beauty of nature. 

The town had a nature reserve and a botanical garden to it. The botanical garden itself was mostly under construction with relics from the Soviet Union scattered throughout. It wasn't that interesting there, though you could try the natural mineral water straight from the source, and there was no charge for it. The workers would just fill up a plastic cup from the tap and hand it to you. It doesn't taste great at all. But hey, it's an experience! In this area I took the drone with me, I shot a few photographs and videos from above, but I think I'll feature those in the next post. Most of this roam through the garden was just seeing annoying loud Kamaz trucks passing through, throwing out fumes into the air and not caring for the people walking around the park, happy to almost run you over. It felt typical of what I had seen from Georgians so far. I ignored that though, and found it surprising when a person from the train, the most suspicious person from it, was roaming the park that day too. He tried to speak to me but the language barrier made it a bit difficult. I told him I was taking videos with the drone and showing him the environment from above. We shook hands and I never saw him again.

At this point I was using the Helios 44-2 lens with a 58mm focal length, I was using an adapter to put this Soviet vintage glass on the Sony A6000. I quite liked how the images turned out with it, they aren't super sharp but they have a slight haze to them, that beautiful vintage look. I didn't use it the entirety of this trip though, I would find myself switching between lenses the whole time. This first day felt like a bit of exploration and pursuing photography. Taking photographs of pretty much everything I came across. Just not caring for the subject and having fun with it all. I had been needing this for a while as I had grown a little tired of shooting things with the camera. That fatigue of treating it all like work rather than just shitting the shutter whenever for fun. In the end, we roamed part of the botanical garden, relaxed, and then went home for some food. It was a short day, but a very relaxing one. A good start to our Borjomi travels as nothing was rushed, and everything was a slow exploration of a small, quiet town with a lot of history and things to offer.