There's nothing we can't face...

Except for bunnies.

It'll make sense in a minute.  (Unless it doesn't, in which case you need to watch some DVDs, stat.)

Back in January, I made a list.  (Remember how I LOVE lists!?)  As of last Saturday evening, the list looked like this:

• Kazbegi/Khevsureti (overnight [long weekend?])
• Gori/Uplistsikhe (overnight)
• Kakheti/Telavi (overnight)
• Mtskheta (day trip)
• Davit Gareja (day trip)
• Rustavi (day trip)

Now, that's a hell of a lot better than it looked at the beginning of May, but with the end drawing nigh I was determined to not let a weekend go by without being able to cross something off.  Unfortunately the end drawing nigh is coinciding with the money wearing thin, so a hired cab out to Davit Gareja is not going to be in the cards.  (Also apparently right now is not the world's best time to visit Davit Gareja, as I might find myself rather awkwardly in Azerbaijan.)  My last weekend in Georgia is ironclad-set for Kazbegi, although the original plan of including one extra night and a trip to awesome Khevsureti is not going to happen either.  That left Kakheti, which I did just see (albeit quite briefly), or Rustavi.

Day trip to Rustavi!  Wooo!

As luck would have it, my very excellent friend David One (from the epic hike to the Mestia Cross fame) was going to be in Tbilisi for his last weekend before shipping out, and he agreed to accompany me on a very unplanned, unresearched Sunday trip to Rustavi.  "What will we do there?"  David asked.  "I don't know," I said.  "But I'm sure there will be some ancient ruined thing on the top of some hill that we can walk to."

Before heading out (as in, in the ten minutes before I had to leave), I looked up Rustavi on wikipedia and wikitravel.  And... oh my goodness.  An industrial Soviet-era town partially built by German POWs?  Great.  A whole variety of steel plants and factories?  Super.  To quote from wikitravel:  "there's a river, and plenty of crumbling apartment buildings to wander past. "  Damn, sign me UP.  Nonetheless, it was on the list, so to Rustavi I would go.

First though, I had to meet David at Didube.  This proved uneventful, although of course we still had to navigate around the sharks and sheisters trying to tell us that every marshutka in Georgia had been compromised by aliens, and would we by any chance like to take his taxi?  (Taxi drivers have really been pissing me off lately, there might be a whole separate post forthcoming about that.)  As with the trip to Mtskheta, it takes twice as long to actually get to Tbilisi as it takes to actually get to the town.  Southeast Georgia is surprisingly flat, and treeless.  Down even further south by Davit Gareja, the land turns into full-on desert.  It's pretty in a stark, barren sort of way, but at least the hills and fields are still green.  We passed a couple giant auto lots, and then out in the distance, rising out of nowhere was this gloomy collection of Soviet-era apartment blocks.  "Wow," I say to David, indicating the grimy buildings rising forlornly into the naked haze.  "Can you imagine coming out here to Georgia and finding out you'd been posted there?"

And then the driver makes a turn and I realize that those very apartment blocks are in fact... Rustavi.

I'm not gonna lie.  Rustavi is hella depressing.  My friends and I joke about how Georgians always tell you "there's nothing there!"... but here... there kind of is nothing there.  David and I rode along down the main drag looking for... something to make us want to get off the bus.  Finally I saw something that might be a restaurant, so we got off and began our forage for food.

Odd modern art steel sculpture, and three of Rustavi's six trees in the background.

There are no trees in Rustavi.  Well, maybe a couple, that have obviously been deliberately planted there.  I thought Poti was flat and lacking in both character and viable shade, but Rustavi takes the prize.  All in all, it was a hot and uninspiring trek down the road.  Eventually we did spot an open restaurant around the corner from the Elit Electronics shop, and plunked down at one of the two outside tables.  The restaurant was surprisingly good, although the menu was only in Georgian and the toilet was both smelly and Turkish.  (It reminded me so much of being back in Poti!)  We ordered a ton of food and a couple drinks, but at check time the bill only came to 13 lari each, which also reminded me a whole lot of being back in Poti!  Almost worth the trip right there, it would have easily been at least twice as expensive at any restaurant in Tbilisi.

After food though, we had to decide what to do next.  Up on a nearby hill, there was indeed something we could hike to, unfortunately nothing interesting like a church or a ruin though -- it was a giant steel cross built by Rustavi steel workers.  Some friends of mine had hiked up there recently, so it was on my mind, and after seeing the town I sure didn't know how else we would fill our afternoon.  David was unsure.

"Will it be fun?"

"Well... no.  But we can hike up a treeless mountain and get a view, or walk around a treeless town and find... something else.  It's gonna be hot either way."

With that stellar and implacable argument in place, he agreed but decided we would need to take some cognac with us to fortify ourselves for the adventure.  Hot-ass hike up a steep hill with no shade in sight?  Hard liquor is clearly the key to success!

And we were off.

That is a lot of open space.  Tiny cross in the distance, growing out of David's head.

I will say, hiking straight uphill, in summer, where there are no trees and no flat stretches to catch your breath is a freaking chore.  About two-thirds of the way up, we did find this one clump of bushes that offered shade, and we cowered there for about 15 minutes, regaining our strength and resolve with sips of sun-warmed cognac.

But eventually, re reached the top and took refuge in the shade of a concrete skeleton that appeared to be a bombed-out building, possibly all that was left standing after an unpublicized nuclear attack.

We found where Georgians had stacked up some rubble in an approximation of a stone table and benches -- never underestimate a Georgian when there is a supra at stake! -- and fortified ourselves with more cognac and delicious Georgian cherries.

Then it was time for more exploring around the ruin, and the final push up one last hill to the cross itself.

David had been providing marching music with his iPhone, and while at the cross we discovered that both of us were huge Buffy fans -- specifically, of the musical episode!  So we got to stand and gaze out at this incredible view, while singing along to "Once More with Feeling."  Utter, complete win.

Not a tree in sight!  Or... anything else.

Capturing Rustavi

We explored more building shells, then it was time to slip, slide, and skid our way back down the mountain, which sure beat the hell out of staggering up it.

You better believe we went up.

Does not capture the steepness.

Back in town, we stopped at the World's Saddest Playground before a quick beer-and-fries pit stop, and hopping a Tbilisi-bound marshutka back home.

Yep.

I had a really good day with my friend; we had a lot of laughs and I was pretty happy we got to hang out before he flew.  In a way it was kind of fitting that we pushed ourselves hiking up some random mountain to some random metal cross for no other reason than we had nothing better to do.  After all, that was how our friendship started!  That said, I am very glad I didn't attempt to make Rustavi a solo trip, because I would have been quite bored.  Well, one more for the checked column.

This weekend is Kazbegi, eastern Georgia's Svaneti.  I hope I have saved the best for last!  More humping it uphill... cannot wait!  At least Kazbegi boasts an old church or two.  Although I'm sure they have plenty of random metal crosses too.