Davide Cassenti

Georgians say that their country is the land of the hospitality: actually you can think they just want to praise it, but you should try and probably you would realize that it is not so wrong. I had an appointment with my friend Natia to go to Nariyala, a really wonderful part of Tbilisi, but before our meeting I received an invitation from an italian teacher to partecipate to the students’ party for the end of the year; since Natia is studying italian, we decided to go there before going to Nariyala, together with another friend, Tako. Since we had to wait an hour and an half before the party, Natia decided to invite us to her grandparents’ house for a while.

Entering the apartment was an experience that remembers the horror house at the Luna Park, with the old stairs, no lights and strange noises while walking; the flat itself, however, although quite similar to Pisa’s leaning tower, was nice and Natia’s grandmom welcomed us very kindly. No way to enter an house in Georgia without being considered as a god: after 3 minutes the table in the center of the room was full of tea, sweets and god-knows-what.

I will never forget the mandarines in the plate: yes, because as soon as grandmom saw I liked them, she filled my jacket with tons of them, even if I was like “no please, it’s enough”; result was that for 3 days I walked in Tbilisi asking to everyone “მანდარინი გინდა?” (mandarini ginda, do you want a mandarin?); I have still one on my table right now. Of course, offering a tea and some fruits is not enough, and by entering the house we were already automatically invited for a dinner in the same evening.

The italian party was nice: students prepared some italian songs and poetries to read, there were food and drinks and at last they also did a quiz with questions about Italy which made me win a nice little puppet-keyring, because I was the first answering which book wrote Dante Alighieri. After the party we finally went to see Tbilisi from Nariyala: view from there is really beautiful, day was nice and we had really great time there.

And finally, after a walk on the hills, dinner time came: we didn’t regret Natia’s grandparent’s invite and we came back at their house. On the menu there were 2 dishes: lobiani and kartopiliani. Grandmom didn’t want any help to prepare them and after some time, once again, the table was full of food. I will never forget that old nice woman watching at us saying “ჭამე, ჭამე” (eat, eat) and especially asking Natia how to say it in italian; then she was looking at me again with the italian version of it “mangia, mangia”: really funny!

Dinner, however, was really tasty and those people were very nice with us; and it happens with many people here: maybe that’s why Georgia stayes in everyone’s heart once came here.