Strange Things Happen in Georgia’s Famous Baths
One of the highlights of Georgia and Tbilisi, for the obscurity of the experience, were the Georgian Baths.
Similar in nature to the traditional Turkish Baths; but the bigger and more explicit brother. Abanotubani, is the old region of Tbilisi and is home to these beauties; the bath I chose was Bathhouse no. 5 and is the oldest at 300 years old and one of the only public ones.
One pays the princely sum of 3 Lari upon entry (a smidge over a £1); wanders down to the locker room, where you are greeted by some 30 Georgians having their post-spa smoke and over explicitly thrusting there manhoods at you from every direction.
After I took this in; stripped down, and was pestered for 10 Lari for a traditional Georgian massage. I walked through to the bath itself with bollocks swinging to-and-fro’ and was greeted by what can only be described as the pre-scene prep of an 80s gay porno.
Through the mist of the sulphur steam, I could just about make out 3 outlines of men mutually shaving each other’s backs – yes, mutual back shaving is a thing in Georgia. To my right, it seemed one guy had his leg up on the marble table to get his razor to them ‘hard to reach’ places and to my left a macho guy performing a power pose, thrusting his stuff. Due to my shear bewilderment of the situation, I didn’t have time to think about, that I was in fact walking through a thick layer of your finest Georgian back and pubic hair.
It doesn’t stop there though. After 10 minutes and getting the suss of where things were and what the etiquette was; I perched myself down one of the sulphur baths at the far end of the 20m steam-filled room. It wasn’t 2 minutes, before I had, that said, 30 year macho chap doing his daily stretches about 5 feet from my face; he then continued to help stretch what seemed to be his grandfather, as if he had just done 90 minutes on the field. Extraordinary.
By this point, I was astonished at the events unfolding; but it continued.
One scrawny looking chap stumbled in to the steamy spa with a fag in mouth, pissed as a fart, carrying a 2 litre bottle of Kabuki (local beer). He then got one of the masseuses to rub him down in this golden goodness from head to toe for 10 minutes, while bordering on consciousness. What I found hard to believe, was the look on the masseuse’s face. Nothing. Poker face. As if this was a completely rational request.
After observing this and relaxing for a further half hour, I had one last sauna before heading out. To my amazement, they had managed to cram a grand total of 16 people (17 including me), in a 2x2m room with just 2 shelves. A total of 6 were standing and I am not sure how I felt about having my crown jewels brush up against my newly acquainted Georgian friend’s leg.
I left the bath, feeling like I just captured a bit of true Georgian culture and all-in-all, I would highly recommend it to anyone who’s visiting in and around Tbilisi.
On another note:
Dog attack update – Home side 1-1 Away side. Bigger than the South American counterparts and come in packs of 3 or 4; these brutes have already taken me out while descending a mountain and come off relatively unscathed with just a bit of road rash. But karma prevailed and when a pack of 3 large Alsatians came after me around Lake Seven and one got taken out by an on-coming Lada 1200 and sustained significant damage; which was both satisfying and disheartening.
Don’t hate me.
