Anna Epova, writer

The summer season in Tbilisi is like greeting a beloved uncle you stay with for the holidays. It smells of the sun, viscid grape syrup, sweets and light summer wine. It greets you with strong, warm hugs and a velvety, welcoming, ‘Gamardzhoba genatsvale!’ In the day the tables are laid with foods that fill the air with the aromas of tkemali, fresh bread, coriander and khinkali. In the evening it expands its welcome in small clean kitchens, making the mind drunk with chacha and filling the heart with a special significance. There is always something to talk or to keep silence about. During its long life Tbilisi has been through many great loves, wars, births, deaths, richness and poverty, everything that makes up human destinies. It knows more than it can tell, which is why it remains a riddle with hints hidden in the turn of the carved facades that support ancient buildings and in the loops of its small paved streets. Tbilisi is a love affair from the first meeting. Its hug, as of a beloved uncle, keeps you warm for ages, and remains in scraps of memory and in photographs darkening in the brilliant sunshine and when you touch them you feel a kind of rapturous, truthful, youthful melancholy that lasts until the next, new, long-awaited summer.