Our plan was to spend the winter in Gudauri, the biggest ski resort in Georgia.
Racki wanted to find a job there and I was looking forward to learning snowboarding.
So we decided to get the temporary Georgian license plates for Racki’s car Thor. These ones are valid for three years and with them we won’t need to make a border run every three months.
The process of getting them was partly confusing and did take us about five hours in the offices in Rustavi.
If you ever want to do it, stick to this order:
Technical inspection (if you have a camper car, you need to get a special document there which says you have a car of the category “special”)
Getting a tax number
Document that says how much you have to pay
Paying at the bank office
To another desk which checks everything and gives you all the necessary papers
Getting license plates
It may be a good idea to have a friendly Georgian on the phone who can explain and translate when getting stuck in the process.
We went back near Batumi because the package from Germany was ready for pickup. We had sent it to a friend of Cindy and I was very thankful that he did invest his energy and time in this.
But the process of getting this package was crazy for me. I believe that basically humans are good and that experiences can make them behave not so well. So for me this is a state of confusion which is totally human and just part of us humans although we are basically good.
The friend of Cindy believes in mostly the opposite. That’s ok with me but still it was so demanding for me to get this package from the postal office and listen all the time to all the examples he had to somehow prove his view. And all the things that happened in the package retrieval process he saw as proofs of his beliefs. For him all the people we dealt with were bad and their only reason for existence seemed to be to make our lives harder. And about this he was sure even before we met the first of them.
So we started our odyssey and drove to the postal office. There we had to wait for half an hour. After that the people there started to ask questions about the contents of the package etc. Cindy’s friend was already pissed and had the people feel that. They were speaking Russian so I could not understand exactly what they said but that wasn’t necessary or even better that way. This procedure took about half an hour and I felt not good. Not good for Cindy’s friend, not good for the people in the postal office and not good for myself.
In the end we had to go to a Georgian Bank office to pay the import fees. I saw that coming because everything over 300 GEL (approximately 100 Euro) gets an import fee of about 18% in Georgia. For Cindy’s friend this fee was a proof of the evilness of the people in the postal office. At the bank we had to wait for a while and then paid. There was some discussion with the bank accountant about the fact that we only could pay in cash. Another sign of evilness.
We went back to the postal office. On the way I did tell Cindy’s friend about my perspective on the things happening and that it’s all ok. I did not want to convince him of my “Buddhist Zen-like” perspective but I could stay silent as well. I guess I just wanted to say something to calm myself or ensure myself that my beliefs were alright. And although I tried to accept that Cindy’s friend had just a different but not better or worse perspective than me, I could not remain neutral. And the fact that he believed that for example Trump would save humanity of evilness did not make it easier for me.
At the postal office the people told us that there has to be a mistake. The bank accountant did charge us three Lari too little. For me a mistake that can happen. For Cindy’s friend another proof of evilness.
So we went back to the bank. Cindy’s friend was pissed and had a big discussion with the accountant. I was smiling. In the end the accountant offered to pay the three Lari by her own. I liked the gesture. For Cindy’s friend she was making fun of us. We payed the three Lari.
After that we went back to the postal office and retrieved the package. I was happy that this was over. And I was still thankful that Cindy’s friend did go through this with me. Especially because this whole process was so full of evilness from his perspective.
I was super happy about the package full of mountaineering and climbing stuff and so we went to the nearest climbing area to try my first own climbing shoes. But I could not really climb. I was just not centered at all. Too busy in the head.
I guess this whole package mission just let me doubt about my whole perspective on the world. Maybe the perspective of Cindy’s friend was the right one and I was wrong? During the whole day, but especially at that point I felt that the “Zen perspective” really helped me to accept my perspective, his perspective and most importantly a part of the nature of human perspectives and beliefs: to have something that’s true, something we can rely on, something that gives us the feeling of having understood something about our own lives.
