In Gudauri, my ear started hurting a lot. It was super confusing and partly depressing because especially sounds like loud laughter and voices became very hurtful for me and so it got partly painful to hang around with others.

So I decided to drive down to Tbilisi to have my ear checked in a clinic. It went all super good, friendly and pretty cheap (about 70€ for two diagnoses and medicine). A week later my ear was already very good again.

In Tbilisi, I met Whoopie, Paul and Adrian with his dog in a parking lot and together we had a lot of fun and tried to get rid of a squeaking noise that only occurred when turning the steering wheel of Rosinante.

We did not manage to locate the origin of the squeaking noise but found a part of the front wheel suspension that got loose and we fixed that.

Back in Gudauri, Racki and I started to prepare our leaving of the Pappartment.

After months staying on the same spot, we had to tow Thor through the mud.

Back in Tbilisi, we met Whoopie at her work place and more friends and had a great time.

Racki and I had decided to permanently live and travel together and now it was time to actually move together in one car, Rosinante. I was super happy and loved the idea that we’ll stay together. And I was very curious of the adventures we would experience and how our relationship would develop.

We got rid of a whole lot of stuff. Especially Racki gave away so many things and clothes… It was crazy.  Especially because for her most of her things are reminders of special friends and occasions.

We cleaned and prepared Thor for sale and advertised him in German car markets. Whoopie’s chefs (who have a caravan rental) were very interested in buying him but one of their workers said that there was a law in Georgia that prohibits the import of cars older than ten years.

Ogri our temporary oger-dog-friend.

We upgraded our lifepo4 battery with an automated heating system.

And improved our electricity system.

Rosinante looked crazy in the process.

When I brought Rosinante to a Toyota garage in Tbilisi, they found the issue that caused the squeaking noise: ball joints that I had exchanged on Cyprus. I should not have them exchanged back then but at that time I was not so familiar with all the car topics and believed more in the mechanics.

And we found some bushings that needed to be exchanged. That was a pretty clear case.

In January I had to do a border run to Armenia with Rosinante. Because of customs regulations.

It was actually super nice to spend some time in a mild climate and just hanging around outside. And it was super nice to experience Armenian hospitality again. After a couple of minutes at a nice spot at a river, some guys started a barbeque and invited me to join. We had a great time together.

After a night in Armenia, I went to Tbilisi, visited a nice bazaar with Whoopy and met Racki who went down from the mountain with a Minibus. Together we went to the airport to pick up a friend of her who came to visit us. We spent a nice time in Tbilisi sight seeing and in the evening we went for dinner and a cocktail bar.

In the cocktail bar we met friends who we had met in Gudauri. Our time in the bar was crazy. The waitress and bar keeper was absolutely drunk and maybe on some other drugs and we had weird but funny conversations. After some time a Russian girl joined us. She was drunk as well, very funny, had a rich husband and in the end she paid all our drinks.

And the friend of Racki brought my snowboard and equipment that I had bought in Germany via Kleinanzeigen. It was super awesome to finally have my own stuff. My snowboard was pure red and I called it Zäpfchen. The friend of Racki got late to the airport in Germany because of the public transport. He was so late that there was no time to check in the big bag with all my stuff properly and so the airline let him bring the big bag without paying.

After two days another friend of Racki joined us and together we had so much fun snowboarding, hanging around and spending time together.