I've visited Georgia for two weeks, mainly to take in some of the mountain scenery. I hoped to get a better flavour of the place while I was there, but I only really was able to scratch the surface. Everything I write here should be taken with a big caveat that it's a huge generalisation from a baka gaijin.

Georgia comes across as a hybrid between a modern European metropolitan state and something less 'developed' (as problematic as I find that term). Tbilisi seems on the surface to be rich: there's functioning public transport, people wearing modern clothing (though few people appeared dressed expensively), visible subcultures, a club scene. There is a significant amount of tourism, I imagine similar to how London looks to some people. Alongside the simulacrum of wealth, the true economy is much poorer. Eating at bakeries, it's possible to eat for a day for probably under 5 lari, less than £2. Median monthly salary seems to clock in somewhere between 1000 and 2000 lari -- roughly 250 to 500 GBP. Meanwhile pricing is wildly fluctuating and is stretched by the tourists being present, and apparently also the presence of Russian 'expats'. I met one Russian on a bus, who had moved from St Petersburg after the war. I read online that there's a mixed feeling towards these Russian immigrants -- who will largely be opposing the war in Ukraine (they don't support Putin), but they're seen as pushing up prices.

This is city life, of course. In villages, the economy is more or less agrarian in the extreme and based around subsistence farming. Of course where there is tourism this will present an extreme lure, because the prices paid by tourists are astronomical compared to local salaries. In these rural areas I would not be surprised if the cash economy is uninformative as it doesn't cover gifts, debt, and other kinship obligations. The film 'Dede' is a rousing watch to boggle the mind at how the observations of Levi-Strauss etc continue to hold.

Food: The food of Georgia is characterised by its heavy and comforting nature. Umami bombs are everywhere to be seen. To my tastes, there is a lack of zinginess (acid) in the food, but they can frequently served with pickled vegetables (mtsnili). These pickled vegetables are an absolute revelation (at least in Salobe Bia). They taste mind-blowing, including the unavailable-in-the-west jonjoli.

The primary flavours are black pepper, pomegranate, nuts, cheese. Beef and lamb and pork are all widely seen. There are cows everywhere. There's a lot of cheese: I had the pleasure to eat sulguni and imeruli. The khachapuri is the iconic snack, a baked cheese item. Sometimes you get items in bakeries that contain meat, these are insanely filling and often delicious, similar in principle to a Cornish pasty but more luxurious. Lobiani is a variant stuffed with a type of bean mash, similar to refried beans. This will set you back a cool 2GEL. Keeps unrefrigerated and very practical. I didn't try the notorious Adjaran khachapuri as I do not like eggs.

Drink-wise, I find the orange/amber wine (however you refer to it -- white grapes in kvevri (ქვევრი) very excellent. Handmade wine is referred to as 'home wine', and is generally very reasonably priced. I tried a glass of a Saperavi red but that was a little much for me. I've tried a couple of draught lagers but found them poor. The lemonade -- largely you can get served a famous bright green lemonade that is flavoured with tarragon, I don't find this nice. I do find the Kazbegi lemonade in the standard lemon variation very delicious though. The Borjomi water is a one-time try for me and was pretty nice actually, I can see myself getting used to the strange salty mineral flavour that it has, but represents something of an extravagance.

Language: I don't speak any Georgian at all. The most I've managed to learn is hello (gamarjoba) and thanks (madloba). The script is visually strange, more akin to Thai than any particular other script that I know, with its circles and orbs. The majority of Georgians do not speak English. However there is a pretty clear age divide which I speculate corresponds almost exactly to the collapse of the USSR; older generations know Russian and sometimes some German. Younger generations sometimes speak decent English, though I don't think I met any 'C2' level English speakers. Despite this, people will generally make a valiant effort to communicate with you. The phonology or stress pattern of the language is sometimes confusing, for instance 'Kutaisi' (ქუთაისი) will be pronounced with the stress heavily placed on the second vowel sound, which is actually somewhere between the vowel sound in English 'high' (diphthong) and the way that adjacent vowels are individually pronounced in Japanese. Both vowel sounds are distinguishable but they are slightly joined together.

Travel: The main means of transport is the marshrutka which is a private minivan operated by drivers, usually as part of some larger guild or agency. It's cheap and goes everywhere. However this is really all it has going for it. It is marginally cheaper than UK coaches or buses but significantly less comfortable. There are now better coaches it seems under the brand Georgian Bus. Marshrutkas don't leave at a specific time, only when the driver feels like it. However I never had to wait more than 30 minutes for a marshrutka to leave. In some places there will be only one marshrutka to a certain other destination per day, and in this case it's sometimes necessary to book it in advance. Talk to people to figure this out. In Tbilisi however there are marshrutkas going to every destination, including other countries. They'll want to you to put your bag in the back sometimes. This may be worth it, because the amount of legroom is very mixed, and in a pathological case you'll want to make sure you have the most legroom possible. They normally make at least 1 toilet stop on long journeys. Drivers on tourist routes will sometimes stop excessively to get commission from various roadside stalls, this is a pain. You'll want to keep 1 lari coins for the occasional toilet fee.

The bit of transport that I would call out as excellent is the Tbilisi metro. It's beautiful, atmospheric with its long escalators, sometimes with beautiful Soviet-era artwork. Not only that: it's mind-bogglingly cheap, and extremely fast and efficient. The journey from Liberty Square to Avlabari, probably 30 minutes on foot will only take about 2 minutes on the metro (though more like 10 minutes end to end). More efficient the further you are going. The only problem for the traveller is you have to listen well for the stops, meaning you have to develop at least a novice grasp of Georgian phonology.

Money: Cash is very annoying, because essentially only 5 lari, 10 lari, and 20 lari notes are useful. 50 lari and above are too high to be of any practical use, and people often won't have change for them. Many places accept card, I frequently used card transactions which can ease the burden a little bit.

Restaurants: Food is fantastic as above, but service is terrible almost in equal proportion. To their credit, the staff of restaurants in Georgia are not actively rude to you, but they do specialise in ignoring you as much as possible. This can be quite dysphoric as it breaks the illusion you may have of being in another city in your own country (I say with my tongue in my cheek). It's a common occurrence to 1) not be greeted at when you enter 2) not be given a table 3) not be asked to order, have to harass the waiter in order to do so. I even encountered one waiter who flagrantly skipped half of the order he himself had sold/recommended to me before proceeding to bill me for the full amount (this was in an establishment with a plethora of 5 star reviews online). But overall, being ignored or served extremely slowly is the worst, and eventually put me off hospitality establishments totally because the speed was so unpredictable. My profile is that I tend to show up to the restaurant when I'm already hungry, and since I'm travelling solo I don't have idle chatter to pass the time with. I also notice that the guide book I was using has several comments about slow service so I am not the only one to observe this. However the bad service is not universal, for every terrible experience there was another highly satisfactory or even great one. The heuristic that I developed was just to avoid large, busy establishments, and prefer small, less busy ones. Amusingly, this is the opposite of the common tip you'll see ("look for the restaurants where the locals are queuing out of the door") but my heuristic is certainly not foolproof either. My top restaurant is Pirosmani in Kutaisi, where just about everything was perfect, and Salobe Bia in Tbilisi, which is just a cut above.

Politics: It's obvious that there are several political issues in the country. Georgian Dream seems to be essentially running a one-party state. There is a certain Christian conservatism to the country that comes across even in metropolitan areas like Tbilisi. Contra this, in Hungary you have a huge political distinction between Budapest vs the-rest-of-the-country. I didn't feel this was quite so observable in Georgia. There is however a lot of graffiti criticising Georgian Dream and also calling for the return of seceded regions (Abkhazia, South Ossetia), criticising Russia. I was told by an older lady running a hostel of the relatively recent times when there was no water, gas, electricity on a regular basis. The fraught relationship with Russia is a very complex issue, but my overall impression is that the Georgians display a fierce nationalism and a kind of post-imperial thirst for independence, while Russia is several orders of magnitude more powerful than them. See Russo-Georgian War, Six-Day War of Abkhazia. Of course the seceded regions have their own claims that Georgia itself is the imperial power, making the issue rather vexed. I read that there is also significant ethnic tension within Georgia itself with respect to Azerbaijani and Armenian minorities.

Accommodation: The standard of accommodation is generally good, commensurate with European standards. The price is largely excellent. The minimum one can expect to pay for a private room is about 60GEL. The standard of this will be good. Noticeably in the mountainous and rural regions the standard is lower than in the cities. In the mountainous regions, do not expect to get air conditioning (they assume the temperature doesn't require it, which is slightly wrong in my view).

If you're flying there, I'd recommend getting a direct flight if you possibly can, transfers in the Turkish airports are a horrible nightmare that I would have paid a significant amount to avoid (at least 50% of the flight cost). It looks like at one point Wizz Air ran a Luton to Kutaisi flight which seems extremely convenient. I didn't actually overlook this flight when booking -- it has been removed or paused as I write this (August 2026). So I am saved from the crying-over-spilt-milk of my possible flight mistake. As of this writing Luton isn't particularly local to me so introduces its own issues.