2010 - 2011 Tbilisi - Tbilisi Airport - Tbilisi

Text by: Madis Katz


The Ghost Train

This is about a train ride what I haven’t had. It’s about a train what I want to take just to make sure it’s there.

It all started back in September, when we arrived to Georgia. One of my travel companions had read from LP that there’s a train connection under construction between the Tbilisi train station and the airport. He made some calculations based on the given estimate of construction duration and the publishing date of this concrete LP edition, and concluded that this connection should be ready. We considered the “should be ready” factor of Georgia and didn’t get our hopes up but asked around, nevertheless. Most of the taxi drivers claimed there is no such a line. Some other people said there is a line but it works “maybe”.

It sounded somewhat unreliable, and an adventure of finding out the schedule for the “maybe” train in Georgia a bit too time demanding for the fun of it. So, when my companions had to leave, they did it using the regular “flag a taxi and bargain” way.

But I had a seed in my head, and it demanded some irrigation. After not so long I found a person who actually had taken the train. He told me how he went for it for the first time. In the middle of the night (as, for some reason, many of the planes depart and arrive in the middle of the night around here) he found himself behind closed doors of the train station. Locked inside of it. The train from the airport had brought them to Tbilisi all right, but seemingly, considering locked doors, it was hard to get away from the tracks and platforms. Nobody there to ask for advice.

He described the train (another time when he took it) as completely empty, standing there, at the station, lights lit, deserted. He entered, sat. Suddenly the train started moving. Ha sat alone in the lit railway carriage dipped in the surrounding deep darkness throughout the voyage. Even this person who was supposed to sell the tickets didn’t show up.

Soon I happened to be in the train station and as I was there I took the possibility for checking the schedule for this mysterious train. I found it, proper-looking printout, partly in English. I wrote down the times into my notebook. It felt so nostalgic, pre-internet era thing to do. This elusive schedule, when I looked at it there, fresh and written by my own hand in my notebook - it seemed so trustworthy and real.

And then I was given a reason – a friend, while leaving Georgia, forgot her Swiss army knife in her hand luggage and left it there at the airport for me to pick up. (They also had planned taking the train to the airport, but it offered them two hours of plain waiting, an extra time hard to substantiate with all the sitting around peculiar to flying.) I looked into this schedule, now with an evident aim. Trains wait there, at the airport, for ten minutes before coming back. That was not enough time, even if I would have run and hoped for no queue at the desk where the knife was waiting. Next step – interval. Between two to three hours during the night and early morning, then four hours up to noon and then six hours from there to the two-three hours interval of the evening and night period again. This particular knife-holding desk was opened only during the day. Early morning is not the prime time of the day for me, but, again, no trains between twelve and six. Anyway, just waiting for two to three hours? Because of a knife? Or rather for the sole reason of being able to take the train? I can manage considerable concessions for to have a possibility to prefer trains as transport, but that was a bit too much. Tbilisi airport is no special case amongst its kin - heavily expensive, no comfortable sitting places for non-paying customers, a building in the middle of nowhere, nowhere which is bleak. Park, please? Can somebody name an airport which would have a park next to it, where you could sit on a bench and read while surrounded by lush, quiet, friendly greenery? Asphalt and tasteless, overpriced bars – that’s the trend for the house of airports.

I took a bus instead and it was pain in the ass. Long and boring ride, “there and back again” as in real, prosaic life. Nothing remarkable happened for those pages.

Next chance came to me in January. I went to the airport for to farewell a friend. I delved into my tangible schedule again – if I kill some time, I can go for it, take the train back to the city that is. I felt this mixture of pleasure and anticipation when I was approaching the train station at the airport. Taxis slowing down next to me – I have to admit, I was alone walking there, and I had nowhere to walk to if you, as an average taxi driver, render this train solution and the accompanying fancy station building nonexistent –, me waving them to go with assured gesture of a platonic train lover. My eyes were locked at this end-of-the-line building, the airport train stop. A golden, curved form, a bit reminding a concha of a giant (let me remind – golden!) snail, accented arches descending from the arrival direction towards the ground. I reach it and step in through half opened sliding doors. It’s clean, it’s fancy and it’s completely empty. A little lady rushes to me from a small room where she was watching TV, and tells me there are no trains. What do you mean? Why? When will there be another one? We have a language problem, her Russian is bad, my Russian is bad. She says something somewhere is broken. That’s all she knows, that’s all I will know.

When I was walking back towards the airport taxi drivers who passed me did not slow down anymore. It felt like they were laughing at me. Miserable me, I went and took a seat in a bus, resentful and fully aware of what kind of pages were waiting for me.

And now, say three weeks ago, two quests were arriving from Estonia. I was thinking about going to welcome them at the airport. By train, of course - I could take a book with me and sit through my time of waiting in a best manner. But I felt some unease about just walking to the train station and decided to make some enquiries first. After all, I had collected four-five phone numbers of the train station from different sources. Just in case. Now it was the case. I started calling. One was a fax machine. None of the others answered. For an hour. I gave up with the train station, checked the airport web page instead. They had train schedule there online, checking and - same as mine. Still, better to be safe than sorry - I called to the airport. The schedule has changed, they said, but they don’t know it. Who might know it, I enquired. Train station. Somebody else, maybe? I didn’t give up. Information line 09. Ok, thank you.

I call 09. Can you speak English? She calls for someone by name. I can hear the sounds of an office on the background. The English speaker arrives and takes over. I start getting the information about train times. After fourth departure time - and the process of telling times is slow, like she would have to google each one of them separately - I understand that she can’t grasp the concept of “half past”. In Estonian, also in Russian, you say “half to” to signify the same thing. To say half past four you’d say “half five” or “half to five”. That insight made me careful, very very careful, and I started going over all the times I had written down thus far. Just to be sure. After I had five asked and checked, I stopped. I had the most usable ones and continuing (the initial plan was to write them all down) would have meant a huge phone bill for me and a glass of sugar water for her. Hard work it was. Some of those times matched with the ones I already had, some of them had seemingly changed.

For other reasons I finally didn’t welcome them at the airport. But I had a new schedule. What a success . I was proud. I mean, how many people actually knew that schedule? As a foreigner I felt as a very special insider.

I told those two Estonian quests about my little adventures around the airport train issues. They had also heard that there is a train connecting the airport with city centre, seemingly the rumour is very viable outside of Georgia. We planned to go to a myth-busting mission – just, notwithstanding, take the train, there and back again. And that would be that.

We didn’t do it*, though.

So, I didn’t know much more than I did three weeks ago when today we decided to go to the airport to welcome some friends. We would have had to play cards for two hours once there, but as we were three it sounded like an ok plan – a match of Rummy 500 in the middle of the night at the airport, why not. I had Information concerning train schedule, gained from the reliable and recommended source just some time ago. That didn’t sound like something one should have doubt in. As at the airport they had said that there is a new schedule I thought it’s quite safe bet to presume that it hasn’t changed again in past three weeks.

We were running late and rushed to the train station. Caused some confusion with our questions – where does it depart from? And reached to an old guy who pointed at airport train schedule. That was something different. Four trains, two in the morning , two during the day time. Nothing there what I had heard about. Four trains instead of eight, and departing at almost completely reversed times. Well. Is it new, I ask. Oh, no, the old guy says, it has been like that for the past half of the year or so.

I’ll bet if one checks the airport home page now, the train schedule is still there. The same worthless schedule what I have in my notebook - or I actually have a somewhat upgraded (or somewhere-graded) version of it - the trustworthy and real-looking schedule in it’s beautiful, handwritten and nostalgic form. Internet might be the fast medium for the information, but seemingly it can’t speed in solitude – I mean six months should be enough time to update something on the web, no? Especially if it concerns transport what people might actually want to take. (Yet, maybe it can speed in solitude – I just checked the web page myself. There’s a schedule there I have never seen before. Maybe this is a schedule for the better future, delivered beforehand? Or maybe I should start collecting them, different ghost-times for a simple trip of Railway station – Airport – Railway station.)

Here the fastest medium for the information about the train schedule between an international airport and the capital city of the country called Georgia is a A5 printout glued to the window of the ticket office on the third floor of the main train station building.

And yet this airport home page looks so modern, I think, there at the vagzal, while I write down the “new” schedule in my notebook. With a pencil, this time.

*The plan itself is alive, nevertheless.

April, 2011.