I knew nothing about Georgia before I arrived. I had been meaning to check out some information on Wikipedia and read a few travel blogs, but I never quite got there. ‘Why are you going to Georgia?’, people would ask me upon hearing of my next destination.
“I had a mate that went there 2 years ago and said it was good.”
“Oh, what language do they speak there?”
“Ummm Georgian”, I’d reply not a hundred percent certain in my response.
Is that even a language, maybe you should look that shit up before you answer again. You’re going to look like a muppet if you meet someone that has actually been there, and calls you out on this.
Then before I got around to doing any research I’d bump into someone having lunch at Tasha’s.
“Gareth, it’s so good to see you. I didn’t know you were back. Where are you off to next?”
“Georgia”
“Oh cool, my parents have been to Atlanta a few times my Dad’s company … ”
“No this is Georgia, the country, in Eastern Europe”
Is it Eastern Europe? Perhaps I should get my geography right, in case people ask me something about this place. I’ll check on Google maps when I get home later, and find out what language they speak while I’m there.
A few hours later I was at the gym and I bumped into “Never-wears-sleeves-Stuart“. Actually, I don’t think that’s his real name, even the Stuart part, but that guy that I’ve known from just about every gym in the north of Joburg.
“I check you’ve been hanging with the betties down in Mexico”, he says.
“Well Guatemala, yes it’s been great.”
“Sweet, where you headed next?”
Here we go.
“I’m going to Georgia, Eastern Europe”.
“Never heard of it, what country is that in?
“That is the country”.
“Sick. What language do they speak there?”
FML.
About Gareth Pickering
After running my own advertising agency in Johannesburg for 10 years, I decided that I needed to do something else. I sold the business to my partner at the time and left on a 6-month trip to Asia to decide what to do next. That was 4 years ago.
I now travel full time and aim to live as many perfect days as I can.
I set up The Freedom Fighter in 2015 as a travel blog and it has since grown into a community of like-minded people looking to improve how they live and separating their earnings from their time.
Along with a partner, I recently launched an ongoing project called Ignite. Ignite is a 6-month masterclass that helps people set up and launch a business that teaches on the internet.
I am also a partner in another e-learning platform called Keep It On Core. An online tuition service that assists high schools students to improve their Math grades.
I think that the two most important days of a person’s life are the day that they’re born, and the day that they figure out why they were born.