As part of a day expedition to explore some of the stranger / abandoned places in Tbilisi we stumbled upon possibly the most soviet thing still in existence I’ve ever seen.
Drawn in by the promise of the crumbling concrete walkways that were said to connect three abandoned tower blocks in the north west part of the city, I set off for the day with 2 French brothers and a German from my hostel in a bid to explore them.
After a little faff struggling with the Yandex Go taxi app, which didn’t even detail the area of the city we were trying to get to on it’s in-app map (Bolt is a tad pricier but works better if you’re ever in Georgia) we finally arrived at the base of the building.
On arrival however it soon became apparent that the buildings were far from abandoned. Nearly every floor was in fact occupied. It was hard to discern any real detail about the more recent history of the buildings having read some conflicting bits of information online. Some stated that the buildings had become home for refugees after sitting abandoned for some time. All I know is that they certainly looked pretty unique!
We quickly scurried up a set of stairs through the highest set of the three towers. This was after trying and failing to use the elevator which opened to let us in but would not take us anywhere once we got onboard. Higher up however we noted the elevator would move up to whichever floor we called it to. We proceeded to mess about with it for ages, but couldn’t ultimately get it to transport us anywhere. Frustrating, but quite possibly for the best.
We moved on to admire the view and the famed walkways we’d ultimately come to see. The concrete was slowly crumbling away from the steel frames that held them aloft, but they were still sturdy and provided some great views across the city. These walkways also cleverly allowed residents access from all three buildings straight through to the cliff across from them. This is supposedly where most residents worked when they were initially built in the 70s and must have cut down any commute considerably.
Lest you walk away impressed by any kind of soviet ingenuity however, our trip to the second elevator was an example of exactly the opposite. Having already witnessed how dodgy the first elevator was, boys being boys, we all jumped into the second with gusto and proceeded to try operating the controls. Nothing happened. We stayed put a bit, taking pictures of ourselves in the mirrored ceiling and messing about until we noticed a small coin slot in the corner of the lift.
We quickly fumbled around trying to find a Georgian coin small enough to meet the 20 tetri (5p) asking price on the console. After putting money through the slot and a little delay the lift started to descend! This may not sound like a great victory, but after trying so hard to get the previous lift to take us anywhere this proved a very exciting development.
Thankfully, we reached the bottom floor as intended, where we were greeted by a stern and stout Georgian woman demanding we pay her more for the lift. Taken aback we obliged the woman doling out a further 20 tetri. With a big smile she then ushered us round to her to her a small room around the corner from the lift which operated as both her office and bedroom.
The room was a lot to take in. On one side of the rectangular room was a large array of electronics messily spread across a desk, and the other a small single bed. The rest of the room was covered in all many of strange decorations, the most standout of which appeared to be some peculiar shrine to Joseph Stalin…
Clearly very excited to have some international company the lady, speaking some bizarre combination of German, Russian and Georgian, was able to engage In some basic back and forth with the German member of our group. The large array of machinery at her disposal was, it turns out, all to do with the bloody lift.
Enthusiastically she walked us through all the cameras that she monitored from her cubby hole. All but one of her 4 cameras however no longer had any working video feed, including the camera that sat within the coin slot itself.
Sharply drawing a finger to her lips when somebody new entered the lift however, she demonstrated that the microphone to all these feeds still functioned and allowed her to clearly hear anybody in the elevator paying the required fee. After becoming satisfied with the ‘clink’ of any customer’s coinage, she would then dutifully click the switch to make the elevator ascend. The entire lift mechanism was manually run by her!!
Amid the barrage of languages and gestures she was doling out, it was hard to discern what was going on at moments but we did manage to ask her what on earth happened when she needed to go to sleep. At this point she gleefully pulled out an extended switch which could reach right across the room and plopped herself horizontal across her bed. Throughout the night she could awaken whenever required and move the lift for those passing through at all hours.
The fact that this exists as a job in 2021 was too much! Across Tbilisi there is contactless payment everywhere, beautiful modern constructions abound and everything works like clockwork. The older crumbling tower blocks on the cities perimeter prove one of the few obvious vestiges that the country ever went through a Soviet period. Here however, we were right back in some topsy turvy era where used lightbulbs would command a higher price than new ones.
Baffled enough by everything we witnessed, we opted to not ask about her shrine to Stalin. If you find yourself in Tbilisi though it’s well worth a trip to this corner of town, simply to visit this woman and her lift if nothing else.
Song of the Post
I'll aim to follow each of my posts with an associated song. It might be something which fits my current writing or perhaps it's simply something nice I've heard recently.