In Tbilisi there is one interesting tradition that almost no tourist knows about. And the locals who prefer taxis and their own driving are unlikely to know about it. It is connected to the Tbilisi metro.
At first, I didn’t pay much attention to the boys who were struggling with the turnikets. Few are waiting for someone, or want to jump through for free when the controller turns away. Then he began to notice that people coming out of the subway sometimes give them their cards so that they can pass at their expense. A strange form of charity, I thought, and almost forgot about it.
I remember when I recently travelled with my Georgian friend. We climbed the ladder up to the Rustavelli hall. The turnikets just spotted such a young man with an apologizing face. My friend, without saying anything and even without carrying his eyebrows, extended him a card. The guy whispered at her turniket, returned a friend and ran down to the trains. I decided to clarify.
“Tell me, my friend Gio, did you just give him a trip for 50 tetris?
“No,” Gio laughed in response. I missed it for free.
Of course, it’s free for him, but you paid for it right now?
Free in the sense that it didn’t cost me anything either.
How is it so?
And then my friend Gio told me such a story. This tradition is called the “givardцахli”. For a long time, on the Georgian Military Road, in its most dangerous places, there were guard posts. They collected a fee from the passers, spending money on cleaning the crusts, cleaning the snow, protecting against the bandits.
But not everyone had money to pay for the road, and sometimes it was vital to go. Then there was an obscure rule: if you could pay not only for yourself, but also for the poor man who froze on the sidelines, then in the guard post, the pay was taken only from you. And you missed it for free. of Guardzacli. Do you understand?
I cried, remembering the word. Vladimir Ivanovich Dal slunged a pencil and wrote "rejuvenates, soon completely freezes."
And when they introduced the card payment system of the subway in exchange for outdated tokens, they remembered this custom. We want to remember our ancestors. Continued by Gio. - You go in, attach a card from the turniquet, and for 50 tetris you can drive for an hour and a half as many times as you want. It turns out that at any station you can get out and immediately get back in, and it is free.
I can’t go in, but anyone else.
and exactly. This is not taken into account in the system. You go out, attach a card again to the entrance, and pass free of charge anyone who can’t pay for their trip.
and Guardzacli.
and yes. It is easy to do good when it is worth nothing.
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