Tbilisi: A Road Trip Through Georgia (ft. Carlo Schneider)

As modern people, we tend to crave definitions. We put
things in categories and boxes, almost so we can forget
about them and move on. Some of us even bring
that instinct with us when we travel, hoping to sum
up a place quickly, to make sense of it before
we've given it our full attention. But if we're lucky,
travel does something else. It resists our limiting frameworks and
asks us to linger in contradiction, staying there long enough
to let ourselves be changed. This is Wayfinder, Life changing travel.
This podcast goes beyond the guidebooks into the heart and
soul of real life travelers as they journey around the world.
I'm your host, Daniel Scheffler, and I have seen first
hand how our stories connect us and inspire us. Today,
I'm speaking with Carlo Schneider, an entrepreneur and renaissance man
from Luxembourg with a decades long career in travel, fashion
and luxury. Four years ago, Carlone's daughter set out on
a road trip through the diverse country of Georgia, beginning
in the capital city of Tiblisi. What first appeared as
a much needed father daughter adventure slowly revealed itself to
be something much more layered color. Where are you calling
him from today?
Luxembourg?
Oh right, are you in Luxembourg?
In Luxembourgish, Luxembourgish. Do I know anyone that's Luxembourgish.
I don't know one. Yes, now I do. Great, I
have been there, but I don't think I don't have
a friend that's from them. Now you have a friend. Great,
we've changed all of that. So tell me how did
you first get into travel in general? Yeah, Luxembourg's small,
so everything is traveled for you.
Yeah, that is the starting point. If I talk to people,
they very often are impressed by the fact that we
speak so many languages, that we are so well traveled.
By the end of the day, it takes me. I'll
live in Luxmik city if there is no traffic jam.
There are always traffic jams. But if there is no
traffic jam, it takes me twenty twenty five minutes to
be in France, fifteen minutes to be in Belgium, and
maybe half an hour to be in Germany. So traveling
is a very natural thing in my country. I mean,
that's the unique thing in Europe. Don't need to tell
you this. No matter where you live, even if you
live in Germany and France. It takes you one of
a flight to be in ten different countries, and we
should always be aware how we are free to travel
around on many levels because looking at the political situation
and what is going on and what is coming everywhere,
who knows what would be in five for ten years time.
It's an interesting time if you think about it, right,
it's like this movement backwards. It's crazy, like the things
that we thought were settled are just perhaps not settled,
and when you travel you see it, like I felt
that Georgia was such a great example of exactly what
could happen elsewhere.
You've been in Georgia very recently, just last week, yes,
oh gosh, my trip was strange but amazing, Like the
Russian occupation is obviously happening in real time, so there's
all this underground creativity that's sort of happening, similar to
the Mavis dar Madri l Anon, which after the Franco
take tatoship brought out this creativity, and perhaps something similar
will happen in America after this moment.
Maybe it breeds a lot of creativity, so we could
be hopeful, that's alp Let's hope.
But it's interesting. When I was there, it only started
to become a let's call it a digital hub for
the nomad, and you can certainly confirm this. It has
really become the place where a lot of Russians, buid
of Russians have immigrated, have run away from their regime
to be free to work.
Oh yeah, so what prompted your trip to Georgia?
My daughter Laara and I we have been traveling quite
extensively since she was a child, and the older she got,
the more difficulty got to do the big trips, because
then at some point there's a boyfriend, and there are friends,
and there are university studies, and then there's this and that,
and there is not much time left for daddy. And
we were looking at a place which is not too
far away because we needed to squeeze it in and
being interested both in history in culture and architecture in nature,
we were looking for a place which is not a
typical tourist place, but again not too far away, and
we wanted.
To do a road trip. That was the idea.
I was looking at a couple of places, but felt
very very quickly that Georgia could be the thing. And
how old was she At the time, she was twenty one,
and she was just old enough to be allowed to
drive a rental car because in Europe you need to
be twenty one. And it turned out that she drove
most of the time. She loved it, and it was
quite a thing for me sitting next to her.
That's wonderful, I mean, it is something special to travel
with a parent, right, yes, it is.
First of all, doing a road trip means you're stuck
in a small thing called car, and you have a
lot of time to talk about the big things, little things,
and very often you start with the little things like oh,
look at this mountain or at this cow on the
side of the street or whatever it is, and then
you engage into a deeper conversation. And this is really
what I experienced. And it was quality time. And the
expression quality time has two words, quality and time, so
quality means value valuaball.
So it was really important for me.
But it was the time I spent with her, which
is every moment is a unique moment, as we know,
so I strongly felt this uniqueness. It was a precious moment.
It was an intensive moment. But there was also the
awareness on my side that this is something that will
not happen every few months or even every year. And
we had a lot of moments just her and me
sitting in the car discovering new places. And the amazing
thing about Georgia is everything is so condensed. You drive
for one hour and you arrive in a totally different landscape,
You see different architecture, you can do an experience so
many different things, from the Caucusus to the Black Sea,
and then you go to Tiblissi and all these places
and there's so much.
Input and so ready for some father daughter bonding. Carlo
and Lara arrived in Tiblissy, the first stop on their
journey through Georgia.
We stayed two days in Tiblisi before we really really
started the road trip. So the idea was to dive
into the Georgian culture, to experience the city, and then
to drive uproad. So we arrived by car in tibly
C breakfast time, and then instantly you see that this
city is something special because of its architecture. You pass
the old town, you see this new bridge, this futuristic bridge,
and you see so many different architectural elements without even
stepping out of the car. It's not the Middle East.
It's not Turkey, it's not Eastern Europe, it's not Russia.
And that was interesting. The light is not the Western
European light. It's a different light.
It's soft, like the bulbs are softer. It just felt different.
And then the language right, like, the language feels completely
not familiar.
Yeah, so different from anything else I've ever heard. The alphabet,
the letters have something artful. If I had to draw
an alphabet that is between Arabic and the Russian alphabet,
it would probably something like Georgia. But it has nothing
to do with both alphabets. So that was interesting to
see this organic shaped Yes, exactly. I was instantly amazed.
It feels like, okay, you landed in a place that
is so unique. Of course I read a little bit
about it, so I knew it, but it was an
instant confirmation that this is a very old place, a
country with an old soul.
If I can say, like.
This, so you're into Plasy with your daughter, what do
you remember most from your time there?
Walking?
Walking, walking, right, and everything that is linked to walking,
So walking around in the old town. Then you have
the bath, you have the new districts where the digital
nomads Hangaru. Yeah, Fabrica, which is amazing to see because
it's so close to the old town. And I love
the old town because it has this funny mix of
architectural influence. There's a lot of wood all these courtyards.
At some point we pass a building and it felt
and it looked like cockwards, like this really really sophisticated
architecture with all the little details, the statues, the wooden balconies.
And you can only be surprised in a positive way
if you start to walk, and I would almost say,
without a plan, just go.
As they wandered through to Bilizy, it became clear that
Georgia is a country shaped by opposing forces, ancient and modern,
Eastern and Western, familiar and completely foreign. And nowhere is
that tension more visible than in its architecture.
It's a country of contrast and of contradictions. Of contrast
because there is this huge variety of nature of what
you can live culturally from an architectural point of view,
but also contradictions because of the geopolitical situation of its history.
What was really really interesting was this massive amount of
flex from the European Union. I saw everywhere around and
they are a candidate to become a member of the
European Union for a couple of years. So I saw
the European flags on one side. On the other side
you see the influence of the Soviet Union, which also
means an influence of the Russian culture, and then you
see the legacy the history of the Persian Armenian cultures.
So it's really squeezed in between all these different cultures.
And again talking about architecture, I think it's the best
possible example to show the contradictions of Soviet Union brutalism
and postmodern glass palaces, and then the old architecture with
the wooden balconies and the Armenian Persian influence. So there
are so many influences and the architecture shows all these
contradictions and these contrasts.
I think when you travel you try and develop a framework,
just because that's how humans operate. And the more I
tried to decipher this thing, the more I was realizing, well,
that's its uniqueness. It's magic, right. It's been sort of
conquered by everybody. It has been playground for everybody, and
in that mix, it's created this very unique human like
It's created this very unique culture and a very old
one exactly right, and dating back. I mean wine comes
from Georgia, it was made there. I think there's six
languages that have nothing to do with any other language.
It's completely unique and on its own, and Georgia has that.
So that stuff started to really unravel for me in
a way that I found it quite positive, Like how
do you travel to a destination without wanting to kind
of have a framework and to sort of release those
expectations and then to just go with this idea of well,
I don't need it to be Asia, I don't need
it to be the Middle East. I don't need it
to be Europe. I just needed to be this. And
the people that I meant discussed this tension and this
magic in context of everything they were doing, whether it
was designed as architects, drag queens, chefs, like everybody had
this mix and this rope that they were sort of
weaving and creating, and it really thrilled me.
They don't deny their legacy.
If you go to some countries, it becomes terribly unpopular
to use old patterns or to be influenced by old music.
It seems to be considered to be old fashioned.
And the Georgian culture is strong enough and people are
proud of it, and people like to be influenced by
the legacy of that country, and I think it's the
right way. What is renewal of culture is taking the
best of the old world and the new world and
putting it together and reinventing things. And I think in Georgia,
when you look at culture, when you look at fashion
design or in design in general, you see this.
Yeah, that's matteric. There's a tradition there that I love.
Also is that at a dinner they have a master
ceremony and that person will get up from the table
with wine and start to sing in the middle of dinner.
You just sing old songs from the second century and
they're sort of guttural and beautiful and I don't understand it.
And if you're sitting next to someone, they'll just hum
and kind of feel the music and have a guttural response.
It's absolutely like nothing I've ever experienced.
Yeah, they experienced something their parents and grandparents and great
grandparents have experience. And don't forget this country has been
going through tough times, namely during the Soviet Union time,
so culture was what they had culture of wine and food.
And on the topic of wine and food, here are
some of Carlo's favorite foods and places in and around
tip See catcha puri.
I felt in love with katcha puri, which is pizza
basically yeah, cheese, bread, Yeah, a lot of bread and
a lot of cheese, and then you add whatever you
want to add. Katcha puri is naturally probably the most
popular dish they have because if you look at all
the cultures, bread is always important. Bread is always something
you share. Bread is always obviously something that is easy
to make. But no matter where you go, bread in
all these variations is an important thing for culture, for
gathering together, for sitting together. Georgians like to sit together
big family gatherings, So katcha puri is the main thing.
I remember. Then kinkali, which are dumplings. You eat it by.
Hand, Yeah, you bite and then you drink.
Yeah, you drink it yeah, which also means that you
eat it quickly. It's not by small bites. It's just
like you bite and then you empty it and you
take the rest.
Here. Do you have some favorite food spots Intili?
One of the places I really really loved was Atnograph
and then you have a couple of nice towels like
the stumbar.
Oh Stumbles where I stayed.
It was fantastic, fantastic hotel, nice, nice restaurant, world.
Class, like one of the best hotels I've stayed in
another planet. It is.
Yeah, it's a beautiful hotel. It's perfectly located.
You can walk absolutely everywhere from.
That walking distance from all the major spots in TBC.
After two days in the rich complexity of the capital,
Carlo and Lara set forth on their road trip, trading
city streets for Georgia's vineyards, caves and ever changing landscapes.
We did a lot within that week, so we did
a day trip to the wine region to Signagie. They
called it Little Tuscany and interesting city. Small city because
it has been renovated to a tract. Tourists, it looks
a bit artificial. But then we had the chance to
stain in a small hotel with a beautiful view over
the valley, and it looked like Tuscany. It really really did.
The next day we did this amazing road trip to
these caves. The name is David. It's the Saint David's caves.
I don't remember the name.
Carlos, referring here to the David Garecha Caves, a sixth
century monastery carved into rock at the southern border of Georgia.
And you leave this wine region, you drive for an
hour and a half and very quickly you come to
a landscape which is kind of a desert. It has
a lunar look and feel. There's nothing growing, no trees,
nothing's just flats and streets is literally disappearing. We just
see the marks of the wheels of cars who passed before.
The monastery is impressive. It's i think from the twelfth century,
built in a huge ruck and it's Normans land. There's
nothing around. So that was a beautiful day trip. And
then we continued let's say west west north towards Gory,
which is the place Starling was born, where the museum is.
As I said, this was kind of an experience. We
always tend to see things rather black and white, and
Georgia is not black. It's not white. And one of
the examples I found interesting, amazing, maybe shocking was this
Starling museum. You go into this museum and you really think, like,
are you serious. I mean, this is one of the
biggest mass murders in the twentieth century, if not in
the history of mankind. And you provide this person a
platform which is absolutely not critical. So he's in this
museum presented as the greatest Georgian ever. First of all,
I was shocked, and I went with my daughter and
trying to give her historical context. Me coming from a
small country, you have to understand that this was, in
the long history of Georgia, one of the rare moments
where they were able via one of their descendants, to
influence politics. And I think this is something you can
only really understand if you come from a small country.
The Stalin Museum was just another reminder that Georgian culture
doesn't exist in a single framework. By now Carlo and
Laura had learned to expect the unexpected.
And then went to the north to Katzbergi, which was
also something because you're still in the same country, but
you feel like, what's happening here? You drive by car,
suddenly there's some goats that block the streets, and then
he starts to snow and he's like, hey, wait, we
are in September, what's going on here? And that's one
of the fascinating things about Georgia is the changing landscapes,
is a changing nature, is the changing weather, and honestly,
you feel very quickly some humbleness facing all these weather conditions.
It's biblical, right, Like Georgia feels like the landscape is biblical.
Like these extremes, these temperatures, these changes, these seasons, everything
feels possible in this tiny little country. It's a fascinating experience.
Following these snowy mountain roads, Carlo and Lara descended towards
the Black Sea, one of the great prides of the
nation and yet another unexpected facet in the complexity of Georgia.
We went to Batoum, which is in the very south
of the Black Sea, and it's part of this old
stripe which actually starts in Sochi in Russia. And what
a mix agan of architecture. First thing, you arrive and
you see all these can I call it sky scrappers,
I don't know. It's a high elevated buildings.
It's like Abu Dhabi.
Yeah, it's almost like Abu Dhabi.
And it drives through the nature and everything looks very green,
and then you see on the horizon suddenly these buildings
and you see these arnuvu buildings villas built in the
late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, and then you
see these very modern buildings, which is a very very
weird mix because it's very condensed within the city and
when you go to the beach, it almost feels like
back in the sixties at the French area. It could
almost be Saint Tropez. Beautiful by itself, but you know,
you have restaurants, but they are not very posh, and
it has a very very specific charm. And you can
imagine that this always was and still is the proud
of the nation because they don't need to go to Centrape.
They have their Center Pe r and.
They can feel fifty years younger because it's like Center
Pe fifty years ago. So yeah, I really really was
impressed by But to me, overall everything I've mentioned so far,
it's places you have to go, and I think George
is a place you need to do road trip.
H Yeah, that's great. The distances are short.
Yeah, and it's an adventure of itself to drive. And
it's a safe country. I think it's important to raise
it's super safe country. One thing which I experience is
the hospitality They have this wording and I've written it
down because I really really wanted to say that sot
mari da gushtiza it means that the guest is sent
by God. These people are welcoming. They may not be
able to talk to you because they only speak Georgian,
but it is something we don't know that much in
Western Europe.
They're not trying to make money off you. It didn't
feel like that to me. It was like they were
honoring this thing that if you were sent by the gods,
then we're going to try and treat you like the
gold that you are. Looking back on your trip, what
sticks with you now?
Quality time with my daughter. That was something really really special.
Traveling is not only about the moment of traveling, but
you have, of course the preparation and idly you read
a little bit and you book hotels and everything, and
you discuss about, hey, what shall we do and what
will be the pace? But then comes also the post
traveling where you still have these experiences, these moments you
carry around with you. And this also makes it precious
to travel with someone. What's intimate, very it's very intimate, yeah.
And it's in a way the intimacy of a car,
the monotonousness of the road, the sound of the wheels,
and the changing of the landscape. It allows you to
tap into a deeper conversation.
I am thankful for the time we were both able
to spend together. The road trip thing is something we
felt in love with. We got the confirmation that we
want to do this again. We continue to do it afterwards.
The intensity of moments, of impressions of changes in weather conditions,
in nature, in food, in landscapes, in architecture was really
really unique, and you.
Don't have time to breath.
It's just like new impressions, new impressions, new impressions, all
the time. And this is really really something we both share.
And I think our relationship changed with the Georgia trip
because before she was my daughter.
She's still my daughter, but also friends.
And I'm very very thankful for that, because you know,
it's a thing as apparent as a father to see
your child growing up, and it comes with a lot
of things. It comes with can I call it a
loss of emotional control over your child because you suddenly
don't know any more what she's thinking, what she's doing,
the little details of her everyday life you don't see
anymore because she has moved out and she has her
own life, and it's part of the whole story. And
connecting in a new way doing a trip that is
something I'm very, very thankful and grateful for.
Great Carlo. That's so lovely. I love this chat. Thank you,
thank you so much. Georgia is not a country that
can be decoded or easily put in a box. It's
defined by its multitudes, a patchwork display of culture, people
and scenery that come together to reveal the nation rooted
in tradition, yes, but all together rand new. For Carlo,
what seemed like a simple adventure brought an unexpected gift,
not just a deeper understanding of the country, but a
quiet shift in his relationship with his daughter from parents
and child to something that looks a lot more like
a good friend. And maybe that's another layer of what
travel offers us, not definitions, but in greater connection to
the people and places evolving right alongside us.
My message to future travelers to Georgia is to be
curious and go there with an open heart and open eyes,
and to road trip, and to road trip.
That's the thing.
Wherever your path leads you. Next, may you allow it
to surprise you and reveal so much more than what
you could ever have expected. Wayfinder Life Changing Travel is
a production of Iheart's Ruby Studio. I'm your host Daniel Scheffler.
Our show's executive producer is Sierra Kaiser, with supervising producer
Meredith Barnes. Our story producer is Ryan Amador, with post
production by James Foster and editing by Sierra Spreen. Don't
forget to subscribe to Wayfinder, and please rate and review
the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
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