gamarjoba This is the Tbilisi Podcast, covering life, travel, and more in the country of Georgia, brought to you by foodfuntravel.com expathub.ge and in this episode, we are talking about King David, the man, the myth, the legend, King David the builder, who took Georgia from under the stranglehold of the Seljuk Turks and created the most glorious empire Georgia has ever seen. Listen on to find out more about King David. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Tbilisi Podcast, a show about life and travel in Tbilisi and Georgia. I'm Meg. I am one of your hosts. I run a website called foodfuntravel.com and with me, as always. Well, actually, not as always. We've had a couple of episodes that we haven't done together, so I won't say as always, but yes, with me is my husband, Tom. Hi, Tom.

Hey, everyone, it's Tom here from expert and eatthistours.com Greetings.

Wonderful. Today we do have another history episode for everyone, for all those history buffs out there that want to know a little bit more about Georgian personalities and, you know, these people that you. You know, you see street signs and you see statues and you hear about these different people and you're like, who was that anyway?

Yeah. Or maybe you just never heard of this person before and you're like, but I like history stuff. So let's find out who this is.

Exactly. So let's do a little bit of a who are they?

Who is it? Who are we talking about?

Okay, well, this dude.

Can we pronounce his name?

I'm gonna try.

Okay.

Good luck. He was the king of Georgia from 1089 to 1125 CE, which is. What does that stand for again?

Common Era.

Common Era.

I'm fine with A.D. like, I don't care. I'm obviously living in the past. Yeah, whatever. Anno Domini. Whatever.

He is one of the most famous and beloved rulers of Georgian history. He's considered the original architect of Georgian golden age. He succeeded.

Are we doing a bit of a Jeopardy thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I said.

Who is it? Who am I?

Is it Jeopardy that has that, or is it something else? I can't remember. Or Jeopardy Is the one where they give you the answer first and then you have to get the question or something. I don't know. I haven't really watched it.

No, they do that. The. They do, yeah. And then you answer with the who is? Blah, blah, blah.

All right. Well, I mean, most people. Unless this Episode just rolled on in their headphones from the last one without them reading. Probably clicked on the link and it has the name of the guy.

Stop ruining my phone.

Oh, well, never mind. All right, sure.

He succeeded in driving the Seljuk Tur out of the country, won the Battle of Digori in 1121. And his reforms of the army and political administration enabled him to reunite the country and bring most of the lands of the Caucasus under George's control. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's episode. It is King David the Fourth.

Well, that's the easy part to pronounce. That was cheating.

He is Dafet. Ag Mash and Billy. Agmash and Billy.

Maybe.

But from now on he will be referred to as King David.

That's. That's the best way to do it, isn't it?

Yes. He is a very beloved man in these lands because King David managed to uplift Georgia and the Georgian people and transform the kingdom into a military and economic powerhouse during his reign. So we're going to learn a little bit about him today.

All right. I'm excited. I mean, I don't know him. He's older than me. Well, yes, significantly. I mean, like, I'm technically a millennial. I'm not even sure if he's Gen Z. Gen X? No, Gen Z's newer. I mean, I don't know. I don't know.

I don't even know what you'd call people back then.

Gen A, maybe Gen B.

Well, see, if he created the golden era, he would be Gen. Like ge.

Yeah. Gen G for Georgia. All right. Gen Georgia, Why not?

All right, so David ascended the throne at an early age of 16. Would you believe that was in 1089?

Could you imagine being a king when you're 16 years old?

I mean, bonkers, bonkers. Like, I mean, now they live like lives of luxury and they'd be like, sure, okay, cool. Back then things were cray cray.

Yeah. But I just mean like my level of maturity and ability to rule over a kingdom and then take a. Like, he's one of the greatest rulers ever. As we'll discuss.

Precisely.

Yeah. 16 year old and going, yeah, yeah, I'll sort this whole country out.

The interesting thing about David is that he didn't actually ascend the throne because his father died. His father quit. He gave it to David. He was like, well, you know what? Things aren't going so great for me. I'm gonna give it to my 16 year old son and see how that turns out.

Shit, dad.

Yep. Yes. Well, he's got a few redeeming factors. His father was George ii. He did, as I said, abdicate the throne to his son because the kingdom was slipping into chaos.

So he thought the best thing to do is let a 16 year old take over.

Exactly.

They can always sort out chaos. They're known for sorting out chaos, actually.

But it did turn out to be a good idea. So.

Wow.

To old George ii. And he actually lived like a proper long life. Like, he's not really spoken about a lot in the books after the abdication, but he was always sort of there as like a mentor and stuff like that. He just sort of lived his life and did his thing and was like, go, David, go. Go, David, go.

As he, you know, taking little league games and stuff.

Yeah.

With swords, though, of course, not baseball bats.

Indeed.

Yeah.

So back then, the kingdom of Georgia encompassed what is today known as Western Georgia. And this is including Abkhazia in that, with its easternmost point being Musketa. And the actual kingdom located back in those days in Ktaisi Mutsketa, is just north Tbilisi.

For those new listeners who don't know much about Tbilisi.

Yep.

I guess if you don't know where Tbilisi is in terms of Georgia, then really do look at a map, because I don't think you could listen to this podcast if you don't know where Tbilisi is, as it is called. The Tbilisi podcast.

Indeed.

Or Tbilisi. Tbilisi. Tbilisi. Yeah, I always. Tbilisi, again, need to pronounce it better.

The eastern part of modern Georgia, including Tbilisi, was occupied at this time completely by the Seljuks. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. S, E, L, J, UK Seljuk.

I mean, they're not Georgian and this is a Georgian.

They are not. They are Turkish.

We're only apologizing for bad pronunciations of Georgian words.

The Seljuqs were a ruling military family. They were Turkic tribes that invaded southwestern asia in the 11th century and eventually founded an empire that included Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and most of Iran. So these guys were actually kind of a big deal back then. Well, the Seljuk dominance of the eastern region persisted unchecked for almost a decade. They were in charge, they were comfortable. They were just, like, doing their thing. Georgia was, like, not only devastated by enemy invasions, like, not just by them, but like other enemies and stuff like that. They had a bunch of natural disasters that happened at the same time, you know, and when stuff like that happens, food is scarce and people are troubled. And so you have internal dissent, like things were not going great. Also, at that time, they had to pay the Seljuk Sultan an annual peace tribute. And that was put in place after his father, George ii, he actually tried overthrowing the Turkish tribes and kicking them out and stuff, but it didn't work. He was not successful in that. And even though the Georgians were paying a peace tribute because of this, like, so he tried to take it over. And he was like, can you just leave my people alone? And they were like, sure, we can leave your people alone. If you pay us. It's kind of like the mob, that sort of thing. It's like, well, if you pay us as peace tribute, like, annually and, you know, make sure that I'm happy, then we won't invade your. Your lands anymore. But just because the head honcho guy says, sure, we're good, you pay on time and everything's fine, doesn't mean that the little minions around the countryside are actually listening. And they still continued to do raids. Peasants were carried off as booty. The Georgian capital of Ktaisi was constantly looted. It was said that there was. So. It's actually. There's a quote here. It says, no more sowing and harvesting of the lands. The forests crept back in, and wild beasts and critters in the fields took the place of men.

Blimey.

So, basically, as we know, Georgia to be today is a very agricultural place. They've got beautiful lands that you can grow crops, and lots of different things can be grown here. And back in that time, like, they were just so constantly devastated. And as I said, the natural disasters didn't help as well. They just couldn't get everything together to grow food and, like, cultivate the land. And so people were hungry, people were upset, people were being carried away as slaves. Like, it was a crazy time. So this is what David walked into. Yay.

Yeah.

So, yeah, his dad was strongly encouraged to quit after his. Well, they didn't. They didn't strongly encourage him to, like, you know, like they did the Romanovs. He was.

The Romanovs were very strongly encouraged to quit.

Yeah. So there's different levels of strongly encouraged. He did all that.

Infinitely encouraged.

So they let his son take the throne, basically. The changeover is a little bit of a mystery and is mentioned only in passing in many Georgian chronicles. But according to the best and most reliable chronicle of them all, Wiki.

Wiki Chronicle. I didn't know there was a Wiki Chronicle. Is it written in, like, old English and stuff? Well, old Georgian, but, you know. You know what I mean?

But Basically wiki said that all is recorded is that Georgia George crowned his son as king with his own hands, after which he disappears from the chronicle. He was most probably forced by his nobles in a palace coup masterminded by the powerful minister Bishop Giorgi Chikundi. And he was actually a tutor to the young David, which actually comes into play later. So it's this thing because. So the bishop is actually really well known and very renowned. So I think the details on whether or not he orchestrated this coup is a little sort of hush hush.

Oh yeah, he kept it out of the history books, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly right, that all adds up. And that's also why it's only in wiki though, potentially. That's just conjecture. This is all conjecture. There's no actual written record for this reason. Exactly.

But he did quite well over the changeover, so.

Yeah, well, I mean if you were going to be a little bit of a cynic here, you might say that he, yeah, orchestrated the entire thing and was using 16 year old David as someone he could control. But then maybe it turned out that David was smarter and better at this than he thought he was gonna be.

Indee.

You know, there could be a lot to it. There should be a TV show on this. Maybe there is a Georgian TV show on this already, but we just wouldn't be able to watch it.

I will actually state here that there does seem to be a period of time where David and George actually co ruled together. So he wasn't just some 16 year old kid going about his life and doing whatever and being like, hey you.

You'Re in skateboarding and things like that. Exactly, yeah, he was doing more than that.

He was, he was actually really well educated and they co ruled for a bit. He wasn't just completely thrown in the deep end with all of this.

All right.

But yeah, despite his young age, David was very intelligent. He'd been actively engaged in politics from a very young age where he was. Yeah, as I mentioned, he was serving as co ruler with his father. So he sort of knew the day in and day out of how things worked before he took over. And as I mentioned, he was tutored by the influential bishop who then went on to become his most trusted advisor. Right, yes. So basically, after years of watching his land be sacked by invaders, King David had really big ambitions, as 16 year olds do, and he had really big plans regarding the revival of the kingdom which he actually began to put into place. So here's some of the things that he put into place. He worked to centralize the kingdom administration under his rule. So he just gave less control to like a lot of the lords in the different areas because a few of them were getting a little antsy. And he was like, hey, bring it in, Bring it. Bring your head in. He was determined to bring order to the land and quench any unrest from unruly feudal lords. This included whether or not they were part of the clergy. So it didn't matter if you were part of the clergy. Pull your head in.

The general summary is pull your head in.

Pretty much that's what he said. He formed a new type of army that would stand up better to the Seljuk Turkish military organization. And he put into place a methodical offensive with the aim of expelling the Seljuks, first from Georgia and then the whole of the Caucasus. He did this by picking off isolated enemy troops and then allowing his people to move back in, take some time to resettle the lands and while growing crops and rebuilding the cities. That meant he can move on to the next offensive.

So slowly, slowly, slowly incremental. Doesn't that make sense?

Exactly.

Rather than that crazy going for everything all at once and then ending up exhausted.

Exactly.

Good plan.

He also came into a little bit of luck as well. Around about the same time as he wanted to put all of this in Place. In 1092, a major leader of the Seljuks was made very much unalive.

Unalive. He was doing less breathing by the end of this process.

Yeah. He was very much assassinated.

A non breather, if you will.

But another one died. I don't know exactly how he died, but he was not made unalive. He was just unalive.

He was not made unalive. He naturally became less alive.

He did.

Through the natural processes of not being alive anymore.

Indeed.

Right, interesting.

So this caused an imbalance in the leadership of the Seljuks. And then while that was a little bit in topsy turvy and people were like, ah, who's in control now? What's gonna happen? Another army turned up on their doorstep looking for a little bit of so many.

So many armies in those days. Yeah.

But this one was quite a substantial one. So 1095, we have the arrival of Mongols, the Christian crusader crusaders.

Yeah, Mongols is a bit later. It's like 100 years later or so.

Yeah. But when you're thinking about like important armies or people that, you know, swept through regions, I think Mongols is definitely a good guess.

But it's ballpark the right time but, yeah, maybe about 100 years later, I think they came around.

We had the Christian Crusaders turn up. They marched in to reclaim the Holy Land from the Muslims, and in doing so, gave King David the perfect opportunity to once and for all cut off tribute to the Seljuks. He did that in 1099, and he then took the money that he wasn't giving to them and invested it in his army. I think I mentioned it a little bit later, but he does some unique things with his army that actually made them very, very loyal to him. And I'll talk about it a little later.

Does it involve wine?

Well, always. Always, Always.

That's a separate story, but obviously also a true story.

Yeah. So he took that money, invested it in the army and infrastructure instead, and then this is where he decided to go on the offensive. While the Seljuk's backs were turned and they were paying attention to the Crusades, he decided to start taking back his land of Georgia.

Fair enough.

So fortress after fortress, village after village, they all fell to King David and his army, who were said to have, quote, moved through the lands as a tsunami. End quote.

Wow.

The Seljuks were now facing Crusaders to the west and King David in the north. They couldn't fight on two fronts, and their remaining strongholds started to collapse. One thing that was unique about King David's army is that he'd formed a standing Georgian army that were loyal to him alone. And he did this by paying his men a salary.

Oh, people actually get paid.

It's a really crazy concept. And it worked. So rather than them just having to loot and, you know, get by on their own, so whatever they found along the way, he actually paid them. He used that money that, as I said before, he was no longer paying in tribute to give them a salary. So people were happy, people were loyal, people were willing to fight for King David and King David alone.

Yeah. Instead of keeping the money for himself, he was like, yep, share the wealth and we will win.

He also went together really, really strict on them, and he wouldn't allow any unsavory behavior. He was like, you are Georgians. You are brave soldiers. If you do not act in a proper way, you will be disciplined. So basically, there was, like, no swearing, raping, pillaging, that sort of stuff.

Oh, no raping or pillaging.

I know. Crazy.

Yeah. I mean, this is unusual. This is very, very different.

But the thing is, according to one estimate, his army may have been as large as 40,000 men. And this also included an elite royal guard. Unit as well.

Well, yeah, people, you know, which seems.

Like a big army. But he was very successful with that army because they were loyal to him and they. They fought hard.

Yeah. They figure out that there's a job going, and everyone's like, telling, hey, hey, hey, Giorgi, have you heard about this? As David's putting jobs out. Putting jobs out to everyone. Paid, paid jobs.

It kind of reminds me of that story about Luxembourg and the last time they went to war. I think something like 280 soldiers went off to battle and 281 came back. Because one dude was like, I like you guys. Can I come back with you? And they're like, sure. I love that story. I think that's quite funny.

I'm guessing that the Turks were not coming back to drink wine with the Georgians after all of this.

No, they were not. So within three years, that's all it took, King David and his loyal army had managed to go forth and liberate most of eastern Georgia. One of David's most significant victories came in 1121, when he defeated a massive Seljuk army at the Battle of Didgori.

There's a big historical site. It's about 45 minutes outside of Tbilisi. Yeah, we take people on tours there occasionally, but it's not really a wine area, so we don't normally go that way.

Yeah.

But, yeah, that's a cool place on the top of a hill. It's great.

The story behind this is it's said that the Sultan of the Seljuks became very aware of David's successes, and he was not too happy about a bunch of Christians coming back in to take over the lands that they had already looted and plundered. They wanted to keep it for themselves. So he declared a holy jihad on Georgia. It's said that the Muslim army was so large that it was maybe even 600,000 soldiers that gathered there to conquer David and his army, which, as I mentioned before, was only like 40,000 or so soldiers. So this epic battle reached its climax at the Battle of D, which to this day is considered the greatest military victory in the history of Georgia. Now, what they're saying is one of the reasons why he actually won this with so few men was what he did was he actually made friends with some of the Crusaders because they were, like, Christians fighting, you know, helping out Christians. And he got a few of the Crusaders to be strategically placed in different spots where they could see them. Like, there'd be, like, a bunch of them here and a bunch of Them there, like up on these different, you.

Know, look out guys, look out spots of some sort.

And so the Seljuks would turn up and they would see like they were getting their asses kicked by the Crusaders in other areas. And everyone had heard about it. So they saw them there and they thought, oh, my goodness, the whole army is here. They've got the crusaders on their side, they're gonna kick our butts. And so a lot of them like, were like, nope, we're out. Thank you, bye.

Nice is a smooth move, Ferguson.

Exactly. So it was this smart thinking and stuff like this that made David actually really smart in his military conquests and all that sort of stuff. He was just like, you know, as I said before, things that he was doing, like putting money back into the military, putting money back into the land, making sure that, you know, people had food to eat and that the soldiers were fed and ready to fight and all of that sort of stuff just helped him have a very loyal, very strong army. And he just had these, like, really smart ideas that absolutely worked.

Killing it.

Literally killing them, killing them. So the battle at Dagori was the culmination of the entire Georgian Seljuk wars and led to the Georgians reconquest of Tbilisi in 1122. It came back. Yay.

And now we can live here.

Yep. Soon after that, David moved the capital from Kutaisi back to Tbilisi. And the victory at Dogori is seen as the beginning of the medieval Georgian age and is celebrated to this day on August 12th with the festival known, known as Dyguroba, which is the day of Dygori.

Yeah, anything that sort of ends in Ober seems to be a festival. Tiblis Oba. I think there's a Kittais Oba as well. Yeah, there's loads of obers, which are great. I'm always looking out for obers. Yeah, I'm a fan.

I like the obers. So hearing of his victories, King David's supporters in other provinces overthrew their leaders and rejoined Georgia. They were like, yay, we can fight too. One region in particular was the kingdom of Karkatia, where the people rebelled against their young king and booted him out. Karketia has always been like a really wealthy region, a wealthy land, because it's very fertile, very fertile. It's a good place for wine and just growing stuff in general. So they had actually avoided the Turkish raids through a treaty that they had with the Seljuks. And once the Seljuks were gone, it Came back to being this king who was a young king, going, I don't know what I'm doing. And they're like, no, you don't. Bye. And so they went back and joined with Georgia, with King David, and so there, the wealth of the land helped Georgia continue to develop infrastructure and rebuild fortifications because they had the money to do so.

Nice.

By the end of King David's conquests, the Georgian kingdom stretched from the very tip of the Caucasus Mountains in the west all the way down to the river Araxes, which borders the territory we know today as Azerbaijan, Iran, Armenia and Turkey. So they took a lot of land and then some.

It's bigger than Georgia is today.

Correct.

As I understand, this was like the largest Georgia ever was as a single country, which is why King David is such a big deal, because not only did he bring all his land back, but he actually got more land as well. It was like the. Yeah, the golden age.

The golden age, yeah. They. They were the biggest they'd ever been. They had lots of money and were prosperous and could, you know, celebrate and live their lives in happy peace for the time, for a little while.

Until the Mongols turned up. That's another podcast that is.

So, yeah. David was educated king, and with many people now back under Georgian rule, he preached tolerance and acceptance of other religions. He abolished religious taxes for Muslims and Jews in his kingdom, and he advocated for the protection of Muslim scholars. So this level of humane treatment of different religions and cultures created a diverse, multi ethnic kingdom and set a hallmark not only for his enlightened reign, but for all of Georgian history and culture. So one thing that people, if you do go on tours here, people do constantly talk about how Tbilisi in particular, and lots of Georgia has been very accepting of other people's religions and everyone can live here peacefully. While it is predominantly a Christian culture, no one has ever needed to fear being a different religion and being here, because Georgians have always been very accepting of and tolerant of other religions and cultures.

Yep. There's a bunch of synagogues and mosques all over the place.

Yep.

All around the country. Yeah.

Yeah. So King David died on January 24, 1125, aged 52. Pretty young, but I think back in those days, that was a pretty good run. As he decreed, he was buried under a tombstone at the entrance to the Galati Monastery, which is located near Kutaisi, so that anyone who enters must first step on his tomb as a show of his ultimate humility. The epitaph reads, christ, this is my resting place for eternity. It pleases me Here I shall dwell. So that monastery was actually built by him and it actually was an educational zone for many, many years for people to get educated and prosper. And so that was like his. His big thing that he built.

Yeah. And today it's a un with some of the best preserved frescoes in Georgia.

Yeah.

So it's definitely on the. On the hit list for anyone who's traveling here to pop in and have a look and step on King David's grave.

Yep. In all his humility. So some interesting facts. King David personally participated in most, if not all, battles that were fought during his reign, which is crazy for a king, especially when you're like, 17 or whatever.

I suppose when you're 17, I'll never die.

I'll be fine to 30. And it's like, oh, my mortality still stick kicking in a little bit now. But they were more prosperous then. I think it was all done and whatever by then. But he's said to have led the army from the front and always been in the heat of battle with his compatriots. So, yeah, he wasn't just sitting somewhere telling people what to do. He would always get in there and get involved himself. Apparently, he also. Before the big battle of Diggori, David ordered his troops to block their own way back, telling his soldiers that they would either win or die there. As a result, over 70% of the Seljuks were killed and the rest were taken prisoner. Well, it was just like, go, go, go. No option here. Got to win. The airport at Kutaisi is named in his honour. So if you've flown into Kutaisi or you're looking at that as an option. It is, actually. If you're looking at traveling to Georgia, that is a good option. You can fly into Tbilisi or Kutaisi. A lot of people forget about the Katasi airport.

Yeah. There's quite a lot of flights from European cities and a few from the Middle east as well, I think. So, yeah, it's a good option.

The National Defense Academy is named after him. Makes sense. And Ilya Chavchavadze, who we did another episode on a couple of months ago, you can go back and take a listen to who Ilyavchavadse is. He writes about King David. Oh, I didn't even mention that he's named King David the Builder. Did I say that? No, he's King David the Builder.

Because we just said King David the difficult to pronounce surname. That's all we did from the start.

King David the Builder. Yeah. Because he built this great land, he put it all back together and built it up to be great. And then they had the golden age of the Georgian era. But yes, Chavchavadze said this marvelous day which reminds us of such a glorious man. That was King David, whose remembrance brings about the rebirth of a nation. And who dares forget this? It must be a deadly sin for a nation. A man must have two names, says the nation. One for earthly remembrance and another to take with him to heaven. David is remembered as a king and as a builder. But being a religious man, he went away as a saint. So David the builder was canonite as a saint by the Georgian Orthodox Christian Church. So he is known as a saint.

Makes sense.

Yeah. That is King David. Of course, I could have gone on a lot more in depth about like the different battles and all that sort of stuff, but that's a nice little overview for you. So you know a little bit about King David, what he did and why he's such a big deal.

Yeah. And now there's an apartment block in Tbilisi named after him. So you know. Oh yeah, people use his name for so many things like. Yeah, there's always a King David street in every avenue in every single city.

An apartment building is so modern. Like I don't know if there was any sort of reference from him to build for that style or they just.

Surely not. No, it was just a. Let's use the name because people will know what that is.

Yeah, it's like the fanciest apartment block in Tbilisi.

It is definitely a high end apartment block. It is quite a sight. It is a landmark for sure. Whether you like it or don't like it, I don't know. But it is a very visual landmark and very large, very glass, blue glass sort of apartment block.

So there you go. Now you know, Tom. And everyone.

Now I know. Yeah.

Knows about King David. What was your favorite fact that you learned about King David?

That he went skateboarding with his dad. Cause they co ruled together when he was 16.

Okay, you weren't listening. You can listen to the podcast again once it's released.

I mentioned something to do with this during the podcast. I'm pretty sure that happened.

Yes. But you need to go back and listen to this podcast again, please.

You're saying I haven't done my homework properly? No, no. To be fair, I've only listened to this podcast once, which is whilst we just recorded it in the last few minutes. So it's not like I really studied this at length.

Anyone who's Listening. Next time you see Tom, give him a pop quiz to make sure that he has gone back and done his King David studies.

Right. Yes. Eventually. Eventually I will. You never know. If enough people come up to me in the street and ask me about it, then maybe I actually will.

Yep. Alright. That is the end of another historical figure episode. If you have anyone that you would like us to do, if you want us to, you know, drop someone in, like, drop a name.

We've got a whole list of people actually already. We don't know when we're going to do them. We're going to do them eventually.

But I'd like to know if there's anyone that you find interesting that you'd like me to jump ahead of the queue. Can be anyone. Like, you know, it can be people from today. Who is Katie Melua?

Who is Katie Mellower?

She's a singer.

Yes. From Georgia, if you didn't know. And I never knew, like when she was famous in England and I lived in England, I had no idea.

I did not.

Now, of course, as soon as I came to Georgia, everyone's like, Katie Bellawer. Like, oh, what?

Yep, yep.

Now we know.

There you go. So, yeah, any famous people, let us know that you want to learn a little bit more about. We can maybe jump them ahead in the queue. You can contact us by emailing, which is megziedfundtravel.com or we are on the socials on Facebook. Insta. I'm on the top.

We're on the TikTok now. We're on the TikTok. It's real. We're doing it. It's actually pretty good with all the.

Young people on the TikToks. Yes. So, I mean, are we really that old?

We keep acting like we're really old. We're always going like, oh, I don't know what young people are doing. We're not that old. We're not 65 or something. Sorry. To anyone who's 65. And I'm just saying you're old. I mean, technically you are, I guess. And you might have to just accept it at that point. I'm gonna have to accept it at some point. I'm definitely getting older, but I don't consider myself a pensioner at this point.

No, but we are past middle age. We are, yes.

Well, that depends, actually, because, you know, with all of the developments in AI and medical science and everything else, we might live to 150.

That's a lot.

Yeah. That is probably too much.

And hips hold out well.

The whole point is that they'll all get fixed, isn't it?

Oh, that's a good point.

That's the idea. Otherwise you're not going to make it to 150 because you'll just be lying on your back for 50 years and it'd be pretty boring.

That'd suck.

Yeah. Yeah. Don't want to do that.

Yep. But yes. Anyway, the whole point of this is we are on the socials and come and check out our new TikTok it is Tbilisi podcast. Everything is Tbilisi podcast across the board.

Yep. That made it easy.

Yep. Made it nice and easy. Doing some reels, doing just. I don't know, it's mostly just me walking around Tivolisi and doing stuff.

Yeah, yeah. And if you like wine, we started.

There's always gonna be wine.

There's always wine. Yeah. But I mean, go listen to some of our wine episodes. But yeah, we've started up our. Our wine tastings in Tbilisi because it was. It was such a frustrating situation during COVID and everything else that happened the last few years to run something in person with a large group of people that we just didn't.

Yeah.

But now that it's 2023 and stuff seems to be a bit more ironed out, we are starting to run those again. So just a little mini plug there. Completely separate from this episode. As we said, King David and his troops used to drink wine. So if you want to do something similar to that, without the war and the death, just the wine part. We're doing that in Tbilisi.

They weren't doing it in Tbilisi either. Like when they were fighting, they got Tbilisi at the end of it all.

Oh, yeah. But then they probably drank wine in Tbilisi. They probably had a massive wine cere tasting at the end of that battle.

For sure.

Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, head to eattistours.com there's going to be a link somewhere on there with wine tastings and you can find us.

Yep.

Yep. Nice.

Wonderful. Thank you for joining us again for another episode. We really appreciate you guys listening. If you've got this far listening to our ramblings, you're the best. Thank you so much. And we hope you click on and listen to another episode either today or next time we release another episode, we'll be there. Yeah, hopefully you will.

If you're upset that I said you were too old or something and you thought I was talking directly to you. I wasn't. I was just making a general comment that was completely ridiculous.

Too late now. You've already said it.

I've already said it.

I'd backpedal.

Now, don't leave us negative reviews because you thought I was having a go at you for being older than me or something. I mean, that's completely silly, isn't it? Completely silly. We're joking around here a bit. Get over it. How about that? Just. Just get over it.

You're getting offensive and you're trying to not be offensive. I'm offending myself.

I'm so old, Meg.

I'm so old. Now let's go drink some more wine.

Oh, yeah, I think that's a good idea.

Okay, bye. Thanks for listening to the Tbilisi Podcast. Connect with us@tbilisi podcast.com where you can find all relevant social media links, join our email newsletter and discover more about travel tours and expat services in Georgia. This show is brought to you by foodfuntravel.com expathub, ga and ecostours.com ra.