The One Chocolate of My Life That Came to Mind While Walking Along Batumi Beach [Lee Hwan-joo's Self-Funded Travelogue]

[Financial News] After breakfast at a hotel in Mestia, I set off for Batumi early in the day. The drive from Mestia to Batumi took about five hours. Located in southwestern Georgia, Batumi is the country's largest port city and a seaside resort—something like Busan in South Korea. Its proximity to the Turkish border gives it an atmosphere entirely different from that of the capital, Tbilisi.


We arrived at Batumi Seaside Park around 2 p.m., after lunch. We went to see the ‘Ali & Nino’ statue, one of the most popular symbols featured on souvenir magnets from Georgia.
The Ali and Nino sculpture was created by Georgian artist and architect Tamar Kvesitadze, inspired by the novel of the same name by renowned Azerbaijani novelist Kurban Said. Ali, the novel's protagonist, is a young Azerbaijani Muslim, while Nino is a Georgian Christian princess. The novel tells of a poignant love that cannot be fulfilled amid religious and cultural differences, World War I and national upheaval. Every evening at 7 p.m., the statues move toward each other, embrace and merge into one, then eventually pass through each other and move apart in opposite directions. They seemed a little like Georgia's version of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. 
Walking along Batumi Seaside Park, we saw the Alphabet Tower and Piazza Square, which calls to mind a piazza in Rome, Italy.
I visited in late August, but the cloudy weather kept me from fully enjoying Batumi Beach. It was unusual to see a beach made up of black pebbles rather than fine sand. At the heart of Batumi's old town is Europe Square, where the variety of buildings can make you feel as if you've arrived somewhere in Europe in the late 19th century. In the center of the square stands a statue of Medea holding the Golden Fleece from Greek mythology, a popular spot for tourists to take souvenir photos.






Just a few days earlier, I had been trekking across the green meadows of Juta, which looked like they belonged on a Windows desktop background, while avoiding horse manure. Batumi felt entirely different, hard to believe it was in the same country. It was a clean city with what seemed like an equal mix of European and Russian sensibilities. Crypto ATMs where people can trade Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were easy to spot throughout the city. Georgia is one of the world's most crypto-friendly countries, with the ownership and trading of cryptocurrency fully permitted by law. Bitcoin ATMs are particularly easy to find near large supermarkets and shopping areas.
However, many of the ATMs reportedly only let users buy Georgian cash (lari) with Bitcoin or Tether (USDT). Even when people try to sell cryptocurrency and withdraw cash, the machines are often out of cash. What's more, fees for converting cryptocurrency to cash or buying it through an ATM are high—7–10%, compared with regular exchanges. As a result, tourists, rather than locals, are more likely to use them to trade coins in a hurry or out of curiosity.
Meanwhile, Georgia's local currency, the lari, has strengthened recently, and deposit rates are relatively high, as is common in emerging economies.The National Bank of Georgia's policy rate is 8.25% a year, while local deposit rates reach 10%.With a weak industrial base, including in manufacturing, Georgia appears keen to attract foreign investment. Among other measures, it allows foreigners, including South Koreans, to stay in the country visa-free for one year.For people with substantial financial assets, such as stocks, Georgia also serves as a kind of tax haven, since it has no capital gains tax on U.S. stocks and similar assets.To receive tax benefits in Georgia, however, one must qualify as a tax resident under Georgian law by staying in the country for at least 183 days in any consecutive 12-month period.


After that, I wandered around Europe Square and visited two or three souvenir shops. I found that wine and some other items I had bought in earlier cities were cheaper here. I feel this every time: if you buy souvenirs early in a trip because you're afraid you might not be able to get them anywhere else, you inevitably end up paying more. Another problem is having to carry the extra weight for the rest of the trip. But if you tell yourself you'll buy something you like later and then miss your chance, all too often the place where you saw it before turns out to have been your last opportunity to buy it. Perhaps relationships between people (romantic relationships) are similar in some ways. It resembles the feeling of missing an ex after a breakup, when you ended things thinking you might somehow find someone better than the person you're with now.
Before I got married, I thought having little dating experience was a major flaw. I didn't have enough past relationships to give me a basis for judging how good the person I was dating was. I vaguely felt inferior, thinking, ‘People who have dated a lot will be good at marriage, too.’ But after learning about a chocolate experiment involving children, I began to think that having little dating experience might actually lead to a happier marriage.
Here's how the chocolate experiment works. When a child is given one piece of chocolate, their satisfaction is said to be high, at 10. But if a child is given two pieces and asked to choose one, their satisfaction drops below 10. And the more chocolates they can choose from, the lower their satisfaction is said to be after they pick one.Is meeting people any different? Just because I've tried lots of chocolates doesn't mean there's much chance that the one I ultimately choose will be the best of them. And once your threshold for sweetness rises, it's hard to feel much happiness from eating just any chocolate.Come to think of it, there seemed to be many couples around me who had dated for a long time, married, and were living happily with the girlfriends they first met in college.
After looking around Europe Square, we headed to a restaurant for dinner. After about a week, I was tired of traditional Georgian food, so we looked for a place serving Western-style cuisine. We went to a place called Amedeo restaurant and had shrimp cream pasta and beef with mashed potatoes. It was delicious. Of course, sharing the meal with someone who loves good food probably helped, too.


Afterward, we checked into our accommodation and unpacked, then went to look around Batumi's fish market that evening. It was some distance from the hotel, but we walked there instead of driving, partly to aid digestion. A fine drizzle was falling, and walking without an umbrella felt a little eerie, but it was a memory nonetheless. The fish market wasn't as large as I had expected, but we saw several unusual kinds of fish that you wouldn't find in a Korean fish market. It seemed that people usually bought fish or squid there and ate them at a nearby restaurant, but we just looked around and went back to our accommodation.
We still had some time, so we took another walk along the seaside path, past Europe Square and the Ali and Nino sculpture we had seen during the day. Because of their impossible love, Ali and Nino can only pass each other once each evening. But we, watching the statue, had much more time together ahead of us.



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