Dear Mom and Dad,
What have your spa experiences been like? I can’t remember either of you spending much time there: bathing was done at home or at the Jewish Community Center after a swim in the community pool. Have you ever been to a proper spa? Dad, I know you spoke often about the pools in Istanbul, and Mom, I know you always said you would like to have a real spa day but have you ever gotten one?
Well, the spas in Tbilisi are special. For starters, they’re called baths, not spas, and they’re built on sulfur springs. Tbilisi’s status as capital of the country of Georgia is due in large part to the springs. The legend goes something like this:
In the 5th Century CE, King Vakhtang Gorgasali was on a hunt outside of the then capital city of Mtskheta. During the expedition, his falcon flew from his arm and caught a pheasant in its talons. The pheasant fought for its life and amidst the struggle, both pheasant and falcon fell into a steaming hot pool. Moments later, to the Kings astonishment, both birds emerged from the pool, their wounds completely healed! Having witnessed the spring’s natural healing powers firsthand, the King then decided to build a new capital city at the site of the spring.
In the years since the reign of King Vakhtang Gorgasali, the baths have become deeply ingrained within the social fabric of Tbilisi. They have provided a space to gossip, and the public displays of nakedness were used by matchmakers to offer forbidden glimpses for future suitors. Tbilisi’s identity is so bound to the baths that in the old Georgian language, ‘Tbilisi’ directly translates to ‘warm place’.
…
After a week spent among old churches, vibrant parks, and crumbling castles Molly and I were finally ready to indulge in Tbilisi’s namesake experience. Evening was setting in on our last day in the city and the first few drops of rain fell as we stepped under the stained glass window into the bath house.
Inside, lights glowed along a hallway warming the stone walls and ceiling. Thick with dampness, the air made the space feel like a cozy cave. Through a door to our right was a small coffee shop and to our left, behind a window, sat a middle-aged woman. Without looking up from her magazine, she inquired as to how we would like to be cleansed. Molly wanted only the scrub, but for an extra 10GEL (3.75USD) I couldn’t resist a massage.
“Very Good!” She smiled as she pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “Someone will be right with you.”
Another woman, younger than the first, emerged from behind the counter and led us down the hallway into the complex. Doors lined either side of the corridor and once we reached ours, we were ushered into a private bathing space. That’s when the smell hit us. Sulfur. Strong sulfur. If you haven’t smelled it, or can’t remember, it’s like an eggy metallic fart expelled from deep within the bowels of the earth.
Once our noses had adjusted a bit to the stench, we dropped our belongings on two wicker chairs. Metal lanterns sprouted from the walls and their glow reflected on white tiles.
The woman told us we should change into our bathing suits and someone would be by shortly to scrub us down. In the meantime, we were invited to have a good soak in the sulfur bath. Rubber sandals were provided which squeaked like mice when we walked across the sleek checkered floors.
Across from the chairs was a tiny wooden door. Pushing it open, Molly entered the bath chamber first. Warm air met us as we stepped through the threshold.
In the room, a barrier rose knee high along one wall to form a pool of water. It was fed by a faucet centered on the wall. Filled to its brim, water overflowed from the pool and gently trickled onto the floor. The room was roughly 15 by 20 feet in dimension and its tile walls rose to meet a huge stone dome which formed the ceiling. The only hint of an outside world came from a small circular opening at the peak of the dome that looked directly up into the darkened evening sky. Clear plastic covered the hole and prevented the now heavy rain from falling into the room. A black ring burnt around the opening seemed to offer evidence, perhaps, of fires, candles, and pipes that had burned throughout the centuries.
I couldn’t help feeling like a mountain king entering my royal cavern. If I had been in that same room one thousand five hundred years earlier, I imagine it would have looked nearly identical. I wondered how many generations of great kings must have soaked in the same tub I now approached. The waters would be a welcome reprieve from the stress that nagged their tired bodies. The first kings to bathe here would worry about encroaching armies of Persians from the South-East and about the next moves of the Eastern Roman empire to the west. Later kings would worry about clashes between their Christian armies and those of Muslim Seljuk Turks. But all those worries would soon melt away once the kings’ feet met the water.
The stone, the dim light, and the ancient spring all shattered my sense of time. Was I a tourist from the United States in 2019? Or was I one of the thousands of merchants who traveled along the Silk Road and visited these same halls hoping to have the grime from Chinese deserts and Indian jungles scrubbed from my skin?
However, traces of the modern world snapped me back to the present. The bath was fed by PVC pipe that dripped through a mesh bag seemingly better suited for carrying groceries. Adjacent was a PVC pipe shower with no head and two knobs, one blue, one red.
The air in the room was thick with the smell of sulfur. And although the stench was foul at that moment, now, looking back, I’ve come to think of the stink as a seal of authenticity on the whole experience: a reminder that our water was warmed by the earth itself.
Timidly, we crossed the room and sank into the bath. Ahhhhhhhh. Warm – almost hot, but far from scalding. We soaked and soaked and blood rose to my face. The seat in the bath was hard but it didn’t matter as my body seemed ready to melt into the mineral water.
Then, abruptly, there was a heavy knock on the door.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Hello!” Came a deep muffled voice. “I am here to wash you. I come in?”
“Yes yes! Of course!” I answered.
In walked a middle-aged man. He was bald and wore short blue bathing trunks that barely contained his large dense belly. Black hair sprouted along his chest and shoulders but his legs and forearms were surprisingly bare. Carrying a bucket, he slipped through the small door dividing the rooms and stood above us.
He was warm and welcoming and he invited me out of the tub.
“You have soaked, yes?” He questioned
“Yes, yes I have.”
“Good! Now I soap and scrub,” he said while motioning with his hands. “Then you have massage, yes?”
“That’s right, just me, my girlfriend didn’t want one.”
“Ah, ok.” He smiled and continued. “After, cold shower. No hot. OK?”
“Got it.”
I was ready. I lay across a stone bed that formed where the wall protruded into the room, and it was not as uncomfortable as one would imagine a stone bed with no padding to be. Once again, I imagined myself a king of old who may have laid out across the same bed. What ailment would need mending today? Was it an arrow taken from an Iranian bow? Or perhaps an ankle sprained while charging a Shirvanshahan force on horseback. Regardless, I was sure that the finest bath worker in the kingdom could mend me.
The man got right to work. He gathered water from the shower in his bucket then mixed in some soap. Dunking his rag in the sudsy solution, he formed a huge mass of bubbles then laid them gently on my stomach. He paused, looked pleased with himself, and presented the soapy clump to Molly for a photo. Her phone was too far away to bother with a picture, but he laughed and was proud regardless.
Then the man slipped a scrubber made of felt and rough scaly plastic on his hand and by rhythmically swaying back and forth, he scrubbed with vigor. Dirt that had comfortably occupied the inner layers of my skin for years was now suddenly expelled. My pores took their first real breath in ages and it dawned on me that perhaps there was more to skin care than my Dove for Men Body Wash.
The man was thorough in his work. He made sure to attend to every crevice and fold of my skin. It appeared important to him to maintain the integrity of a tradition which stretched back a thousand years. He was the guardian of a great ancient art: cleansing and rejuvenating both visitors and locals, and because of men like him that tradition had so far survived the decay of time. I wondered if his family were proud of him. I wondered if his kids bragged to their friends at school that their Dad worked at the baths. I wondered if his neighbors respected him for holding a position that was so deeply connected to the identity of the ancient, storied city. I hoped they did.
I couldn’t quite tell when the scrubbing stopped and the massage began, but it happened at some point. And as this large, friendly, Georgian man rubbed and flipped me like a chef seasoning a piece of raw chicken, my mind drifted through memories of the week we spent in the capital city. I won’t be able to recount them all to you, but here’s just some of the images which passed through my head:
At night, the castle is lit up along with the green square in the center of the city. 
Tbilisi’s subway system may only have two lines, but it’s enough to cover most of the city. The old cars originally brought from Soviet Russia brighten up the tunnels. 
Speaking of the Soviets, most of the city’s apartment buildings were constructed during Soviet rule and it shows. Our Air BnB was in one such building and though the exterior may look harsh the apartment was warm and cozy.
At the Church in Mtskheta, many monks and nuns can be found attending to their duties. 
At the Church in Mtskheta, many monks and nuns can be found attending to their duties. 
Inside the church, the paintings have held up pretty well since 1010 when the current church was built.
Back in Tbilisi, not everyone is a nun or a monk. The fountains found in public parks around the city offer a good way to cool off in the summer heat. 
A Georgian specialty – Adjaruli Khachapuri is a hearty mix of cheese and bread topped by an egg and a slab of butter. 
A museum on the outskirts of the city featured entire houses brought from all different regions of Georgia.
When my mind floated back down to my body, my Georgian masseuse was just finishing up. He carefully inspected my skin for any dirty surface and once he was certain any further scrubbing would reveal bone, he calmly twisted the knob of the shower and rinsed himself off. I was still pulling my limp body off the stone bed when he carefully folded his towel over his arm, meticulously arranged his bathing tools in his bucket, and gave us one last wide smile and wave.
“You enjoy Tbilisi? I glad, I glad” came his booming voice.
I Joined Molly in the bath and sank so low in the water that its warmth reached my lips.
Molly was up next, and as she was scrubbed by a female bath worker, I reluctantly dragged myself from the spring and turned on cold water from the shower. I tested the temperature with my finger – yup, cold as Ice. Inhaling deeply, and summoning what kingly courage I could, I plunged myself under the icy stream, screeching like a pheasant caught in the talons of a falcon. My feet then did a little dance and though I fought to stay under the Icy cascade, seconds later I jumped out – defeated but energized. Paradoxically, my skin radiated warmth. The woman scrubbing molly laughed at me and I was glad someone was entertained.
I toweled off while Molly partook in a similar baptism of icy water. She shrieked and shouted and it was my turn to laugh. Neither one of us noticed the stinky smell anymore.
Strolling back up the hallway towards the exit, our bodies enjoyed their new layers of skin. It was a physical pleasure I hadn’t experienced before which helped me to imagine why this ancient activity of pampering was so important to the generations of Georgians and travelers who had gone before me.
The city of Tbilisi was ancient, but I felt its history each day I was there. The city’s past was not sealed off behind museum glass or displayed beyond railings, rather, it was the very foundation of the streets, the bridges, the churches, the hotels, the restaurants, and especially the baths. History was woven into the fabric of daily life: even the wine served in secret garden restaurants throughout the city owed its orange color to techniques that dated back to the 11th Century. The monks and nuns that prayed in Tbilisi’s churches followed traditions brought to the country when Constantinople was still the most prosperous city in the world. Commuters traveled the subway in cars built by Soviet hands. Traces of Georgia’s past were everywhere I looked and they flourished in the traditions kept alive by its people: people like my masseuse who were proud to work in the same ways they had for over a thousand years and to share those almost sacred practices with today’s visitors.
I don’t imagine you may ever consider visiting the country of Georgia, but if you’re looking for a special kind of spa experience consider this: Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital city, can scrub both your skin, and your sense of being locked in the present.
I’ll write again soon.
Love,
Dylan
