How To Tile Kitchen / hallway floor
The time had finally come and I was ready to tile the kitchen and hallway floors at our Vilgale apartment.
A year ago I would say - no way I'm going to do it myself, but here you go, I did it all on my own, with some research on Youtube and a lot of encouragement from friends who have done it.
As it is in our Tbilisi apartment - I decided to go with large 60cmx60cm tiles, which I bought at the local DEPO store (in Liepaja) In total I purchased tiles to cover 21m2, which turned out too much, but I did put my margin of error as I didn't know how well it will go. Surprisingly it went very well, and I did break just one tile, which I still managed to reuse. Awesome. My biggest concern…
New Investment Project - Summer House with Garden in Latvia
Welcome to another interesting project in the home remodeling series. - summer house with a garden in SouthWest Latvia. It turns out this is already the third, ongoing home remodeling project featured on the blog. Exciting.
This is the project my fiancee actually bought, without first seeing it - the price seemed very good, not to take this property. I was a bit skeptical at the start, as we still have another ongoing renovation project with the apartment in Vilgale, but I found this offer a value deal.
We learned about this project about a month ago, as we still were in Georgia, we decided to buy a cat in the sack and transferred a 10% deposit to the seller. At the end of June, we…
Pearl of Tbilisi - Gardenia Shevardnadze Flower Garden
Gardenia Shevardnadze is a lovely flower garden in Tbilisi, where you can buy seedlings for your yard, balcony, terrace, home, or office.
The place is popular among photographers, tourists, gardeners, and enjoyers of life.
After visiting this place so many times, while living in Georgia, I wouldn't hesitate to call this place a Pearl of Tbilisi and include it among the top 10 must-visit places in the Georgian capital.
It was an early Saturday morning, at the start of June 2022, we decided to visit Gardenia just to catch some inspiration and I decided to use my good, old DSLR camera, which I wasn't using since our Sri-Lanka trip (where the camera stopped working because of…
Hiking Likani, Sunday school Rustavi
Another awesome weekend in Georgia 🇬🇪- with some elements of offroad riding, hiking, camping, horseback riding near Likani station, and a few skulls at Green monastery Saturday.
Back to Rustavi scout center for a lovely Sunday with fellow Latvians.
Our last weekend trip with VW Touareg.
Eagle canyon in Georgia
The bear went over the mountain .. or last weekend we went hiking at the Eagle Canyon near Dedoplistskaro, Shopping at the Dezerteer market in Tbilisi, and exercising at Lisi Lake... another fabulous weekend has been put on our tapes and post-processed.
Enjoy the video and thumbs up!
Sighnaghi & Vazisubani trip
At the start of May, Oskars invited us to visit his new hut in Kakheti.
After a few stops at McDonald's, Sighanghi, and Bodbe monastery we finally reached Vazisubani, where we were greeted with traditional Georgian supra and a lot of chacha.
Now, there is one more cool place where they speak Latvian to visit in Georgia. Enjoy the video and Thumbs up!
Filmed with DJI Mavic Air 2 and Samsung Galaxy phone, Georgia May 13-14, 2022
Notes from Tbilisi: Abandoned Military sites in Latvia / Estonia; Sold VW Touareg car; #2 Bitcoin newsletter
Good afternoon from sunny and hot Tbilisi. The weather was scorching today, reaching +32 Celsius.
The morning started with an interesting message to the blog's contact form - an Estonian person was asking some questions about military sites in Latvia, we exchanged a few e-mails and talked both about Latvian and Estonian abandoned military sites.
Information about former Latvian radar base Skrunda-1
Hello, Reinis
I read your post about Skrunda-1 and also did some internet ''research''. And I've come to a couple of questions.
When did You visit this place? And was it closed? Because I read that it is now closed for tourists and the Latvian army has closed the area. Could You please tell…
International Scout Centre Rustavi
The industrial town of Rustavi, approximately 25 km southeast of the Georgian capital Tbilisi, offers a modern international scouting center.
The youth center offers space for a variety of indoor and outdoor activities. The facility is available for children and young people from Rustavi and offers comfortable and reasonably priced accommodation, seminar, and conference facilities for regional and international youth groups, schools, universities, and non-governmental organizations, as well as tourists and individual travelers.
I first visited this place at the end of May 2022, during an event organized by Latvian Sunday School in Tbilisi.
Should I say I was really impressed after seeing…
How to Fix "Unable to install bootstrap, bootstrap.settings already exists in active configuration"
As this was already the second time i faced the "Unable to install bootstrap, bootstrap.settings already exists in active configuration." problem i decided to share a quick and simple solution.
Background: I have faced this error when performing the Drupal 7 upgrade to the Drupal 9 version and trying to enable the bootstrap theme.
solution: in PHPMyAdmin open the database your Drupal site is running, in the Search tab enter "bootstrap"
Make sure you select all under tables and click the go button
You will get a result with rows showwin where bootstrap setting might belocated, in our case, table config
Simply click the delete on config.
that's it - now you should be…
Notes from Tbilisi: Caru.ge services our Car, new expats join language courses, PCR test
The morning started with the kiddo having a little fever (temperature 37 C). Decided to leave her at home and observe, as this Friday we have our first school concert. It would be very sad to miss. Sent a message to Ms. Nino.
Yesterday - the car just stopped working, or won't crank. Already for the third time, this year ordered caru.ge to service the car. As the car was parked in Vake I went to the office in the morning to meet the service guy in the afternoon. Traded a bit of bitcoin futures. Packed out robot cleaner for cleaning our apt.
Met with the caru.ge guy, he said, the problem is with the starter, had to order evacuator. I left the spot and come home.
We received a letter…
How To Upgrade Drupal 7 to 9 (With Multilingual Support)
In this article, I will keep notes on how I upgraded the multilingual Drupal 7 site to a multilingual Drupal 9 site.
Turns out I had originally built this website on Drupal 7 more than 10 years ago and it already felt that the exciting website's look and feel is a bit outdated and we wanted to get a fresh look.
I thought it wouldn't do any harm upgrading the database too. As I have already done a few successful upgrades in the past and as the website was not very complicated I didn't spend a lot of time on this.
As I'm using Linode VPS I decide to go the migrate path, and started with creating a new subdomain on the webserver giving it a prefix d9
As I already had configured the server…
Dashbashi Canyon & Waterfall with 240 meter long Glass Bridge
If there is a reason to visit Dashbasi canyons near the Tsalka in Georgia - the canyons themselves, cascading waterfall and the glass bridge hanging over the gorge should raise some interest.
Dashbashi Canyon Natural Monument is part of Khrami (known as Ktsia at it source) gorge near Dashbashi village, 3 km from the town of Tsalka
I first heard about this place a couple of years ago from an ex-pat friend, back then the place was pretty much not developed and unknown to the broader masses.
We first visited Dashabshi Canyon in 2020, back then it was still a pretty much-underdeveloped area, but some touristic routes were built. Back then we didn't climb down to the cascading waterfalls, but…
Tsalka lake & Dashbashi canyon with waterfalls
This time, our destination was the mesmerizing Tsalka Lake and Dashbashi Canyon, where nature's beauty unfolds in every corner. From hyper-lapses over the tranquil lake to an adrenaline-pumping drone flight over a 240-meter long glass bridge, this weekend was truly one for the books. Fasten your seatbelts, and let's dive into the magic of Tsalka and Dashbashi!Our journey began at Tsalka Lake, a hidden gem surrounded by rolling hills and lush greenery. The calm waters mirrored the clear blue sky, creating a serene atmosphere that instantly transported us away from the hustle and bustle of daily life. A-frame houses dotted the landscape, offering a picturesque backdrop for our weekend…
Notes from Tbilisi - Crypto Club, Learning Spanish, Could Bitcoin crash $25,000
Yesterday I visited the crypto club event at Local Tbilisi. Met a bunch of smart guys, mostly expats, was fun to watch bitcoin love/hate talks, listened to stories about investing in alt-coins. Been there, and seen that.
As you might already know - I'm neutral on crypto, neither bullish nor bearish. Prefer to trade Bitcoin futures.
With a smile, listened to the crypto talks about where should bitcoin go next, some saying bitcoin will have support at $20,000 some said at $18,000. nevertheless, most of the crypto enthusiasts didn't care about the bitcoin price dropping, as seems they are hodlers or not investing in Bitcoin at all but in some altcoins.
Belgian guy made a lot of…
Georgian language classes for Expats in Tbilisi
I've been involved in the Georgias ex-pat community for some good time already, a few years ago I helped to launch the Georgian Expat photographer club, and some years later I launched Expats in Georgia Facebook group, and today I'm happily sharing the latest brainchild - Georgian for expats
A couple of weeks ago I helped to start - the Georgian for an Expats language course. It took us some 72 hours from the idea to realization, as we already had an office in a convenient location, tutors, and even a whiteboard - it was all about marketing texts, and Facebook ads.
After the first 24 hours, we got our first students.
Here is what it all is about
Learn basic Georgian in 8…
Notes from Tbilisi - Gym, BitcoinGeorgia.Ge, Georgian for Expats and Bitcoin dips under $32,000
Wow, what a day it was today - stock futures were opening lower, quite lower, Dow Jones index was failing more than 400 points, extending the stock market bleeding for some sixth or seventh week in a row.
I was holding several long bitcoin positions on Deribit with strike prices above $40,000, and the losses just kept accelerating, to keep my positions above the water I bought more bitcoin and deposited them on Deribit.
Bitcoin is not for all. Bitcoin futures, definitely are for a few select ones.
Went to the Champions academy for some cardio and dumbell workout. Later worked on my latest brainchild - BitcoinGeorgia.ge (more on that in some of the other blog posts.
In the evening…
Weekend trip to Batumi from Tbilisi by Train
In this article, I will share notes and points of interest from our latest trip to Batumi during the Orthodox Easter 2022.
We were traveling from Tbilisi Railway station by train, paying GEL 25 for a seat in second class (The price for the seat in first class was GEL 60, business class GEL 100). Comfortable 2-story Swiss-built Stadler train, the total travel time about 6 hours. Just a few stops - Tbilisi - Ureki, Kobuleti, Batumi.
Batumi railway station is not located in the city center, so we took a Taxi (Bolt app) and paid about 5-6 GEL for a transfer to our hotel near the Boulevard. We chose to stay at Best Western Premium hotel, which is located out of the city center but offered a…
Batumi Loves You
R is For Restaurant - or here is what we got after spending 4 days in Batumi - dealing with a ton of real estate developers, cheesecakes and chocolate fondants, blue skies, and swimming pools. Hyper lapses and long-range drone flights.
Filmed with a DJI Mavic drone and Samsung Galaxy A52 mobile phone. Batumi April 19-April 23, 2022
Best Western Premier Batumi Hotel
Best Western Premier Batumi hotel is one of our best finds in Batumi, the price corresponds to the service. Budget-friendly 4-star hotel with a swimming pool.
I booked this hotel directly by calling to the reception instead booking online and got a very nice offer - 800 GEL for 4 nights with breakfast included and additional head for our 3-year old kiddo. I think we saved at least 500-600 GEL. Quite nice. If you prefer online booking, here is my shame affiliate link: Book now
Not centrally located, but taxis are quite affordable in Batumi, literally we spent about 2-3 GEL for getting to the city center and GEL 8-10 to getting to Batumi botanical garden with Bolt taxi. Very affordable.…
Easter 2022
Good times in Georgia or another awesome Easter weekend have been recorded in our tapes. From the windy mountains near Mtskheta, hiking trip near Turtle lake, egg fights in Tbilisi, meeting fellow Latvians at Vake park, and dining near the Bazaleti lake.
Enjoy the video and thumbs up!