The Amazing Dinamo Market of Tbilisi

The Amazing Dinamo Market is labyrinthine.

It curves, winds, layers; staircases hide behind cases of raw meat, the dark and dingy alleys reveal a sort of Georgian tapas scene.

The Amazing Dinamo Market, much like the city of Tbilisi itself, is full of tiny, delightful mysteries.

For one thing, it’s not actually called the Dinamo Market.

I named it that myself, when “the market near the Dinamo Arena that Naomi recommended” became too wordy, even in my own head.

Hence, The Amazing Dinamo Market.

(A friend who has lived now and then as an expat in Tbilisi tells me he knows the market as Bazroba, though that is likely not its name either. Some mysteries are not solved so easily.)

The first time I stumbled through the Amazing Dinamo Market alone. It seems deceptively simple in the beginning. Ladies sell fruits and vegetables in a semi-covered building. I bought the most luscious peaches (what peaches! what penumbras!) and spent a few minutes wandering around in a fruit-inspired rapture. My reverie carried me deeper into the market, past piles of watermelons and stacks of cilantro, and despite lacking both Russian and Georgian language skills, I began to communicate with the vendors.

Pointing, smiling, shrugging apologetically… and somehow, despite lacking words, the sellers began to gift me small things: unidentified Georgian salts, bitter figs, limes. I tried to pay—they refused to accept. Instead, they gave me one more thing: their faces.

I found myself weaving through stalls, taking black-and-white portraits of these kind people I couldn’t speak with, a bit more grateful with every frame I shot.

And then they started offering wine.

It couldn’t possibly get better, I thought as I wandered into the world laden with fruits and salts and undeveloped portraits of strangers.

I was wrong.

The second time I weaved through the Amazing Dinamo Market was with company, including a friend who could speak Russian and some Georgian.

The Amazing Dinamo Market has layers and offshoots I never even noticed the first time around. We climbed up a gray staircase and a whole undiscovered second floor unspooled, filled with giant jars of yellow spices and fruit leathers and fresh ham. The honey sellers took a shine to us and spread thick honey on our hands for tasting, following it up with some sort of Georgian honey-wine… we all took shots together and toasted to a sweet life. The hall of honey was adjacent to a long corridor of cheese (which we had to sample, naturally), and then we descended to the winemaker’s alley and really got a buzz.

Before long we were sampling homemade wines and chacha, a Georgian liquor that I thought resembled whiskey but is apparently more like a brandy. I bought a liter of sweet red wine ladled into a plastic bottle for three lari, or $1.80.

More discoveries awaited. An entire offshoot of the market contained gold and jewelry and old Georgian ladies pitching us bargains on both. Sidestreets were lined with shoe sellers. Corners contained cascades of tea leaves.

The Amazing Dinamo Market boggled my mind. I’m sure there are more corridors and alleys and vendors I never found, lurking quietly, waiting to be discovered.

These little mysteries keep me completely enraptured.