The idea to organise a DS meeting in Tbilisi came to me in December 2005, a couple of months after I had bought my first DS. My car had starting problems and I ended up on the citroën-forum.nl (http://www.citroen-forum.nl/viewtopic.php?t=166981&highlight=, where I posted the idea of having a DS event in Georgia. I received a number of enthusiastic reactions to this and notably of Ton Groot Koerkamp of Gare du Nord, who came up with the name of the event: Rondje Zwarte Zee (RZZ). Ton is an experienced DS traveller and offered to help with the organisation of the event, which of course I readily accepted. Not long after, Michel Coenen also joined the organisation and he has done a large part of the necessary preparatory work. Unfortunately, in the end Michel and his family were not able to come to Georgia, but his contribution to the set-up and promotion of RZZ were very important and motivating.

On 13 May a meeting in Deventer was held with the participants, at which I presented the Georgian part of the journey and people had the opportunity to meet each other. Afterwards, both Ton and I had a very good feeling about the whole thing and the two months before the final departure from Holland therefore lasted very long indeed!

Finally, on 20 July, the time had come to go and pick up the twelve RZZ participants, who came in six cars, from the Turkish/Georgian border at Sarpi/Kvariati, together with my Georgian co-organiser Goga and his girlfriend Keti. It was wonderful to see everybody again and the border formalities went smoothly. Because it was raining at the coast (normal for the Western part of Georgia, with its subtropical climate), we decided to drive straight on to Tbilisi. However, because this trip would be too long and tiring and we would have had to drive over the busiest and worse part of the road in the dark, Goga advised that we should sleep over in a hotel in Kutaisi. The day after we drove to Tbilisi and because the hotel in Tbilisi was only booked from 22 July, everybody stayed the night at our house. This was such a nice experience that my husband Tony and I offered to the group to also stay the rest of the week at our place. This meant that all of a sudden we had a house full of our first foreign guests here in Tbilisi! It was an unforgettable sight, seven Goddesses that were parked outside the house!

Because most people could only stay one week in Georgia and wanted to relax a couple of days, wash the dirt off their cars (Ton's banana-yellow ambulance got its first wash in a period of three years) and have a look around Tbilisi, Goga and I had not overloaded the programme. We visited various beautifully located monastries, in Gelati in Western Georgia and in Mtskheta, the former capital of Georgia, and we also spent time in the famous wine region of Kakheti. Our seven-DS convoy drew a lot of attention everywhere we went and many times we had to open the bonnet because curious Georgians wanted to look underneath it and they also wanted to sit behind the wheel.

The time with the group flew and after a visit to the Stalin museum in Gori and the cave houses in Uplistsikhe, we had to say an emotional goodbye to the eight people (Harry, Aksel, Daniël, Gerrit, Anneke, Joost, Dago en Ton Faassen) who were going to travel back by ferry from Poti to Illichevsk in the Ukraine. De remaining four people (Ton, Jan, Remmert en Andrew) went back with us to Tbilisi and with them we have visited the Davit Garedji monastry in Kakheti. A couple of days afterwards they also left, to drive back to Holland via Turkey and Macedonia.

In short, RZZ 2006 was a great success in every way and it was a delightful and festive experience to drive around this beautiful country with such enthusiastic and like-minded spirits and to enjoy each other's company. As far as the cars were concerned, there were no significant technical problems here in Georgia. The biggest challenge was finding an LPG gas station. Now my DS is again the only one in the country and I have slowly returned "back to earth", which hasn't been easy... Hopefully we can repeat this event sometime in the near future, because there are still so many things to see here, although all participants agree that this has been a unique event and it will be difficult to experience the same fantastic atmosphere again... Sakartvelos Gaumarjos!!! Long Live Georgia!!!

Femke O'Malley-Waardenburg
Tbilisi, September 2006

E-mail: femomal@yahoo.com