Batumi, Georgia

Batumi is a town with two decors, the stage and the backstage. The stage is set on the Black Sea front with the new hotels transforming the coast with Radissons and Kempinskis. All set in front of traditional houses sometimes renovated in an exuberant luxuriant pastry style. The season has not yet started in this holiday town of the ex-USSR when loads of Russians used to come to their datchas.

The backstage still reminds us of the earlier soviet days with all the buildings falling apart and the roads looking giving a post-war or a post-earthquake feeling. The backstage is slowly being converted into front stage.