Anyone ever been in a former Soviet country knows Borjomi mineral water. I think the salty taste of this water tastes awful, but it’s supposed to be healthy (and help with hangovers 😉).

After visiting the beautiful Gelati monastery near Kutaisi (check out this post), we drove to Borjomi, the city where the mineral water comes from. It is situated in the north-west of the picturesque Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park. Our intention was to stay in a nice hotel and to enjoy the nature while hiking (on a car-free day) in the national park. Despite bad weather forecast, we did a beautiful hike with breathtaking scenery the day after we arrived in Borjomi.

Since we knew that we would be staying for two nights at the hotel, we only asked for a Schuko (2kW) to charge the car. It is a lot easier to find a “normal” Schuko outlet, than a three-phase outlet. The downside of Schuko-charging is just that it takes often more than 30 hours to charge the car to a satisfying level. What people usually don’t know is that the “quality” of the cable and outlet determines the charging process. The hotel in Borjomi offered us an extension cord that they plugged in at some Schuko in the hotel kitchen. The cable was very long and thin. This means the cable cross-section was almost too thin for constant strain or the resistance to high. The extension-cord got warm, even though we were only charging 1kW. Despite the circumstances, we managed to charge the battery to 90% and left after the second night in Borjomi to Tbilisi.