Clare Chose Tbilisi for Her Digital Nomad Life
I first met Clare through a friend of a friend who said, very simply, that if I ever wanted honest advice about working remotely, she was the person to ask. We ended up talking over coffee on a rushed afternoon that turned into a much longer conversation than either of us planned. Clare has a calm way of explaining a place that makes you trust her immediately, and when Tbilisi came up more than once in our chats, I knew I wanted to sit down with her properly and ask why.
Clare has worked remotely from fourteen countries. She has done it from apartments in Medellin and Chiang Mai and Lisbon and a small house on the coast of Portugal that had unreliable electricity and excellent wine. She knows what makes a city work for remote working and what makes it miserable, and she says Tbilisi is one of the best she has found. She has been back three times now and is already thinking about the fourth.
What Clare noticed first was that Tbilisi feels unlike anywhere else. Georgia sits at the edge of Europe and the edge of Asia and somehow feels like neither and both at once. The old town is full of carved wooden balconies, crumbling Soviet architecture, sulphur baths and churches built into the cliffs. Clare says that when you spend the day in front of a laptop, it matters enormously to step outside into a city that still surprises you.
Why it works for remote working
The first thing Clare always looks at is whether a city can actually support a normal working day. In Tbilisi, she says, the internet is fast and reliable in most parts of the city. That sounds basic, but Clare has lost days of work in places that looked perfect on paper and could not handle a proper video call. In Tbilisi, most apartments have solid broadband and the cafes and co-working spaces are well set up for people who genuinely need to get things done.
She also says the cost of living is a large part of the appeal. A good apartment in the old town or in Vera costs far less than what she would expect to pay in Lisbon or Berlin, which are now the cities she compares everything to. Eating out is cheap, coffee is cheap, and the wine is almost absurdly affordable given how seriously Georgia takes it. Clare laughed when she said you can end up drinking very well for very little, and she was not exaggerating.
The practical side
Clare recommends Tbilisi partly because the practical details are less stressful than they are elsewhere. Georgia allows long visa-free stays for citizens of many Western countries, which means people can settle in without immediately planning border runs or constant renewals. She is careful about giving tax advice and always says to speak to an accountant about your own situation, but her view is that the city makes long stays feel possible rather than awkward.
She also noticed how easy it is to move around once you arrive. Getting a local SIM is simple, mobile data is reliable, the metro is easy to figure out and taxis on Bolt are inexpensive enough to use without overthinking them. Clare spent three months there without once feeling that the city was fighting her on logistics, and that is often what separates a place you admire from a place you can genuinely live in.
The things that take adjustment
One thing Clare says people should understand is that Georgian hospitality is real and generous and not always something you can keep at arm's length. Being invited to share wine or food by someone you have only just met is not unusual. She says some of her best evenings in Tbilisi came from saying yes to plans she had not expected to make, and that the warmth of the city is part of why people feel attached to it so quickly.
She also always warns people about the hills. Maps do not really explain how much climbing the old town can involve, and the cobbles and staircases can feel rather different at the end of a long workday than they do in holiday photographs. Clare's apartment on her second trip was at the top of a long staircase with no lift. She does not regret booking it, but she says she would ask more questions next time before committing to somewhere beautiful but exhausting.
Tbilisi rewards patience, Clare told me. The first week is spent finding your feet. The second week is when you know where to get your coffee and which bakery you trust in the morning. By the third, you understand why people return and why leaving feels harder than expected. Clare finds it hard to leave every time, and after listening to her, I can understand exactly why.
The Best in Travels,
Your Friend Fushia