How do you get there. Until then, I had never thought about it because:

"Where is Georgia anyway?" - Today I know, back then, well!

So, Georgia is located on the Black Sea, about the geographical height of Sicily, was at that time a "member state" of the USSR and at the time when we were there, you could already feel the independence efforts that were fermenting in the then Soviet Union. Georgia and its president at that time, Shevardnadze, were among the pioneers at that time.

Otherwise, Georgia was partly agricultural, partly industrial (mainly ore and mineral mining).

And why I was there - well Tblissi, the capital is twin town of Saarbrücken and had invited to a soccer tournament. Somehow this invitation had reached the Landesjugendring Saar, which asked its member associations to put together a team. Well, so I came to Tblissi like the virgin to the child.

Somehow none of the member federations really wanted to play, so that finally a daring troop of, I think 11 people, who had never played together and hardly knew each other, flew to Georgia to represent the flag of the Saarland in a worthy manner.

Ehh, why does that sound so pathetic ?

Well, what none of us had known:

All the other teams, i.e. Kiev, Lisbon, FC Tirol and what they were all called, had played elimination tournaments just to be allowed to compete there. And then came from the tranquil Saarland the "Hobby - Thekenmannschafts - Nichttrainiert - Trupp" and had to play in the first game in front of about 8000 spectators against Tblissi's selection.