While in Georgia, blackouts were a fairly common occurence. More so in the countryside; I was in a little village in Samegrelo region, western Georgia, right on the border with Abkhazia. Most often blackouts were not too disrupting (2-6 hours). But at other times, they started to be a bit annoying.
The longest continuous blackout was for 22 hours. Then there were shorter blackouts, but some of them felt longer. There was a series of three blackouts, each about 8 hours long, with very short periods of the power back on in between. And of course you did not care if the power was on at night, while sleeping. So all in all, it felt more than 1 day. Yet another one felt similar - the power was out all day, then it was on at night (when no-one really cared), but the next morning (until some 11:00am) it was again off. So that felt like 1½ days.
With all of this and the date December 21st, 2012 nearing, the more educated members of my host family, who could log on to the internet, began to fear the End of the World. Now the word that they used for world translates to свет in Russian. The word that they used for electricity is light. And light translates as свет to Russian as well! So a conversation went as follows:
— Какая катастрофа! Свет не будет три дня! (What a disaster! The world will cease to exist for three days!)
Upon which I replied:
— Ну и что. Здесь свету нет вообще. (Well, the problem is, there's no power here in general)
