Georgian Revenue service is providing information on tax free shopping and the VAT refund on their website , but unfortunately in Georgian only. As the process is quite different than in other countries, we decided to share our experiences about it.
Dear Mr. Niinistö, I am deeply concerned about the current state of affairs in Finland. We left Finland in 2004 to travel the world. We have been living in 102 countries around the world, and travelled through countries devastated by the US, NATO, and Russia. The last three years we lived in Georgia , which is at war with Russia . There is a ceasefire agreement, but a peace accord was never signed. Russia – the second biggest arms exporter in the world right after the US – benefits from such instability.
Travelling the trans-siberian railway all the way from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, Russia. And visiting Voguls on the way. We started our Trans-Siberian railway ride from Kuokkaniemi, a small village situated near Sortavala and Finnish border in Karelia. The trip ended in Vladivostok near Japan and Korea totaling well over 10.000 kilometres. It would have been possible to do the trip in about eleven days, but we wanted to stop every once in a while and look around. We bought our tickets one by one, just to the next destination, and got this way a lot of experience of Russian bureaucracy, despotism of the police (militsiya), and the lack of any kind of logic in Russia. We knew right away that our Experiment would at least be challenging. In Santeri’s words: Russia should be avoided at any cost.
We have been living 3 years in Georgia, first in Tbilisi and after that in Batumi on the Black Sea coast. Georgia has one of the best immigration policies in the world allowing stays up to 12 months without visa-runs . However, finding an apartment is not that easy.
We have been travelling more than five years with our new Finn-Savotta backpacks, Savotta LJK12 and Savotta 906, in dozens of countries all over the world . The backpacks are still in one piece and in usable condition. There are some scratches and bumps in the aluminium structure and the fabric has worn out a bit here and there but nothing major. On the other hand, there were some minor usability challenges.
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