The first hour decides how the next two weeks feel, and it is the hour most people spend sitting at the terminal with a bag on their knees. Mine runs on six steps in a fixed order, learned after arriving in cities where nothing was open, everything was a step away, and I had to learn both facts twice before I wrote them down.
1. Water before directions
I buy a bottle and a roll at the first kiosk, which costs about 2 euros and removes the two things that make a new place feel hostile: a dry mouth and low blood sugar. The kiosk also gives me change for the bus, and the person behind it will usually point at the right board if I hold up the address I have written on paper.
2. I photograph the departure board
Timetables at the arrival point are the version I trust, because they are printed for people standing where I am standing. I take one photograph of the bus board and one of the metro map on the wall, and both have saved me at 23:00 when the signal went and the app had nothing to show.
The photo costs nothing and it ages slowly. Three days later, when I have been walking for hours and the streets have stopped looking distinct, the board still tells me which side of the city the last departure leaves from.
3. One loop of fifteen minutes
I walk a circle of about 800 metres around the arrival point before I go anywhere else, because the first street is the one I will judge the whole city by and I would rather not judge it from a bus window. The loop shows me where the pharmacy is, which corner has lights after dark and how steep the walk to the bed really is.
It also tells me what the walk will cost me in minutes twice a day, which is how I decide between the cheap room at the edge and the dearer one inside the ring. A 20 minute walk each way is an hour a day I get back, and in a city I have two weeks to see, that hour is worth more than the 6 euros I would save.
4. I write down the bread price
One line in the notebook: what a loaf cost at the nearest bakery. It has been the most useful number I track, because it scales with everything else, and a city where bread is 0.50 tells me a different story about the week than one where it is 1.80.
I add the tram single next to it, and between the two I can price the ordinary day before I have bought anything else. On that basis I budgeted 14 euros a day in Tbilisi and spent 16, which for a first estimate is close enough to stop me checking prices every hour.
5. I walk the sleeping street while it is light
Before the light goes I find the street I will sleep on and look at it properly: where the door is, which buildings have lights on at 21:00, whether the corner shop is open late. Arriving at midnight turns every street into a guess, and I have moved rooms twice because of something I saw on that walk.
The same walk marks the route I will take home after dark, and I pick it while the shops are open rather than at 01:00. It takes ten minutes, it costs nothing, and it is the difference between a street I know and a street I am guessing at from a map on a dim screen.
6. Cash inside the station, not on the street
The machine inside the concourse has a camera over it and a fee I can read before I confirm. The one on the corner has neither, and the 3 euro difference on a withdrawal is a free lunch that I would rather take from the bank than from a machine with a card reader I cannot inspect.
7. I send the address to myself
The last step takes thirty seconds: the street name, the number and one line about the door, pasted into a message to myself before the signal has a chance to fail. Twice it has been the only copy I had, and both times the taxi driver read it from my screen rather than asking me to pronounce it.
Seven steps, about an hour, and by the end I know what the week costs, where the last bus goes and which door I am opening after dark. The bread price and the photographed board do most of the work, and both are in the notebook before I reach the bed.