Tom Humphries/LockerRoom: Some notes from a strange time in a strange place. Sometimes you pinch yourself. Slap some cold water on the face. Check the readings.

You go on one of these trips and push the little bits and pieces down through the laptop and then it's over and you never take the memories out again and examine them. Lost days. It's Sunday in Georgia. People will remember today for Harrington or for the rugby. Still.

We're in a hotel in Tbilisi putting down time till we're all ready to go to Tirana. There's a press conference going on in an airless basement room. Chris Hughton and Gary Doherty at the top table. Us media grubs in the seats. Spurs versus The Rest. Our radio friend, the heavy metal man, is telling Doherty most forcefully that much as he might like to make a vocational decision between attacking and defending Glenn Hoddle won't let him. Three times our guy makes his point.

He's exasperated that Doherty should think that he can choose. He says it's a Catch 22. It can't be done. Doherty just nods. Catch 22? Then everyone bursts out laughing and the press conference changes tracks.

We've been in this room for about 20 minutes. We've been talking a lot about "countries like this." Not offensively, everyone hopes. Just in terms of the adjustment for players. Bad facilities. Bumpy pitch. We all nod. Sure, sure. Countries like this.

There's news from home. Paul Ackford is talking about Lansdowne Road as if it's in a "country like this." How offensive. Get some perspective man. Lansdowne Road is much worse than anything in a country like this. The pitch, the press area, the stands, the petty rules. The Georgians will come to Lansdowne and they will begin to appreciate what they have. They will speak of the difficulties of coming to a "country like this." Strange stuff.

Everywhere I go in the world for sport I notice something else. They have Jim Ryan and Tony O'Sullivan from Cork. Everywhere. We were floating along on Saturday night along the perimeter of the Lokomotiv Stadium looking for the entrance to the ground and there on the other side of the railings, inevitably, were Jim Ryan and Tony O'Sullivan from Cork. Soon they were pointing to us and explaining to the security blockheads that these guys were media, they were okay. Vouchsafed by Jim Ryan and Tony O' Sullivan from Cork we got in.

Now this was on a night when even Davy Keogh wasn't saying hello. I have no doubt when Amundsen made it to the South Pole the two figures he could see from hundreds of miles away turned out to be Jim and Tony just waiting around to shake his hand.

Jim and Tony make their own way to these places. Youth games in Nigeria. Play-offs in Tehran. Qualifiers in Tbilisi. If they aren't there a FIFA rule kicks in about the game being invalid. Just in case, Brian Kerr texted them the other day to make sure they had tickets. I can't imagine the golf in Florida or the rugby in Lansdowne actually took place yesterday. Jim and Tony were here working out how to get to Tirana.

The lads are made of sterner stuff than us hacks. We've been staying in this hotel in Tbilisi. Very nice, thanks. A Sheraton. It's quieter and more modern than the team hotel and it has a swimming pool. We wondered why we were here instead of the team being here. A new Kerr-led era in media relations perhaps. Then we noticed the US and British Embassies are in our hotel too. Made us feel a little less special.

Saturday night felt like an important game of soccer. An away win like the one we carved out for ourselves is a rare enough treat. With a weakened team, a new management, a hostile atmosphere, an odd equaliser, flying penknives and hurtling bottles there was a 10-minute period where the game offered us a good excuse for a bad performance. It was getting away and we could just have let it go. The win was important and what happened in Albania heightened the significance.

Yet these things have no fixed value until the market settles. We are spending Sunday sitting staring at a blinking cursor, waiting for the word. A football match is a small enough thing compared to a war, or whatever the correct term is for what is being done to the Iraqis. We are sitting and waiting to see what else will happen. An important game of soccer won't make page one. It might not even be the front of the supplement. There's the rugby.

There's Padraig Harrington. These things are up in the air waiting to be settled. When they all come down we'll know how much a football match will be worth on Monday morning.

More than a hurling match in March anyway. Here's a funny thing. I'm in Tbilisi on Saturday night. We've just spent the afternoon with a nice man called Nador who brought us around the sights but who got all edgy every time he spoke about Communists. Corrupt. Lazy. Shifty. That's Nador's impression of Communists.

Don't know what he means. My friend Ed, the Communist, is the opposite to all these things and he is texting me breaking news from Parnell Park. Ed is a staunch Communist. Or should that be a devout Communist? If my man Nador could meet Ed, who is a proper Communist and not one of those county councillor type grifters with jackboots who used to run Georgia, well he'd change his mind. I don't know.

Sorry if this bores you all. I just like the thought of it. Ed, the Communist, texting me on a mobile phone at a soccer match in Joe Stalin's front garden to say that the hurling Dubs are three points down at half-time.

Next text: Flynn Goal! Can't concentrate on the soccer now. Text back an inquiry. Level? By the time Ed can text me again it's bad news. The goal just annoyed Kilkenny, he says. Nine points down now and no sign of things getting better. Let out the most mournful howl Tbilisi has heard since Joe Stalin let them down. Feel that in Donnycarney comrade Ed is doing the same.

The world just gets smaller. Parnell Park and the Lokomotiv stadium are next door to each other. We're watching Russia and Albania after our own match. Live on TV. In Russian. We are so cosmopolitan. Albania score after 20 minutes.

Jaysus. If they could hang on. Could they hang on? The mobile phone beeps again. It's my friend Éanna. Just to say, the final score is 3-1 to Albania. Ah-ha. So it's not live after all. We're the last people in the world to know this result. Ho hum.

On Saturday Nador drove us to this field in the middle of nowhere and ordered us out of the car. He indicated we should follow him. This, we thought, is the shakedown. This is where he shoots us, leaves us for dead and everyone wonders afterwards what were the lads doing out in the middle of nowhere with this notorious geezer in the first place. Instead he led us through the fields to a half-built museum. The Communists were building it when the time came for them to leave.

So it lies there with hundreds of fifth-century gravestones and artefacts just strewn about the place waiting for somebody to come and finish the place. You had to wonder when does an unfinished museum become an exhibition itself?

We told Nador that if this was a field in Dublin everything would have been ripped off by sunset the first day. And not by Communists, Nador.

Nador led us back to his old rattler of a car and told us proudly the first European was Georgian. They'd found the bones of a 1.7 million-year-old chap and nobody had beaten that record, although Garret FitzGerald came close. He said he liked Liverpool FC because Michael Owen is the image of his six-year-old son. We agreed it was the best reason we'd heard so far for liking Liverpool. All Europeans together.

That's the lost weekend. It's Eoin Hand's birthday. There is a debate as to whether this event is best marked in Tbilisi or Tirana. It's been a strange few days. I say keep the weirdness going. Blow the candles out in Tirana, Eoin.