On Monday evening I am taking the express train from Tbilisi to Samtredia with my wife and two kids (business class, 120GEL). We plan to stay overnight in a little family hotel (40GEL), and at 6.30 am we’ll board the Wizz Air flight to Katowice, Poland, at the cost of €40 a person and €35 per suitcase (one way).

As Stephen Dowling put it in his BBC News article a few years ago, “when it comes to crossing the road, there's no such thing as an international standard. Every country does it differently.” How people drive and cross the road, according to Dowling, is a matter of a country’s cultural values. Is it really?

I have snapped the picture above in one of Tbilisi’s main streets. To the economist’s eye, however, this picture should be disturbing. While the general observer will see clean and wide sidewalks, beautiful classical-style buildings, and a single pedestrian in this early hour of the day, one also sees two adjacent currency exchange booths (Lombardi, as they are called here).