A cold hard wind hit us as we stepped off the plane in our summer clothes. Even the weather was trying to tell us something

Er, no, I hadn't. I used to live in Georgia, and I went back there for a visit a year and a half ago.

It all seemed perfectly splendid to me - slightly crazy as usual, a bit run down, a bit "ex Soviet Union-ish". But great people, stunning scenery, and those huge jugs of crisp white wine.

Chilly reception

A cold hard wind hit us as we stepped off the plane in our summer clothes. A huge cyclone was battering the capital, Tbilisi. Even the weather was trying to tell us something.

Tbilisi is an old, disheveled jewel of a city, squeezed into a narrow gorge in the shadow of the vast Caucasus mountain range.

By the time we were driving through its cobbled streets on the way to our guest house, I'd forgotten about the warnings.

It was early morning, the sun was peeking through the clouds, and the first corpulent batch of traffic police were squeezing out of their Lada cars, testing their speed guns, and no doubt hoping some drivers would actually deign to be pulled over today.

Drivers in Tbilisi often ignore police instructions to pull over

On my last visit, my friend Nata and I were waved down by a policeman for speeding. She put her foot on the accelerator, wound down the window and shouted: "We're in a hurry. We'll stop on the way back." The policeman shrugged. Georgia is that kind of place.

Or rather, it was that kind of place. Chaotic, but laid back. Now it's chaotic and tense. A few hours later, I found out why.

Violent side

We'd come to Georgia for a wedding. Two hours after we arrived, a Lebanese businessman was dragged out of his car and kidnapped in the city. It turned out he was a close friend of one of our friends. There's been no word from him or about him since then.

As we sat and listened to the details, it became clear that this was not an isolated incident. Over the last year or so, dozens of foreigners have been taken hostage, or savagely beaten and robbed in Tbilisi.

It looks, ominously, like some sort of deliberate campaign - an attempt to scare foreigners away from Georgia, to spoil its attempts to become a normal, stable country.

It's the Russians. They'll take over this country again - just you watch

Georgian landlord

The wedding party was wild. The choir - five portly men - sat in the middle of the banquet table, eating as if it was their last chance, and breaking tempestuously into song every few minutes.

Georgians know how to have a good time, almost to a fault. New nightclubs and art galleries are forever sprouting up in Tbilisi.

But the country remains horribly corrupt, and seriously poor. There are more beggars than there used to be when I lived there. Most are old women, who are dignified and embarrassed to be asking for money to supplement their eight pounds worth of monthly pension.

Blame game

So who is doing all the beating up and the kidnapping? The knee-jerk answer from most Georgians I know is Russia - the big, bad neighbour on the other side of the mountains.

Russia doesn't want little independent Georgia to run away and join Nato and the European Union, so it stirs up trouble.

Georgia's neighbour Chechnya has a reputation for hostage-taking

It's a depressingly plausible theory - particularly concerning the beatings. But the kidnappings are more complicated. Chechnya is just across the mountains too - and hostage-taking is something of speciality there. Maybe some of their gangs are now roaming Georgia.

The trouble with these theories is that they enable Georgians to keep drinking and partying and avoiding the blame.

When I lived in Tbilisi, the city barely woke up before 10 o'clock in the morning. It's still the same today.

The couch-ridden landlord at our guest house railed at me every time we tried to sneak out of our room. "It's the Russians," he shouted. "They'll take over this country again - just you watch."

An hour later the message has changed. "It's the west. They're ruining this place, giving us all that aid money - it just makes people here even more corrupt."