Hitting up Hayastan (A Weekend in Armenia)

Hayastan (Հայաստան") is the Armenian word for Armenia.

I knew that when I was returning to Georgia that I wanted to visit another country of the South Caucasus (for those of you who don't know, those countries are Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan). Now, it would not be easy to visit both Azerbaijan and Armenia due to a war that has never officially ended between the two over the territory of Nagarno-Kharabakh. Armenia happens to be landlocked and border locked on two sides, by Turkey and by Azerbaijan. Turkey refuses to acknowledge the Armenian genocide and therefore relations between the two countries are not good. Now, I really only have a basic understanding of these conflicts as my primary knowledge and interests lie with Georgia and its breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. I ended up choosing to go to Armenia for two simple reasons, the first being I had a Fulbright friend who was living and working in Yerevan (the capital), and a visa could be bought at the border. Getting a visa for Azerbaijan would have been a difficult and time-consuming, not to mention expensive, endeavor. So, it was Armenia that I chose.

Due to the inappropriate behavior of one of my students towards me, I stopped teaching a certain class, which freed up my Thursday to depart Keda and make my way to Tbilisi. I had reasoned that traveling all the way from Keda, Georgia to Yerevan, Armenia in one day would have made for such a long day that I decided, along with Destinee (who lives in a small town near Kutaisi), to spend the night in Tbilisi. Going to the capital is our only real chance to have food that is not Georgian. When you have been having Georgian food for the past nine months, and not necessarily the really good and savory kind, but the endless stream of potatoes and oily soup with an unidentifiable chunk of bony meat in the middle, a different cuisine is quite welcome. To all the Georgians who might be reading this - I do love Georgian food, but the quintessential Georgian cuisine is not what I usually receive in my home stay). So, Thursday night, Destinee and I chose to eat Iraqi food. Delicious!

Friday morning, we woke up bright and early to catch a marshrutka to Armenia's capital, Yerevan! The border crossing was a bit awkward for both Destinee and I. For Destinee, she forgot to purchase the visa (which can be done at the border), and was turned back by passport control. The second time she made it to passport control, the Armenian guards asked her where she was going. "Armenia!" To which she was met with the "well, duh" look by the guards. As for me, I made it through passport control without any hitch. My moment of awkwardness happened after when I whipped out my camera to take a picture.  I was met with a "No, no!" by the guards and I had to show them that I was deleting the picture. Oops…

The Armenian countryside.

The Armenian countryside was beautiful. The villages in Armenia seemed a little bit more spread out from each other than they are in Georgia. As Destinee remarked, Yerevan just happened upon us, emerging suddenly from the other side of a hill while entering Tbilisi you have a more gradual build-up of "city". By mid-afternoon, we were in Yerevan. The guy who drove the marshrutka offered to take us to our destination within Yerevan for ten lari (roughly $7). Three minutes later we were there and I realized that we had been stiffed. Such is the life of foreigners sometimes.

A couple of things I noticed about Armenia that were different from Georgia: there were a lot more signs and things written in Russian/cyrillic (Armenia does have a better relationship with Russia). Another thing was that were actual stoplights and crosswalks in Yerevan that drivers actually honored. I have maybe seen exactly one crosswalk/traffic light in Georgia, and that was in Batumi, where you only had two seconds to get across a major street.

Because we only had a weekend to spend in Armenia, we hit the ground running. The girl who was hosting us, a Fulbright ETA herself, took us to see Mother Armenia, a monument to the 50th Anniversary of Soviet Armenia, and a giant park/terrace that cascaded down the hill. I do not know if that is quite the right word to use, but I thought it fitting amidst the plethora of steps, fountains, and shrubbery. Once reaching the bottom, we stopped in a nearby cafe and all enjoyed delicious strawberry-banana smoothies (or smoofies as the Armenians and Russians call them) blended to perfection. We were led through a ritzy development of Yerevan where the oligarchs were all trying to outdo each other by building opulent apartments and high end shops that the average Armenian could not afford - even those living in the capital. Much of Yerevan's old town has been torn down to make way for these developments. The restaurant we ate at that night was fabulous. After seven months of Georgian food, a change in cuisine was welcome. I was not quite sure what to expect in the Armenian cuisine, prior to leaving for the Caucasus last summer, I had read up on local cuisines but actually arriving in the Caucasus, the experience had been different. What I noticed about Armenian food was the mixture of different cultures, especially from the Middle East. My favorite dish, by far, was Armenian lavash (a bread) and a pomegranate-pepper dip. I may have to find a recipe and prepare this at some point. Well, not may, must.

Mother Armenia and the (not so) Eternal Flame

Yerevan!

The cascading park.

Yours truly in Republic Square with the Armenian flag 

"Kavkazskaya Plennitsa" (Prisoner of the Caucasus) Cafe named after one of my favorite
Russian films by Leonid Gaidai.

The three fools of the "Prisoner of the Caucasus" (You'll find this film titled in English as
"Kidnapping: Caucasus Style" but that is not the direct translation of Kavkazskaya Plennitsa).

Saturday. I woke up to the sun and a bright blue sky streaming through the bedroom window. The legendary Mount Ararat, said to be the landing spot of Noah's Ark and sacred to the Armenians, came out of partial hiding. I took a picture of it because I did not know if I would see it again. It was too bad that I did not see Mount Ararat in all its glory while I was there.

The partially obscured Mount Ararat.

The three of us went out for breakfast and enjoyed bliny with chocolate sauce and bananas (bliny are crepes, but since I am Russophile, you will never hear me call them that. The proper name is bliny). Afterwards, we picked up yet another Fulbrighter and traveled to Armenia's largest body of water, Lake Sevan. Lake Sevan is the place to be to escape the summer heat and to eat delicious fish. The lake is dazzling in its shades of blue - something I have really only seen in the tropics. Both Lake Michigan and the Black Sea are more uniform in their blueness. While there, we trekked up a long flight of stairs to Sevanavank Monastery. There were two churches, Apostles and Holy Mother of God which were built over a 1000 years ago. We ate lunch at a nice lakeside restaurant and then went in search for a place to swim. My Russian skills came in handy as I translated the English guidebook's suggestions of where the best beaches could be found. Those good beaches we never quite found, but instead came upon a desolate triangle of a beach obscured by billboards. By this time, a storm was approaching and a horde of Armenian men stood watching us, dashing any sincere hopes that we might swim. As the rain began to pour, we scrambled back to our hired cab and were driven back to Yerevan.

Arakelots (Apostles) and Surp Astvatsatsin (Holy Mother of God) Churches.
Otherwise known as Sevanavank.

Inside the church (I cannot remember which one)

Yours truly

Lake Sevan and her brilliant blues. 

Lake Sevan and the approaching storm

A storm over lake Sevan

That night, Destinee and I were introduced to a bunch of the friends of the Armenian Fulbrighters. We also had another delicious Armenian dinner.

Sunday was a lazy day spent in Yerevan where we encountered a whole lot of strangeness and awkward moments that made for an interesting time indeed. After an eco-friendly, all natural breakfast, we went in search for a nail salon. For being a country supposedly obsessed with plastic surgery and looks, according to the Fulbright ETAs here, we sure had a hard time finding a salon that had time to take us that day. The salon we finally did find would be what the Fulbright ETA called janky, suspect and not to standard. I usually use the term "sketchy" to describe such places. The salon was sparse and the beauticians were trying to sell us more than we wanted in addition to making things needlessly complicated. "Oh, you want a manicure and pedicure? So do you want your hands washed, too?" The three of us exchanged looks, asked if the two were separate, and threatened to walk out. The beautician pleaded with us to stay and we did through two pedicures. After looking through the clumpy nail polish, we decided to leave and return to the far nicer salon we had found earlier to have it all redone. It was there that we were "properly pampered".

Later in the afternoon, Destinee and I headed to the Armenian Genocide Memorial.

The eternal flame at the Genocide Memorial.

The menu for Sunday night was Chinese food because it was decided that international cuisine is a luxury for those of us living in rural Georgia and we liked to take advantage when we could. We ordered heaps of food. The most awkward moment came from us spying what we thought was sweet and sour chicken on someone else's table, ordering it, and when it arrived complained it was not what we had ordered. We pointed to the food at the other table, to which the waitress replied: "But that's fried apple in caramel sauce." I think we all just about died of laughter. One of us had a cold and thus a lot of nose blowing ensued…an old woman came up behind us and muttered in Russian: "Help…go to the pharmacy…invalid…" It was hard to discern whether this woman was talking about us or herself. (A side note, nose blowing in public is considered rude in the Caucasus but the three of us could care less). After we left the restaurant and were approaching a young girl and her father, a random and loud expletive was hurled from our lips. The father looked at us wide-eyed and clutched his daughter's hand, yanking her away from us. Things calmed down after this and we enjoyed ice cream while watching a fountain and light show in Yerevan's Republic Square.

Fountain and light show at Republic Square

Monday, Destinee and I hopped on a marshrutka that was headed back to Tbilisi. About an hour or so into the trip, Destinee tapped my arm and told me she had to use the bathroom. I made this known to the driver in Russian and was told we would stop somewhere soon. Forty-five minutes later, Destinee taps my arm again and before I can say anything more, a bunch of Armenian passengers and the driver started badgering in a mixture of Russian and Armenian. Damn near started a riot on the marshrutka. We finally stopped, took care of business, took pictures, and waited for the driver as he grabbed a bite to eat. Nothing extraordinary happened on the ride back after that. In Tbilisi, Destinee and I parted ways as she wanted to get back that same day. It would have been too long for me and instead I stayed the night in Tbilisi before setting off back to Keda the next day.

It was a fantastic trip!

The Armenian countryside

Yours truly in the Armenian countryside.

The road between Yerevan and Tbilisi.

To part ways, for all of those who do not know the latest, I will be spending another year abroad! Graduate school did not pan out this year due to lack of funding, so I deferred and will have an "in" in at least two universities for Fall 2015. In the meantime, I have signed up for another year of teaching English as a foreign language in Russia! Words cannot describe how excited I am to be returning to Russia! It will be a chance to really improve on my Russian language skills that I otherwise would not get waiting for grad school to start.

Oh! And two weeks until my parents arrive in Georgia! 

Spring Sun, Tbilisi, and Keda Fun

After my last lengthy blogpost about Svaneti, certain keys on my keyboard stopped working. Which keys you might ask? Why t, y, u, i, o! It was rather unfortunate that most of my vowels were out of commission - it certainly made matters difficult. Anyway, this is probably boring for you, but it set up my recent trip to Tbilisi quite nicely because I had to order a new external keyboard which was to be picked up in the capital city.

Last weekend, I made the seven hour journey from Keda to Tbilisi, all by marshrutka. There is a train that goes between Batumi and Tbilisi, but it leaves a little too early in the morning for my taste.

In Tbilisi, I stayed at this nice hostel off of Rustaveli Avenue because I know the owner real well and because it had a private room for me to stay in at more than half the cost of a budget hotel room. The weather was quite nice, warm, but cloudy with some passing showers. I met with friends Nathan who is on a Fulbright research grant in Tbilisi, Cameron who is a Fulbright ETA in Armenia, and Tengo who was an intern at the US Embassy when we all arrived back in September, all of whom I had not seen in quite some time and ended up having a great time with them over dinner two nights in a row.  While going out to dinner, Nathan introduced me to a part of Tbilisi that I had never seen before and so on Sunday I went there by myself to wonder around and take pictures. I cannot say that a whole lot of interesting things happened this weekend, it was just a nice, good, fun weekend. I felt happy.

Rustaveli Avenue

Freedom Square

Marjanishvili Street

Marjanishvili neighborhood

A park along Marjanishvili Street

Yours truly in said park,

This weekend was spent locally. I stayed in Keda, explored a local church by the name of Zvare just 5 kilometers down the road, and visited with my Georgian neighbors. Friday night was warm and I went with Giorgi and neighbor Tamuna to a local park where we played on a seesaw for roughly half an hour by light of the moon and fireflies. It has been fifteen years since I was on a seesaw and must admit that it was quite fun.

Zvare is a beautiful church located on a cliff jutting out into the river Acharistkhali, which is the main river that courses through the lush mountains of Adjara. Saturday was a gorgeous and perfect day to visit this church and explore the area before getting a ride back to Keda with a counterpart. I had planned on walking back, but having forgotten to put on sunscreen, I did not want to get burned in the hot afternoon sun, so I took him up on his offer. Back in Keda, I bought local bottled mineral water and some ice cream before hanging out with my schoolgirl neighbor, Tamuna, and her mother, Maka, in the local pharmacy. I just love Tamuna, she is such a sweet girl and our friendship transcends both age and language. She is ten and speaks little English, I am 24 and speak little Georgian, but somehow we make it work. We went off to a park to take pictures. I also hung out at another neighbor's for a good while, chatting over Turkish coffee and sliced apples.

Zvare Church and the Acharistskhali River 

The lush subtropical mountains of Adjara. These mountains make up part of the (lesser)
Caucasus Mountain Range that runs along the border of Georgia, Turkey, and Armenia

Tamuna and I in the local aptiaki (pharmacy)
run by her mother, Maka (not pictured). I often stop by to visit.

Tamuna in 9 Aprili Park.

The sign as you enter Keda, my Fulbright host site over the past year.

My dear Tamuna.

And to part ways…kittens!

Sunday was a lazy day spent inside due to the rain and cool air that had descended upon the mountains. I lay here on my bed, writing this blog post, with the host cat Jackson sitting on my butt. It has been a nice day hanging out with my host family and neighbors - I really do not have too many of these days left before I return to the States.

Next weekend, I am going on a trip to Armenia! It will be quite fun and interesting to see another country of the Caucasus. To do this, though, I really need to invest in some sunscreen because I got sunburned this weekend and next weekend in Yerevan looks like it is going to be scorching.

So, that's it on my end! Stay tuned for a post about Armenia. Oh! It is less than a month now until my parents arrive in Georgia and you will definitely want to stay tuned for that!

Easter Break in Svaneti

The true skyscrapers on this Earth are mountains for they can reach so high as to grace heaven. The Greater Caucasus Range forms the border between Russia and Georgia, and Russia and Azerbaijan. These mountains are the tallest in Europe, the ragged, snowcapped peaks souring over 18,000 feet in places. This range is formidable, mythological, wild. It is here that Prometheus was chained to a mountain, where mountain men and women lived in the clouds, where the hearts of some of Russia's greatest literary heroes were drawn. Mikhail Lermontov wrote this in his work Hero of Our Time: "All around the valley tower formidable mountains, reddish crags draped with hanging ivy and crowned with clusters of pine trees, yellow cliffs grooved by torrents, with a gilded fringe of snow high above." The region of Svaneti in particular was for a long time, so remote and inaccessible that no foreign enemy ever was fully successful in conquering and taming it. Because of this, the unique culture, language (unintelligible to most Georgians outside this region despite it being in the same Kartvelian language family), and heritage of its inhabitants, the Svans, have survived largely intact.

Up until about ten years ago, blood feuds among neighbors still occurred in Svaneti. In addition, due to severe economic problems, a harsh climate, and natural disasters, it became a safe haven for criminals making it very dangerous for tourists and trekkers to travel throughout Svaneti. Around 2003, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili sent in Georgian Special Forces to carry out large scale anti-criminilization and anti-corruption operations which resulted in significant improvement of the situation.  Today, the region is considered very safe…so for all of you are reading this worrying about me traveling alone, fear not. I am back in one piece with a singing heart and stirred imagination.

You see, these towering mountains were truly where it all began for me. Ten years ago, I watched in horror as Chechen terrorists seized an elementary school in the semi-autonous Russian Caucasus Republic of North Ossetia-Alania. Something about this event stuck out in my memory beyond the atrocity - I wanted to know more. This was a time when I was truly starting to develop interests that reached beyond my immediate world and surroundings. I was fascinated, although it was not as defined at the time, by military history and despotic leaders. World War II and Joseph Stalin fit both of those and I found him by discovering the Caucasus and I discovered Russia (and Georgia) through Stalin and the War. Another simple fact about my intrigue over the Caucasus was the very connection I felt with mountains. Mountains have a way of opening me up, easing me, stirring my soul. Ten years of dedication and determination, of passion and devotion, of research, of papers, of books, of classes, of travel, of discussions and I finally was able to actually be in the place that had spawned all of it.

Aside from all the personal significance for which I wanted to travel to Svaneti, it also was a matter of practicality. For all the reasons I outlined above, I wanted to spend more than just a weekend there, I really wanted to get a feel for the place, not to mention the sheer logistics of just getting there.

I stayed in Mestia, the administrative center of this region, nestled deep within the mountains and mere kilometers from the Russian border. Mestia is a launching point for trekking, horse riding, and skiing. I would only engage in the first, and even then nothing too serious, I just casually blazed along rural roads that weaved through little mountain hamlets and fields of farm animals. Easter weekend that happened to fall right during the shoulder season of mid-April caused the town of Mestia to be pretty dead - hardly anything was open. Even if things had been open, it would not have changed the scheme of things all that much because there were no independent restaurants or cafes or significant shops of any kind. There were a couple of small, open markets that sold the same general hodgepodge of cheap imported items, food, drinks, and cigarettes that I have found to be so pervasive and indicative here in Georgia. These types of shops are everywhere. The only restaurants in town were ones attached to hotels and home stays and after an especially awkward, lonesome Sovietesque meal in one of these places, I opted to have dinner at my hotel for the rest of my stay.

Six days I was in Svaneti, including two days of travel back and forth. I left Keda mid-morning on Thursday and two marshrutka rides later, I ended up in the small city of Zugdidi, the gateway of the Caucasus. The plan had initially been to take a marshrutka up there, but by the time I arrived to Zugdidi in mid-afternoon, the marshrutka was not going to depart because there were not enough passengers. I finally convinced the two other intended passengers, an old Georgian lady and the all too common, all too sketchy middle-aged Georgian man, to take a taxi (well not so much the man, but he decided to come along anyway). Taking a taxi definitely cost a great deal more than taking a marshrutka would have, but honestly, I did not mind. I was just excited and eager to be heading into the mountains. The ride to Mestia was absolutely spectacular.

The front range of the Caucasus right outside Zugdidi is already lush
and in full spring glory.

The Zugdidi-Mestia Highway

The wild and rugged peaks of the Caucasus Mountains as seen
from the Zugdidi-Mestia Highway.

By the time we arrived in Mestia, it was evening and just growing dark, and the middle-aged Georgian man insisted I stay with him. I tried to explain to him an innumerable amount of times that I had already booked a hotel, but because he spoke poor Russian and I poor Georgian, it was all lost on him. He followed me through town until I approached the entryway of my hotel and then he understood. I appreciated his offer, but I did not feel entirely comfortable for many reasons, and I said thank you and goodbye.

Friday I spent all day wandering around Mestia, checking out churches, rivers, and side streets. I also met a Georgian man later in the hotel named after John Wayne - he proceeded to engage me in a long conversation about American Westerns.  In pictures, you will see what I saw and did (especially since everything was closed):

The town of Mestia.

One of at least half a dozen churches in Mestia. 

Seti Square in the center of Mestia. What is interesting about it is that
these buildings that you see are just merely facades. They are gutted inside
and it does not look as if they were ever developed.

An alley that branches off a side street. 

Yours truly standing in front of the iconic Svan watchtowers that were
used in days of old as defense to watch for both invading foreign enemies and feuding neighbors.

Cows are everywhere in Georgia.

Saturday was a gloriously beautiful, sunny, warm day. I decided to take a walk to the center of town to see if the information center and ethnography museum were open (they were not) and ended up walking over a bridge that teetered above a deep gorge. I would have taken pictures but it was littered with trash. An elderly Georgian man passed me by in a marshrutka brimming with hay, stopped, and asked me if I wanted a ride to Ushguli, Europe's supposed highest inhabited settlement. Now, I consider myself a fairly good judge of character and have fairly good intuition and sensed no harm from this man. Since I wanted to see Ushguli, I hopped in. Fifteen minutes into the ride and six or so kilometers out of town, I realized that this man was not a local and thus severely underestimated the supposed travel time to Ushguli (he had said only half an hour, which I found suspect). I was not prepared to spend the night anywhere but Mestia and told him to leave me on the side of the road so that I could walk back. At first, he was hesitant, but I convinced him in short order when I spotted some American tourists and before I knew it, I was in the cleanest vehicle that I had seen in months and was wearing a seatbelt! For the next couple of hours, I hung out with these American tourists, who happen to be currently living and working in Tbilisi, crisscrossing the valley from village to village.

Mount Ushba clocks in at over 16,000 feet.

Old churches housed in the iconic watchtowers.

Just beyond these mountains sits Russia. 

The view from one of the villages.

At midnight on Easter, all the churches in Mestia began to ring, and I listened as the beauty and jubilation of the tolling echoed throughout the valley for five minutes. Easter Sunday turned out to be another beautiful day and I went for a walk along the Zugdidi-Mestia Highway and counted the cows and towers that passed me by.

The village of Lenjeri. 

An ornamented door of an old church.

Yours truly standing along the Zugdidi-Mestia Highway.

Mr. Cow and Lenjeri.

The village of Lenjeri.

Monday was quieter, cooler, and rainy and thus I spent most of it at the hotel doing work, alternating between the balcony and my room. That night, I was treated with a brilliant sunset, a perfect farewell to my time spent in these mountains and with which I will leave you before I left at 6:30 am the next morning.

Sunset in Svaneti 

Alpenglow