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!