Days 11-14

Armenia!  Land of the Uni-Brow.  We're in a small town in the northern mountains of Armenia called Dilidjan.  Very pretty.  The leaves on the hornbeams and oak are changing colors.  Its a gentle rolling landscape of hills surrounding the town, with tall mountains to the east.  We arrived in Armenia a couple of nights ago.  I did not receive a welcoming lei or hug as we came across the border as I was expecting.  Instead of kisses I received a scolding for not filling out my visa application fast enough and because my application was sloppy.

We took the night bus to Yerevan and pulled into the city around 11:00 at night.  We walked through the downtown area to get to the apartment flat we were going to stay at.  Yerevan is, surprisingly, a lovely city.  Quite modern and, unlike Tbilisi, quite European.  We only stayed the night and got up early to catch a mashrutka to Lake Sevan so we didn't get to see much.  We hope to spend a few days there before we fly out .  Lake Sevan itself is beautiful, the infrastructure around the lake kitschy and deteriorating.  Armenia, like Georgia, suffered far too much from soviet architectural influence.

The rest of our stay in Georgia was enjoyable.  We stayed with a family for 3 nights in the wine region which is strewn with vineyards and studded with old churches and monastaries (4th to 6th centuries) perched on top of hillsides.  Nelly, our host, told us that one of the churches was built with nothing but stone and eggs.  I call bullshit.

The mashrutka from Telavi to Tblisi was a gag-inducing three hour bus-ride.  I'd had too much cha cha the night before and the bus was packed tightly (as they all are).  The man sitting next to me smelled like a mixture of vomit and rotting offal.  The nimbus of stench must have radiated only a foot or so from his body -- like Pig Pen's cloud of dirt -- because Erin didn't seem to suffer the same level of nausea I did.  Though she did seem to enjoy his aggressive nosepicking.  It was as if he'd stored a precious valuable in the dark depths of this naval cavity and was hell bent on getting it out.  Whatever it was is still on his pant leg I think.  The pleasures of travel by chicken bus.

On our bus ride to Yerevan we sat next to a German who works in Tblisi.  He was taking a vacation to Stepanakert in Nargorno-Karbagh.  He had some very interesting things to say about Georgia and the Georgian people, most of it negative.  I will not bore you with the details but one thing he said I found amusing had to do with how Tblisi was a melting pot -- a toxic blend of Georgians, Russians, Azeris, Armenians and Kurds.  He said they all have their place in society.  In his effeminate German accent, he explained that The Kurds are the streetsweepers, the Azeris the farmers, the Armenians the merchants and traders and bankers, and the "Georgians do nothing."  Then he giggled.

Hopefully by the next time I write I'll have a better impression of the Armenian people and the food, culture etc to make some overly sweeping, stupid generalizations about them.  The only thing I can say at this point is that they are very laid-back (much more so then the Georgians) and many of them have uni-brows which I dig.

Hope all is well.