I am sitting on the bank of Lake Hallsted, Austria, on what might be the most beautiful fall day. The sky is clear and blue, the sun is warming my bare feet, the leaves in the Austrian Alps are turning and it is so peaceful. Even the train the intermittently runs behind me is quiet. My clothes are being washed, I'm freshly showered and will enjoy the luxury of cooking our own dinner tonight. I think its now been a sufficient amount of time and distance to look back on our adventures in Armenia!
Armenian men wear very pointy shoes. If the shoes are black (black and white are the predominant colors) they prefer a high shine. Women seemed to favor heels for all occasions, the higher the better, especially in yeravan. Needless to say my chacos and ugly brown hiking shoes received many scowls of disapproval.
I don't know for sure if it was our shoes, our clothes, or lack of frequent showers but as paul said, the armenians had no problem staring at us and openly laughing in our faces. The women especially. I did not enjoy this.
Like other third world countries, the domestic animals are treated poorly. Many street-savvy dogs roam the streets of Yerevan and it is some consolation to me that they were more astute about when to cross the street than we were. I was not allowed to pet them.
Best meal: Dilijan, we ate eetch (the only place we found it), lentil kufta (a version of armenian meatballs but made with lentils and maybe some kind of bread crumb served with yogurt sauce), wild mushroom and apricot soup (oh so very yummy, kind of like my mamas but with a sweet twist), and rice pilaf with herbs. At the same place, different meal, we ate my favorite lamajon. It was my favorite because you could really taste the spices, especially cinnamon, which wasn't on most versions of this armenian staple.
Other notable eats included good tolmas (we call them dolmas) at a strange armenian pub called sherlock holmes and a pickled green bean salad with dill and vinegar (it tasted much better than it sounds). Armenian food in general uses tons of fresh herbs like parsley, dill and purple basil. Like Georgia, I think we were lucky to be there at harvest time otherwise the food probably wouldn't have been nearly as fresh and tasty!
We has two excellent versions of taboule, one with more parsley like the kind paul makes and one with more bulgar, the way I make it. These differing versions led me to surmise that eastern armenian (the current boundaries of the country)food is much more russian influenced and western armenian (what is now turkey) food like paul's family makes is moe middle eastern influenced.
As I travel with an eye on infrastructure and buildings, I noticed some interesting and very contradictory things.
1. They do not have orange barrels in armenia, everyone simply dives over the rubble, around the heavy machinery, and right through the piles of road base on the side of the road. It truly is a wonder that they are able to construct a road under these conditions.
2. All natural gas and water lines are above ground, you can smell the gas when you walk by.
3. They are building a 25 million dollar cable car (currently being installed by the swiss of course) to the Tatev monastary as well as building a brand new road to get there. This seems odd as the town Goris that would serve as the base for tourists to eat and sleep when they visit the monastary has marginal hotels, few places to eat and is litterally swimming in garbage. The river that runs through it appears to be the main landfill for the community.
4. My favorite piece of soviet architecture is the genocide memorial in yerevan. Its shocking that the soviets allowed it to be built and even more jaw dropping that it was designed by two soviet architects. The memorial is a recessed area with a fire burning in the center surrounded by 12 monolithic posts that lean inwards and give the feeling that you are surrounded. The interior is full of changing shadows and haunting music is playing. Flowers surround the center area where the fire burns. It is a very special place where they managed to create a very solemn, introspective feeling. It the kind of place where you whisper.
While in armenia I was compelled to read a book on the genocide and in a nutshell, for those who don't know, the Turks killed over 1.5 million armenians in a series of massacres in the late 1800s and then a mass extermination starting in 1915. Armenia was the first country to embrace christianity as a nation and though there were surely other cultural reasons, the muslim Turks felt the need to eliminate the christians. The germans actually learned how to kill masses of people at one time from the Turks who did things like drowning, burning, crucifying and butchering people. We did not visit the places where these horrible things occurred as the places (including where Pauls grandparents are from) are now in Turkey. What is current day Armenia was under Russian control during the genocide and was protected to a large degree. Its strange to think about what the country would have been like if the majority of the population hadn't been murdered in the early part of the century.
Traveling in Armenia was a unique and fascinating experience but ill confess, I was pretty excited to arrive in austria where most people smile back at me, speak english, and feel compelled to pay people to clean their stop lights!
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