Today is our last day in Armenia. We only stayed the day in Karabakh and the following morning, to borrow a figure of speech from Jack Kerouac, who I'm reading for the first time, we "balled" it from Stepanakert to Yerevan in a shared taxi driven by a young hipster Armenian who had a penchant for Dire Straits, Metallica and the Scorpions. He was also a fine multi-tasker -- he could smoke cigarettes, change the CD, talk on his cell phone and wipe the windshield with a rag all while barreling around hairpin turns on a precipitous mountain road swathed in a pea-soup fog so dense we couldn't see more than 10 feet in any given direction. That did not prevent him from passing every vehicle on the road when the need arose. In any event we made to Yerevan safely.
Yerevan is a great city. The snowy peaks of Mt. Ararat loom in the distance and the fertile Ararat plains, where every variety of vegetable is grown, stretch far to the east into Turkey. The city is dotted with small parks sporting chic outdoor cafes where the young and the old relax under the walnut and oak trees, donning smart threads, sipping turkish coffee and smoking european cigarettes. There is a lassitude here I have not found in any other city I've visited. The city folk stroll the cafe-lined streets at a snail's pace, hand in hand, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but enjoy the evening. It's quite infectious.
Yesterday we decided to take a tour. We tired of negotiating (the language barrier is extremely frustrating -- a simple question can elicit mass confusion) and mashrutkas and we wanted things easy for a day. On the bus to a 1st century pagan temple we ran into the indecisive Czechs again. They too had tired of mashrutkas. In fact on their way back to Yerevan they told the driver to stop the mashrutka because the fumes in the back of the bus were so bad they couldn't breathe. The passengers and driver were apparently utterly flummoxed as the now decisive Czechs got of the mashrutka in the middle of nowhere and had to hitch a ride the rest of the way to Yerevan.
Today we went to the genocide memorial and museum. The only piece of soviet architecture worth a damn. The memorial is very moving and choked me up. The museum was too but it felt like a repository of documentary evidence against the Turks.
Armenians are not pita people. They eat lavash which is a chewy, tissue-thin bread. It's delicious. There are lamhajoon joints all over town. You can get one lamhajoon for 100 dram which is roughly equivalent to 30 cents. They eat their lamhajoon with tan, which is a tasty yogurt drink that goes really well with the little lamb-paste pizzas. Spas (yogurt soup) is also a staple -- I've eaten it at virtually every meal.
Tomorrow morning we fly to Vienna. I think we'll stay there for the night and then take a train to the Alps somewhere -- we don't know where yet. In fact Erin is sitting next to me trying to find a relaxing destination that is accessible by train and had good hiking.
Ang - I'll always be your apprentice..
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