The Armenia part of my trip began as fabulously as England’s beginning was hideous. As soon as I arrived at 5 AM on Saturday morning it was obvious that I was in a different country, or at least a different time. To be fair, I really don’t know what a US airport was like in the fifties, but this is how I imagine it; people smoking freely and nearly all the men doing it, small stark airport with styles that would have been trendy in the fifties, a decidedly patriarchal tinge on everything, a little on the chaotic side, plus there was a slight feeling that just being there, in the airport, raised your status some… The chaos leapt to the forefront and it was obviously another country as I exited the airport. I had a dozen offers for a taxi yelled at me before I even reached the crowd greeting those escaping customs. Lucky for me Armenians in general tend to be somewhat short and Masha is not vertically challenged in the least. She was easy to find in the mass and we quickly escaped to the dead streets of early morning Yerevan. We drove to a diaspora built overlook to watch the sun fulfill it’s morning ritual. The city of 1.5 million people has little in the way of industry, but the air belies the fact, smoggy from heat and dust. The outline of Mount Ararat, a dominant symbol in the area, some 30 km away was barely visible in the distance. After the sun finally made it up, we went back to Masha’s place and took a nap. A perfect welcome to Armenia…

A few hours later we drove out into the countryside, ostensibly to see an ancient monastery, but also to see the land. Armenia has a pretty decent variety of terrain for it’s size varying from dessert to mountain ranges and many more in between. On the way to the church we went through a tunnel and one side was grassy hills full of livestock and the other was thick forests. The monetary we visited was one of the older ones and had several hundred years on anything I’d seen in England, and unlike the old English ruins, they actually still have services in it. Armenia was the first nation in which Christianity was the official religion, and some of the churches there as a result are decidedly ancient. We had a lunch on the way back, it was served in what we called the “birdhouse,” which is a small picnic table sized house that was built over a small river. We were brought loads of breads, cheese, meat, tomato and cucumber salads, and yogurt. We came nowhere near eating it all, which I suspect was the point, but trying left me stuffed the rest of the day. Matches of Risk and Scrabble that were greatly enhanced by the local beers topped off day one. After a devastating campaign in Risk the alcohol started kicking in and I was barely able to hang on to win Scrabble. The local beers, aside from one that tastes of hay, are actually quite good (for beer), and I found them to be far superior to those I sampled in Britain.

The next day came bright and early at 10AM and we headed off to chruch to atone for the previous night’s enjoyment. The Armenian Apostolic Church lies somewhere between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, so lots of standing (the church did have pews though, a rarity for Armenian churches), chanting (lost in the language barrier), and incense (which didn’t help my hangover headache any). I only made it through an hour before begging for release. So after a quick lunch, we left to scale Mt. Aragast, the highest point in Armenia with a height of just over 4000 meters. On the trip there we got a bit turned around and ended up giving a couple of old ladies a ride home in exchange for help in getting back on the right track. One gave us peaches from her garden, and they were divine… The height didn’t seem to bother me as much as Masha, though my headache did get a bit worse. After a huge thunder cloud enveloped the top of the mountain when we were one-two hundred meters from the top, we decided that it would not be wise to summit. After a shower of hail Masha refused to continue even to the ridge. So, amid the loud thunder claps I tried running on ahead to see what I could see before we turned back. Running took my breath incredibly quick at that height, but I persevered and saw into the valley to the east peak, and could even see the north peak in the distance. Going back down was a little trickier on the slick slate plates, and I ended up unintentionally surfing down some steep portions of the ridge. One of the great parts of the excursion was that the temps were really nice at that height in comparison to Yerevan. Starved from the effort on the hill, we devoured some terrific Russian food (no curried pel meni here) to top off the night.

The next day I was on my own in boiling Yerevan while Masha toiled away in the embassy. I was constantly buying water and ice cream as I toured the city on foot, from one side of the bowl to the other and back again along the green. Even still I couldn’t wait to return to the cool of Masha’s place. The city is loaded with statues, but few have descriptive tags (not that I would have been able to read them anyway, but that’s not the point…). Even still, I appreciated their presence as well as that of the many small green areas the Soviets added to the city. That night we got lavish amounts of food at the Armenian/Georgian/other restaurant; the other stands for Azerbaijan, however, that is a dirty word, and certainly can’t be used to describe food that is actually good… Armenia is the birthplace of cherries and apricots, and while the cherries were pretty much done, the produce that was in season was spectacular: really sweet apricots, juicy raspberries, and deliciously plump blackberries (we’ll get to the watermelon in a bit…).

Day two on my own was far less prolific than the first. After doing laundry, I again ventured into the heat, but didn’t get very far before grabbing a spicy-saucy-meat-on-a-bun and, after a strained conversation in English with the vendor, fleeing to the delightful shade of make-out park. In Armenia, and unmarried couple in private is a big fo-pa, so after a successful date or two, they head to the park and proceed to maul each other in public, which is totally acceptable, as long as the clothes stay on. There is also a fountain in the park where a dozen or so kids were keeping cool by taking turns jumping in. After a few hours hanging out, writing some of this, and attempting to acclimate myself, I attempted to venture forth again and see the south side of town. Unfortunately I was again quickly overwhelmed by the heat and escaped back to the apartment, a cold shower, and a nap.

When Masha returned from work, we went to an Arabic place for dinner. The food was really great as expected, but what followed was a tragedy. Masha destroyed me at scrabble while sucking smoke sagely from a hookah-pipe (basically a flavored tobacco bong). Also, during the game, we ate what I suspect was an Iranian watermelon. The watermelon in Iran come into season a little earlier than those from Armenia and in Iran, they have a tendency to pump their watermelons full of water in an effort to make the fruit bigger and heavier (thus worth more). The problem is that Iranian water is just awful stuff, and my stomach problems began somewhere around midnight (just about the same time as I lost my plane tickets), and are still recovering a month later. I did manage to leave at 5 AM the next morning from the security lax Zarnots airport where I wandered around on the tarmac looking for my plane before really realizing that I was not supposed to be there (hey, it was early and I felt like crap, give me a break).

So, opposite England, Armenia started fabulous and ended with an awful butt-muscle clenching workout…

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