i arrived into yerevan, armenia overland from tbilisi, georgia. my friend brad has an armenian friend named veronika that he put me in touch with. and thank goodness, as when i arrived in at my hostel there was no one to be found. apparently no one ever stays there. it took about 15 calls in armenian, and finally someone got in touch with the guy who was supposed to be running the hostel. turns out it was quite luxurious, and i was the only person there! veronika was super nice, and she even took a day off work to show me around the city! we went out to a town called etchmiadzin, where the oldest church in armenia is, from the furth century. armenia is the oldest christian country in the world! and to this day their brand of christianity has its own independent flair. we then went to a museum devoted to the armenian filmmaker and artist sergei parajanov, whose work was heavily censored by the soviets. and we ate some really tasty armenian food. i was amazed at how cultured the place is. there is cutting edge art absolutely everywhere, and everyone is intently concerned with looking really, really good. as a group, they seem to hold themselves to a very high standard.
that evening i went to the armenian genocide memorial, which is on the crest of a hill overlooking yerevan. unfortunately the museum was closed by the time i got there, but there is an eternal flame and some evocative architecture that is very poignant. the armenian genocide occurred during the late 1910’s: 1.5 million armenians were killed by the ottoman empire. this cause has been furthered by armenia’s huge diaspora in the west. to this day turkey refuses to call it a genocide, resulting in a very antagonistic relationship between armenia and turkey. the border is completely sealed shut.
armenia and azerbaijan, its neighbor on the other side, also unfortunately don’t get along. i learned a lot about this from veronika, who is working to encourage dialogue between youth of the two countries. there was a big war in the early 1990’s, after which the ethnically armenian region of nagorno-karabakh declared its own (still internationally unrecognized) independence from azerbaijan. the tensions and the complexities are one of the reasons that i really wanted to visit this part of the world, so it was great to hang out with someone who could explain it all. armenia = super interesting place, i’d highly recommend anyone to go there. as a parting gift, on my last day i finally got to see mount ararat, which towers over yerevan. it is where noah’s ark is believed to have run aground.
