After nine nights spent in Georgia, I next visited neighboring Armenia, a calmer and better-organized country. Yerevan, the capital city, was a very welcome respite after the insanity of Tbilisi. Kinder and gentler people, ample sidewalks and crosswalks, and perhaps best of all, no stray dogs. But not as many jaw-dropping sights in the region. Tradeoffs.
In planning for this trip months in advance, I just presumed that there would be straightforward options for getting from Tbilisi in Georgia to Yerevan in Armenia, which by car should take about five hours. However, boy was I wrong. One could of course hire a private driver, but that was prohibitively expensive, at least for me. And renting and driving a car myself didn’t seem desirable given the dangers of the roads. There are marshrutkas, or shared taxi vans, and while these are economical, the reality is that they don’t typically depart until full, and I read reports of that sometimes taking up to three hours! No thank you. I investigated buses, and there were surprisingly few. And when I would look up reviews for these bus routes, opinions were mostly very negative about things like safety, cleanliness, smells, timing, lack of restroom break, and more. Finally, I realized that because I wanted a tour of sights in Armenia anyway, perhaps there were group tours leaving from Tbilisi, visiting attractions in Armenia, and at some point stopping in Yerevan. And there indeed were such options, rated well, so I booked one and then inquired with the operator if I could bring my luggage with me and leave the group in Yerevan, with them returning without me. They said that was fine, and in the end there were three other tourists who took exactly the same approach. It wasn’t much more pricey than a bus, and then I also got a guided tour to multiple interesting places along the journey.
As an aside, noteworthy is that tour vans in Georgia often were clearly acquired from pervious operators in the US, without any attempt to remove old labeling:
As readers of the previous posts about my experiences in Georgia may recall, I mentioned that cleanliness isn’t top priority in that country. This was perhaps best exhibited through the experience crossing the border to Armenia. At the crossing we van passengers first had to exit the vehicle and enter an administrative building on the Georgian side in order to wait in line to present our passports to Georgian agents there to “check out”. While waiting in this line, our eardrums were assaulted by the barks of multiple dogs in a pack inside the cavernous and echoey building space, as these dogs were warning off an outsider canine every time it too attempted to enter the building. Despite the ear-splitting cacophony, the border agents remained unfazed and did nothing to kick these dogs out of the building. But worst of all was the visit to the restrooms, as brief as it was. I and a female tour group member entered the Georgian toilet area to relieve ourselves after hours on the road. At the risk of being too graphic, let me say that entering each unisex room was the most shocking and off-putting toilet experience I’ve ever had the displeasure to encounter. Imagine the worst port-a-john you’ve ever stepped into, and then envision that structure also then being turned upside down and shaken. There was no toilet per se, but only a hole in the floor, as is common in the region. And somehow many visitors apparently struggled in their aim and missed the hole during evacuation. It must have been several days or even weeks of this, perhaps with an attendant occasionally and haphazardly spraying water from a hose into the room, also without aim, causing various matter to now splatter not only horizontally, but also vertically. Given the urgency, I momentarily considered going for it. But I couldn’t stomach being there any longer, because unsurprisingly there was an odor well-paired with the horrid sight. It was only a second or two that I processed all this, and then I quickly spun and hightailed it out of there. On my way out, I saw that my female cohort had gone through the exact same resignation process from her chosen room. And to think that presumably the border agents use those rooms each day. Or hopefully they have their own staff-only alternative. But never fear, once we had crossed the border into Armenia, there were restrooms on that side too, and they were spotless.
And there were no dogs on the Armenian side of the border crossing – I suppose the Armenian border guards keep them out. I believed for more than a moment that I was going to be rejected just like those dogs. This is because I have an Azerbaijani stamp in my passport from a visit there last year. I had to go through special additional questioning to get into Armenia, along with a few other tourists who’d also been to neighboring Azerbaijan, a historic enemy of Armenia. But fortunately all of us were eventually admitted.
Once in Armenia I had a pleasant time, and every day was more enjoyable than any day spent in Georgia, thank goodness.
Armenian tidbits:
– I got to see some September 21 independence day celebrations the weekend before, though I departed that Monday before the main day big events had kicked off. It’s been 35 years since they left the USSR.
– Like Georgia, Armenia has their own distinct language and character set – here’s what the alphabet looks like:
– This region has deep history, such as Armenia being the first Christian nation and Yerevan being one of the longest continually-inhabited cities in the world. In 2018, 2800 fountains were installed around the city in honor of the 2800th anniversary of the city’s foundation. Though Mount Ararat is no longer part of Armenia (it’s in Turkey), it lives on as sacred in the peoples’ hearts, and on clear days the mountain can be seen from many places around the country. Said to be the resting place of Noah’s Ark, Mount Ararat is the main national symbol of Armenia. The country also has the world’s oldest shoe at around 5500 years old! I even got to have a look at it – it’s in better shape than some of my old pairs, haha.
– Cheese is huge in Armenia, as is chess. Chess is even a mandatory subject for school children!
– We learned from a walking tour guide that nose jobs are popular for Armenian women. She said to look for women with bandaged noses, and as if on cue, soon thereafter one walked by! Maybe better than using tobacco, so I read:
– Given that Armenia borders Iran, one encounters literal busloads of Iranian tourists around the country.
– While one doesn’t find many Chinese tourists, there are plenty of Chinese-made cars, including those from luxury car maker Honqi, a division of FAW, the oldest car company in China. I don’t recall having seen these cars prior to visiting Yerevan, but they are everywhere there!
– Another very popular car model in Yerevan is the Chevy Volt! I cannot remember ever spotting a Volt in Czechia during the 1.5 years I’ve spent in Prague, and I would likely notice because I enjoyed driving my old Volt years ago. One could make a decent anecdotal case that the Chevy Volt is the most popular passenger car in Yerevan! I would see multiple at a time, and eventually I decided to capture a few photos of at least two Volts in the same shot. And during my exploration I sometimes found Volts parked on sidewalks nearby unique sights, such as these shown below. It’s comical!
– Speaking of cars, how about these mobile shops?:
– But car-wise, I was most surprised by the sight of the car shown below. Not for the model, but for the North Carolina license plate!
– Armenians have a huge diaspora around the world, including many in Glendale, California specifically. In fact, the Los Angeles area (which includes Glendale) has the largest population of Armenians outside of Armenia! You’ve likely even heard of some of them, like the Kardashians. 😉
– One cannot have much of a discussion of Armenia without at least referencing the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, when likely well over 1 million Armenians died. There is a powerful and heartbreaking Armenian Genocide Museum in Yerevan.
Today’s Armenian video:
Here’s an American tourist touting Yerevan:
Today’s dad joke:
Some people tend to follow pop culture, while others choose Pope culture, as it’s a higher calling.
Today’s fun music video:
In honor of the upcoming holiday, here’s this year’s annual Broken Peach “spooky” Halloween installment:
