On Good Friday we flew to Yerevan, Armenia, and I think we were the only two people on board not bringing along a flat-screen tv. I think Samsung was giving away televisions to anybody buying a ticket to a former Soviet state. The plane was full of Armenian ex-pat workers going home for Easter weekend and the moment wheels touched down they were up, ignoring announcements telling them to sit. As we taxied, one guy even asked the still-seated Nicole and me what we were waiting for.
Armenia suffers high unemployment and men in particular often find work in the Middle East and elsewhere, leaving behind families when necessary. Like much of the former Soviet Union, Armenia had manufactured goods for the rest of the empire; those jobs disappeared when the USSR collapsed. But Armenians are proud of the brandy and other boozes they make. Most restaurants offer lengthy vodka lists, including their own in-house, homemade selections.
We stayed at a bed and breakfast in the middle of downtown Yerevan. A social service agency called Family Care operates the b&b as a way to help sustain their services like teaching art and traditional crafts to developmentally disabled kids. The place is full of pottery, textiles, and macrame rope hangings that line the rickety wood stairs up to the bedrooms. Breakfast there was pretty simple (tea, bread, cheese) but always included a variety of amazing preserves made from walnuts, apricots, etc.
For a capital, Yerevan is laid back. Nicole and I walking through parks, all full of old guys playing enthusiastic rounds of backgammon and other games. Also, young lovers on park benches. Public displays of affection between men and women are strictly forbidden in Sharjah; they are encouraged in Armenia. Mass on Easter Sunday seemed like an extension of the love Armenians have for socializing. At Etchmiadzin, the Holy See of the Armenian Church (like their Vatican), church-goers would wander into the cathedral for part of Mass and then go outside with their friends and spend time chilling on benches, smoking and chatting. Inside, the Catolicos (the patriarch of the Armenian rite church) was saying Mass and Nicole and I followed the crowd, spending part of Mass inside with him and part of the time outside soaking up the sun.
We saw a lot of sites, including the memorial to the 1915 genocide, Lake Sevan, the first century pre-Christian temple at Garni, a winery in the Ararat region, and Matenadaran--a rare manuscript repository with biblical and hellenistic translations and early literature and holy writings in the Armenian language. The place is a virtual shrine to Mesrop Mashtots, a kind of patriarch and nationalist figure known for developing the Armenian alphabet in the 300s and 400s, soon after Armenia became Christian. Numerous monasteries and chapels from the Middle Ages were highlights too and definitely give visitors a fast education in the Armenian church and its history: chapels devoted to 7th Century virgin martyrs, cave monasteries carved by monks in the 1200s, a cathedral built over the cell where St. Gregory the Illuminator was imprisoned (and a ladder you can climb down into his "pit," where pilgrims light candles that barely get enough oxygen to stay lighted).
We tended to eat at downtown's "Caucus taverns." They're very inexpensive and have foods from the whole Caucus region (mainly Armenia and Georgia, as there are political tensions with Azerbaijan). Harissa, also popular in Lebanon and Iraq, is a staple here: a kind of porridge made of wheat and shredded chicken and shared with neighbors and the needy in Christian Armenia, similar to the Shi'a tradition of sharing pots of harissa with pilgrims and others during memorials and holidays like Ashura. Also delicious was a Georgian dish called satsivi, pieces of chicken cooked and served in a walnut sauce you can dip bread in (some call it the Georgian version of hummus), and also a dish called khorjine, a kind of meat pie baked in a pastry shell (think of shepherd's pie, or beef wellington, but with more herbs and veggies).
My friend Ara hooked me up with some great colleagues at the American University of Armenia who are starting a writing center and we spent a nice morning brainstorming about ideas and strategies; hope to work with them again. So the week wasn't entirely taverns and monasteries!
Click here for Nicole's photo album of Armenia.
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