When in Armenia...part one!

Georgia celebrated two holidays on the 3^rd and 8^th of March - Mother’s Day and International Women’s day – so my travel partners-in-crime and I decided to turn it into a 6-day weekend and head to Armenia! We started the trip off by heading to T’bilisi on Wednesday night so we could catch the morning marshutka without too much difficulty. The highlight of my night was undoubtedly visiting the local McDonald’s…this may have been my first real sign of missing home. Say what you want about McD’s, but after complete separation from almost everything you’ve ever known, crossing under those golden arches was the closest thing to home I was going to find for awhile, and man how I missed it. Walking up, I was giddy like a 5-year-old who had just convinced their mom to treat them after a hard half day of kindergarten and ABC’s. After entering, I immediately broke into hysterical laughter for no reason other than pure joy, and I couldn’t stop. It was then that I knew I missed hamburgers, I missed French fries, I missed MY food, and I missed home. I absolutely have a new appreciation for this conglomerate (which I had given up at one point in my life) and now understand their international reign. Their global presence is not to fatten the world and make a buck off one fat kid at a time. No, they have spread their existence purely for the sake of those expats that are looking for a break from their new reality, and a taste of home :).

i'm home :)

We spent the night at Lani's family friend's flat...it was beautiful and we were able to walk around in our socks and even sleep without them! We received impeccable hospitality from Nino and her 11-year-old daughter, Tamuna, who both spoke perfect English. Nino, realizing that we've probably had our fill of Georgian food, had quite the international spread ready for our breakfast which included American style donuts and milk for our tea and coffee! It was just after 10 a.m. and we were basking in the warmth of central heating when we decided we should call the marshutka station to make sure the one to Armenia was scheduled to leave at 11 a.m. Nino made the call and was informed that it left at 10:30 a.m. and we were about 20 minutes away from the station! She was able to speak directly to the driver and get him to wait for us. As we hustled to get dressed and collect our belongings, Nino called a cab, packed us some snacks, and in 5 minutes had us out the door. Again, Georgian hospitality to the rescue! We made it just in time without  holding up our traveling comrades, and we took our seats in the back.

It cost 30 Lari each (about $18) for the 5 hour ride, and although bumping around in the back of the bus, it was made nice by the sun-filled mountainous views and nice conversation - which we freely have given that no one can understand us. It took just over and hour to reach the border when the driver stopped, said something in Armenian, and passengers started to get off. We figured we'd just follow the herd when the guy sitting in front of us turned around and said, "he said that you girls should go first since it will take you longer to get the visas."...perfect English. With stunned looks on our faces we said thank you and I began to rack my brain thinking 1) how did I not notice this guy?! and 2) do I need to remove my foot from my mouth for any reason??? It turns out there were two American guys sitting in front of us, both fluent in Armenian, wearing matching slacks, coats and name tags,  and were from Utah...Mormon Missionaries. After exchanging brief introductions we got our passports stamped at the Georgian border and proceeded across the bridge to Armenia. I've never crossed a border on foot before! We were like nomads :) We were the only passengers that had to get visas and this took a good 20 minutes to complete as border patrol was in no hurry.

the infamous marshutka.

The missionaries didn't hover but kept their eyes on us, and not in a creepy way, but in a just in case we need help kind of way. We made it through and continued our journey this time keeping our conversations quieter and sans religious discussion - which I'm fairly certain we touched on earlier. However, this topic became the pink elephant in the marsh and the three of us couldn't help but slip into talk about religion was involved in our upbringings - the three of us repping

I don't remember his exact response, but he politely turned around and that was that. I have to say this though, us discussing religion was like holding raw meat in front of a lion. If he hadn't tried to talk to us about his beliefs while on a religious mission, I might have judged him for not doing his job :) jokes aside, you can't blame the guy for trying. And even though he went 0-3, they still offered to help us get to our final destination...given that our Georgian was as valuable as our English here. We had the address and phone number of the friend we were staying with, but our phones didn't work. So they let us use their phone, caught us the right marsh (luckily we were going the same direction as them), told us where to get off, and even paid our fair. We may have different beliefs from them, but kindness is a universal language and we couldn't have been more grateful to them.

We spent our first night in Armenia "couch surfing" with an Iranian expat named Usher. We walked the city streets with him and his friend Nikholi, a New Zealand Swed that is teaching English there through European Volunteer Services. We saw Mother Armenia, a very large statue that over looks the city (used to be a statue of Stalin); Cascade; the Republic Square, where the Marriott is one of the seven major buildings, holding company with the likes of the National Gallery and Government House. Then we enjoyed a traditional Armenian dinner, each dish selected by Nikholi's student, Armon, who works in the Government's Economic department. After dinner, we headed back to Usher's where we didn't have the best night's sleep, so we decided to check into a hostel Friday morning...best decision ever! The hostel was impeccable from the cleanliness, to the staff, to the free coffee, tea, and breakfast, to the free Internet, and fairly quiet patrons. We ran into many other TLG-ers also staying there so it was like a mini reunion :)

clock tower in republic square.

armenian monument.

Friday we visited the genocide museum which was completely new news to me...don't remember learning about that in history class. 75% of the Armenian population was massacred in the early 1900's by the Turkish empire. I won't go into details as I'm definitely not educated enough on the topic, but visiting the museum was quite a moving experience. It was very informative, tactfully displayed, and not overdone. It told it's story and it still amazes me that something like that could happen. After the museum we stumbled into a huge bazaar underneath Yerevan's football stadium. We browsed for a bit and then headed out to dinner. We decided that our first night in Armenia would be dedicated to their traditional cuisine, but since it had been so long since we'd been in an actual city and eaten anything other than Georgian food, it was game on after that! So we had Chinese of Friday, Pizza on Saturday, and Mexican on Sunday! And I will give the Armenians props for doing all three fairly well. We were especially impressed with the Mexican. After dinner on Friday, we hit up a bar called Wild West with a new friend we met at the hostel who invited us to tour some historical churches with him on Saturday.

eternal flame in the genocide monument.

inside the genocide museum.

second genocide monument.

...Given that I write waaaaaay too much :) and it's been awhile since I posted something, I'm going to write about this trip in two posts. So if you're still interested...stay tuned!