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The story below is part of the diary of an American woman who traveled to Caucasus including Armenia two years ago, it is worth reading…
Friday, February 06, 2004
The Rest of Transcaucasia
Clif was contacted by the Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan, Armenia, just a couple of weeks ago, to see if he could come do a presentation to some graphic design students and professionals. No problem, he said, although we knew it would be sort of a tight scheduling thing, what with us leaving so soon. Anyway, he worked it out, and on Wednesday the 28th we left.
We left at about 8:30 a.m., with the sun sort of peeking through fog. We made our way down the main highway toward Marneuli, and although we had heard that this road was simply awful, there was new asphalt on a good bit of it. The bad bit of it, however, was as bad as advertised. It seemed to me that once we left the suburbs of Tbilisi we had in fact entered Azerbaijan. The people are all Azeris: it turned out they spoke neither Georgian nor Russian!
It took a while to go the last few kilometers, but we made it to the border by 10:30. At first I didn’t think Armenia looked very different from Georgia—the differences were subtle. It was a little greener, and the farms were tidier. The first clue that something really different was going on was the radar installation I kept seeing as we curved up and around the mountains. We reached a point on the highway where our driver, Rouben, explained that the road we were about to take was brand new. It had been built to avoid the danger of potshots and the occasional artillery round from Azerbaijan. The old road goes past a bombed-out abandoned village and continues around the base of a mountain. The new road goes up and over the mountain—it’s a multi-gazillion–dollar project involving switchbacks, steep climbs, and even steeper descents. All that to avoid getting shot. It was a pointed illustration of the complete economic uselessness of a war, unless you’re Halliburton, of course.
We continued up beautiful valleys, and the road switched back and forth, climbing and climbing. The views were magnificent, and Rouben was a great driver, full of information about all the sights we were seeing. We kept climbing, our ears popping, until we came at last to the entrance of a tunnel into the mountain. This is a new thing, too, Rouben told us. The tunnel was begun many years ago during Soviet times, but has only recently been finished and opened for traffic. I could see the old road that kept switching back and forth as it headed for the pass, and it looked like we would gain back the time we lost on the other new piece of road. The tunnel is 2 kilometers long, and it keeps climbing, too. As we came out, I was sure there would be some incredible view of a valley or something, thousands of feet down. I was astonished when we came out onto a flat snowy plain surrounded by peaks. It felt like the top of the world.
As we came around a turn, we saw a sapphire-colored lake surrounded by white mountains. This is Lake Sevan, at 6200 feet above sea level. The lake has been drawn down by hydroelectric projects, so what used to be an island is now a peninsula. We stopped here to eat lunch and to take a look at a monastery. The Sevanavank complex has two churches, and the courtyard is filled with katchkars, standing monumental carved stone crosses that are decorated with knotwork that looks amazingly Celtic. (Of course, Armenians would say the Celtic crosses look Armenian. Whatever.)
We climbed the thousands of stairs, poked around, and had the caretaker explain the large katchkar inside one of the churches. It had lovely naïve scenes of the Nativity, including one panel of a donkey and a cow sitting erect across a table from each other, the flight into Egypt, the four evangelists’ symbols, etc. We came back to the restaurant to see a huge feast laid out (inward groan). One of the treats Rouben recommended was matson (yogurt) dried to a spreadable consistency then mixed with nuts. Another was a kind of fish from the lake, which although it was called “sick,” was really yummy.
We descended slowly and turned off the highway to go to Garni, a classical temple perched at the point of a triangular plateau that stands more than 1,000 feet above a canyon. On the other side of the canyon are more mountains. Wow. I don’t think it’s describable—you just have to go there. There is a Roman bath with a mosaic floor on which it says, “We worked but we didn’t get anything,” a Roman job action, I guess. The temple collapsed in an earthquake in the seventeenth century, but it was reconstructed in the 1960s, using stones of a slightly different color to fill in where the originals were missing or destroyed. The whole thing is just beautiful.
After we left Garni, we went to Geghard monastery a few miles away. I had really wanted to visit Geghard after reading Andre Bitov’s account of it in his “A Captive of the Caucasus” (a title that gets used about as often as “Georgia on My Mind”—please cut it out, folks). Geghard means “spear” and refers to the relic the monastery had of the spear that pierced Christ’s side, until it was relocated under the relic protection plan. The complex is way up in a ravine, and it was getting to be the end of the day, so we couldn’t spend as much time as we wanted to.
The main church has a “gavit,” or vestibule, that is larger than the church itself. Someday maybe I will learn why this is the case in many of the Armenian churches we saw. (Someday maybe I will also learn exactly what “monophysite” means at the end of the day. The Armenian Apostolic Orthodox church is a complete mystery to me.) The real attraction at Geghard, though, is the churches and burial chambers carved out from the rock above and behind the church. These are miraculous, as far as I’m concerned: stalactite-style domes, free-standing columns, a pool of holy water and channels to take it around, two enormous bas relief lions, and thousands of crosses carved into the walls. It is amazing. One of the chapels is actually on the second story. And they were all carved out of the solid rock, starting from a hole at the top!
We poked around for a while, but we had to leave. The sun was setting and the fog started to roll down from the mountains at the head of the ravine.
We arrived in Yerevan and checked in to our hotel just off Republic Square. We ate a quick dinner in the hotel dining room (though how I managed to put away more food after the lunch at Lake Sevan is a mystery). Afterwards, Clif and Wilson went for a walk to the square to take in the atmosphere. I lay on the comfortable bed and watched English-language television. Ahhhh.
The next morning, we were picked up at the hotel by an embassy driver and taken to meet Hasmik, the young lady who was our minder and who had made all the arrangements for us. There was a typed schedule in fifteen-minute increments, but luckily, this fell apart pretty quickly. Clif gave a lecture on the state of design in America to some graphic design students from the Art Academy. He says he never knows how these things go over, but everyone seemed happy. Afterwards there was a meeting with some design educators. Again, he didn’t know what if any good he was, but everyone seemed pleased. Hasmik took us to a late lunch at a traditional Armenian restaurant, where we sampled the local delicacies, including stuffed grape and cabbage leaves (dolma), chicken and porridge (harissa), square flat tortilla-type bread (lavash), and more.
Later that night we went out to have supper near Republic Square. This large urban space is a funny sight: Stalinist grandiosity constructed of purple and pink blocks of tufa. Think Fascism with Freckles. Four buildings are colonnaded quarter-circles with avenue going off between them. At the top is the history museum, more of that odd pastiche of classical Stalinist fantasy. In the middle is a huge fountain (turned off for the winter) and a large paved space where people stroll back and forth in the evening. It’s a great urban space, and it feels very safe. Cars stop for traffic lights (!) so you can get to the middle without being killed (try that in Tbilisi).
Architecturally, the whole city is of a piece. Something has existed here for millennia, but the city as it is now was built in a limited period of time in the 1920s. There is no “old town,” and although there are the requisite Brezhnev apartment blocks, they too are made of the multicolored tufa blocks—everything from purple to pink to orange to yellow, even the occasional green.
The next morning, Hasmik and Rouben picked us up and took us to the Matenadaran, the repository for a collection of more than 12,000 ancient manuscripts. A statue of Mesrop Mashtots, the creator of the Armenian alphabet, stands outside. The tiny percentage of manuscripts that are actually on display are both beautiful to look at and historically significant. Wilson liked the case where ancient manuscripts from many different world cultures was shown. I liked a 13th century gospel where a portrait of a saint is amazingly expressive and lifelike, not at all like most of the stylized figures you see from that time. Another favorite is a beautiful ivory book cover with scenes from the Bible in its various panels.
Our next stop was just outside Yerevan at the complex of Echmiadzin. This is the home of the Supreme Catholicos of the Armenian church, the seminary, library, and several different churches. The main church was built in 303 a.d. after King Trdates III and his realm were converted to Christianity by Gregory the Illuminator. Jesus came to Gregory in a dream and showed him where to build the church. The church has been added onto and renovated many times since then, but the 1,700 year old structure is still there. Inside, it is painted in a light color and decorated with Baroque ornaments. It doesn’t look like it could possibly be as old as it is.
This church is lovely, but it is not as spiritually satisfying as the nearby St. Hripsime church. This was built in 618 a.d. on the site of an earlier church where St. Hripsime was martyred for refusing to marry the not-yet-converted King Trdates III. The exterior forms a balanced and stable geometric shape. Inside, there is very little decoration: the austere stones create a quiet and contemplative atmosphere. Just like all the other churches we saw, there were many katchkars in the churchyard.
Back at the embassy, the next adventure involved a no-plan plan for a presentation to some design professionals. This immediately fell apart into a “heated discussion” between two factions, which I found out later were (a) design-as-art people, and (b) design-as-business people. They all agreed that whoever it was who accepted only $80 to do a major identity campaign for the biggest bank in Armenia deserves contempt.
We went back to the hotel and met up with friends from Tbilisi, one of them Wilson’s friend, also age 11. We decided to eat at the Armenian Kitchen around the corner (Hasmik had recommended it), and while the boys went back upstairs to get their coats, we sat in the lobby. They didn’t come back and they didn’t come back. And then we started hearing them shout. I thought they were just horsing around in the hall upstairs, but they were in fact stuck in the elevator. The one that says “No unaccompanied children.” They had evidently been jumping up and down and pressing buttons, and the mechanism just said, “OK. That’s enough!” The maintenance man was called. He tried the tricks he knew, but he couldn’t get it going. So the elevator company was called, and a car was dispatched to go pick up the official mechanic. Meanwhile, a hole had miraculously opened up in the floor of the lobby, and I had sunk down 10 feet where no one noticed my absence. Not.
After about an hour, the boys were out of the elevator, but not at all chastened by the experience, unfortunately. They were defiant, casting blame, and accusing each other of freaking out. Not a pretty sight. The hotel staff were very nice, and when we were not billed hundreds of dollars for the elevator mechanic, I was grateful. The restaurant was quite an experience, too, when we finally got there. It was small, only about eight tables, and the waiter was very patient with our fumbling around with both the unfamiliar menu and the picky child stuff on top of it. We stuffed ourselves and rolled back to the hotel and bed.
The next morning we got up and met Hasmik at the Vernissage, the crafts and flea market near Republic Square. Immediately, I saw rugs. Rugs! Fabulous rugs! Gorgeous rugs! But rugs without export permits, for the most part, and I was not willing to put two embassies in a difficult position by trying to smuggle one out. So, sadly, we did not buy a rug in Armenia, though they were definitely my favorites of all the Caucasian carpets.
We snarfed up some souvenirs and set out for home. Because we had been so interested in visiting the various monasteries and churches on the way to Yerevan, Rouben took us to a couple of monasteries on our way back toward Georgia.
Back at the border, we said goodbye reluctantly to Rouben. He is a great guy, and he promised to help us find an apartment to stay in next time we come to Armenia. We breezed through all the various passport and customs checkpoints (we could have brought a rug—oh well), and then listened to about two hours of why Armenians are awful. Just to be fair, we had listened to many hours of why Georgians are awful, too, on the other side of the border.
I don’t understand this at all. You have three small countries in the Trans-Caucasus: two Christian, one Muslim. One Christian country is actually at war with the Muslim country, but it’s the two Christian countries who expend a lot of energy despising each other. The Armenians don’t even hate the Azeris as much as they hate the Georgians. Go figure. This is just like Dr. Seuss’s “Butter Battle” book, in which the two sides are at war over whether they eat their bread with the butter side up or the butter side down, and no one remembers how it started or why. I’m sure there is history and justification and rationalization for every single bit of this, but it just made me tired. I don’t really care who’s top dog in the Caucasus. They would all be better off if they could do the Rodney King thing and “just get along.” Back we went to Tbilisi, which never looked so dirty, so half-abandoned, or so ill-maintained to me as it did at this moment. We had 48 hours to pack up six months worth of living here.
The Rest of Transcaucasia
Clif was contacted by the Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan, Armenia, just a couple of weeks ago, to see if he could come do a presentation to some graphic design students and professionals. No problem, he said, although we knew it would be sort of a tight scheduling thing, what with us leaving so soon. Anyway, he worked it out, and on Wednesday the 28th we left.
We left at about 8:30 a.m., with the sun sort of peeking through fog. We made our way down the main highway toward Marneuli, and although we had heard that this road was simply awful, there was new asphalt on a good bit of it. The bad bit of it, however, was as bad as advertised. It seemed to me that once we left the suburbs of Tbilisi we had in fact entered Azerbaijan. The people are all Azeris: it turned out they spoke neither Georgian nor Russian!
It took a while to go the last few kilometers, but we made it to the border by 10:30. At first I didn’t think Armenia looked very different from Georgia—the differences were subtle. It was a little greener, and the farms were tidier. The first clue that something really different was going on was the radar installation I kept seeing as we curved up and around the mountains. We reached a point on the highway where our driver, Rouben, explained that the road we were about to take was brand new. It had been built to avoid the danger of potshots and the occasional artillery round from Azerbaijan. The old road goes past a bombed-out abandoned village and continues around the base of a mountain. The new road goes up and over the mountain—it’s a multi-gazillion–dollar project involving switchbacks, steep climbs, and even steeper descents. All that to avoid getting shot. It was a pointed illustration of the complete economic uselessness of a war, unless you’re Halliburton, of course.
We continued up beautiful valleys, and the road switched back and forth, climbing and climbing. The views were magnificent, and Rouben was a great driver, full of information about all the sights we were seeing. We kept climbing, our ears popping, until we came at last to the entrance of a tunnel into the mountain. This is a new thing, too, Rouben told us. The tunnel was begun many years ago during Soviet times, but has only recently been finished and opened for traffic. I could see the old road that kept switching back and forth as it headed for the pass, and it looked like we would gain back the time we lost on the other new piece of road. The tunnel is 2 kilometers long, and it keeps climbing, too. As we came out, I was sure there would be some incredible view of a valley or something, thousands of feet down. I was astonished when we came out onto a flat snowy plain surrounded by peaks. It felt like the top of the world.
As we came around a turn, we saw a sapphire-colored lake surrounded by white mountains. This is Lake Sevan, at 6200 feet above sea level. The lake has been drawn down by hydroelectric projects, so what used to be an island is now a peninsula. We stopped here to eat lunch and to take a look at a monastery. The Sevanavank complex has two churches, and the courtyard is filled with katchkars, standing monumental carved stone crosses that are decorated with knotwork that looks amazingly Celtic. (Of course, Armenians would say the Celtic crosses look Armenian. Whatever.)
We climbed the thousands of stairs, poked around, and had the caretaker explain the large katchkar inside one of the churches. It had lovely naïve scenes of the Nativity, including one panel of a donkey and a cow sitting erect across a table from each other, the flight into Egypt, the four evangelists’ symbols, etc. We came back to the restaurant to see a huge feast laid out (inward groan). One of the treats Rouben recommended was matson (yogurt) dried to a spreadable consistency then mixed with nuts. Another was a kind of fish from the lake, which although it was called “sick,” was really yummy.
We descended slowly and turned off the highway to go to Garni, a classical temple perched at the point of a triangular plateau that stands more than 1,000 feet above a canyon. On the other side of the canyon are more mountains. Wow. I don’t think it’s describable—you just have to go there. There is a Roman bath with a mosaic floor on which it says, “We worked but we didn’t get anything,” a Roman job action, I guess. The temple collapsed in an earthquake in the seventeenth century, but it was reconstructed in the 1960s, using stones of a slightly different color to fill in where the originals were missing or destroyed. The whole thing is just beautiful.
After we left Garni, we went to Geghard monastery a few miles away. I had really wanted to visit Geghard after reading Andre Bitov’s account of it in his “A Captive of the Caucasus” (a title that gets used about as often as “Georgia on My Mind”—please cut it out, folks). Geghard means “spear” and refers to the relic the monastery had of the spear that pierced Christ’s side, until it was relocated under the relic protection plan. The complex is way up in a ravine, and it was getting to be the end of the day, so we couldn’t spend as much time as we wanted to.
The main church has a “gavit,” or vestibule, that is larger than the church itself. Someday maybe I will learn why this is the case in many of the Armenian churches we saw. (Someday maybe I will also learn exactly what “monophysite” means at the end of the day. The Armenian Apostolic Orthodox church is a complete mystery to me.) The real attraction at Geghard, though, is the churches and burial chambers carved out from the rock above and behind the church. These are miraculous, as far as I’m concerned: stalactite-style domes, free-standing columns, a pool of holy water and channels to take it around, two enormous bas relief lions, and thousands of crosses carved into the walls. It is amazing. One of the chapels is actually on the second story. And they were all carved out of the solid rock, starting from a hole at the top!
We poked around for a while, but we had to leave. The sun was setting and the fog started to roll down from the mountains at the head of the ravine.
We arrived in Yerevan and checked in to our hotel just off Republic Square. We ate a quick dinner in the hotel dining room (though how I managed to put away more food after the lunch at Lake Sevan is a mystery). Afterwards, Clif and Wilson went for a walk to the square to take in the atmosphere. I lay on the comfortable bed and watched English-language television. Ahhhh.
The next morning, we were picked up at the hotel by an embassy driver and taken to meet Hasmik, the young lady who was our minder and who had made all the arrangements for us. There was a typed schedule in fifteen-minute increments, but luckily, this fell apart pretty quickly. Clif gave a lecture on the state of design in America to some graphic design students from the Art Academy. He says he never knows how these things go over, but everyone seemed happy. Afterwards there was a meeting with some design educators. Again, he didn’t know what if any good he was, but everyone seemed pleased. Hasmik took us to a late lunch at a traditional Armenian restaurant, where we sampled the local delicacies, including stuffed grape and cabbage leaves (dolma), chicken and porridge (harissa), square flat tortilla-type bread (lavash), and more.
Later that night we went out to have supper near Republic Square. This large urban space is a funny sight: Stalinist grandiosity constructed of purple and pink blocks of tufa. Think Fascism with Freckles. Four buildings are colonnaded quarter-circles with avenue going off between them. At the top is the history museum, more of that odd pastiche of classical Stalinist fantasy. In the middle is a huge fountain (turned off for the winter) and a large paved space where people stroll back and forth in the evening. It’s a great urban space, and it feels very safe. Cars stop for traffic lights (!) so you can get to the middle without being killed (try that in Tbilisi).
Architecturally, the whole city is of a piece. Something has existed here for millennia, but the city as it is now was built in a limited period of time in the 1920s. There is no “old town,” and although there are the requisite Brezhnev apartment blocks, they too are made of the multicolored tufa blocks—everything from purple to pink to orange to yellow, even the occasional green.
The next morning, Hasmik and Rouben picked us up and took us to the Matenadaran, the repository for a collection of more than 12,000 ancient manuscripts. A statue of Mesrop Mashtots, the creator of the Armenian alphabet, stands outside. The tiny percentage of manuscripts that are actually on display are both beautiful to look at and historically significant. Wilson liked the case where ancient manuscripts from many different world cultures was shown. I liked a 13th century gospel where a portrait of a saint is amazingly expressive and lifelike, not at all like most of the stylized figures you see from that time. Another favorite is a beautiful ivory book cover with scenes from the Bible in its various panels.
Our next stop was just outside Yerevan at the complex of Echmiadzin. This is the home of the Supreme Catholicos of the Armenian church, the seminary, library, and several different churches. The main church was built in 303 a.d. after King Trdates III and his realm were converted to Christianity by Gregory the Illuminator. Jesus came to Gregory in a dream and showed him where to build the church. The church has been added onto and renovated many times since then, but the 1,700 year old structure is still there. Inside, it is painted in a light color and decorated with Baroque ornaments. It doesn’t look like it could possibly be as old as it is.
This church is lovely, but it is not as spiritually satisfying as the nearby St. Hripsime church. This was built in 618 a.d. on the site of an earlier church where St. Hripsime was martyred for refusing to marry the not-yet-converted King Trdates III. The exterior forms a balanced and stable geometric shape. Inside, there is very little decoration: the austere stones create a quiet and contemplative atmosphere. Just like all the other churches we saw, there were many katchkars in the churchyard.
Back at the embassy, the next adventure involved a no-plan plan for a presentation to some design professionals. This immediately fell apart into a “heated discussion” between two factions, which I found out later were (a) design-as-art people, and (b) design-as-business people. They all agreed that whoever it was who accepted only $80 to do a major identity campaign for the biggest bank in Armenia deserves contempt.
We went back to the hotel and met up with friends from Tbilisi, one of them Wilson’s friend, also age 11. We decided to eat at the Armenian Kitchen around the corner (Hasmik had recommended it), and while the boys went back upstairs to get their coats, we sat in the lobby. They didn’t come back and they didn’t come back. And then we started hearing them shout. I thought they were just horsing around in the hall upstairs, but they were in fact stuck in the elevator. The one that says “No unaccompanied children.” They had evidently been jumping up and down and pressing buttons, and the mechanism just said, “OK. That’s enough!” The maintenance man was called. He tried the tricks he knew, but he couldn’t get it going. So the elevator company was called, and a car was dispatched to go pick up the official mechanic. Meanwhile, a hole had miraculously opened up in the floor of the lobby, and I had sunk down 10 feet where no one noticed my absence. Not.
After about an hour, the boys were out of the elevator, but not at all chastened by the experience, unfortunately. They were defiant, casting blame, and accusing each other of freaking out. Not a pretty sight. The hotel staff were very nice, and when we were not billed hundreds of dollars for the elevator mechanic, I was grateful. The restaurant was quite an experience, too, when we finally got there. It was small, only about eight tables, and the waiter was very patient with our fumbling around with both the unfamiliar menu and the picky child stuff on top of it. We stuffed ourselves and rolled back to the hotel and bed.
The next morning we got up and met Hasmik at the Vernissage, the crafts and flea market near Republic Square. Immediately, I saw rugs. Rugs! Fabulous rugs! Gorgeous rugs! But rugs without export permits, for the most part, and I was not willing to put two embassies in a difficult position by trying to smuggle one out. So, sadly, we did not buy a rug in Armenia, though they were definitely my favorites of all the Caucasian carpets.
We snarfed up some souvenirs and set out for home. Because we had been so interested in visiting the various monasteries and churches on the way to Yerevan, Rouben took us to a couple of monasteries on our way back toward Georgia.
Back at the border, we said goodbye reluctantly to Rouben. He is a great guy, and he promised to help us find an apartment to stay in next time we come to Armenia. We breezed through all the various passport and customs checkpoints (we could have brought a rug—oh well), and then listened to about two hours of why Armenians are awful. Just to be fair, we had listened to many hours of why Georgians are awful, too, on the other side of the border.
I don’t understand this at all. You have three small countries in the Trans-Caucasus: two Christian, one Muslim. One Christian country is actually at war with the Muslim country, but it’s the two Christian countries who expend a lot of energy despising each other. The Armenians don’t even hate the Azeris as much as they hate the Georgians. Go figure. This is just like Dr. Seuss’s “Butter Battle” book, in which the two sides are at war over whether they eat their bread with the butter side up or the butter side down, and no one remembers how it started or why. I’m sure there is history and justification and rationalization for every single bit of this, but it just made me tired. I don’t really care who’s top dog in the Caucasus. They would all be better off if they could do the Rodney King thing and “just get along.” Back we went to Tbilisi, which never looked so dirty, so half-abandoned, or so ill-maintained to me as it did at this moment. We had 48 hours to pack up six months worth of living here.
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