6 The population of Armenia is only a little over three million, and a million live in Yerevan, the capital. The way the peace Corps calculates it, there are only two cities, Vanadzor and Gyumri, both in the north and both about 150,000 population. Gyumri is to the west near the Turkish border and is the old capital. Before the earthquake, it was the larger of the two, but has recovered more slowly. Though it isn’t far, an there is a daily bus from Spitak, I haven’t visited it yet.
Vanadzor is where my Peace Corps class trained and is only a half hour by bus from Spitak, so I am familiar with it. The guide book says there is nothing there of interest to the tourist, but it has the vitality of a regional city, though the shops don’t take credit cards. But you can get cash from the automatic teller machines outside the banks. It has restaurants, and pretty good shopping. A university, and a reasonably impressive city center with a fountain, a municipal building, and a hotel, There are other hotels away from the main square. The city is squeezes into a river valley between two low mountain ranges and is much longer than it is wide. Down on the river bottom east of downtown is a string of abandoned factories. What the earthquake didn’t do to Vanadzor’s industrial base, the breakup of the Soviet union did. The soviet policy was to tie the Union together by for instance shipping cotton from Central Asia to Armenia to be turned into cloth which was shipped to markets elsewhere. This was useful to tie the Union together, but economical, so when the Union disbanded the logic of the factories evaporated.
Spitak is a town of about 17,000 and was once an important small manufacturing town. It was all but destroyed in the earthquake of 1988, but rebuilt with a lot of international aid. It has a handsome colonnaded town center with a fountain that is dry most of the time, and a cultural center building opposite which includes an auditorium, a library, and several room for English, French, and music lessons. It also has some attractively designed apartment buildings in the center of town built in the pink volcanic stone favored for buildings of importance. I’m not sure how much industry remains in Spitak, though my host family’s son is working in a factory that makes doors and window sashes.
Immediately after the earthquake, the intention was to build a new Spitak three miles west. Several Soviet republics and foreign nations built communities, but too many Spitakians had property in town, so it was rebuilt on the old site, leaving the new suburbs isolated, with large open spaces for public buildings that were never built. I live in the Swiss village, a development of two-story stuccoed stone houses. Just below it is the Italian Village, of tiny four-room prefabricated houses, that the Italians are probably surprised are still in use. The houses in Swiss Village are privately owned, but the houses in Italian village are owned by the city, and the tenants pay rent, the maximum being about $25, and the tenants much sign affidavits that they cannot afford anything more. There is a small building divided between an drug store and the post office, three small food and general merchandise stores, and a scattering of even smaller provision shops.
The bus route into Spitak ends at the Italian Village the last of the artifical villages. The road is the main road from Vanadzor and the north to Yerevan, but the scattered villages between it and Spitak are build far off the road, and the citizens have a fair hike down to the bus stop. I say “bus” advisedly. At certain times a small orange bus plies the route, but mostly the transportation is by “marchutni,” a van seating 14-16. Service begins at eight o‘clock in the morning and ends at seven in the evening. During the middle of the day, service is frequent enough that one doesn’t have to know the schedule. Other times one goes by taxi. Spitak is overrun by taxis, since every man with a car gets what he can out of it. Marchutni fare is 70 drams or about 25 cents. Taxi fare is $2.50.
Spitak is not bad shopping for most ordinary household shopping, but people go into Vanadzor for serious shopping. Busses and marchutnis run about every hour.
From eight in the morning till seven in the evening, there is hourly marchutni service to Yerevan, a trip that takes an hour and a half. Apparently one can call the company and it will pick one up in Italian Village, but I have never tried that. I go into Spitak. The marchutnis that go to Yerevan seat 14 or 16, and have no standing room, so if you don’t get there early, you may have to wait for the next one. I’ve never had the problem, though I have occasionally taken the last seat. From Yerevan it can be more of a problem, but the Vanadzor bus stop is just around the block, and the marchutnis are more frequent. The price is only 60 cents more. Oddly, all the regional transportation is from specific towns. One would think there would be a market for regular bus service from the two northern routes through Vanadzor to Yerevan, like our onw Greyhound service, but there isn’t. There is a train station in Spitak, and there used to be train service by way of Gyumri, but it no longer exists, though the line is in use for goods.
YEREVAN
Yerevan, Armenia’s capital is an attractive and bustling city situated on shelf above the sheer walls of the canyon of the _____ River. These sheer walls form dramatic vistas of the buildings that cling to the rim and spill down over it. Above the center of the city on the north and east rise steep hills that provide dramatic pedestals for monuments. On a hill to the south is the Genocide Monument, commemorating those killed in the events of 1915. Directly north is a construction called the Cascade which when completed will form a cascade of water flowing down the hillside, with stairs and an escalator to the top. In Soviet times, the top was crowned with the world’s largest statue of Joseph Stalin, but he has been replaced by a female figure known as Mother Armenia.
The center of Yerevan is a circular area of about eight blocks by eight blocks in a grid running northeast to southwest. At some time, a cirle of parks was planned around the center, but it has been complete only about halfway on the east and north sides. It us ab attractive idea, but unfortunately the park is filled up with outdoor cafés until little of the park land is actual park at the moment. In the center of the grid is Republic Square, dominated by buildings of Soviet Monumentality, but luckily executed by more sensitive Armenian architects. They are in the pink volcanic stone that is the country’s signature. The National Museum dominates the square surrounded by a hotel now operated by Marriott, and some government buildings, though the Presidential Palace and Parliament oare on the north side of downtown. A block-wide park extends directly southeast from the National Museum.
Cutting directly north from the back side of the museum is a new avenue known as North Avenue which leads to the monumental Opera House. As of this writing, many of the buildings are not finished, and only a few street-level shops are occupied. Then finished, the street will be a vehicle free pedestrian mall, lined by ten-story office buildings in the ubiquitous pink stone, down the center are staircases leading down to a two-level shopping arcade, which may be designed to hold the huge outdoor market which now fills a park between the NE corner of the square and the outlying park. Or it may be one more Souq.
In fact it is hard to imagine that Yerevan needs more shopping space. The street level shops sell everything. McDonald’s has not arrived in Armenia, but KFC has in a venture which seems to be half-Russian, and there is a Victoria’s Secret near the opera. The city blocks in the center of Yerevan are very wide, and there are apartment blocks back in the center. At the present time there is a huge construction project running down the peripheral park which begins at a new tunnel well up on the route that comes in from the east and goes down to where it snarls traffic just where the spitak and Vanadzor bus stop are located. It does its best to form a barrier between the center and the east side of the city. I don’t know what it is supposed to be--water, sewage of a new subway line. Yerevan has one subway line, which I take regularly from the bus stop to Peace Corps headquarters, but I don’t know where it goes beyond City Center. The stations have long platforms, but at present the trains consist of only two cars each. The present fare is about 18 cents.
Construction is going on all over Yerevan, from downtown office buildings, to huge apartment complexes on the outskirts, to suburban American-style gated communities with the only lawns one sees in Armenia. Some criticize the fact that so much development is concentrated in the capital to the detriment of the outlying towns. There is some construction in Vanadzor and Spitak, though in both places there are half-built structures that seem to have been abandoned when the money ran out.
I enjoy goingover the high country to Yerevan. Spitak is at 5000 feet, and I think the high country is about 1500-2000 feet higher. Up there they have snow on the ground long after it has turned spring even in high Spitak. Mount Aragats, an extinct volcano whos old rim has eroded into four peaks is justy about 14,000 feet, and even in July, there is still a lot of snow on the peak. The one town up there is Aparan, and just after Aparan, one goes over the intevening hills and if the weather cooperates, the huge bulk of Ararat looms ahead. It 16,000 feet is is snow-covered all year, and of course it is even huger in Yerevan.
The wildflowers are spectacular in and around the Italican District where I live. They spring up on the untended verge of the highway and the local streets and lanes and on the unplowed fields. Yellow and white predominated earlier, but the purple and blue are more prominant as the summer wears on. I would like to find out if there are packets of Armenian wildflower seeds available. Some plants are not familiiar at all to me, and others are wild versions of garden flowers, like forget-me-nots and larkspur. There is not much red. Poppies are abundant in some places, but we don't have many here, and they tend to be unexpected accents. The only plant I keep looking for that I don't find around here is the wild hollyhock. It grows profusely on the road between Spitak and Vanadzor, but I haven't seen any I can get to without hiring a taxi. I'l like to gather some seeds to bring home. The wild version is all pale yellow. I think the plants are smaller than coltivated hollyhock, but have only seen them through the window of a passing bus, so can't tell for sure.
In the high country, bee-keepers set out hives in the open country and tend them from little gypsy wagons. I don't know where the bee-keepers live, but obviously somebody must visit and supply them by car or truck. Of course they are taking advantage of the abundant wildflowers of the high country. The last time I was through, many keepers and little tables set up at the roadside with one jar of honey on each to indicate they had honey for sale. My hostess has five working hives, and has harvested the honey. There are ten hives at school, and somebody from the neighborhood tends them for the school, but i don't know what happens to the honey.
I've taken dozens of pictuures of wildflowers among other shots, and would post them if I could figure out how to add photos to my web site.
5
It's Christmas time, and I've had some adventures that are in part geographical, so I'll put them here. The Sunday before Christmas on the Gregorian Calendar, my hostess said to me:
"David and I are going to visit and army friend of
David's south of Yerevan. Artrun will get your supper--unless you'd like to go."
"When are you leaving?"
"In about fifteen minutes."
So I changed my plans for the day, and decided to go. It was a cold day in Spitak, and even colder going over the high country, but in the lower altitude at Yerevan and the south, it was more like Columbus at Christmas. South of Yerevan is a broad, absolutely flat plain between Mount Ararat and the mountains to the east. The border with Turkey is not far away to the west. At that point it is a river, but you can't see it. At one point, we passed a military base, and there were a couple of watch towers, but that was the only sign there is something to watch. Many paintings of Ararat show a monastery on a hill in front of it. We could see this monastery in the distance at one point, and the hills it is on look rather like mine tailings on the flat plain. Ararat was now visible and snow-covered, very large-appearing, but the lower reached swathed in smog or haze. There is a huge cement factory off to the east which is doing its best to provide the smog.
This is the heart of Armenia's wine and fruit country, so there were orchards, vinyards, and other open fields. But this being winter when everything looks bleak, and there are no houses, because Armenians live in villages, and no trees other than the orchards, it looked bleak. Down at the end of the valley, where the road turned east into the hills, the Turkish border makes a little finger around that disconnected part of Azerbaijan called Nakachovian, or something like that, and the corner of Iran is only a few miles away. The road west follows the Azerbaijani border just a couple of kilometers away, but the border follows a high ridge, so you can't see into Azerbaijan. We finally came to the village of, I think it's called Arena, off the highway to the South. Zazel told people I live in a mountain village at Spitak, but it doesn't feel like a mountain village, because it it in a wide fairly flat valley between two ranges, but this was truly a mountain village, with winding streets going up and down. I laid out my camera to take, but forgot it in my rush to get ready, so I didn't get pictures.
We were well entertained by David's army buddy's family, which included a peir of grandparents, the buddy and his wife and their two or three young son's (one might have been a neighbor.) This is a village famous for making its own wine and vodka, so we drank heartily. (I did, up to my self-imposed limit.) David's older son same with us, and he doesn't drink at all. I guess he came as designated driver so that David could enjoy himself. He is about 23. The vodka seems stonger than the commercial variety, and curiously, grandpa didn't drink it. His son poured his out of a commercial bottle. Since I still don't know enough Armenian to follow the conversations, I offered to do a little English with the boys. They were playing video football in the other room (Argentina vs. Brazil) And though their mother brought out their textbook and urged them, I couldn't get them to say a word to me. I asked how far the border was, and if there were problems. The host said no problems at all. David said he would show me the border before we left, but when we left he apparently forgot it, and I didn't press the point. When we left our host's house he went with us to another house where we had coffee and vodka. On the groud floor of that house, wome were making lavash. the Armenian flat bread, which is like the tortilla bread burritos are wrapped in. The bread they were rolling out was about two feet long and half a foot long and rounded on the ends like an old-fasioned dresser scarf, laid on a board, and baked a short while. This lavash is all full of learge and small bubbles and a little crisper and less bendable for wraps than commercial lavash, and altogether delicious. We took several leaves home. Also some wine and vodka.
Back on the highway, which is the main route to the south, there were several pyramids of Coca Cola bottles right along the highway for travellers to stop and purchase. But the Coke bottles are not full of Coke. They are full of the local wine. They save the Coke bottles for the homemade wine. Later when we were back on the plain, we saw several water tanks along the road full of carp (I think) taken form a nearby resevoir. You pick out a suitable fish, and the vendor kills and guts it for you. David bought one that was about 15 pounds. At another place where we stopped but didn't buy, a man was boying several, and an old lady was taking them out, hitting them on the head with an iron bar, and putting them in his plastic bag. What the hitting was for, I wasn't sure, because it didn't seem to stun the fish but only give them a headache.
nbsp; There is no bypass around Yerevan. You have to go right through, and downtown near City Hall, we stopped at a huge houseplant store, that had huge tables of everything. Both David and Nune love plants and have them all over the house. There were African Violets, ficus, cactus, and all kinds of other things. What I was most impressed by was the huge table of pineapple plants with one or two little pineapples growing out of the leaves. i would have bought one, but hadn't brought any money with me. It was growing dark when we left Yerevan, so we had to make the final trip over the mountain in the dark. It took us about an hour to get to Yerevan in the morning, but an hour and a half coming back. Garek drove back.
I should say something about Yerevan, since I had stayed their overnight Friday and Saturday. It is a beautiful city, at least the downtown part that I have seen. The center is a grid partly surrounded by a circular park system. The plan is only half completed, but they are coninuing the parks a bit at a time. The only trouble is that the existing park ring is so filled up with outdoor cafes that it is hard to enjoy the park. In the center is Republic Square, one of the few examples of Soviet Grandiosity that actually works, The buildings around the square are all of similar architecture in the local pink tufa. The centerpiece is a large museum I haven't visited yet, and there are government buildings and a hotel now run by Marriott. There are fountains in the center, but I don't remember them working. A parkway stretches to the Southwest. The grid is at an angle to the points of the compass, and they have recently completed an avenue cutting straight north from a block NE of the Square to the Opera. It is lined with pink stone monumental buildings which are not yet finished. The huge city blocks have apartment buildings in their centers, and the avenues are lined with expensive shops. Near my hotel was a Victoria's Secret. McDonald's hasn't arrive in Armenia yet, but other non-food chains have. I stayed at the University Hotel, which the Peace Corps has an agreement with. It was basic but nice and about $25 for a single room. Practically no one was there this season when the schools are closed. They don't serve breakfast, but there was a Yum-Yum Donut shop across the street. The donuts were laid out on racks just like a Dunkin' Donuts or Krispy Kreme, and I ordered a log cream-filled chocolate iced bar and an apple fritter. I thought the prices were rather high, but when I got them, I realized they were substantially larger than American equivalents, and one would have done fine.
I walked across downtown to the open air market selling all the tourist stuff. As I passed the Moscow Movie House, I noticed that "Enchanted" and "Beowulf" were playing, presumably dubbed in Russian, which is what they get here. I don't know if the Moscow, Armenia's largest movie palace is subdivided, or the movies show sequentially. At the open air market, people wanted to sell me a rug. I want to get one before I come home, but now yet. There are also wood carvings, paintings, embroidery and needlework, and a lot of other things for tourists, and a lot of old tools and things for the locals. It wasn't nearly as full as when I visited it in the summer, but even only partially full it is huge.
I'd like to see more of Yerevan, but I'm not the indefatiguable walker I used to be. They do have a nice subway line which costs about 20 cents. Someday when I have time, I'll explore it out to its ends.
4 I'd like to describe how and where I live. Gugark sits in a bowl and climbs up the sides, so there is little level land. The street I live on, as you walk down from the center of town, slopes up on the left and drops down rather more precipitously on the right side. Most of the houses are two-story, with space for various activities on the ground floor and living quarters above. A few houses have two stories of living quarters, but they are the exception. On the uphill side, one enters the living quarters by an outside staircase. On the downhill side, one enters directly into the living quarters, and there is an outside staircase down to the lower level. All building in Armenia--and I do mean all- is in tufa, a volcanic stone that ranges in color from black to gray, to all shades of pink, the rosy pink being the most desired and expensive. There is also a shade of brick red which is used only as facing in public buildings and more pretentious homes. When there is a wide mortar between, the construction is rather ugly, and I suppose meant to be stuccoed as some houses or parts of houses are.
The house I live in has a fairly gentle slop up to the barn, and most of the ground is covered with potato plants. The street is lined either with the facade of the house or barn, or a wall or low parapet and fence, so the cows and occasional pigs which wander the street won't go astray. My house borders the street and is a blank wall on the street level except one door on the far side which is to the family's shop, which sells produce, bread, food staples, candy, ice cream novelties, some wine and liquor. There is no sign on the door, and people shop by standing in the drive on the other side and calling up to Tamar to come and open up for them. There seems to be a surprising amount of turnover from this arrangement.
There is a low parapet and fence from the house next door, occupied by Styopa's brother's family, and the metal gate to the drive, which is a double metal door, with a door in the left panel for people on foot. It is never locked.
One enters a much deteriorated cement drive which goes all the way to the back of the house. There is a sloping parapet on the left, and the concrete wall at the end is a story high. There is a low double door in the middle of the wall, and steps that lead down to a cool storage place that does not seem to be used.
In the back part of the lower story is the dairy, where the milk is strained and put in milk cans for transport of Vanadzor. There is also a cream separator, and I think Tamara makes butter and cheese down there, also yogert. The cheese is one step removed from our cottage cheese. Also string cheese. There is an open space in front of the back door to the store, and there is a broken-down couch there where Tamara is occasionally to be seen taking a much-needed afternoon nap. The stair up to the veranda goes up backward from the far end. On the front end at the top of the stairs is the blank wall of the bathroom. The front door is immediately to the left, and at the far end, the varanda is even with the potato patch, which has sloped up that far. There is a table beside the front door, and Tamara often has coffee there with her daughter-in-law or friends.
In side, the front door opens onto a hall that is about 7 foot wide. To the left it is just long enough to contain a backless coouch or daybed covered by a rug, and beyond that the door to the living room, where Tamara now sleeps alone on a futon, since her husband is in Moscow working. There is a window over the couch in the hall. Beyond the door is the wall of the bathroom, and then the opening to the bathroom on the right and another to the toilet/wash basin. The bathroom is also the laundry room. There is a small washing machine which sits in the alcove and is wheeled into bathroom and filled from a hose from the tub. It has a washer and spinner. The daughter-in-law uses it, but Tamara uses plastic tubs exclusively.
Beyond the lavatory alcove is the door to the kitchen, and the hall ends with the dining room table and chairs. The kitchen contains a small primitive refrigerator, a sink, a gas stove with electric pilot light, and a large sideboard/cabinet, which fills the whole wall inside the door. On the wall over the sink is a gas water heater that heats only the water as it is used. It works with a pilot light, but Tamar turns off the gas entirely when it isn't needed and lights the pilot light with a match when water is wanted. They are very frugal of gas and electricity, but wasteful of water. I think I'm the only one who ever checks to see that the plunger in the toilet tank isn't stuck open.
On the far wall, next to the living room, is my room, which would be the grandparents' room when they don't have Peace Corps Trainees (I'm their fourth--the previous two are still in country and return for visists.) It's a plain room with a wardrobe, bed, a couple of low bedside tables, and a desk, with a chandelier, and a single wall plug nowhere near the desk. The window is high up on the far wall, too high to see out.
Next to my room is a curtained alcove for winter coats and the ironing board. Next to it is the door that leads to the two bedrooms of the son, daughter-in-law, and their two sons, who share the outer one, while the son and daughter-in-law take the inner one. They all sleep much later than Tamara and me when they are at home, so we have to be reasonably quiet. We sleep in the middle/eastern European tradition, covered by a huge comforter, which is really a huge bag full of wool ticking. It is not quilted, and has to be pounded and shaken back into shape occasionally. It is stuffed into a blanket protector (so-called in the US, where it can be found in department stores which cater to a middle European clientel.) This covers the sleeper. It's like two sheets sewn together with either an opening at the side, or a diamond shaped opening on the top side to shove the comforter in. I happen to sleep on a pad on the bed, which is covered with a matching sheet. The pillow, also covered with a matching case, is about three times the size of an American pillow, and you have to learn to pound out a small corner to actually sleep on. Armenians are scandalized by Volunteers who in hot weather will remove the comforter and sleep covered by only the covering. We're up high at 4500 feet, so it gets reasonably cool at hight. I don't know what Americans do down in Yerevan. The living room is the only room that can be said to have a decor. The futon and two chairs are covered by matching light-weight rugs. The far wall is taken up with a huge cabinet wall, which displays a huge assortment of fancy plates and tea and coffee cups for serving guests. (By the way, they don't use a dinner plate our size. Food is eaten off a plate the size of our salad plate. Coffee is very strong, made with sugar, and served in tiny cups, smaller than our collectors' teacups. Volunteers who want "real" coffee have to buy7 instant, or I suppose coffee-makers are available, and coffee beans can be ground to taste.)
There is also a dining table and chairs for more formal occasions. The walls and ceiling are painted with columns and other architectural effects. That is common here. I forgot to say that the whole house is covered with a corrugated metal roof.
3 I'll say something about the people of Armenia. They are the Middle Eastern type; that is, they look like the Iranians Turks, and Kurds. I have a notion that though linguisitally the Turks came from central Asia north of the Caspian Sea, their racial stock is probably largely the people of Anatolia who converted to Islam, intermarried and became Turkified. They are on the average shorter than northern Europeans, though everything is relative. They have the Anatolian tendency toward more prominent noses, and these range to magnificent beaks. Once they regain their prosperity, there will probably be a good clientel for plastic surgery. I suppose they range in good looks about the same as anywhere else. They have black hair, though by some quirk of genetics there are more women than men with blonde or red hair. By temperament they are good-humored and calm. I have yet to see anyone upset in public, say, by someone's driving or other carelessness. There is probably the strong sense that they are all in this thing together. We Peace Corps members are invariably treated with good humor and cheerful courtesy. It's not a country where there is any large hnumber of foreigners, at least outside of the capital.
They dress up in public. Peace Corps Voulteers tend to be the scruffiest people visible. Young women are not averse to tight form-fitting tops and bottoms, but I haven't seen any bare midriffs. The other day, we went to an awards ceremony in the English Department of the local Pedagogical school. All women. They were dressed for the special occasion, but the variety was vast. There were short dresses, long gowns, dresses with multiple hemlines, slacks. All very sylish in their own very individual ways. Young men tend to wear polo shirts at work. You don't see any running or athletic shoes. They wear very stylish shoes, usually very pointed and sometimes pointing up, though that may be a result of use. Women wear sandals.
Boys and young men in casual situaitons wear tee-shirts invariably with some sort of English message, but not like anything I've seen in the U. S. Often the messages are cryptic advertisements, and often as not misspelled. They can't read them, or make out what they mean even if they have a little English. No political slogans.
Mature women, grandmothers, wear silk or similar blouses hanging loose over black slacks or skirts, occasionally two pieces of the same pattern. The pattern of the blouse is almost invariably a pattern in black, brown, tan, and gold. One looks stylish, but if everybody wears it, it begins to look like a uniform. I don't know whether it is this year's style or there is some sort of identifying message. Very old women wear black and look as if they have given up all pretense of trying to look good.
Older people may tend to get stout, but one sees very few younger persons or children who are fat or even chubby. The exceptions ten to catch one's eye. On the other hand, they smoke a lot more than we do.
2
Zazel asked me if Gugark is picturesque. That's a hard question to answer. I guess it depends upon what "picturesque" means, and where you are going to hang the picture. The first thing you notice is the horrible streets or roads. Look carefully and you whill see that they were once paved, but there hasn't been money for any repairs for a long time. Cars coming through the village, or from Vanadzor, take whatever take whichever side of the road promises less strain on the axle. They are pretty good about letting the first to arrive pass. In rain, the streets run like creeks, and I noticed on my street some kids had built a little dam across a gully in the middle of the street.
There are several houses along the street either damaged by the earthquake and never rebuilt, or statrted and not continued for lack of money. The universal building material is a volcanic tufa, which ranges from brick red and pink for the fancier houses to gray and black. Where it is put together with thick mortar it is particularly ugly, and a lot of the houses look like what they need is a layer of stucco. But if you look closer, many of the houses are substantially built, and there are even some new houses of considerable pretention.
There is no such thing as a lawn, and I suppose the locals would consider it a very wasteful luxury. Most houses try to have some sort of flower garden or border. Some are quite elaborate. Because of the cooler climate the peonies, a favorite, seem to last longer. Also the iris. Now there are roses, and occasionally Asiatic lilies, the kind that bloom straight up. There are many fruit trees. The apricot is the national fruit tree and originated in this area. Also cherries now. The gardens are full of potatoes, beans, and eggplant. Not many tomatoes. It may be too cool. My hostess has a pig and three cows. The cows are gathered by a herdsman and driven out to pasture and brought back in the evening. I must ask hoe much is charged. One sees cows and occasionally pigs wandering the streets.
There are lots of weeds and wildflowers. wild mustard is common, and a form of bluebell. Now the red poppies are coming into full bloom, and there are occasional places where there are masses of them.
> But the most spectacular thing is the setting with the bowl of hills surrounded by low mountains, and beyond them high mountains. By now (June 24) the snow is nearly gone, but there is still some on the shetered parts of the north slopes. Along the ridge on the Vanadsor side are high rise apartments, which look incongruous.
1
size=4> Guides say Armenia is slightly larger than Maryland, but what kind of comparison is that? The shapes are nothing alike, and does that include or exclude the waters of Chesapeake Bay? It is also a little smaller than Belgium, which is more useful, provided you have any idea of the size of Belgium. It is mountainous. I can say that, though the hights I have found are all in meters, which I don't have any feeling for. Armenia is in the Lesser Caucasus, the southern range, which is not as high as the northern range, but there are several peaks over 10,000 feet. When we arrived, they had considerable patches of snow on them. They are disappearing, but I still saw some as I was coming into town to write this on June 17.
; Vanadzor, where we are training, is in a valley in the mountains. It is a city of about 150,000. Some guides say it is the third city of Armenia, but others say the former second, a city west of here that I can't name without a map, was so badly damaged it has never recovered and is now less. All of Armenia has about 3--3 1/2 million people, but many, particularly men, are out of the country working in Russia or the Ukraine.
We train in Vanadzor once a week, but live in villages outside of town, where we have our language training in local schools rented for the purpose.
My village is Gugark. It's not really a village, since it is a town of 8000 on the east edge of Vanadzor, and is more what we would call a suburb. There is nothing to buy in Gugark except small shops we would call convenience stores, so everybody does there serious shopping in Vanadzor, which is only 20 minutes away by bus, which runs every half hour unless one or both are broken down. They run on natural gas and have four or five long propane tanks on the roof. Last night at a little after 7, I waited at the bus stop to go home, but no bus came, so I had to take a taxi. Normal rate is 500 drams, but though I held out a 500 dram coin, the normal fare, I couldn't get anyone to go for less than 1000. I don't have the language to haggle. A colleague says you don't haggle. You tell them you want to go to Gugark, and when you get there you give them 500 dramm, and maybe a tip. That shows you already know the fare.
Gugark sits in a natural bowl, with the houses spreading up the side. There are the lower hills that form the circle, higher hills, and mountains beyond that. a very impressive and picturesque setting. On the West, though, on a ridge coming out from Vanadzor, is a line of Soviet-style tall apartment blocks that look like Martian monsters about to tramp down and devour the town. On the east side on a closer high hill is a tiny chapel. I haven't been there yet. Beside it is the second structure where sacrifices are made. I don't know if that is a practice picked up from the Muslims, but they sacrifice ritually on occasion and feast on the animal or give some to the poor. They sacrifice chickens, sheep, and other domestic animals, always male.