Armenia, part 2

Daniel, my new German friend, is gone and it’s time to face life alone since I started the trip. “Alone”, sometimes that word scares but is it true that I am ever alone? I go to have a really good breakfast (breakfasts are really important in my life now! – yep, I changed), but just 3 minutes before they finish serving it, anyway the lady smile at my sleepy face and gave me my portion. I stayed there planning the next part. I really want my visa to go to Iran, and I tried to push some doors. Another day exploring Yerevan and looking at new faces, I love doing this. One night I met Asha, a local girl, who offered herself to show me around. We arranged to meet at Tumanyan statue, I spent 30 minutes looking for this statue asking local people who sent me to a variety of places! At the end I found the place and it was my fault, I was asking all the time for Tamanyan statue, and it seems that my Armenian pronunciation is not that good, he. We met and talked a bit about everything, I was showing them my beautiful Jujuy and she showed me the place where she comes from (near the Iranian border). We met some of her friends and one of them even sang a song for me, he said it is a typical one. I have to say that even though it is a nation that carries a painful past, Armenia is a nation that carries a positive present. I stood at the top of the “cascade” at night for a while and I looked at the city, I thought a lot…a lot.

Another day I was sitting in front the computer planning the things to do later, and a French guy greeted me and invited me to join him and an English man for lunch, a French cooking, I could only say yes. He was also stuck in Armenia waiting for his Visa to go to Iran, and the English man, well… it wasn’t so clear to me. But after 15 minutes we were all friends, and we were even talking about the Iron Lady and Maradona. The French didn’t know anything about the dirty war so he could hear the 2 versions of the conflict that seemed to be very similar. My camera broke, so I bought a very cheap one, the seller said I had a 2 year guarantee, I said to him I’d be back in 2015 to see him…

Another day when I returned from the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (that is another story) there was a film festival in Yerevan so I went to watch a French-Swedish movie in a theatre called “Theatre Moscow” gosh, whoever you are you have to watch this film, it is called “Rendez Vous in Kiruna”. At night we (Fred, the French and I) met another girl to go and watch another movie, a Polish one, called Black Thursday, gosh, I almost lost my hope again, so many deaths, and so many stories that are only personal stories of loss and grief that nobody will ever know. But the movie finished and the rains started and we went to chat with this girl, she liked Margaret Thatcher and she hated Russians. Not a good combination. She told us that 5 years ago nobody could say anything negative about the government, chances of you getting into problems were high (it reminds me of Argentina now, but we have a bit more freedom). She wants to go to South America someday, well, she knows where to stay now in Argentina.

There was music in the air, there was laughter, and there were people smiling. I could see old couples walking hand to hand. There is no terror to fear (or maybe there is one inside all of us that we need to eliminate?). My heart stopped bleeding and started to sing, to sing a song that I didn’t know, or a song that I have never felt before (if it is correct to say that we feel songs). Surprisingly I didn’t hear anybody mentioning the most famous music band in Armenia, System of a Down (SOAD), but I found something on the walls. It’s impossible to forget the things we are proud of, isn’t it? My visa didn’t arrive the time they promised, I decided to leave, Armenia has its borders closed to Turkey and Azerbaijan, and open to Iran and Georgia, but I have the doors closed to go to Iran so I need to go back to Georgia, border Turkey and head to one of the destinations I’ve never thought of going before, Iraq. My heart is singing a song of redemption, I don’t remember the lyrics, it happened only in Armenia…

just in case you don't know SOAD...here is a little video =) 
Aerials - System of a Down

Armenia - the land that made me cry

It’s 7 in the morning and I wake up to continue my life. I go upstairs and I have breakfast…a typical Georgian breakfast. That means that I didn’t go to Armenia Yesterday.  I go to the “bus station” (kind of free space for taxis and vans) and I set journey with two Belgian and a German. We go through a breath-taking scenery, colourful flowers and fields, cows on the road, green hills, more cows, shinning streams, and many more cows. When crossing the border I am welcomed in Spanish by a soldier who is passing by. I want a picture entering Armenia and people are smiling as I stand next the first Armenian sign post. I can notice that there are gas pipes everywhere.

The journey is long and a bit adventurous, the driver of our taxi doesn’t respect the speed limits and we are going at 130 km p/h in a road where the maximum speed is 80 km p/h. Near Yerevan (the capital city of Armenia) he starts speaking in Georgian to us, then he tries Russian and the German guy can understand a bit as he knows Polish as well (I don’t know how it works, maybe like Spanish-Italian or Spanish-Portuguese). I want to be driven to the tourist information as this time Couchsurfing didn’t work, but I am informed that there is no tourist information centre, I insist but the response is the same. I decide to go to the place where the German is staying, his name is Daniel, and the girl that is there is very kind, she offers me to use the internet if I need it, and if I want I can store my rucksack in the storage room while I decide what to do. I walk through Yerevan looking for a place to stay and I find this mysterious guy inviting me to his hostel, we go and it ends up being a 7^th floor flat turned into a “hostel”, I decide to go back to the other. I met Daniel there and we decide to go together to explore the city, I am given a bigger map and we set off in the middle of a hot day.

We walk where the streets have 2 names, in Armenian and English, and this city is vibrant wherever you look at it. People look different from Georgian, and they look at us, they know we are not from here. The city still has vestige of communism, a bit less than Georgia maybe but at the same time it seems they want to forget about it (but sometimes it’s difficult to forget, isn’t it?). We go to a place up in a hill (Yerevan is hilly – well Armenia is) and we saw the statue of “Mother Armenia” a big woman holding a sword and facing the city, like protecting it. We discover later that during communism there was a statue of Lenin instead, like telling people that he was observing them that they couldn’t escape from him but today Lenin is not there anymore, and this Mother protects the city, well…heaven always protects them. Under the statue there is a museum, and I must say that when I see all these pictures of people suffering or I know a little more about their story, I want to cry, there is so much pain contained here and for some reason I can feel it.

Mother Armenia protecting Yerevan

Mother Armenia

We walk and walk and this city is awesome. An English poet called Byron said “there is no other land in the world so full of wonders as the land of Armenians” but he also wrote about its waters, something like that once you drink them you will never forget it. Well I don’t know Byron but I can agree to the point that the water is really refreshing here while you walk under the sun, there is no need to buy water here as in every corner you’ll find fountains where to drink from. Taxis are normally “Lada” similar to Fiat 128, small old cars that form time to time stop during the journey (I only took 2 and 1 stopped working). Armenia is like an open museum because many artists show their works in the streets, something that conservative Armenians don’t like and that I find interesting. In the country they speak 2 Armenian dialects and Russian, (sometimes it’s difficult to escape from who you were), they are a bit more than 3 million and almost half the population live in Yerevan. The main point of attraction in the country is Mount Ararat, a mount where Noah’s ark landed after the flood; you can see it wherever you are in Yerevan.

There is a genocide memorial somewhere in the city. We walk and walk with Daniel following the map the gave me at the hostel (it is true that there is no tourist information centre in Yerevan!) and we see in the way a lot of places, the Opera, Parliament, Republic Square, Blue Mosque, Brandy factory, Apostolic churches, etc. We pass an open air gym (only boys were there) and I say hello to somebody and they think I am Iranian (there are many Iranian entering the country). I don’t know how or when I lost my map so we need to continue following our instincts…and asking people. Somebody says that we need to go through a hill, and when we are going uphill to police officers start to speak to us in Armenian, Russian and they were there like no letting us pass, but in a moment one of them asks where we are from, and when Daniel says that I am Argentinian the guy smiles and stretches his hand and he introduces himself and his companion and he offers himself to take us to the memorial place! (Thanks Maradona and Messi for this).

The memorial is a sad place, I have only been in 2 countries by now but my heart is so burdened, as I said once, humanity is rotten and that makes me feel bad but at the same time I believe that there is hope for a change, for redemption. And here I am, standing in front of a  fire memorial of people I don’t know, I haven’t heard of, that I don’t have anything to do with, but I can feel the burden in my heart and I want to cry and ask somebody to stop this, while I am in my deep thoughts a guy come to ask us to take a picture of him and his friends so we stand up to help and it happens that he wants a picture with us like if we were his friends, he asks my nationality, I ask him, he is Russian from Moscow, and here we are all friends in Armenia, at least for a moment… at least for a moment we can all share the same place without having to think about pride, death or war, and I believe again that there is hope.

The sunset is at the door and I stare at it a while, I have a lot to think, a lot to process. We are inventing a way back as we don’t have a clue where we are, so we ask a bunch of guys for directions, none of them speak English but they make a call and pass the mobile to us to ask somebody for directions! A few metres later we do the same and the same happens, but this time the guys are going to go with us for a little while. This people are so lovely. And I go to take a shower to relax thinking what I always think… this world is rotten but there are still people trying to restore it, and I want to be part of it, I close my eyes and my heart bleeds.

Georgia part 2

The night before leaving Georgia I decided to get up early in order to check some roads and go hitchhiking, but the same night I went to sleep late which resulted in me getting up late… Anyway I got up, saw the beautiful sky, etc etc…and I went to check my road for the day, I wanted to go to Marneuli, a place in the south of Georgia in my way to Armenia. While I was checking Mathias woke up and we decided to go and eat something, it was another hot day, but this time I was carrying everything, so walking only 3 streets down resulted in me being soaked, I had an Omelette, that was supposed to last until the next day, and the time to say goodbye to a new good friend came, we hugged and I walked towards the metro station (underground) to leave the city centre, then I walked a lot, and all the taxis(I am using a hyperbolic expression) of Tbilisi stopped to ask me to go with them wherever I was going (and some of them got upset when I said no…) I arrived to a good point and at this moment of the day it’s near 5pm, not a good sign, as it is a journey that usually takes 6-8 hours. I asked 2 cars that were stopped, one was full and the other wasn’t going that way, and the story of the day started when I asked the third car…so sit down and read.

I asked a man for a lift to Marneuli and the guy said to me “this is not America, people are going to hurt you, they are not going to pick you up” I said thanks but anyway I was going to wait for a lift, the guy was still there and he came and said to me “look son, you can come to my house have a shower, have something to eat, I guess you are tired, tomorrow you can leave in a bus” ( I don’t know if you understand the situation… he had told me that there are bad people around and now he wants to take me to his house, so how am I going to trust in him?) So, I said yes, and he asked me to put my rucksack in the boot and the conversation started…

Man: Where are you from?       
Emilio: from Argentina.
Man: oh, I have a son in Denmark and he has a friend from Argentina, so you speak Portuguese?
Emilio: not really, so from where in Argentina is your son’s friend?
Man: ehm… where are you from in Argentina?
Emilio: Jujujy
Man: oh, like my son’s friend
Emilio:….
Man: Do you work or study?
Emilio: Study.
Man: What do you study?
Emilio: Theology.
Man: oh, like my son!
Emilio:….

At this point I was feeling uncomfortable and also because he was driving in the opposite direction to Tbilisi, he drove that direction, around 10 minutes. ..

Man: can I see your passport? I’ve never seen a Portuguese passport, do you have one?
Emilio: I have, but I am Argentinian.
Man: Oh yes, show me (and he stretched his hand)
Emilio: ok… (I didn’t have any option – I gave him the passport)
Man: oh… very nice, very nice…
Emilio:….

He drove into a forest, and there was nobody there, he stopped in front of a company which worked with wood, I asked him why we stopped there (I was a bit afraid at this point), he told me that he was going to collect his wife, so he picked his mobile phone and dialled a number, I don’t know Georgian, Russian or any of the languages here, but I know when people say Argentinian, and he said it twice, when he ended the call, 10 big guys appeared! I thought…I am going to die, this is the end… as I couldn’t escape, only a miracle could save me… well, it wasn’t a miracle exactly, when the guys were coming in direction to the car a lady appeared, and she was the man’s wife! They took me to their house and he ended up being the boss of Tbilisi Electricity Company, the company in charge of providing all the power to run the electricity there.

They welcomed me with Georgian tea and typical bread, then he was calling me son, I prepared my Mate and showed them a photo album, they both said that my mom looked like a Georgian lady and my mom’s name means “I am not in it” in Georgian. The lady prepared dinner and he joked that it was crocodile meat, then when I said that in Argentina people eat crocodile they were serious, and I enjoyed. I played my charango and he wanted to try as well. They were quite happy that evening, we talked about the Soviet Union, and the Russians. Somebody knocked at the door; it was a Muslim guy asking for money, he gave him money, and then when I told him that my plan was to go to Iran and Iraq he said to me “SON, DON’T GO! They are going to kill you! You are a Christian, they will chop your head”, I smiled. We had a lot of interesting chats about a lot of things, I even helped him to water his plants (it took like 30 minutes – so you can imagine) and at night he took me to the city for a while. Then I went to my part of the house (that was another house) and I re arranged my things for the next morning.

I am so blessed to meet this kind of people, I like to learn from them, I like to hear their stories, and I want them to hear mine, I find that language sometimes is not a problem (sometimes I say), that sometimes the opposites get on really well and there is nothing to fear, but also I find that fear to the unknown is a big problem, it shouldn’t be like that, the unknown is something we need, well at least me. I believe that some people are rotten but there are a lot of good people out there ready to help you. Sometimes the “bad” people can be good, and vice versa. In this search/journey I am finding myself in the people I meet, we are so similar and so different, but that is good… if only we could all learn this… (sigh)