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.