Caucasian sketchy sketches III - Armenia

Armenia: The Gratifying Surprise

(May 16-20): We left Georgia this morning and crossed into Armenia, and into the mountains of the South Caucasus.  It’s beautiful mountain scenery with trees and many rivers, now running very high, but somehow not as awe-inspiring as the northern range.  The landscape gradually lost its trees as we went south, giving way to what looked like green carpet, though it’s actually very stony land, that can’t be farmed.  You’d never know it from a distance though: it looks as if the landscape is entirely covered in golf course turf, and I had the urge to run up one of those hills, though I’m sure would have been much harder than it looked.

Four very high snowy peaks form Mount Aragats, and at the foot of one of the peaks are three Yazidi villages.  These folks are from the same group that was threatened by ISIS in Iraq recently, and there are groups of them in various surrounding countries. .  The have a monotheistic religion that is not Christian, Jewish or Islamic, but developed on its own.  Most of those in Armenia are cowboys or sheepherders.  From there, we descended to the valley where Yerevan is located.  To its southeast, Mount Ararat, but it’s in Turkey, and the border is closed, as is the one to Azerbaijan, because of the Nagorno-Karabakh war.

Mount Aragats 

Armenia is land-locked, with open borders only to Iran and Georgia, and the Iranian borderland is tiny. It is also the least wealthy of the three countries on this trip, with 30% unemployment.  In Soviet days there were a lot of factories that fed into the USSR manufacturing system, but these are now abandoned and derelict.  In most towns,  old Soviet-era apartment buildings and houses predominate, most even shabbier than those in Georgia. Most outside investment now comes from the Armenian diaspora, and there is a long way to go, with the economy so stagnant.

Cozy Church Interior

We visited several Armenian churches and monasteries.  At first they look like Georgian ones, but Armenian national Christianity is even older, and the church interiors are quite different; Most have a covered entry room, supported by four columns, then the main domed sanctuary.  Here there only a very few icons, and no iconostasis, so people coming have a much greater view of the mass itself.  There are curtains that can be drawn over the apse at certain moments.  Surprisingly, these tall dark structures have a cozy comfort.  I guess it has something to do with building proportions, and also the Caucasian carpets that add colorful touches on the floor.

The other great feature in Armenian imagery are its stone crosses, some dating back to its early Christian origins,--and even earlier.  They are elaborately carved in low relief, with profusions of patterns increasing in more recent centuries.  we were reminded of celtic crosses, and for me also, Mayan stelae.

 

Various Crosses at Haghbat Monastery

Urban Yerevan; View from My  Window

Yerevan is the one big city in this small country; Armenia presently is about the size of Maryland, but with floating memories of its golden age during early Christianity. By day the city is somewhat scuzzy: mostly shabby soviet era apartments and ugly construction (with an incongruous San Antonio-style subdivision on the outskirts, built, we were told, by a rich Armenian-American,  and meant as a retirement community for other diasporians who want to live in the Old Country—but in proper comfort). But  the downtown core is a mixture of older nice stuff and some post-soviet construction.  This section has wide streets with a circular loop around city center and a sort of wheel-grid inside, and there are lots of cafes along the streets, as well as one very posh pedestrian shopping street. 

Republic Square on a Saturday Night

In the evenings, though, downtown Yerevan is transformed.  Saturday night, everyone turns out and strolls the streets; folks of all ages, families with tiny kids and older walkers too. There are mimes and buskers everywhere.  Many stores are open late, and there’s enough ice cream being sold to sweeten the kids and adults alike for days. Best of all is the most fabulous musical and colored fountain display in the center. Love is all around.  It’s what an ideal urban experience should be!

Singers at Gerhard Monastery

Gerhard is a particularly impressive monastery, by a gorgeous gorge, on a hillside, partly carved into it. There was a brief concert by 5 ladies who sang acapella in one of the chapels, an unearthly beautiful sound. Later at lunch, we watched ladies make lavash.  It was rolled out, flipped around like a pizza into an oval, put on a big sort of pillow and deposited on the sides of a circular charcoal oven, then pulled off with a hook when ready.  You rip off pieces and fold it around cheese and herbs—wow!

 

Lavash Makers and Their Pillow

We vaguely saw Mt. Ararat, but it was hazy.  Everyone says it looks better from Turkey, but you can’t get there from here.  Most of the time, from Yerevan, one sees one of its two peaks, snowcapped, hovering in the ether, rather like the way Mount Ranier looks from Seattle.  And, by the way, Armenia is over a deep fault line and prone to bad earthquakes.

We drove up to Lake Sevan’ a freshwater lake in northeast Armenia.  We visited 2  ½ more monasteries in the area.  The south part of the Sevan area is hilly, but without much in the way of trees. After going through a tunnel, it’s mountainous and treed—a resort area they like to call “The Armenian Switzerland,” with snowy mountains all around, though in high summer, the snow melts. Locals make summer excursions here when Yerevan is hot, and rich ones have summer houses..

Genocide Memorial

There 60 Armenian-American students from California here for 2 weeks on a heritage tour.  It reminds me of our “March of the Living” trips for young Jews.  The century-old Armenian slaughter is the elephant in the room here, particularly now, since we arrived about three weeks after the centennial of the beginning of that horrifying event.  Posters all over the city commemorated it.  I’m saving a discussion of this for another blogpost.

Our last stop, though, was the Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, which is as moving as Yad Vashem.  The memorial was built in Soviet times (1965), the museum in the 90’s after independence.  The museum has a photographic exhibit, chronological in format and graphic, much like Holocaust museums.  The memorial has a tall, obelisk structure representing a split blade of grass, the shorter piece Armenia, the taller the diaspora. A circle of stones like an interior-leaning Stonehenge surrounds a lower circular area with an eternal flame in its center.  Sad Armenian laments are piped in.  It’s a very meditative space.  Along the pathway in, various groups and families have planted fir trees, with dedicatory plaques beside them in Armenian and whatever home language of the donor.

Both Ararat and Aragats are visible from this high place, but Ararat was hazy again….like an unattainable dream.

Mount Ararat

Caucasian Sketchy Sketches II:

 Five Rainy Nights in Georgia—As We Go Marching Through

May 11-16, 2015

Over the border to Georgia from Azerbaijan: the landscape is the same, but so different! As soon as frontier is crossed, all the houses are festooned with grapevines.  Towns immediately feel much more European, though Georgian script is completely strange.  

Georgian Feast- Tourist Version

Food and wine seem to dominate everything here.  Our first evening is in Telavi, in the middle of wine country.   Lunches and dinners are vast, and on our first night we were treated to the tourist version of the “Georgian Feast,” replete with singing toastmaster.  The first course is on the table when you come in, and later courses just added on.  The tomato and cucumber salad is still among us, and so are herbs; but also diverse veggies, some stuffed with walnut concoctions in variety, each different. And then there’s katchapuri, an amazing cross between pizza and cheese quiche, in endless   Then comes soup and a meat course, and often potatoes, with or without added veggies, all with sour plum sauce, either green or red.  Some dishes are spicy, some not, but all complexly seasoned, and the table gets more and more loaded.   Great bread baked on a tandoor sort of oven, but it comes out tasting like French or Catalan bread.  All through it, red wine, made in-house and served in pitchers, is consumed, to the tune of many toasts.

subtle and regional variations.

Red wine is called black wine; it’s very dark and full in body, made by fermenting red grapes with stems and skins in buried clay jars for two weeks, then filtered, eventually ending up in oak barrels or other clay sealed jars, the latter buried again until consumed.  White wine is singular in flavor, the best light like Chenin Blanc, the rest stronger in flavor and body.

Towns look different, seemingly less ordered than Azeri ones, and Georgian Christian churches instead of mosques, plus lots of friendly “town dogs” while in Muslim Azerbaijan, almost never.

 

Georgian Town Dog

The landscape in Eastern Georgia is gentle, very agricultural and very green.  The foothills of the Caucasus are green too, and forested.  Mtskheta (you pronounce it!), Georgia’s ancient capital, with fabulous churches and monasteries, sits on a triangular peninsula at the confluence of two rivers of different colors that first co-exist, then merge.

 

Mtskheta of the Two Rivers

Upland, it’s even more  impressive: in Gudairi, we were above the tree line, and the high peaks above us had snow.  Too bad it’s rainy, but it’s awesome anyway, and comparable to the Rockies, but somehow even more majestic, (with different trees, of course)!  But politically, it’s different too.  The Rockies just keep going on, spanning two friendly countries.  The next valley to the west here is South Ossetia, removed from Georgia, along with Abkhazia, further to the west, by the Russians in a war beginning in 2008, but it’s much more complicated than that, as Georgia is a patchwork of ethnic groups and languages, and a turbulent history of various migrations and invasions. I leave the labyrinthine history to specialists, but can say that the Georgian language, like Basque, is not related to anybody else and within itself, has dialects.  It’s hard to get a handle except on a very superficial level, in four days of travel in a country whose language(s) and alphabet(s) you don’t know.

Greater Caucasus, (or what we could see of them)

We came down from the mountains next morning (it was snowing!).  Back down the Georgian Military Highway through the same very green, mountain landscape to the Georgian flats.  We were at Uplistsikhe, with 700 man- made caves that served as a Silk Road caravanserai, parts dating at least back to Byzantine times.  We only got to see a little because of the rain.  Then to ugly Gori, Stalin’s home town and his museum. Outside is the one room in a little house, rented by his parents, where he spent years 0-4, and his green railroad car. So many Stalin portraits! The museum is chock-full of paintings of comrade S.  in the expected social realist propaganda style. He was cutest in an early mug-shot when he was in his teens, then it was all down hill in every way. As a sop, a little room dedicated to his victims in Gori (no mention of the thirty million others). 

 

Stalin  (Youthful Mugshot)

Real Unrestored Caravanserai

And now Tblisi, city of my dreams! My first impression is that it’s a little like Budapest for street vitality, but more raffish and less gloomy, even in the rain.  After further exploration, I think that Tblisi reminds me even more of Barcelona when I first went there in the 1960’s: a little down at the heels, but a Grande Dame nonetheless. Things aren’t over restored yet, so you can see all the wrinkles and cracks.  One mosque, three synagogues (one is now a museum), many Georgian churches, and in the old city, remains of caravanserais and bath houses. Caravanserais went out with the coming of the railroad in the 1870’s, so only remnants remain.Traces of the old ethnic quarters are all there, all next to one another.

You really can’t date structures here. Tblisi was invaded so many times, and so much destroyed and rebuilt.  Different ethnic groups dominated and then shifted. Georgian church imagery is timeless, so that 19^th and 20^th century icons and paintings look virtually indistinguishable from elderly Byzantine and Russian-type ones. In the old town, streets are narrow and wind around a lot in medieval fashion, though most structures are relatively modern. 

 

Older  (But Fixed-Up) Street in Tblisi

Rustaveli Street, the main elegant shopping street, reminds me of the Passeig de Gracia in 1966, here with modernista buildings replaced by ugly soviet era ones.  There isn’t much industry here, so I think the city gets by on its raffish charm to attract tourism, at least for now.  But we are staying in a cubic Holiday Inn with all conveniences.

On our last day last day in Tblisi, we went to a museum full of icons and other relics, medieval to 19^th century after a nice talk by a Georgian art historian on cloisonné, an old art form here from early times until the 15^th century.  It is being revived now in exquisite jewelry (I bought some later on in the day).  We saw earlier examples in the museum.  For me as an art historian it was very nice, though as usual, there was not enough time to really examine things, read the labels, and make comparisons. We couldn’t go to the other museum that we had planned to because Rustaveli Avenue, and the museum itself was closed because of a big trade conference here.

Georgian Christianity is the second oldest national one in the world, with its own liturgy.  We were taken to many historic churches and monesteries all around the eastern part of the country.  They are mostly high and dark, and do remind me of Eastern Orthodox ones that I have seen in Russia and Jordan, with an iconostasis and a large amount of icons ultimately following Byzantine examples, so that it’s hard stylistically or iconographically to tell a very old one from a newer one.

The Jewish community traces its roots back to the Babylon Captivity, and, some maintain, possibly the tribe of Issachar.  In recent years many of them have emigrated to Israel, but there are still 13,000 left, who have always lived peacefully among everyone else.  The Akhaltische synagogue is really gorgeous, and well maintained (it was built in 1904). The little Jewish Museum, located in a former synagogue, had the usual ceremonial stuff, Georgian-Jewish bridal costumes, and a very early (11^th c., I think) tanakh with micrographic borders said to have been brought to Jews in Georgia by an angel!  In the basement, they were preparing an exhibition by a contemporary Jewish embroiderer that opens Monday; too bad that we’ll be gone.  Building wise, the old Jewish quarter is pretty shabby, but maybe it’s because 30,000 Georgian Jews emigrated during Soviet times. The Georgian Jews are proud that there’s never been anti-semitism in their 2600 year old history here; though Soviet domination was nasty to any religion.

 

Alkhaltische Synagogue, Tblisi

I would love to know my City of Dreams better, and know what really makes it tick, but I’m too old to learn its complicated language and alphabet, much less its dialects and linguistic soup of other languages.  I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with Catalonia.

Tbilisi postscript: at the top of one of the hills surrounding Tblisi is a small amusement park with a Ferris wheel that is outlined in ethereal light blue at night. Except that the lights in the spokes of one quadrant don’t work.  Perfect summation of this town!

Tblisi with the Ferris Wheel On The Hill (and also cellphone tower)

Caucasian Very Sketchy Sketches - I

                                                    

Between May 7 and May 19^th I took my dream trip to the Caucasus, where I have wanted to visit since I was a kid.  This blog and the two to follow are thoughts about each of the three countries visited.

I went with Road Scholars, a wonderful organization that sponsors a vast variety of trips for older but active folk.  It’s a great introduction to these places, with informative guides and lots of information on all cultural and political facets of the places visited, but I have a few caveats:  One problem with a tour, even one at this level is that there is not enough time in any single place to really check out any one in depth for a label reader like me.  We also had very nice hotels, were plied with every possible variety of local cuisine, and traveled in comfortable busses, but how much can we really discover in four days in each country with our privileged tourist status? 

And finally, the history of this region is so incredibly complicated, with so much migration and cross-migration, so many languages and shifting political situations, and bigger countries all around, always threatening to bite off a piece, that whatever I am writing now may be completely changed in five or ten years.  So within those limits, here goes:

                            Azerbaijan (May 7-11)

Old Baku (foreground) and New (background)

I had no preconceptions about Baku except it’s being an oil town, but I wasn't expecting the combination of Old Soviet and New Gulf-State city.  Baku is an oil and gas town, and seems to be trying to outdo Abu Dhabi in tall buildings in crazy shapes and immaculate buildings in a uniform gray limestone with very elegant, neo-Moorish filigree ornamentation.  The new city has broad streets, opulent, manicured parks, and is incredibly clean.  We never saw any dogs, and only the occasional cat.  All the expensive international bling stores are here too (Armani, Tiffany, etc). 

Old Baku: Palace

Most of the small “old town” in the same gray stone, is carefully restored, or in the act of being so, and so it has the usual restoration conundrum (when a site is in use for a long time, what time does one restore it to, and isn’t there always older stuff still left around?). Most interesting here were several restored caravanserais, the old merchants’ “hotels” stretching back to silk-road days, with big courtyards for camels and traders, and accommodations for the merchants all around it.

Caravanserai - now picturesque but uncomfortable hotel

This area is rug paradise.  There is an entire museum dedicated to carpets, with great lighting, and geographical groupings of Azeri rugs, plus all sorts of interactive material on rug making and the materials. The tourist shops around the old town are festooned with new rugs in traditional patterns and sizes too.

Courteous and laid-back (or laid back appearing) people are all around, and we were continually told that though the country is 93% Muslim, that it’s not all a theocracy.  Most women don’t wear headscarves, Sunnis get along fine with Shiites, Jews, Christians and other ethnic groups and faiths are not only tolerated, but welcomed.  There are a large number of distinct tribal groups with their own localized languages, particularlyN in the mountainous north. In this respect, it’s almost Utopia, unless you’re Armenian, since there is a long-standing territorial dispute over the territory of Nigorno-Karabagh, now part of Armenia.  It sounds like Israel and Palestine all over again, and you are not permitted to go directly from one country to the other.  There is also a part of Azerbaijan that’s separated from the rest by Armenia, and the Azeri government has subsidized very cheap flights so that folks can go from one part to the other.  We were also fed quite a bit of bitter rhetoric about Azeri refugees expelled from Armenia.

Zoroastrian Temple, Eternal Flame (now piped in)

In the oil country surrounding the city, it’s flat, ugly and industrial.  Baku is on the Caspian Sea, but it’s no Rio de Janeiro. No beaches, just oil and shipping, and the country is definitely part of the Islamic world  (“Turkish Toilets,” are the norm); there’s regular ferry service to Kazakistan and Turkmenistan. It also shares a border with Iran, that itself has a considerable Azeri population, and this is perhaps reflected in the Azeri mosques we visited, elegantly restored and also recently built mosques, beautiful and serene with all the elegance of their Iranian counterparts.

 

Gorgeous New Mosque

May 10 - in Sheki, a town in the northwest foothills.  It’s more typical rural Azeri, but now being developed more for tourism.  The houses here brick and stone, but it’s also more sophisticated than the towns surrounding it, in that most streets are paved.  We visited the Khan’s summer palace with amazing painted and stained glass of brilliant colors, with the Eastern type of total juxtaposition of decoration patterns.  The stained glass is set into beechwood framing, both of tiny elements and no glue in complex geometric and floral patterns; the glass being very bright in color, and originally from Venice.

 

Sheki - Khan's Palace

The Sunday market: wonderful veggies, meat cut from the carcass and live poultry. The veggies are generally familiar; they are big on green tart plums and sour cherries.  Most of the spices are also familiar, with lots of Azeri saffron and powdered sumac.  They make circular “halvah” of walnut, filberts, oodles of honey syrup and a crisscross saffron pattern, a Sheki specialty.  Azeri lunches and dinners follow a set pattern: on the table fresh herbs, tomatoes and cucumbers, veggie salads, yogurt, bread and local very salty white cheese.  Then comes soup, chicken, lentil, etc., then a meat course, barbecued or tasty stews with veggies.  Then tea-in-a-glass.  No pork because of halal laws.  All the ingredients are super fresh, and most dishes are subtly seasoned to enhance the natural favors.  Lots of food but not fatty, and people are slim, except for plump older ladies.  The latter remind me of elderly Spanish ladies in the 1960’s.  Like them, they generally dress in black, and look just as formidable.  It’s hard to believe that I am the same age as many of them!

 

Sheki - Sunday Market

I was hoping that we would visit the all-Jewish village of Krasnaya Sloboda, near Quba, but we didn’t get up that way.  North of the border in the North Caucasian range is Russian territory, specifically Daghestan.  Needless to say, we didn’t go there either.