(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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Various Crosses at Haghbat Monastery |
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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!
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| 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..
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| 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.
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| Mount Ararat |
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