Monday evening, November 7, as I write this. It is a cold and blustery evening in Yerevan, and Nancy and I are glad we walked less than a block to dinner. People here tolerate heat much more easily than cold, and activity on the sidewalks seems to totally cease once temps go below 50 F.
Today was the first totally clear day we have had here and, from the Bank’s training room on the 6th floor I was able to see snow-capped mountains roughly 40 miles to the south and west. A beautiful sight which is often obscured in this hazy valley.
My first training class “graduated” Friday, and my second began this afternoon. The current group is more seasoned, so they are already challenging me and feeling free to give their own takes on topics. Good – that is the way training is supposed to run. It is also much easier to run a discussion or debate than Slow Death By Powerpoint.
My first class gave me a momento on Friday – a miniature carved wooden barrel, with working spigot, filled with a litre of 10-year old Armenian brandy. A very nice and generous gesture on their part. While we cannot take it home via carry-on because of American stupidity about air travel “safety” (yes, we could carry it aboard in any other country), Nancy’s suitcase is large enough to accommodate it for checked luggage. Perhaps we need to have a brandy party over the holidays, as the bottle of brandy I was given here a year ago sits at home, barely touched.
Speaking of local generosity, our training department hosts have reserved our upcoming weekend (our last on this trip) to take us touring. Saturday will start with a local church that is the center of the Armenian Apostolic Church, continue to the Genocide Museum, and end with a trip to the closed Turkish border, near Mt. Ararat, where St. Gregory built Khor Virap, a monastery, and founded Christianity as the state religion in 301 A.D. While I have been to the latter, Nancy has not. Sunday is scheduled for a drive to Gegharkunik, about 100 km. north of here. It is a mountainous region most noted for its many remote churches (which some people still reach by donkey) and the 2000-metre high Lake Sevan, which supplies drinking water and fish for Yerevan. I expect snow to greet us there. I have been to this area of Armenia only briefly, and look forward to a return. My hosts, however, have made it clear that Nancy carries veto power over any plans and destinations.
While we continue our 8-10 mile daily walking pace, we have yet to enjoy any true entertainment options here. There was a promising symphonic concert in the middle of last week, in the Opera House, but I was just not up to attending after a full day of training. Unfortunately, a look at events over the next two weeks suggests there are only Armenian plays and operas, which would be fruitless for us to attend. But, we will probably catch a jazz evening or two at a widely-known club that I dropped in on last year.
We got little done Saturday because one of the meals I ate Thursday or Friday gave me a mild case of food poisoning. After spending a couple of morning hours at the flea market and catching a meal, we headed back to the hotel and I slept into the evening. By Sunday morning all of the symptoms had abated, so we spent the day checking out the Cascades (a semi-finished valley-high monument to Soviet-Armenian friendship) and its associated museums. We also wandered some of the high-class apartment buildings under construction at the top of the valley overlooking the city, and many ruins and abandoned stone houses near said construction. I do not know if the ruins are from people being ousted in the name of urban development, or if they collapsed in the 1988 earthquake. But, with each failed house is probably the end of somebody’s dream, and it is hard not to think about the former inhabitants when one strolls through what used to be their yard.
There are a few photos to post and many meals and probings to tell you about. But, truth be told, Nancy has been doing a far better job of this in her blog than I ever would. Those of you who read this but are not aware of hers might want to check out:
Otherwise, I shall catch up on the good stuff as time permits, now that training has eased up for the rest of the trip.
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