First Snow of the Season

A chilly and rainy Friday evening in Yerevan, and Nancy is busily working on her blog post while I use this to fill the moments between emails.  As usual on a training day, I have not downloaded email in 12 hours and have about 150 in the queue.  Unfortunately, the hotel’s web service is abysmal tonight, and my backlog is coming in at the rate of one every two minutes.  I may need to leave this laptop on all night to catch up.

The raw weather promises to continue into tomorrow, possibly dampening (but not canceling) our touring plans.  There was light snow in the northern part of the city this morning, and the long-range forecast suggests more over the entire region on Wednesday.  The sidewalks here are tough to walk on good days (cobblestones) and bad days (rolling stones), so I certainly sympathize with anyone who walks during ice and snow.  Especially the young ladies with stiletto heels.

Training has been going more slowly than planned this week.  For once, this is a good outcome.  The class is more experienced than last week’s, and they tend to ask more questions and debate much more.  It is good to have people there who don’t just blindly believe whatever you tell them.  I am sure many things that have worked at banks in the States would not work here, and vice versa.  We may or may not get caught up next week, but I have several days’ worth of “just in case” activities, so it is no big deal if we do not get to those.

We had a good lesson today about the lack of customer service in government entities from former Soviet republics.  When Nancy obtained her visa to visit here, she filed for a 21-day visa because we are scheduled to be here for 21 days, Saturday to Saturday.  Makes sense, right?  Well, it does in the other countries I have visited, but not here.  We are here for 22 calendar days, not 21 consecutive 24-hour periods.  So, her visa needs to be extended by one day.  A quick check at the nation’s Visa and Passport web site tells us the office is just a few blocks away on Mashtots street, and the extension costs less than $1.50 a day.  No problem, right?

Well, we went to the visa office, where Nancy was given an extension form to fill out, told to bring a photocopy of her original visa and passport, and 1000 dram (for a 2-day extension, the minimum allowed).  Something was also said about a “bank check”, but it went right by us.  Returning ten minutes later with the copies and filled-out form, we were told again “bank check”.  It seems that the visa agents do not accept cash….one must find a local bank (not a problem) and deposit the extension fee in the visa service’s account, returning to the visa agent with the receipt as proof.  This time we managed to follow instructions to the letter, finding a local bank branch (NOT the bank at which I am training people), paying the 1000 dram and the bank’s 100 dram fee (the latter being just over 30 cents), and marched back to the visa office, feeling very confident.  It was a short-lived feeling, as the agent stapled all forms together, took Nancy’s passport, and instructed us to return on Wednesday.  We shall find out then if all has been successful….the fact that the passport was just thrown into a desk drawer made us a bit nervous.  If the passport is not ready on Wednesday I shall have to lean on my bank friends for some fast help, as we are scheduled to leave here less than 72 hours later.    

I have also been having occasional communications during this trip with my team leader for the Hanoi project.  Four weeks after I left there, the bank still can’t decide on the parameters for the marketing research project I was supposed to launch by October 1.  I am starting to have severe doubts about whether the efforts we are putting in will ever result in anything worthwhile being implemented.

One of the students in the current training class very kindly gave me a gift as we quit for the weekend – a collection of 20 or so Soviet coins from the 1980s.  Obviously there were widely used here, but are not worthless to anyone but collectors since the USSR no longer exists.  It is in the culture here to always be alert for one’s interests and use those as a basis for small gifts.  

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Mid-Saturday afternoon, now.  Nancy has had a touch of nausea since about 4:00 this morning, so we cancelled today’s tour.  Actually, our hosts cancelled today – sinced they were able to show me around part of their country last year, they felt it was more important to have Nancy available for touring.  If I had been ill, instead, it is likely that my hosts would have taken Nancy without me.  They will re-work tomorrow’s schedule, and we will leave earlier than originally planned to get a longer day of viewing in.

It has been a bad day to go out, anyway…light snow since about noon, although it has been melting upon contact.  Visibility is poor, too.  Tomorrow is expected to be a much better day- partly cloudy and highs near 50.  I spent a good part of the afternoon at one of our favorite dining spots, extending my lunch to take full advantage of their wifi in the absence of decent internet at the hotel.  I also finally purchased Armenian and Georgian flags…I want a small flag from each country in which I have worked.  Understandable, no store here stocks Azerbaijani flags, so I will need to hunt that one down to complete my 4-country collection.  I ended the afternoon at the grocery store, trying to get some high-energy snacks for Nancy in case she finally feels like eating later.  I’ll spend this evening trying to crack the internet, and perhaps putting some work in on my Vietnam report.  

     

A Chilly Evening

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 6^th 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:

http://armenianvacation.blogspot.com

Otherwise, I shall catch up on the good stuff as time permits, now that training has eased up for the rest of the trip.