4-August-99 Around Lake Sevan

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We slept, in the cool air at 1900 meters elevation, and went back to the hotel dining room for breakfast. The tomatos were as good as the night before. The waiter suggested an omelet, but what they meant this time was eggs fried in the small pen they were served in. Of course there was bread and cheese and loads of herbs as usual, too, and the coffee was dark and strong.

On our way from Yerevan Tom had pointed out a little peninsula with two churches on it, and said that we should try to see it. He thought there was a boat from the hotel to it, but we couldn't track one down. Activate plan B. We walked out to the road. Half a kilometer down it was a little food stand. We figured it was as close to a bus stop as we would find in the area, and waited in front of it. A guy from the shop told us that a bus should be by in half an hour to an hour, but it wasn't that bad -- he looked down the road and pointed out a bus heading toward us two or three Km away along the lake shore. He told the driver where we wanted to get out, and we hopped on.

The road out the peninsula was lined with trees and shady. After a while we came to a building and asked someone -- it was a seminary or monastary, and around the back was the path up the hill (do you notice a theme here -- climbing lots of steps or hills to get to what you want to see?) to the churches.

Church, lake...

It's a very picturesque scene, with the blue lake behind the hill with the ancient churches, and khatchkars here and there.

Khatchkar

The first church we came to was locked, and the second had people working on its roof, so it didn't look like a good idea to get too close. Even so, the scene was right off the back of the old packaging of Near East pilaf mix.

Wildlife report: lots of little lizards running around the hillside. One of them looked pretty much like the rest but with a very short, squared-off tail. Maybe they're the kind whose tail breaks off when a predator snags it.

Back at the bottom of the hill we stopped at a cafe for a bottle of juice. Anne started talking to a couple of guys there, one in a police uniform. The cop was under the impression that if you were stopped for a traffic violation in the US and made any sudden moves while looking for your registration or license you were apt to be shot. He felt much more comfortable with the policing style in Armenia, where the cop was more likely to be a friend of the person he stopped and to let him off with a warning.

We walked back to the main road and ran the last fifty yards when we saw a bus coming. It stopped for us, but turned out not to be going past our hotel, so we waited and tried to flag another. A couple went by without stopping, and we started trying to flag down a car. We had no success, but had a good time watching a kid chase his herd of cows off the road and back up the hill across the street. Finally a taxi with a passenger came by. The driver said he would drop off the passenger and come back for us, drove twenty meters, and called for us to hop in and ride along while he dropped off the passenger. After he let her off at a campground he drove another hundred meters out of our way to say hello to a couple of friends, and then headed back the way we were going. As we went along Anne negotiated with him to drive us to Dilijan, another resort town, the next day, and got his name - Russian version, Mischa.

After all that walking and waiting for a ride we were ready for lunch. There was a table at the lakeside cafe at the resort, and they suggested fish shashlik. That sounded OK to both of us. It turned out to be one whole trout each, grilled with the skin on, with paprika and salt rubbed on the outside. I think a light coating of a Cajun “blackened” spice would be a resonable facsimile. As with the beef shashlik last night, they know how to do it well. It was delicious.

After a little lounging on the beach and a dip in the lake we set off to explore the town across the highway (well, across the two lane road). It was about 1Km down the highway to the road into the town. A big unidentified hawk was patrolling a hayfield just this side of the road to town and flew from one to another haystack as we walked by. The side road crossed a railroad line on a bridge and then started gradually uphill. Pretty soon --

Anne: Look! There's a chicken crossing the road!

Dean: Now, why would a chicken cross a road?

Anne: I dunno, to get to the other side?

Look! There's a cow in that backyard!

At this point I think I'd better throw in a picture. We think those stacks behind the house are blocks of dried manure for fuel.

Find the chickens

Where a street came in from the left there were a couple of tables with fruit. We bought two peaches (the people couldn't believe that we wanted only two, not a whole kilo, and then tried to refuse payment.) As we turned around, a truck laden with hay came down the side street. The hay was piled on to twice the width of the truck bed, and there were three guys riding up in front of the driver -- on the bumper and hood! Anne took a black & white photo of it, but I wasn't alert enough.

We wandered on, talking to people every now and then as we went. One guy was home to visit his family; he worked in Leningrad (his words; we namedroppers call it St. Pete) doing whatever work is available. There's no work around here these days; factories are shut since the fall of the Soviet Union and the trade embargo on the part of Turkey and Azerbaijan. He and Anne had a fairly long conversation (all in Russian; I'm just reporting what Anne told me and what little I could catch) and he invited us in for coffee, but we declined.

We continued along a cross street and got some ice cream from a vendor with a freezer chest out on the street, and were accosted by a kid who turned out to be hawking honey (it took a while to get the languages straight and figure out what he was yelling at us about.) We guessed that one trailer had a loaf of bread hanging over the door as a sign that it was a bakery.

By this time we were pretty far from the road we had come on, and it looked as though the road we were on was headed away from our hotel. A dirt road off to the left seemed to be going in the right direction, if it was cut through, and we set off on it. It led through hayfields and past a kid tending a flock of cows, sheep, and a goat.

Cows, sheep, a goat

A black-and-white bird with an orange head, my second hoopoe of the trip, flew over the road; we passed a field of small grain

Wheat? Barley?

and then saw someone riding towards us on a horse with a load of hay behind him. We got set to take a picture in a hurry, but when Anne asked if she could take his picture he said sure, rode past, and turned around so the sun was behind the camera and he was in good light.

Hay is on horses

He too invited us to his house for coffee.

“No, thanks.”
“Please, be my guest.”
“No, thanks.”
“Please, my house is very close.”
“Thanks, we really have to be going.”

Well, as you can guess from the pictures, we greatly enjoyed that walk through the village. The next time I go to donate blood, though, the nurse is going to ask me,

“Have you been outside the US in the last two years?”
“I was in Armenia.”
“Were you in any rural areas?”
“I walked through a town where chickens were walking in the street and there were stacks of manure drying for fuel next to all the houses.”
“Come back in two years.”

About the only thing on TV was Miss Marple dubbed in Russian.

Anne had a craving for potato chips so we looked in the shop in the hotel and in the bar, but no luck. “Where are Pringles when you want them?” asked Anne. “They're all over Moscow.”

We wondered if we were going to be the prime topic of conversation in that village for the next few days. Anne said she doubts that cash is used in that village at all. Many transactions in the former Soviet Union are strictly barter, even between big businesses which may pay employees in products that they can sell or trade on the street. The soviets eliminated one of the greatest inventions of mankind -- money.

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