For our second day in Armenia, we promised Taline and Liz that we would be staying in the city of Yerevan rather than gallivanting around the northern regions of the country. This time, we assured them, we would definitely make it to dinner. Our first sight of the morning was the Cascade, a series of steps built into a hill. At the top of the Cascade is a monument commemorating the 50th anniversary of Armenia’s integration into the Soviet Union. In other words, the Cascade is another typical grandiose and useless Soviet-era construction project. The construction of the Cascade was never actually finished, as the funding dried up after the Soviet Union collapsed. Rather than climbing the 800 steps to the top, Laura and I opted to take the indoor escalators that run along the side of the Cascade. The escalators don’t actually run the entire length of the Cascade, so we did have to hike to the top of the monument. The view of Yerevan that awaited us at the top was totally worth it, though.
We got our first glimpse of Mount Ararat, the national symbol of Armenia. There are literally hundreds of products and institutions that are named after this mountain: Ararat wine, Ararat vodka, Ararat cognac, Ararat bank…it’s even on the Armenian coat of arms. In a sad twist of irony, however, Mount Ararat lies not within the borders of Armenia, but those of Turkey. While the citizens of Yerevan may gaze upon Ararat, they may not cross the closed Armenian-Turkish border and travel the mere 20 miles to actually visit it. What a cruel joke has been played on the Armenians, to place their national symbol within the borders of a country responsible for the genocide of 1.5 million of their countrymen.
Mount Ararat is also supposedly where Noah’s Ark landed, if you believe that a 600 year-old man single-handedly rounded up “seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female” and put them in a large boat. Personally, I don’t, but that’s just me.
An odd statue near the top of the Soviet monument
After risking our lives by running across several lanes of traffic, we arrived at Victory Park, an overgrown wooded area with a typical Soviet-era amusement park. While the rusty ferris wheel and roller coaster looked tempting, we chose to visit the “Mother Armenia” statue instead.
Mother Armenia looks toward the Turkish border.
This being a Soviet-era monument, there was plenty of military equipment around the plaza.
Artillery pointed towards Turkey.
Soviet tank
Katyusha rocket launcher
Missile
I had too much fun here.
Inside the Mother Armenia statue there is a small museum dedicated to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The entire museum was in Armenian though, so we could only look at the pictures, dioramas, and military equipment and guess what the labels said.
Our final sight of the day was the National Art Gallery. It was definitely an impressive museum, but my knowledge of art is a bit lacking, so I can’t really describe the place very well (as in the various artists and so forth). Oddly enough, there were artists in various rooms that were painting exact copies of some of the museum’s artwork. And some of them were actually better than the originals.
After the art museum, we met up with Liz, Taline, and Crystal and headed over to a restaurant to meet up with some of their expat friends and enjoy a delicious khoravats meal.
To be honest, I don’t really remember most of it, due to the amount of Russki Standart that I consumed. This was a very, very, bad idea considering we were leaving Yerevan at 8:30am tomorrow to go to Tbilisi. I do remember that the food was incredibly good, though. That’s gotta count for something, eh?
Best vodka ever
Brian, the toastmaster
Oh God…not another toast.
Uhhh we have to wake up at 8am tomorrow and drive to Tbilisi. Insert obligatory “I’m never going to drink this much again.”
(Next up: Five American girls go on a road trip to Tbilisi. I promise it won’t take me a week to get that post up.)
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- The South Caucasus: Museums / Lake Sevan / Taxicab Confessions: Armenia Damn, dudes I’m on a roll. This entry includes two – count ‘em, two! – days worth of stuff. This has nothing to do, of course, with the fact that we didn’t do much those past two days in Yerevan! With only two days left in Yerevan, we were trying...
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From Cincysundevil:
Nice pics of the SA-2 and the BM-21 (Do you think I used to have to study Soviet Order of Battle? … lol)
From Lindsay:
See, that Soviet stuff you memorized eventually came in handy
From Ann:
Great pictures.
I was at in-n-out last night in Glendora (and out at Joshua Tree earlier) and thought of you.
From Lindsay:
Aw, I miss In-N-Out!
From brian:
I have worked in the Caucasus for some time and let me tell you, I have seen drunk but these girls from DC took it to a whole new level. As toastmaster, I applaud there taking on Yerevan, Tbilisi, and Baku at 100% – Cheers!
From M Tawsif Salam:
I invite you to come to Bangladesh.
From Samuel Antrim:
Did you people not know that Mt. Ararat has not been within the borders of Armenia since the 10th Century ? That statue of Mother Armenia is typical of the mental frame of the avarage Armenian – a “mother” with a great big sword ? Come on. Did they show you the pictures of 23,000 mutilated Azeri women and children in Karabagh ? Yet you have the audacity to parrot that infamous lie of the WW1 era British Blue Book re the “1.5 million” Armenians supposedly killed by the Turks. Why dont you ask your Armenian friends how many Turks they killed between 1915 and 1919 ? Please – a little more knowledge before making such sweeping statements.