We weren’t expecting much from Yerevan, but it wasn’t all that bad! It felt very European and has lots of cafes museums and art galleries. The most startling thing in the city was its new centre piece - a massive flight of stairs built into a hill. The ‘Cascade’ isn’t only a show of megalomaniac stone masonry, but actually also a really nice piece of public art. Each night hordes of locals climb the wide cream staircase and look out over the city, watching as the snowcapped peak of Mt Ararat catches the last of the evening sun.

 

We saw Ararat everywhere. Its snowy face was the subject of most of the landscape paintings in the National Art Gallery and Armenia’s Tourist Information slogan was - ‘Noah’s route - your route”.  Ararat’s hulk looms over the city but for the last century no Armenian has been able to visit it. The iconic mountain Armenians are so proud of is no longer theirs - it lies 40km away over the firmly closed Turkish border. This situation isn’t likely to change any time soon. Armenia wants an admission of guilt from the Turks over the 1915 genocide of 1.5million Turkish Armenians, the Turks still hold on to the fact that this was all in the fog of WWI.

 

70 years later the collapse of the Soviet Union hit Armenia and its citizens really really hard. Amidst the political and economic chaos Armenia went for the controversial land grab of Nagorno Karabagh, the resulting war led to massive recession, hundreds of thousands of refugees and a closed border to the east with Azerbaijan to add to the closed border to the west with Turkey. Unsurprisingly since 1991 a third of the population has left the country - everyone you speak to has relatives abroad and all the young people we spoke to saw their future somewhere other than Armenia.

 

I felt that most Armenians I met seemed very proud of Armenia and Armenian history, but also quite bitter and overly insecure.  They have undoubtedly suffered one of most painful recent histories on the planet but surely their recovery will remain slow until they develop a less fatalistic and more positive, forward looking mentality.

 

The one country Armenia seems to get along with both politically and culturally is Russia. Unfortunately this has meant that all the worst elements of Russian pop culture has been embraced. Women lounge in the outdoor cafes clad in shiny miss-matched skin-tight outfits and our sleep was disturbed by the pseudo-techno pop love ballads at full volume in the nearby bars. Hopefully though, growing alliances with France and other countries will give the young people here some hope for the future. Otherwise this tiny country of around 4 million people might become even smaller and more isolated than it already is today.

 

Sheesh! Sorry about that rant. Where was I? Ah yes, Yereven - We spent a few days here going to art galleries, museums and cafes and then retraced our steps back up to Tbilisi to catch the overnight train into Azerbaijan.