Yes I still I Armenia… but wrapping up.
Yerevan is another city in the spring summer… life just warms up and all becomes lushly green, all squares get covered with cafes and a good number of the immense amount of fountains (1300 at the peak of soviet times) that you see al around the place starts sheltering the heat.
The summer has also brought a lot of colour… and in more than one sense… starting with the outfits of the woman… guau… I guess there is no comparison to the NZ scene… o perhaps the type of clothing and flesh exposure you may see on Saturday night clubbing or pop fashion party with top 40 music from the acid house scene…. But you would not see those girls wearing that on a Tuesday 11 am while waiting the bus… Absolutely incredible…I wish I was brave enough to approach them with a camera and say… please… the world need to know about you girls…
Matching pinks on the VERY tight top, trousers, stilettos (of course!) and handbag… and in harmony with the other friends you go cruising about… Immaculate white trousers that would not be white not even 5 seconds if anyone I know uses them… Green and red flower stamped tight trousers with more flowered tops… complete yellow outfit only interrupted by a brown “schall” on her shoulders…. And is visually obviously g-strings are the most common type of undies…
Of course, men still use black stripy trousers and black satin shirts with incredibly long pointy shoes…. Refreshing exemptions are some trendy Iranians or Lebanese to whom linen and light cloth shirts are a classic… as long they are beige or pastel…
Obviously I’m by far the worst dressed person around… with my pseudo mature surfer look…
It never ceases to overwhelm me how different perceptions over the same thing are… for me, even if visually wonderful… I found it vulgar… and they fund me vulgar… how somebody with more money than them (as all foreigners are rich) pays so little attention to his appearance…
I guess that would be my more lasting memory from that place, the incredible mixture of mysticism, culture and vulgarity I’m surrounded…
Everything is very ancient and the roots of Armenian culture are as old as civilization, the earliest books, religious and scientific analysis comes from around here…so the earliest references to wine, beer, and pot (there is a city named Ganja!) are hosted in manuscripts held in Armenia…
The history of a people without place or own government for centuries made each Armenian his own king and the holder of his peoples history… there are an immense amount of old books (10th to 14th century) that made it till today, because it was the only thing that people would take with them when the decapitating hordes arrived, when they had to go away because they were in the middle of the old world, Ottomans, Persians, Huns, Crusaders, Bolsheviks… named… all been here…
The identity is the only thing they kept… I have seen people cry of emotion when Niri the Japanese girlfriend of my friend Carlos would talk to them in fluent Armenian… they would hold her hand and in tears say: thank you so much! … Strong stuff mate…
The sense of martyrdom is essential to their psyche… so much that Martiros and Martirosyan, are very common names and surnames respectively…
And even today the centre of they geographical identity, the sole symbol of they culture that stand over everything else and that you can see from everywhere is Mt Ararat… a very impressive sight that goes well over 5000 m right from Yerevan’s valley… is in Turkey… after their annexation of Anatolia…
Is very disturbing, even for me, to have a whole section of a country constructed to look towards this most beautiful mountain that is part of your identity since Noah’s ark… and to know that is in the hand of your enemies…
They got they land and opportunity to foster they culture with some pseudo leverage as being the most culturally prominent republic of the old Soviet Union… but then it collapsed and old unpaid bills came back… you know… war with Azerbaijan and so on…
In general terms in “our” part of the world we see what is call development advances move forwards… you know you get better services and infrastructure as time pass by and today you have more than 10 years ago…
This job get to show you the opposite … not often you get confronted with the decadence of “civilization”… was quite bizarre already in Mozambique when you wander around places that 100 years ago had double sided avenues and palaces and today is very hard to get there in 4wds… here the past is very close… so the abandonment feeling is almost post apocalyptic… you go trough whole industrial areas that are completely empty, buildings and machinery sitting there, hectares of glass houses decaying with no better use than an aim of the local children stones….
Personally and as former amateur sports person from Argentina that always struggle to get support and good training facilities the most anguished place was to visit the abandoned high performance competition centre that the Soviet Union had in the mountains nearby for it elite athletes, in order to train them for Olympics and competitions in high places (is at 2500 mts).
It is a huge complex… it must have been sooo fantastic… and after 10 years of complete neglect it just felt so disturbing… massive Olympic size pool with plants growing from the cracked bottom… huge boilers for the water heating cannibalized for parts laying around… a covered 200 m ling pavilion with a tartan athletics track inside rotten away with the hurdles still laying around… the outside track with 2 adjacent areas for training blackened by the neglect… huge gymnastics halls being used by the local fauna…. and nobody around….
Except in the massive eating and living areas for athletes used by internal refuges of the Nagorno Karabagh war… It just felt what I guess would be the world 10 years after most people died by some apocalyptic reason…
But… then you come to Yerevan, and it is a different world… It must be the most musical city in the world…
Besides having concerts all the time… the quality of the musicians is just incredible… the local conservatory is constantly booming in people… Armenia is the only country in the world who’s number of music students is growing as per % of total population… In the square across the road was the National Armenian Jazz Band… at the style of the big jazz band of the 50’s… not my favourites… but man… those guys were the bomb… they play for 2.5 hrs non stop I was completely into it particularly when they starting playing local jazz that mixes traditional rhythms and instruments with the traditional big band stuff (and I mean big over 20 musicians on stage!)
2 days later similar venue but classical… again mind-blowing… It was Russia day… so big Russian concert with those jumping dancers and all… next day tribute to Piazolla (Argentina’s greatest contemporary classic and tango composer)… and so on… and then incredible international visits… like next week the Kronos Quartet… the most innovative and avant gard contemporary classic quartet in the world … they come here to perform Armenian contemporary composers… and we talking a city with less than a millon people...
It is incredible… you have at least 1-2 different concerts every night and up to four on weekends… plus 2-3 theatre plays… plus marionette and puppets exclusively dedicated theatres with 2 different functions… on children’s plays by Pushkin, Andersen and other classic authors…
I guess that would be one of the issues I will miss the most… and what challenge me the most of this place…. Knowing that the idiot that almost run you over while crossing the streets, stands around eating seeds, let his phone on and starts talking while in training seminar… plays the violin or the cello at a level that most of us would never achieve…
I guess that is the mystic and vulgar dichotomy of the Caucasus…
