Wednesday 14 th Yerevan

We all had the best breakfast today. What a spread. They cater for all tastes and so it is very tempting to keep trying a little bit of this and that!

Our first stop today was the Victory Park Memorial overlooking the city on the top of the hill facing towards Mt Ararat. Unfortunately it was overcast so the mountain was obscured but the park was quite impressive. The statue on the top of the museum in the centre of the square was originally Stalin but once Khrushchev came to power all statues of Stalin were removed and in Armenia they replaced him with a Mother victory based on a young woman the sculpture saw in the market buying tomatoes! It took him some time to convince her to be his model but she relented and now she is in her 80’s! Imagine having a grandmother who was the model for the towns signature sculpture.

Though the park is dedicated to victory in WW2 where Armenia lost 400,000 men, nearly a third of its population at the time, it is now also home to a fun park. From here we visited the Cascades, originally meant to be real cascades to cool the city in Summer when it can get to 40C. , but due to an earthquake of massive proportions that decimated the country at the same time, the money was diverted to emergency relief so it was never fully realised. Now it is an amazing modern art museum where the water runs infrequently.

Many of the grand plans for Yerevan were undermined by budget cuts from Moscow during the Soviet era. This country’s ability to survive and thrive is amazing. Yerevan is the 13 th capital in the history of Armenia and was chosen because it was in the centre of the country and supposedly the safest place, that is until Lenin did a swap for coastal territory on the Black Sea and gave the area around Mt Ararat to Türkiye (Turkey). Mt Ararat is the most important symbol for Armenia. It is on the coat of arms. Its importance dates to the resting place of Noah’s ark and the direct line from Noah’s son Ham. Armenians call the country Hayastan. Yerevan is now close to the Turkish border. It has been continuously inhabited for more than 2800 years.

When Turkey insisted that Armenia remove the image of Mt Ararat from their coat of arms the Armenian minister for foreign affairs replied that the Moon on the flag of Turkey wasn’t theirs alone. As a result the request was dropped.

Our guide is so knowledgeable and this country has so much history I can’t begin to share it all. Despite the trials and invasions they have maintained a strong culture focused on education and preserving their history and language. The alphabet is unique and rather beautiful when written as you can see on the door of the arts centre. There are sculptures in most of the gardens and music such as Opera and folk are very popular. They even have a Chess Academy and chess is taught as part of the educational curriculum from kindergarten! Music and arts and crafts are also mandatory subjects.

The making of brandy and wine has a long 6000 year history but under the soviets they were only allowed to produce brandy and fortified wines. Now they are producing excellent wine with 400 endemic varieties of grapes.

However they have developed a reputation for quality brandy and we visited the Ararat Brandy Factory for tasting. That was fun and the pride evident in the product was conveyed by our guide. We got a tasting lesson and tasted a 3 yo and a 7 yo brandy. They had some that were 70 years barrelled. The brandy is matured in ‘ toasted’ Armenian oak which gives unique flavours of fruit and spices and even chocolate!

Our last stop today was the Matenadaran, museum of ancient illustrated manuscripts. Repositories of manuscripts in Armenia were recorded as early as the fifth century. They were so beautiful and the writing so amazingly elegant and straight. The knowledge contained in these manuscripts is sometimes unique and are dated from before medieval times and some from the libraries in Alexandria (Egypt). This is a place of treasured and rare resources that were lost or hidden in caves to avoid destruction by foreign invaders such as the Turkic and Mongols. During the Soviet time trust grew and as the country gained its independence many have been brought out of hiding or discovered in excavations and are now housed here. There was a large manuscript that weighed 28 kilograms and during the genocide period two women rescued the book by tearing it in two and carrying the halves away. . However only one half arrived safely. One of the women was killed but managed to bury her half before she died. It remained lost for nearly 20 years when it was discovered by a Russian soldier who was crossing the border between Turkey and Armenia. Initially it was believed to be Georgian and sent to Tbilisi where it was recognised as Armenian and the two halves of the manuscript were eventually reunited.

While we were absorbed in the history of the manuscripts the weather outside had taken a dramatic turn. Rain had been forecast but it had stayed warm all day and we had become complacent and left our coats and umbrellas in the bus. Alas as we were leaving a thunderstorm burst overhead and we had to scamper down to the bus. It was far enough away for us all to arrive wet through and bedraggled! Anne and I promptly whipped off our wet shirts and put on our dry jumpers before everyone else arrived. We all looked like drowned rats. What a dramatic end to our day.

The night before we had ordered the Ararat cocktail, which was really delicious but required the blender for mixing. The use of that caused the power to fail and we were plunged into semi darkness for a minute or two. It is obviously a regular thing because the staff weren’t fazed. The power was restored without delay or drama. However we learned today that a couple of people in our tour group had been caught in the lift when the power went out!

We had had a generous lunch at a food court so we just had soup and grilled vegetables for dinner and fell into bed sated and full of all the information about Armenia. It is an intriguing place.