Due Dilijan(ce)

Foiled again by UNDP.  What is this, Kosovo?

My couchsurfing host was an American Peace Corps worker who had two cats.  These two cats turned out to be the bane of my existence and I had a hard time sleeping without sneezing from the fur or having one jump on me and bite me.  But before all these night terrors we had a nice dinner of vegetables and lentils, she told me how everyone in her building thinks she’s a big hooch for having so many young men stay with her (loose American morals and all), and we discussed the merits of Armenian dentistry.

Kardashian family photo op.

In the morning Hillary walked me to the highway to flag down a car.  She barely put her hand out when two Armenian teenagers screeched to a halt, presumably stoked that they were finally going to land a sexually-liberated American girl.  Were they ever disappointed when only I got into the car.  They were only going as far as the monastery on the peninsula up ahead, so I walked from there.  They insisted I come look at it with them but I put my foot down and said I had already seen it and needed to get to my next destination, Dilijan, quickly. They seemed to understand the urgency, as Dilijan is a pretty renowned spa town. 

Further along the highway I contemplated jumping on the back of the slowest moving train in history but could not confidently predict where it would end up.  Either a fisherman or a cement truck driver picked me up a bit further down, I can’t remember which.  What didn’t pick me up was a convoy of UNDP vehicles.  Oh, I remember what happened: I was picked up by a young guy in a dumptruck who dropped me off at a fish stand at the end of the lake.  Glad I got that memory sorted.

Then the two best people in Armenia picked me up.  They were in charge of Internet or something.  I have no idea what they were actually doing, inspecting the internet cables or something around the country, and they spoke English.  I loved these guys because they were very intelligent and offered lots of excellent insight.  They pointed out all the Doukhobor and Molokan villages along the way and were shocked to learn that Doukhobors in Canada were marrying into the local population.  They were also shocked to learn that I, as a self-identified white English Canadian, felt I had more in common with a Vancouverite of Asian descent thenan with an Anglo-Saxon Torontonian.  Believe it, entho-centric nation states!  Starbucks and mountains over humidity and smog is a much bigger unifier than coincidence of ancestry, so get used to it.

Lake Sevan (which is actually a resevoir) and--you guessed it--a monastery silhouetting the  horizon.

They took me all the way to Vanadzor, where I had planned to stay with another PCV.  Wouldn’t you know it, the one time I decide to get my ducks in line I don’t actually need to stay there.  I thought it would take me a full day to get to Vanadzor but I managed to get there before lunch, which put me within smelling distance of the Georgian border. I met up with the PCV, however, and we ate pizza and discussed Jersey Shore.  He was from Montana or something.  Somewhere in the west, and somewhere obscure.  So I think Montana.  He then pointed me in the right direction, north, and I hit the old dusty trail after loading up on two packaged ice cream cones.*

*Packaged ice cream cones are currently the best thing in existence.  I love these little packets of joy more than most material possessions in the world.  Have you had one?  GO to Armenia.  Everything about it sounds a little off, and the cone is pretty questionable, but the ice cream is so good, and it’s the perfect treat for any time of day.  I insist you go because who knows how much longer these things will be around, or how much longer Armenia itself will be around.