Ну, погоди! (Nu, Pogodi!)

Waking up with the initial thought of “Why did I come to Jermuk at all?” I immediately set to work getting myself out of Jermuk and back to the main highway.  I was hoping to somehow get to either Yerevan or Lake Sevan that evening and that was a pretty tall order.  I walked out of town to the more proletarian part of Jermuk to use internet and send a postcard.  Then an old man in a Mercedes picked me up and drove me to the highway.  He initially asked for money but I said no.  He said okay.  Or rather he was so busy hollering into his mobile and spitting flecks of gold everywhere that he didn’t have time to further hound me for money.  

Back on the highway was such a dream.  It was boiling hot and it was bone dry.  I loved every second of it and would have loved to stop at one of the great roadside eateries offering shashlik and tea and luxurious oriental seating arrangements but I was so angsty about getting back to civilization.  Some sort of biznezman screeched to a halt, backed up, hollered at me to get in, and then drove me to the nearest town.  He told me he’d drive me to Lake Sevan for $30 and I told him that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go to Sevan or stay in the south a bit longer.  I was getting really good at this whole bullshitting business.

The town we stopped in was basically a page torn out of eastern Washington.  It was hot, dusty, desolate, and seemingly 30 years behind, so perhaps a little cutting edge compared with some parts of eastern Washington.  In the tourism bureau (SO cutting edge) they turned out to not be very helpful at all, as it was actually a hotel that offered zero tourism services for free.  So onwards I walked, out of the sleepy town of Vayk to where a dumptruck picked me up and drove me to the turn off to a gravel pit.  This is what I love about dumptrucks.  Whenever I am getting a ride with a real person they take me to the city centre and I have to spend an hour walking out.  Dumptrucks only go to random gravel pits in the middle of nowhere, so I’m fresh back on the road. 

The truck driver told me it was a must that I see the local cathedral.  I lied through my teeth telling him I would, and you know what?  It felt good.  I then kept on walking and stopped in a corner store that sold iced coffee with milk.  I bought about 4 and some kefir.  Some might argue that eating dairy products without expiry dates on a sweltering hot day while hitchhiking is a bad idea, but my counterargument is that I am absolutely full of bad ideas, and (almost as much as I am full of coffee and kefir at any given moment) I was ready for anything, including explosive diarrhea. 

Further along I passed through another small town and made it to the critical junction where I could follow the main road to Yerevan or cut up north to Lake Sevan.  I was full of caffeine, probiotics and probably severely deficient bin essential salts and minerals so the natural decision was to head north and see what Sevan had to offer.  I barely made it along before an old man in a Lada Niva screeched his brakes, backed up and hollered at me, “Oh my god, get in the car! Get in the car right now! It’s dangerous out here!  There are bad people!  Please get in the car!”

Since I tend to get so caught up in excitement and living in the now, I hopped in, ignoring the clearly implicit contradictory message of “EVERYONE in Armenia can’t be trusted, including me.”  He was totally wrong, however, as he was the friendliest and most helpful person in the history of Armenia.  He wasn’t going far, but parked his vehicle across the middle of the road and forced other drivers to stop and take me with them.  I told him I was fine and wanted to take pictures of the beautiful landscape.  He finally agreed and let me go, then drove off to his village to presumably tell him wife about his crazy day. 

Further along I was picked up by an old couple who had to periodically stop the Lada and dump water into the engine to cool it down.  Then through a village, where I saw a cop stopping a guy in a Volga.  The man later gave me a ride and was complaining about the militsia.  I told him I know exactly what he means because in high school the police were always shutting down our parties.  Despite these being fundamentally different issues entirely we definitely bonded.  We stopped at a Caravanserai at the top of the hill to eat. He had cheese, bread, and meat, and wanted none of what I brought to the table, which at this point was a bloated bottle of hot kefir.  He also pulled out a bottle of vodka and then out came the knife which he pointed at me and said, “Pogodi!”* 

While 7 year old me was delighted by the cartoon, 24 year old me was delighted by the Nu Pogodi-themed electronica show happening in Tbilisi.  

*Obviously you remember Ну, погоди!, a popular Soviet children’s cartoon which ran from 1969-2006.  Apparently there were only 20 episodes, each ten minutes long which to me sounds absolutely insane.  Maybe I’m so conditioned to absolute garbage being cranked out at 24 episodes per season, but the quality of each Ну, погоди! episode wasn’t so great that we needed to wait 1.85 years on average between episodes in order to fully digest and appreciate each one’s artistic merit. Anyway, I saw a mural in Tbilisi that was some sort of stencil of Ну, погоди! and I was all “Oh heeeey!!!!”