Caravan to Yerevan

Ugh, there is nothing worse than rolling into Yerevan at 5am shivering under a scratchy woolen blanket.  Absolutely nothing.  And what made it worse was not the fact that I had to—and declined to—pay for sheets, but that the conductor woke me up 45 minutes before the train actually stopped and made me give back the blanket.  I was furious but incapable of expressing myself. 

Yerevan sunrise.

Anyway, sometimes shock treatment is the best way for us to grow up and confront our demons, and Yerevan at 5am was my demon.  Luckily, Yerevan is a perfectly charming city and I couldn’t have been more pleased when I actually made it to the centre and saw what a beautifully planned city it was.  The entire city was done in a pinkish marble (Crayola purists may even refer to it as a salmon-coral-Arizona topaz sort of colour) and with the rising sun casting its golden light on these buildings and on Ararat in the distance, all I could think was “Awwww yiss, I’m in Armenia” as I sat down in a bus shelter in the centre to take a break and eventually passed out. 

But really, Yerevan is great.  If I could offer any advice to any nationality is going to be submerged by a great power, do it early when they are still robust and have energy and money to do things.  Don’t wait until they are collapsing under their own bureaucratic weight.  Cities like Yerevan (and to a lesser degree, Chisinau) got the full treatment during the 1930s (which was boomtime for the Soviet Union.  Take that, capitalism) with a pretty remarkable and well-laid out urban scheme.  Plus a metro system, some well-built apartments, and a climate that didn’t make me feel like I was devolving into a swamp monster, Yerevan had a lot going on for it.

So naturally the biggest problem I had with Yerevan is how absolutely out of it I was when I was there and unable to enjoy it, or to decide to stay there for an extra night.  Did you know I have spent literally several days in places I hate, and yet only about 30 hours in Yerevan? The other problem was that it was still 6am and nothing was open at a time when I needed coffee, breakfast, and free wifi to tell me where I would be sleeping that night/this morning.  After several rejections from places inappropriately displaying an “Open” sign, I found a small café owned by an American ex-pat where I paid way too much for a sandwich and then again for a salad. 

Don't even talk to me about Bishkek.  I don't want to hear it, and you don't want to hear about how much I don't want to hear it, trust me.