Yerevan
Yerevan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerevan) is the capital of Armenia, the easternmost country I have ever been to. It is also the first, and so far the only, former Soviet republic upon which I have set foot. I have to say that not really knowing what to expect, I was rather pleasantly surprised and I found the city, the country and it's people to be elegant and charming.
So how did it come to be that a boy from La Ceiba ends up in in Yerevan contemplating Mount Ararat seen here from the hotel window?
Ah, well such is the glamorous life of the international consultant. At least that's what I keep telling myself to forget the bitch-ass corporate whores that we are. The reality is that most of the time you fly coach, eat shitty food, and stay in hotels that look like this.
To give you an idea of how I end up in places like this, I should probably spend some time explaining a few quirks about what I do and how funny this business can be. Earlier this year we got shortlisted for a project that I was almost certain we would win. We had done the previous Strategic Planning study and were (so I thought) the logical choice to win the implementation project. I knew the Client well and we had a great working and personal relationship that I would even go as far as describing it as chummy.
Things looked great, at least until somebody in a warehouse in Miami put my box in a bin or belt that read Brazil instead of the Bahamas. And just like that, everything changes. Months worth of work, the prospects of a lucrative project and more importantly, the the idea of living the glamorous (beach-side) life of the international consultant, were gone.
So that's just how it is. You win some and loose some. And most of the time it is for reasons completely beyond your control.
About that time, we found out we were shortlisted for a couple of projects in Armenia which we did not expect. We went ahead and put together a proposal almost convinced that we wouldn't win but I felt it was just not good manners or good business to just not respond. And somehow, we pulled it off. We won. Again, for reasons mostly beyond our control and the details of which I prefer to keep in that kind of mysterious realm.
So there I was, on a red-eye flight over the Black Sea looking out at the lights of towns and fishing villages of the Turkish coastline and gliding east. Steadily quietly slipping past countless meridians to arrive at 44 degrees 30 minutes East. Always East.
The long overnight flight gave me some time to reflect as did the conversation with my neighbor on the flight. I don't usually find much conversation on flights because...well actually, I don't know why but maybe I'll post a blog entry on that topic some other time.
That night though I was sitting next to a man who's story I would later conclude was perhaps very similar to that of most others on that flight and indeed many of the people who visit the country. He said he was Armenian, despite the fact that he was born in Iran and has lived in the US for decades now. He was traveling half-way around the globe from L.A. to a country he had only been to once before and in which he had never lived, but was to him his uncontested home. He was going home.
He said that his grandfather, like many Armenians, took refuge in Iran after the Turkish genocide (I imagine they went wherever they could). To put this exodus in perspective, he told me some figures that I would hear repeated many times over the following days. The Armenian population today is roughly 12 million, buy only 3 million are in Armenia and the rest in a Diaspora spread far and wide but with amazingly strong ties to that country, and that city, which they hold as their spiritual home.
We continued talking about the concept of home and identity, boundaries and borders all the way until we began our descent around 4 am and were interrupted by something I have never experienced before in a flight and seldom anywhere else.
From the back of the plane came the unmistakable sound of women singing. It started as a low playful, perhaps wistful humming among friends that grew until almost the entire plane was singing old Armenian folk songs about Yerevan. Songs they had probably heard and sang at family gatherings in faraway places like London or Buenos Aires, New York or Paris. Songs of mountains and lakes they had never seen. Songs of streets they had never walked. Songs that proved the power of an oral tradition to preserve identity through time and space. And here they were, gliding down to a blanket of lights of that Yerevan of their grandfathers, that Yerevan of the old songs, that Yerevan that had been cut-off from those who had gone West instead of East almost a hundred years before. At long last here they were. And they sang, sang all the way to the gate.
I don't mind telling you I was moved to tears. No matter what might happen after that during the trip, Yerevan had me at hello.
Moon over Mt. Ararat
View of Hrazdan River canyon from hotel window
So what does one find in a former Soviet republic in the Caucasus, that region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea that is neither Europe nor Asia yet both?
The truth is, I found it to be quite European. The city has a modern downtown planned and constructed in the 1930's under the Soviet era. That means that is has wide boulevards that terminate in monuments or large plazas like Republic Square seen here.
Statue at World War II Monument
View of Opera House from WWII monument
View of WWII monument from the south
Opera House
The city has a ring of parks surrounding much of it. Here near the Opera House.
Silhouette of the city's planner with the steps to the WWII monument in background
As you can see, the city is rather clean and lined with trees and overall you get the sense that it works, or at least it used to. The fact that I was there betrays the reality that there are some serious mobility issues in the city in terms of both traffic and public transport.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and formal independence came a corresponding collapse in funding for all basic services. I was told that the first years were the worst with no gas nor electricity (meaning no heat in this country where winter temperatures dip to -20 degrees Centigrade). To top it all off, they fought a bitter war with neighboring Azerbaijan during the same period in the early 90's.
In general, I got a sense that despite the many signs of prosperity and even opulence (I don't recall so many S-Class MB's in any city I've been to before), there was some nostalgia for the stability of the Soviet days. To be sure, Armenia is out of the dark days of the early nineties, but I cannot help but think how much the their world has changed in 15 short years. I would often hear people say things like, "In the Soviet era there was..." or "In the Russian days that used to be..." and so on and so forth.
An example is the main train station (below) that once boasted long distance trains to Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, and other major cities. Today it serves mostly domestic traffic with an occasional train to Tbilisi.
So as you can imagine, subsidies for public transport quickly dried up and they ended up with a classical example of savage capitalism that is the privatisation of passenger transport that has sprouted spontaneously all over the world. I won't discuss here the details of how this situation arises, but it is enough to mention that the model consists of large numbers of minibuses operating on the most popular routes only, usually in very overcrowded conditions and with little or no regard for schedules, itineraries or passenger safety. This destructive competition degrades into very aggressive driving by the drivers (we have seen cases of fist fights between drivers in some South American cities) who are by all intents and purposes independent business/production units that must maximise the number of passengers in the vehicle, limit the passengers going to the competition, and minimising major operating costs, primarily maintenance.
So that's why we're in Yerevan, to fix this...
It's not all work and no play though. While there, I managed to get out of town for an afternoon to Lake Sevan, the country's only natural lake near the Azerbaijani border. It is also one of the highest lakes in the world with it's surface at nearly 2,000 meters of altitude.
Northwestern shore of Lake Sevan
On a peninsula that used to be an island, this was a vacation residence for Soviet artists and writers. In the background is the ninth century island monastery.
While having lunch, a wedding party pulled up to get married at the monastery. I saw a wedding every day of the week I was in Armenia.
Pic-nic benches on the shore of Sevan. And me without my swimsuit.
The Volga, in Soviet times it was THE car to have, mostly reserved for diplomats and high-ranking party officials. This one came with a TV inside, but no seat belts!
Sevan from the north.
So that was how it went on my first trip to Yerevan and Armenia. A lovely land that is at once exotic and familiar. No doubt, a people capable of breaking into song in an airplane are bound to be great hosts.
Epilogue
I even got a huge suite after complaining about my minuscule room. Apparently there had "been a mistake". And it was in my favor this time. There may be something to this international consultant thing after all.
My pimpin' suite at the Hrazdan Best Eastern (not kidding) hotel. I'm told this was THE hotel in Yerevan in Soviet times, reserved for dignitaries and, you guessed it, high-ranking party officials.
posted by charles @ 4:38 AM
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