Caucuses etc: Armenian mountains

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

I drove to and along the south shore of Lake Sevan, the largest Lake in Armenia. A stop along the shore at the Hairivank Monastery from the 13th century presented a pleasant view

Turning at Martuni, the road began climbing to Selim Pass through endless Alpine meadows. At Selim Pass, there was a Caravanserai (resting place for caravans traversing the silk road). A vertiginous series of switchbacks led down from the pass to the south.

At Shatin, I turned east onto the Yeghegis valley road. I parked in the village of Yeghegis, and walked along a very rutted old road to Saint Zorat's Church. The church was designed with a very wide opening in front of the altar to allow the priests to bless and administer the sacraments to soldiers on horseback who were preparing to go into battle. There were votive candles burning on the right sub-altar, indicating that the church is still a place of devotion.

The final stop of the day was down another rutted cart path to a rickety metal bridge leading to a Jewish cemetery on the other side of the river. The tombstones feature bible verses in Hebrew, and indicate that there was a Jewish community in the town from 1266 to 1346 C.E. Very little is known about this Jewish Community or why they left the valley.

View of Hairivank Monastery

Alpine Meadows North of Selim Pass

Selim Caravanserai

Bright Orange Bug, Yeghegiz Valley

Pinkish-White Flowers, Yeghegis Valley

Saint Zorats Church

Saint Zorat's Church

Bridge to Jewish Cemetery, Yeghegis

Detail from Tombstone at Jewish Cemetery

View of Sevan Lake from Hairivank Monastery

Saint Zorat's Church 

The Large Opening was to Facilitate the Blessing of Soldiers on Horseback

View from my Hotel Balcony

Caucuses etc: Yerevan

Monday, June 5, 2017

The hotel picked me up a car with right hand drive (1) After a 3:30 am arrival, I had a lie-in until about 11:00. Then a walk to the central train station to get a ticket for the sleeper to Tbilisi in 3 days (2). The train station is a grand Soviet design, but now hosts few trains. I grabbed the metro back to town (3).

I wandered over to the Cascades Complex, a kind of park with wide stairways leading up a large hill just north of the city center. There is a sculpture park at the base. Climbing the steps, you can see Mount Ararat (4) quite well. It was still snow-capped in June.

Baklava was on the dessert menu at lunch. I have never really liked Baklava, but now I know what is supposed to taste like. My previous experience had been with overly sweet, mushy baklava. The one I had today was served warm, with a crispy crust and a not-too-sweet mixture of flakey crust inside with a nice blend of honey, egg and nuts.

The Blue Mosque was next. There was a large police presence here, although I'm not sure why. The mosque was built about 250 years ago, when this area of Armenia was ruled by Persia (modern-day Iran). The mosque is housed within a larger complex with an courtyard in a busy part of the city. The traffic noise fades quickly as you step into the courtyard.

I quietly slipped off my shoes and entered the mosque itself. There was only one other person present, a man sitting by the entrance. I wandered about for a few minutes admiring the interior design and carpet. As I took a picture, the man sitting by the entrance  apologized for not greeting me. He said he thought I was an Iranian (5) coming to pray rather than a visitor. He told me about the Mosque's architecture and history. The mosque had been a museum during Soviet times and had been refurbushed with help from the Iranian government for re-use as a worship space by the Shia Muslim population in Yerevan. He invited me back at sunset to join him in breaking the Ramadan fast (6).

There was a free concert with the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra this evening at Khachaturian Hall (7) featuring some very young (probably about 8 to 14 years old) musical prodigies playing movements from Piano, Violin and 'Cello concertos. It was great to see a pianist who looked to be about 9 years old go through the formalities of shaking hands with the concert master, etc.

Yerevan also has a large Soviet-era central square surrounded by government buildings. The city seems to have avoided the sterility problem I have observed with other large plazad. Perhaps this is because of the large fountain that spouts and changes colors in synchrony with music each night, or the large number of sitting places in the square. I also like that Yerevan has a large number of drinking water fountains and benches with the city name scattered throughtout the city.

(1) This is UK style, even though Armenia drives on the same side of the road as the US. The driver said cars with the steering wheel on the wrong side are about US $800 cheaper. There is a glut of used right-side-drive cars from Japan, making these cars cheaper. The Japanese people apparently like new cars. By my rough estimate, about 25% of cars in Armenia,are right-side drive.

(2) You can normally just buy a railway ticket the day of travel, but I wanted to be sure I got a sleeper berth. Only once have I been unable to get a train ticket: from Uzhorod to Solotvino, Ukraine. The minibus ride I took instead reminded me why I prefer trains.

(3) The central railway station is not really central. It is a mile or so south of the city center.

(4) According to the locals, Mt. Ararat (a) is where Noah's Ark came to rest upon the receding of the waters after the Biblical flood. 

(5) During my travels, people have thought I was Irish and German, but never Iranian.

(6) While I did return, I did not see the man who invited me, so I did not enter and break bread. While I am game for many things, entering a mosque in a country where I do speak any either of the common local languages (Aremian or Russian), nor Farsi nor Arabic, then sitting down and eating with strangers was a stretch even for me!

(7) Aram Khachaturian is probably the best-known Armenian symphonic composer best known for his frenatic piece "Sabre Dance."

(a) Due to the vissisitudes of history,  Ararat is now on Turkish territory, although it is still an important symbol in Armenia. When the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic put Ararat on its official seal, the Turkish government objected that the Armenians should not officially use a symbol of something that did not belong to them. According to local lore, Moscow (which ruled Armenia at the time) responded that they did not object to the crescent moon being on Turkey's flag, even though the moon is not in Turkey.

Central Station, Yerevan

Sculpture at the Cascades Complex

The Cascades Complex

The Blue Mosque 

Carpet Detail, Blue Mosque

Khachaturian Hall

Caucuses etc: Day in Minsk

Sunday, June 4, 2017.

Morning flight to Minsk, Belarus; 35 minutes gate to gate (1). I took the bus to the edge of town and caught the metro. There was no tourist info booth at the airport, so I had no map of Minsk, but I figured I would get off the train where the two metro lines met, which I presumed would be centrally located. I emerged into an enormous Soviet-era central plaza flanked by grandious government buildings. I always find these communist-era grand plazas rather sterile (2).

I found a more active neighborhood nearby (upper town) and sat outdoors for lunch. A family was sitting nearby. The father and daughter left for a few minutes and returned with a large bouqet of red roses for the mother/wife, who was quite pleased.

Near the restaurant, I saw a sign for a horse tram museum, and went to take a quick look. I think the attendant was pleased that someone came to visit and she seemed to understand my pidgin Russian for "one ticket please."

A long walk took me to Victory park and the museum of the Great Patriotic War (i.e., World War 2). The first exhibit hall discussed Germany's invasion of  Poland in 1939 (3). There is a fairly accurate (but small) exhibit on the American provision of war matériel and the bravery of British sailors in delivering these supplies to Soviet Arctic ports. As the various phases of the war progress, you reach higher levels in the building, but the museum is rarher dark inside. At the end, you enter a grand rotunda with a large glass dome. On the sunny day I was there, the room was bathed in brilliant light, which had a very uplifting effect (as I assume the architect intended).

A walk to rhe other side of town led to the building where Lee Harvey Oswald lived when he defected to the Soviet Union, before he returned to the US and assasinated President Kennedy (4). A quick visit to the cat "museum" to play with some cats, and then it was back to the airport for the night flight to Yerevan, Armenia. I helped the old woman next to me on the flight who did not know how to buckle or unbuckle her seat belt!

(1) Vilnius to Mink is just over 100 miles. I would normally take the train such a short distance, but arrival in Belarus by any means other than by plane to Minsk requires the hassle and expense of getting a visa ahead of time. You can visit for up to 5 days visa-free flying into Minsk.

(2) There are similar overly-large and communist-era sterile central squares I've visited in Tirana, Albania and Chisinau, Moldova. Such large squares and grand boulevards can also make it easier to put down insurrections should the need arise (a).

(3) The Soviets also invaded Poland in accord with the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact in which the Germans and Soviets agreed to divide Poland between them. A few panels later, the exhibit discussed how the Soviet Union "reunited western Belarus," which is an interesting euphemism for the Soviet invasion of Poland.

(4) There is no indication on the building of Oswald's residence here. I Googled what to do in Minsk during lunch and the address of the apartment came up. According to a New York Times article in 2012, the KGB closely monitored Oswald while he was in Minsk because they had no idea why he had defected (b).

(a) Some believe the grand boulevards of Paris were designed by Haussmann in the late 1800s for the same purpose, as Paris had experienced a number of revolts in the 1800s.

(b) "Defected" is a word from the cold war we don't use much anymore.

The Minsk Metro

The Empty Grand Square in Minsk

At the Horse Tram Museum

American Medical Supplies delivered to the USSR during WW 2

Sunlit Rotunda at WW 2 Museum

Lee Harvey Oswald's Address in Minsk

At the Cat Museum 

(which is just a place to play with cats)

Caucuses etc: to Vilnius

Saturday, June 7, 2017

I took the night flight to Oslo where I had a 3.5 hour layover before connecting to Vilnius, Lithuania. I looked at the rail map in the airport terminal. There is a town nearby called Eidsvoll with trains from the airport every half hour. I guessed they would return every half hour as well, so I hopped on the train just to get out of the airport. 

Eidsvoll turned out to be a pleasant little town at the southern tip of Mjøsa Lake. I enjoyed a walk in the town and sitting by the lake watching the boats. As expected, there were trains every half hour back to the airport, where I caught the flight to Vilnius.

The airport in Vilnius was small, but very pleasant. It looked much more like a train station than an airport. The access to the airport was also very pedestrian friendly. I took a short walk to the train nearby for the 8 minute ride to central station.

After checking into the hotel, I went for a walk. As I was passing a non-descript church, organ music with a choir was drifting out. I poked my head in for a listen. Inside the Holy Spirit Church there was an elaborate ceremony going on with singing and incense (capes and drapes and smells and bells). The church was jam-packed with people. Although the service was in Lithuanian, I thought I knew where we were in the service, but something seemed a bit off. I also noticed that a bishop was presiding and there were a large number of well dressed kids in their early teens. I had stumbled upon a Catholic confirmation ceremony.

After dinner, I walked to the top of fortress hill. The hill and the bend in the river were defensible and fortifiable, which is why Vilnius is located where it is.

Lake Mjøsa at Eidsvoll, Norway

The Arrivals Hall at Vilnius Airport

Holy Spirit Church, Vilnius

The Archbishop Performing the Confirmation Ceremony

Fortress Hill at Sunset

Bulgaria &c: Budapest

March 16, 2017

The train to Budapest stopped at Curtici to clear outbound Romanian immigration. I said "bona ziua" to the officer, who asked if I spoke Romanian. I said no, only three words: bona ziua (hello), moltsumesc (thank you), and papanaş (a Romanian dessert that is something like a creamy jelly donut). He had a laugh about the third Romanian word I knew.

A man sitting across the aisle from me had a 1/5 of some brown liquor that was 40% alcohol. Within 3 hours, he had drained the bottle.

Upon arrival at Budapest Keleti station (1), I walked to the hotel and then walked to find a place for lunch. At lunch, I asked the owner of the restaurant what kind of wine he had served me (the wine was quite tasty). He rattled off a name too fast for me to understand, then said it is his favorite wine, and he has at least two bottles a day at home. I hope he does not live alone!

A bike tour of Pest (2) was next on the agenda. Being so early in the season, the group was just the guide and I. We pedaled out to the area of the city that was the site of the 1896 exposition. The exposition was supposed to be in 1894 to mark the 1,000 year anniversary of the arrivals of the Hungarians (Magyars) in the area. When delays arose in preparing the exposition buildings, historians were asked to recalculate the Magyar's arrival date to be 896, 1,000 years before the expedition was ready!

There was a castle that that was designed to represent the various architectural styles of Hungary (which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time). I said that one of the towers reminded me of the town of Sigişoara (3) in Romania which I had visited two years before. As it happens, the tower in Budapest was a replica of one in Sigişoara, which the Hungarians assert was part of Hungary at the time (4).

The tower at the 1896 Exhibition Palace based on a tower at Sigişoara.

The House of Terror is in this area. The building was used to interrogate people by both the Nazis and the State Police during the communist era. Small pictures of those killed in the building have been placed below the windows.

Pictures of victims on the exterior of the house of terror

We also visited the Parliament building. In the late 1800s, there was a architectural competition to design the Parliament building. There were three entries, and the selection committee liked all three so they built them all. The first prize winner became Parliament, the second prize design became The Hungarian Museum of Ethnography, and the third prize winner now houses the Agriculture Ministry.

                    Exterior of Parliament

                         My bike tour guide

Throughout the city, there are various reminders of the 1956 invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union. Hungary had begun to chart a separate course from the Soviet communism model. The Soviets were not pleased and invaded Hungary to ensure that it remained a Soviet client state.

           Memorial of the 1956 Soviet Invasion

In the evening, I attended a concert by the Budapest Festival Orchestra, which performed Mendelsohn's Italian Symphony and Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. The concert was at the Bartok Bela (5) Concert hall, a modern venue on the south side of town.

(1) Keleti station was the site of a large migrant camp during the European refugee crisis in the summer of 2015.

(2) Budapest is actually two places: topograpgically flat Pest on the east bank of the Danube, and hilly Buda on the west bank.

(3) Sigişoara is best known as the birthplace of Vlad Tepeş, who served as the basis of Dracula in the novel by Bram Stoker.

(4) The Magyars (as Hungarians call themselves) have never forgiven the world for the Treaty of Trianon, which defined Hungary's borders upon the disillusion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the first World War. The treaty left a large number of ethnic Hungarians outside the country's borders, especially in Romania and Northern Serbia.

(5) Bela Bartok is Hungary's best known classical music composer. In Hungarian (as in Chinese), the family name generally comes before the given name; hence the Bartok Bela Concert hall.

Bulgaria &c: Timisoara

March 15, 2017

Early morning train (3:35) to Craiova. There was thick fog on arrival, with many arriving trains blasting their horns to warn of their impending arrival. Not to be outdone, the train drivers in the station began replying with their own horn blasts in an ad-hoc competition. The connecting train passed by the Danube on the way to Timisoara.

        Morning fog at Craiova Train Station

 Passing the Danube. Serbia is to the left,  Romania to the right

Upon arrival at Timisoara Gara De Nord, I had a very pleasant walk to the hotel. The city center is quite compact, and has a number of parks, gardens, and pedestrian promenades. The tallest structure in town is the spire of the Orthodox Cathedral.

            The Orthodox Cathedral, Timisoara

The National Opera Theatre was performing Scripcarul pe Acoperiş. I was not familiar with this work and it had no obvious translation. I looked at the cast and there were characters such as Tevya, Tzeitel and Yentl; so, it was "Fiddler on the Roof"  While the character names and pronunciation may sound very foreign to us, they sound familiar in Eastern Europe (1), much closer to where the events depicted in the musical play actually ocurred.

I got a ticket for a loge seat. The usher was quite nice and told me the view was not very good, but that I could move. I went up to the second balcony, where I would prefer to be anyway. The National Opera Theatre building was quite nice inside, with many interior details typical of the late 1800s.

        Corridor at the National Opera Theatre

         Stairway detail, National Opera Theatre

The show was very well done. Even though it was performed in Romanian, I was able to follow the story reasonably well. From somewhere deep within the cob-webbed recesses of my brain, I was even able to find the English words to the choruses of many of the songs.

(1) Romanian is a romance language, derived from Latin (like French, Italian, Spanish etc.). However, the pronuniciation has been influenced by the Slavic languages (e.g., Russian, Bulgarian, Serbia) common in neighboring countries. In the 1800s, Romanian was commonly written in the Cyrillic alphabet (used for the Slavic languages), which included a letter for the "ts" or "tz" sound: ц.

Bulgaria &c: Belogradchik

March 14, 2017

I took the morning train from Sofia to Gara Oreshec. Northwest of Sophia, the train passes through the deep gorge of the Iskar River, which is so narrow in some place the two railway tracks are on opposite sides of the river.

                   The Iskar River Gorge

The route became flatter after Vratsa, with the Stara Planina mountains to the west. I had my Bulgaria map and a print-out of the train schedule on the seat next to me. As we got nearer to my stop, I ticked off the stations with a pencil to ensure I did not miss my stop. The conductor noticed, picked up the schedule and stared at it for a long time. As well as I could, I told him I was getting off at Gara Oreshec, then going to Belogradchik. He came by as the train approached Gara Oreshec to ensure I got off at the right stop.

Because my time in Belogradchik was limited and there no public transit available, I arranged to have a local guide (Anggel) pick me up at the station. He said very few foreign tourists come to this part of Bulgaria. Belogradchik is a short ride away up into the hills, and the name means small white village. The town's main claim to fame was that it was home to the factory that made most of the phones used by the eastern block countries during the communist era.

There is a fort in the town that takes advantage of the natural rock formations on top of the hill. The location had has been used for fortification by the Romans, Bulgars and Ottomans over the centuries. We were accompanied on our tour by Sarah, the local dog who always seemed to know we were going next. The guide took me off the official paths, scrambling up and over rocks to some very impressive views.

                    The Belogradchik Fort

                  Sarah, my unofficial guide

We then used Anggel' s 1993 Land Rover (with right-side, England-style steering wheel) to drive in the mud roads behind the fort. There are various rock formations that look like people and animals. 

                      Elephant head rock

We had a quick lunch at a restaurant overlooking the rocks. There was something familiar about the view, and I realized that a music video by a Bulgarian Gothic Metal band I like (https://youtu.be/tKpvzjzCQXg) was filmed at a location in view of the window. My guide said he remembered the day they filmed the video; he was below the rocks where they were filming and was wondering who was playing the drums.

Back to the station to catch the train for Vidin. From there, and after a bit of haggling about the fare with fingers and numbers written on scraps of paper, I took a cab across the New Danube River Bridge to Calafat, Romania. Calafat looks like it's best says are behind it, but there some grand-looking buildings still around.

Church in Calafat, Romania

Bulgaria &c. Mountain Train Back to Sofia

Monday, March 13, 2017

I caught the 10:10 train from Dobrinishte to Septemvri. This is a narrow guage (1) mountain railway starting at 834 meters elevation at Dobrinishte. From here to Balitsa (about 25 kilometers), the train is used mostly by locals (mainly older people and students).

                    The Train at Dobrinishte

The coaches are heated with steam, with the excess released through pipes out from the bottom side of the cars. At Balitsa, a train came from the other direction, and a steamy mist enshrouded the narrow platform and the trains.

                     Trains meet at Balitsa

After Balitsa (elevation 773 meters) the serious climbing starts. There are a number of times the train does a complete circle, crossing over itself to gain elevation. As we climbed the mountains, it began snowing (a wet Spring snow that clung to the trees). We reached the highest station on the line (and the highest in the Balkans) at Avramovo, at an elevation of 1,267 meters.

         The highest rail station in the Balkans

The descent then began, with the tracks at one point spiralling through 540 degrees to lose elevation, passing through numerous tunnels on the way. I had opened the window to get a better view. The conductor was sitting a few rows in front of me; she turned around and started talking to me in Bulgarian. I wondered: Was she scolding me for the open window? Asking me to sit down (I was kneeling on the seat to get a better view because the window opened from the top)? Neither. She pointed to the lights and was asking whether I wanted her to turn on the lights as we passed through the many tunnels. I said "no thanks" in Bulgarian.

       Entering one of the 35 tunnels on the line

A friend told me about a novel by the Japanese writer Kawabata called "Snow Country" that begins with:

“The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.”

From Tsvetino onward, we picked up some more local passengers. After Velingrad, we passed through a beautiful narrow gorge before arriving at Septemvri, and a connection to the standard guage line back to Sofia.

(1) The standard rail guage (i.e., width between the rails) used in most of North America, Europe and China is 4 feet 8 1/2 inches. The rails on this Bulgarian line line are 760 mm, or about 2 feet, 5 15/16 inches apart (sometimes called the Bosnian guage). Narrow- guage lines are most common on mountainous terrain where construction costs (especially related to the width and height of the tunnels) would otherwise be too expensive.