A friend just forwarded to me a link to an article which lists several points that were validated between the Turkish and Armenian authorities last week in the agreement of "mutual understanding." Below is the complete article published by Trend News:In a nut shell the Treaty of Kars defined the modern day borders of Armenia, nullifying the expansive borders of the envisioned greater Armenia devised by US President Woodrow Wilson in the Treaty of Sevres. Within those boundaries were several Western Armenian lands and an ample border with the Black Sea in the Trebizond region. 

Labels: Armenian Genocide, Politics

I wrote an article recently that was published by the Armenian Weekly about the agreement of "mutual understanding" that was signed a few days ago. Here's an excerpt:

A New York Times article that appeared on April 23 confirmed that a framework, defined as a “roadmap,” had been agreed upon by Armenia and Turkey assuring that continuing, mutually beneficial relations between them were forthcoming. However, the Turkish side insisted that the Armenian-Turkish border would remain closed.

“The two parties have achieved tangible progress and mutual understanding in this process and they have agreed on a comprehensive framework for the normalization of their bilateral relations in a mutually satisfactory manner,” a joint statement read.

As of April 23 both the Turkish and Armenian foreign ministries refused to comment on the details of the agreement.

Labels: Politics

Photos of Tsitsernakaberd Genocide Memorial, April 24, 2009 by Christian Garbis

Labels: Armenian Genocide

As I wrote briefly in my previous post I found a magnificent Armenian wine called Karmin, produced by Vozkevaz Winery located in Aragatsotn. I don’t know how this wine eluded me before but I’m ecstatic that I finally became acquainted with this particular vintage from 2005.

Karmin is a robust, full-bodied dry wine produced from the Kakhet grape. It has hints of black currant, dark chocolate and fresh walnut, followed by a slight cantaloupe finish. Although I love what Maran Winery has been bottling, the 2005 Karmin is perhaps the best mass-produced Armenian wine that I have had to date. And priced at just above $5 a bottle, it’s a steal.

The other day in a supermarket on Mashdots Street I stumbled upon another dry wine produced by Vozkevaz, the 2004 Karmreni, which is a lighter, fruiter wine, reminiscent of a good Areni. Although it’s also made from Kakhet grapes, it doesn’t come close to the 2005 Karmin in terms of flavor and character. Judging from what I saw at the factory store on Gomidas Street (the sign simply reads “Armenian Wines – In Vino Veritas”), Vozkevaz certainly has a wide selection of wines, including semi-sweets and whites. Some are very young, immature wines while others have been aged for several years, a decade or more. I still have a lot of experimenting to do, and it seems the folks at the factory store are more than happy to oblige me. The other night when I went back there to buy the Karmin the store manager offered me (insisted is more like it) another Muscat to taste, and he invited me back to try other wines. In Armenia I have only sampled wine in villages, never before in stores, so it’s a unique place to shop.

Now a word about what Armenian wines to avoid. By all means—and this is a must from someone with a considerable amount of experience—do not purchase the Areni 2004 or the Vernashen (no production date unsurprisingly) from Vedi Alco, unless you want to have a splitting headache five minutes after taking a sip. The lame Areni is identified by a red label with the word Areni printed in large, white capital letters on a checkered background, presumably a design that is supposed to represent an Armenian carpet. You cannot mistake it for a different Areni. The nasty Vernashen, which can be easily mistaken for poison, has a mostly black label with a poor-quality color photo of an ambiguous Armenian church. These wines are to be avoided at all costs. They are found in virtually all grocery stores and supermarkets, and for some reason you will find them even in good restaurants as well as in people’s homes. If you’re visiting someone and they only have the Vedi Alco wines on the table, drink juice or something else instead. Even soda is better than that crap.

A note about the demise of quality—when I first visited Armenia nine years ago I drank an excellent vodka made from wheat distilled by Vedi Alco. At the time it was better than any Russian vodka I had been exposed to—clean, crisp, no harsh aftertaste, no headache in the morning. I was so impressed with it I even took some back with me to Boston. That vodka has since been discontinued, and the other offerings available now by the factory are just about equivalent to moonshine. And lately each time I drink a Kilikia beer, which was one of my favorite ales, it tastes and even looks different, sometimes pale like Budweiser. For some Armenian companies producing wine and spirits nowadays quantity takes huge precedence over quality, so you have to be very careful with what you select.

If you must drink Vernashen, try one produced by Getnadoun Winery. It is a good semi-sweet wine with some vibrant, berry-like characteristics. Or else find a semi-sweet produced by Vozkevaz; you most likely won’t be disappointed.

The Karmin is calling, back to the pour....

Labels: Food and Drink, Personal Experiences

At early evening on Sunday I was on my way to Hrazdan in my blue Niva with my friend Jason Sohigian, who was visiting his wife’s family for two weeks. He wanted to take some shots of the thermo power plant there, which makes electricity from natural gas, as he was doing research for a paper he needs to write -- he’s studying Environmental Management part-time at Harvard. On the way there we suddenly heard something dragging along the pavement. We pulled over to the side of the road and saw to our dismay that the muffler had dropped, but not completely. A piece of rubber which connects the tail pipe to the undercarriage finally wore out, and it seemed that the muffler itself was separating from the exhaust pipe judging from the 45 degree angle at which it was tilted downward. Conveniently enough—I won’t say miraculously as pieces of junk are always strewn along the roadside, sometimes hidden under broken asphalt or semi-decayed leaves in our case—we found a long, flat fastening wire which served perfectly to attach the tail pipe to the undercarriage, as we found a hole through which the wire could be passed and looped around the pipe. Just to be extra safe we also tied an old motor belt that had also been discarded. Jason managed to do all this work within a five-minute time span and we were off again. It was still light out so we were able to take about 50 or so shots between us with our cameras.

So Monday morning I went down to the garage where I always take my car which is situated beside the circus, run by Karen Hovakimyan and his brothers.  All of them are great guys and they’ve been helping me with auto repairs for nearly four years now. They even saved me thousands of dollars on a Niva I was interested in buying which they found had been in a serious automobile accident just by inspecting the chassis. It was obvious that the muffler had to be welded to the exhaust pipe. I purchased the rubber part needed to hold the thing in place while they broke off the muffler as it was already hanging by a thread at that point and put it in the Niva’s rear cargo space.

Karen’s brother Ernest, who sold me his Niva exactly one year ago, recommended a guy named Lyova who specialized in installing exhaust systems in Arabkir. His garage, located a couple blocks east of Gomidas Avenue on Gulbenkian Street, was practically suspended over the gorge there. When I asked him how he was he unexpectedly told me that he hadn’t been feeling well, and the doctors had not been able to find anything during their examinations. Even an endoscopic probe found nothing. But his spirits were high enough that he could figure out what needed to be done with the car. One look at the muffler convinced him that it needed to be replaced. A hole smaller than a dime had formed on top and there were some rust spots in several places, especially on the underside. It was typical of factory-manufactured parts he told me and said a replacement part which could be purchased at an official Lada parts store wouldn’t last a couple of years before it rotted out as well. I’ll have to say that I was relieved when he told me that he makes his own homemade mufflers. He showed me something that he said was made of solid metal, like iron supposedly, which had been spray-painted silver. He guaranteed that it would last me a minimum of three years, and it would survive probably five years or even more. He told me that his muffler and the one I could purchase from the store were priced nearly the same but the Russian-made part would show signs of wear only after four weeks. It took about one minute for him to convince me to weld it on so I could get out of there. The last thing I wanted to do was call a taxi and convince the driver to take me to the Lada auto parts store at the other end of Gomidas Avenue to bring back a muffler. That would have been a hard sell, and then there would be the added aggravation of finding out they were all out of mufflers because of a region-wide “deficit,” which transpires for certain parts occasionally. I tapped lightly on his muffler and it seemed really solid, while the old muffler made a tinny sound when I rapped on it, like an empty coffee can. When I asked him how much he wanted he told me that the muffler would cost 22,000 dram, or about $60 with today’s exchange rate, while labor was another 3,000.

I knew there was an HSBC bank about a five-minute walk down the street at the intersection with Gomidas, so I headed towards there. After I withdrew some cash I decided to walk up a half block to a place that made excellent khachaburi—a puff-pastry most often filled with cheese or other things like mushrooms or even beans, depending on where you go. As I walked up the street I noticed a store which sold a vast selection of Armenian wines, which I had seen while driving by many times but I never had the opportunity to visit. I figured my chance finally came so I went inside to see what they had. It was an adequately sized store with bottles of wines everywhere, and also some Armenian liquors displayed along the walls. The woman asked me what kind of wine I was looking for, and I told her that I usually drink dry wine, mostly Areni. Then she asked whether I wanted to drink something better than ordinary Areni. This question intrigued me because I wasn’t aware that other dry Armenian wines could be had. She suggested that I try a wine called Karmin, made by a tiny, unobtrusive winery called Vozkevaz. I’ve never been in any store in Yerevan that offered wine tasting, so by that point I was anticipating something divine, yet skeptical that what she was about to serve wasn’t going to compare with the usual wines from Maran Winery which I swear by as being the best bottled offerings in the country.  She poured a few drops into a wine glass, which I lifted to my nose, then I smelled the bouquet just to make sure it was reminiscent of wine and sipped. The wine exploded in my mouth. It was an intense, complex wine high in tannins, not fruity although lively as Areni often is. It reminded me of a good French wine, like Côtes Du Rhône, maybe not exactly on par, but it was very good. And priced at only 1900 dram a bottle! Then she offered me to try Muscat, which is a dessert wine, light brown in color, and something that didn’t impress me the previous time I tried it. The Muscat was in a thin, transparent liqueur bottle, which seemed odd as it’s usually found in ordinary wine bottles.  When I muttered that I don’t like Muscat she retorted that I didn’t have to like it but I should try it nevertheless. Muscat is considered semi-sweet wine, but this offering had a consistency of olive oil; it was smooth, gliding down the back of my throat, yet it wasn’t terribly sugary, but delicate. That Muscat was also made by Vozkevaz, which was a sign that I was about to switch favorite wineries. I told her I would be back.

I finally made it to the khachaburi spot and bought something called samsa, which was a turnover filled with pulled chicken, finely chopped cilantro and onions. After the wine it made a tasty snack. By the time I made it back to Lyova’s garage nearly 30 minutes later he had already finished. The car indeed sounds a decibel or two quieter than it did before the other muffler gave out. He revealed to me the magic ingredient that made his muffler so special but I had no idea what he was talking about since he was using the Russian word. Even if he happened to know the Armenian word for the mystery metal used to do the muffling and whatever else mufflers do I most likely wouldn’t have understood. But at least I know who the go-to man is whenever I need soldering work done on the car. Hopefully that won’t be necessary, but he told me he also does some limited electrical work on “Soviet” cars so undoubtedly he will be of assistance to me in the future since these jalopies always seem to have glitches in the system. Despite the inconvenience of having a bum muffler it turned out to be an efficient, easy-going day, which is always a lovely happenstance in this nutty town full of neurotics.

More about the wine in my next post. 

Labels: Food and Drink, Personal Experiences

Lately I’ve been reminiscing about what it’s like to live in a multi-ethnic society. I grew up in the Boston area, where a cornucopia of cultures, characters, and cuisines thrives. The area is filled with recent or descendants of immigrants from countries like Ireland, Italy, India, South Korea, China, Japan, Brazil and Mexico. Yet here in Armenia, visiting Iranians and Indians are exotic. If you speak English or a European language in public you might as well be from another planet, insinuated by the gaping-mouth stares and chuckles.

There really isn’t much diversity here, probably because of the conservative traditions and stereotypes that are fostered from an early age. Armenians are for the most part friendly, and that trait is increasingly more apparent the farther away from Yerevan you drive. But city hospitality tends to reach a point beyond which it wanes. Eventually the prejudice and haughtiness are going to emerge. Especially against Americans, who are generally perceived as being silly and stupid for some odd reason.

Here in Armenia diversity is apparent by the fashion and style people choose. In this society nearly all men look alike. The vast majority of them for instance wear black pants--that’s a give-- not to mention black jackets, shirts or both. Their hair is cropped short and they are almost always clean shaven, although it is common practice to wear a one or two-day old beard. So if you wear colors as well as clothing reflecting current casual fashion trends and let your hair grow long, you’re already making a statement. Men who wear beards, or even mustaches in the style of William Saroyan, are indeed few and far between—they are usually older, I would say at least 40. And young women who are roughing it with little or no make up while wearing looser fitting garments are indeed trendsetters. They are in contrast to the countless women who look like they’re hooking, wearing skin-tight pants, ultra high-heeled shoes, teased hair and cheap cosmetics caked on their faces. I really don’t understand why some women here choose to make themselves appear like prostitutes quite honestly; such women are very provocatively dressed. But when I see a woman wearing stylish, simple comfortable clothing I privately applaud her. She’s striving, even daring to be diverse that way, odd as it may sound.

I think many people also attempt to stand out with personal material wealth. More and more people are driving cars with each passing day, so owning a vehicle is no longer that unique as it was five years ago, unless of course you have something exotic and inaccessible by most Armenians who can afford to drive. Owning a Mercedes-Benz is still considered prestigious, and I’m sure most drivers aspire to have one. But why drive a Mercedes or BMW for that matter if you can drive a Bentley, Porsche or Maserati instead? The same applies for mobile phones. Nokia is a very popular brand here and the company’s phones can fetch several hundred dollars, or even well more than $1000 based on the prices I’ve seen. Materialism partly exemplifies diversity in Armenian society for sure.

Naturally foreigners and tourists are also signs of diversity, but with the worldwide economic crisis and an expected downturn in tourism they will undoubtedly be much fewer in number this year.

Several years ago after I graduated university back home and was trying to figure out what to do next I began working in an Italian restaurant as a host, showing people to their tables and so forth. The kitchen staff were virtually all immigrants from Brazil, Guatemala and Mexico. Many were seeking new opportunities, but some were simply saving up money. One guy who was making salads and appetizers all day long owned farmland in Guatemala. His goal was to earn enough cash to buy a pickup truck so he could use it to transport crops grown on his land. I remember there was a rivalry between the Spanish speakers and the Brazilians; they didn’t get along very well together. But it was great working with them and learning from them. Our conversations were always limited, with gestures and exaggerated facial expressions taking the place of words. And basically, they always made working there fun for everyone around them, regardless of whether there was a language barrier. Those same experiences I was having that the time were being shared simultaneously by thousands of other young men like me throughout the US, all in the same situation as I was.

Here in Armenia, to learn about life lessons and hear alternative, diverse viewpoints you have to speak with people over the age of 45. Those I know actually have modest roots in small towns or villages. Yet I have the privilege to work with a handful of intelligent guys under 30 who always seem to have something interesting to say. Many youth that I’ve spoken to are limited in conveying anything insightful.

Thinking back to days past occasionally makes me wonder how long I could—or anyone for that matter who is not born in Armenia—live in a mono-ethnic society in which people bow down to conformity and worry excessively about keeping up conservative appearances. For a change of pace, to whimsically lose yourself in a short-lived fantasy, you can visit the few ethic restaurants--one Indian, one Japanese, one Italian, one French, no more than four Chinese, or a Tex-Mex place that serves Margaritas made from instant sour mix. However, occasionally there are classical or popular music concerts given by international performers. But my favorite solution to get away from the mundane and monotony is still to jump into my Niva and drive as far away as I possibly can from Yerevan. If there’s no ethnic diversity to be had, I’ll gladly settle for environmental diversity instead.

Labels: Fashion, Personal Experiences, Thoughts and Musings

On the one-year anniversary of President Serge Sarkisian’s taking office several protesters hanging around the top of the Northern Boulevard were attacked or arrested during the last couple of days. Seems that the government has had enough of people loitering, singing patriotic songs or whatever else they happen to be doing all day long. Nearby restaurant owners are complaining, not that it matters much since it’s not exactly a bustling area to begin with. RFE/RL published an article with more information about journalists being beaten up, random people being arrested, and so forth.

This news is no longer shocking; rather describes a routine, expected way of life. What is shocking, however, is this continuous effort to show support for Levon Ter-Petrossian when he no longer cares about the presidency.  I’m not sure he cares about his candidacy in the upcoming Yerevan mayoral elections. He doesn’t even hold political rallies any more, which is strange considering that the elections are about seven weeks away. Quite honestly, I can no longer really take his supporters seriously, with few exceptions like for instance former Prime Minister Alexander Arzoumanyan who seems to have a raging fire in his belly and won’t withstand nonsensical proceedings held against him in the courtroom.  There’s no point in risking being arrested or beaten when the leader you are apparently supporting is oblivious or apathetic to the protests going on in the name of his cause. He seems to have had his fun and has crawled back into his stale shell in his mansion above the Hrazdan gorge.

 I don’t believe that Armenians really want things to be different from the status quo. They are clearly divided on the issue of regime change. If there was such a drive to oust the government it would have happened last year. It didn’t happen because people were too shook up about the events of March 1 or they didn’t have the spirit to continue. But if you want change bad enough, you have to fight for it, you have to “struggle until the end” as the opposition was so vociferously charging back then. I’m no longer convinced that the Armenian people indeed want change. So long as they can buy their cars, mobile phones and bread-- not to mention manage to stay out of trouble-- they’re happy.  Maybe that’s enough. It seems that way to me at least.

Labels: Politics