Aghveran, which is located in Armenia's Kotayk region (near the border with Aragatsotn) about a 40 minute drive from Yerevan, is one of the most picturesque areas I have ever visited in this country. The village is situated at the end of a long, narrow gorge through which a river runs.

Alongside the river are several picnic areas, and they all have shaded tables, playgrounds, spots for grilling and access to the water.  But as is the case in most of rural Armenia, if you need to use the toilet there's a bit of roughin' it involved.


For the most part the entire stretch of the river bank is forested, and the slopes are covered with trees, grasses and wild flowers.





It's been five years now that I have been going to the Aghveran area for a Sunday picnic, usually with a large, feisty group of people. In my experience there are three things that are mandatory at any Armenian summer afternoon feast: barbecue of any kind insulated by at least four leaves of lavash (today we had fish exclusively), sliced tomatoes and cucumbers that optionally can be served as a salad,  and, you guessed it, vodka. So long as those items are on the table, everyone is pleased. A guest one or two minutes into the meal might start criticizing the chef whose comments will be supported by some and vehemently opposed by others, but usually after a shot or two everyone forgets about how little salt was used in the meat marinade.





The gorgeous, peaceful afternoon in the country was another refreshing reminder about why I love Armenia so much and the reason for why I chose to live here. I really don't understand what everyone in the diaspora is waiting for.



All photos taken by Christian Garbis.

Labels: Nature, Personal Experiences, Photography

Yesterday afternoon I received an e-mail from the guy I work for announcing that the office would not open until 3:30 pm, but all employees were encouraged to call in to verify just before that time. Seems that maintenance work has to be done somewhere on Armenia's electricity grid. It wasn't clear to me what specific areas of Yerevan would be hit by the power outage because I didn't watch the local news and rarely do, and nothing about it, of course, was online.

Rather than doing these repairs in the evening so that business for likely countless thousands of Armenians in Yerevan and other areas would not be impaired, they've decided to do the work in the middle of the day. That means shopkeepers and other businesses that depend on computer networks to operate will lose profits from transactions they could have made during a 6.5 hour period.

The employees of my workplace are expected to make up the time somehow, perhaps staying an hour later each day for a week or longer, but that's no big deal. What's odd is that the Armenian government is allowing this prolonged power outage to take place at all, knowing full well that the livelihood of many people will be impacted to some degree. Yet power outages are not rare in Yerevan; sometimes the lights unexpectedly go out for an hour, possibly longer at some point during the day.

I don't know if there's any other country on earth claiming economic growth, during a period where much of the world is still struggling with the global recession of last year, that would allow something like this to happen. Armenia's National Statistics Service is claiming that the country experienced 8.8 percent growth in the first five months of 2010, while inflation went up 7.6 percent--that's a lot. Exactly how that growth is being manifested is naturally not clear given Armenia's history of surviving under the cloak of a "shadow economy."Meantime the tax authorities keep hassling small and medium-sized business, sometimes shutting them down for days until discrepancies are resolved. Oligarchic structures are left alone. And there's no numbers yet (I think) to indicate how much cash has entered the country in remittances during that period.

So the question remains: How can such growth exist if there are obstacles blocking legitimate business from being conducted?

Labels: Arts and Entertainment, Film and Art, Music, Personal Experiences

From the spacious balcony of my apartment there is a perfect bird's eye view of the water fountain on the corner of the street. It's one of these fountains that was installed around a dozen or so years ago in memory of someone in the neighborhood who passed away, according to my landlord.

At virtually every minute of the day you find people drinking from it, and sometimes they even wash up or fill plastic bottles. Depending on the time of day, I would guesstimate that on average someone approaches that fountain every 10 seconds. They even wait in line for up to a minute or longer. One of my wife's uncles claims that the water from this fountain is the best in Yerevan, and whenever he's in the center he makes a point of stopping by there. I don't know if they managed to tap into a spring or if it's just ordinary tap water, but when the chilly, bubbly jet rises into the back of your throat on a 90 degree day to instantly cool you down, you don't care about where the source is.

It's always been fascinating for me to observe people hover around the fountain like bees scoping out the nectar of orange blossoms. I've been meaning to photograph the entire sipping and washing process for a while now. And it's always peaceful (although I remember there was an argument over someone "hogging" the fountain last year).

All of the photos below were taken at various times of the day, from late morning to early evening, during the weekend. There were many great shots but I must have taken close to a hundred--here's some of the best ones.




This bald guy was very busy, with about six bottles to fill and his own endless thirst to quench. He must have been there for 15 minutes, all the while letting others have a sip, wash their fruit, whatever.



A cop came by to make sure everything was orderly. Here he wanted to be certain that the man's tomatoes and cucumbers were being washed properly.





Even Chi Chi got into the act at one point (although this photo and the three others came out overexposed, I wasn't paying attention at that moment to the aperture).





The woman washing the containers works at the fruit stand which is located directly below my balcony. She kept going back and forth.








That woman putting her hand over the spigot made the other two do the same. Very pushy lady.




This woman was drinking incognito. Perhaps she didn't want to be seen by the neighbors.






This last shot above was taken at around 12:30 am. In the late hours usually night owls and taxi drivers approach the fountain, once every few minutes or so. I was able to get the shot without a flash thanks to the bright arc lamps just across the street and on the corner.

All of these shots were taken using my trusty Pentax K100D Super DSLR. At one point I mounted one of my old zoom lenses that I bought years ago for my Pentax K1000 film camera. Both of them are great, solid cameras, I've taken wonderful photos with each one over the years. The only complaint with the K100D Super is that I cannot take black and white photos with the built-in settings; I have to convert color photos to grayscale during the photo editing process, which is essentially cheating.

I'll be posting more fun photos as the summer ripens....

Labels: Photography, Social and Cultural

I am trying to generate traffic to my other blog about Armenia, Footprints, which is sponsored by Hetq Online. Just over a year has passed since it went online and I still don't know what people honestly think about it, as feedback has generally been low.

Footprints differs from this Armenian blog in that I provide alternate viewpoints about current important political, social and environmental issues in Armenia. I try to be as objective as I can when weighing both sides of controversial subjects but inevitably my opinions, occasionally strongly biased, take precedence.

But the main goal from the onset was to generate a buzz and facilitate an exchange of opinions in the comments section for topics discussed, which regrettably has not yet happened to the extent that I hoped for.

There is much ado about the proposals for opening foreign language schools in Armenia now, and I've addressed the issue in two different articles. This is currently a very controversial subject, with mostly politicians, journalists and some ordinary citizens expressing their strong views about it.

Last year I presented my thoughts on the infamous Turkish-Armenian protocols, which have all but fizzled out.

I've also expressed my opinions about the opposition and what they should or shouldn't be doing, while trying to implement an objective voice. I was never happy about the sentencing of Armenian opposition activists as I thought they were by and large unfair, which is not to say that I support the opposition--I actually don't really care for either side. I tend to be critical of both the parties in opposition and the authorities who are or once were in power.

There's sometimes news about rumors that people like to spread, which are baseless more often than not; nevertheless it's interesting to examine them.

I also publish some photography on Footprints as well. Just before the New Year's I uploaded some interesting pictures about life in the open Armenian market.

If you do decide to visit the Footprints blog, please feel free to leave comments, either positive or negative so I can better gauge what I am doing right and what needs improvement.

This morning I finally took care of the vehicle inspection for my Niva, which is referred to as “tekh osmotr,” a Russian term. I found out from a fellow employee last Friday that the law has changed for this year regarding when the inspection sticker expires. In Armenia, if you do not get a new inspection sticker within twelve months of the expiration date you can potentially be fined 50,000 dram by the traffic police.

In years past as I described in my last post on this blog about car inspections in Armenia five years ago you had until August 31 to have the car inspected, which resulted in a mad rush to the bank for making the related payments. For 2009 I had my car inspected in May, so I was a bit uneasy about having to pay the fine. And if I was required to pay one, I wouldn’t necessarily know where to go to do so (I was assuming I would need to pay a visit to the department of motor vehicles division in Erebuni where I originally registered the car).

In any case, each year there is a ritual that every motorist (or a proxy) has to perform for the car inspection and payment of all the related fees. My car is registered in the “small” center of Yerevan, which means that I have to go to the district administrative building, or “taghabedaran” in Armenian, at the corner of Deryan and Sayat Nova Streets where I went with my wife for moral support, getting there promptly at 9:00am, when they opened for business. Inside are two hallways that veer off diagonally to the left and the right on either side of a grand staircase in the center of the lobby. I knew from experience that I had to go down the left corridor and enter the second to last office on the right—there must be a dozen or more offices along the way, and nearly all of the doors are closed with the exception of the one I visited.

Through a narrow window that you have to bend down to peek through was an attractive, young woman sitting at a computer, to whom I gave my vehicle registration, which is about the size of a credit card. She typed something on the computer keyboard and then on a small square piece of paper wrote “8000,” then handed me the paper and registration.

Next I had to enter the “post office” in the lobby, which is more of an administrative office to make various utility payments than a place to mail a letter. We got their a couple of minutes too soon, so we waited until the woman who works there opened the door, turn on her computer and wipe the dust off the counter before she was ready to receive our payments. I had to pay the “ecological tax” as well as other miscellaneous taxes or fees that people don’t really understand—they just pay the money and get the process over with. I was not an exception to this practice. I gave her 27,000 dram (including the 19,000 dram she asked from me) and received some receipts, which had vague information printed on them regarding what I exactly paid, although at first glance the items seemed detailed. Actually I think the required 8,000 dram is an excise tax and another amount is related to the actual inspection sticker—however much they cost individually I paid them both. The two receipts were printed in duplicate on a single sheet of paper each, so after placing a ruler down the middle of the sheets she ripped them in half against the edge and gave me my copies.

Then we went back to see the attractive woman and gave her the receipts plus my registration. She entered some additional information, stamped the receipts and we were out the door. It was all relatively painless taking only twenty minutes to accomplish, just as it was the last time I made these payments two years ago (my wife took care of it last year but forgot to pay the fees for the actual tekh osmotr which I then paid at the inspection station).

Two years ago the government decided to privatize the vehicle inspection process, meaning that although you still have to make payments at your local district administration building, you still need to pay additional fees, which could be bribes in disguise. One year I think I paid another 8,000 dram for the sticker although I had already done so, but was clueless after having made so many separate payments. Plus I was getting conflicting information from acquaintances about what to pay and how much. The woman at the post office told me that I had to go to the inspection station on Heratsi Street, located across from the Bellagio restaurant. Yet for the last two years I had gone to a different station located on Arshakuniants Street, found behind the Jermuk Group distribution center. I asked her why I couldn’t go there, and she replied that if I did I would have to go to a bank and make payments there for some odd reason. Since I really didn’t care where I went for the inspection, I told her never mind.

The inspection stations are open daily except Sundays from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm. So I decided to have the inspection done today before going to work—by the time I arrived there it was 9:50 am. Usually you have to drive your car into the garage and the “technicians” perform various tests, for emissions and I think alignment. They would park each axle of my car on some rollers and step on the gas to make them turn for some reason. Then you would have to pay other fees, like I previously mentioned, before they approved everything and gave you the sticker. This morning they didn’t waste their time with any of that. One of the two men working there, both middle aged, asked me to go inside and take a seat. Then he inquired whether there was anything wrong with the Niva, for instance the clutch, and if I was satisfied. I told him I was very pleased. He said that it was best to get down to it and they asked me to make two payments—one for the emissions and the other for something else I didn’t catch. The woman at the computer (also fairly attractive) asked me for my phone number, and that was it.

Next was the moment of truth—it was time to determine whether I had to pay the 50,000 dram fine. The man asked me if there was a “VI” printed on the sticker (meaning the sixth month), and if there wasn’t one he could “change it,” which I took to mean he already had some for July. Lucky for me, the sticker in my windshield did have a June expiration, so I was all set. Had I arrived on July 1, I would have been out about $130. Then I was off to work via the Monument neighborhood beside Victory Park.

By comparison, in Massachusetts getting a new sticker is a two-step process. First you have to make sure that your registration is valid, and if it isn’t you need to make a payment by mailing a check to the registry of motor vehicles—it expires every two or three years. Then you simply go to a gas station where they do inspections, give them your registration, and wait for them to check everything with your assistance, like all the lights, the emissions and so forth. The entire process takes about 15 minutes assuming there is no wait, and they even scrape off the old sticker to affix the new one (Armenian motorists have to do this). You make essentially one payment for the inspection, which includes all the service fees, emissions tests fees and state taxes. You don’t necessarily know where every cent is going to, but at least there is very little aggravation involved.

The process in Armenia is getting easier I have to admit—when I first did this about five years ago I had to sign several forms in triplicate with each signature needing to be stamped. That effort has thankfully been done away with. Hopefully by 2020, the tekh osmotr process with be streamlined even more. The total cost for the inspection and related taxes/fees was 32,000 dram, or around $83.

Labels: Bureaucracy and red tape in Armenia, Personal Experiences

This video was taken of Chi Chi with my cell phone, the Nokia N86 8MP, during her romp on the piece of land that I own, located in the village of Jrambar, Aragatsotn, about 45 kilometers north of Yerevan. I took my wife and father-in-law out there last weekend to breathe some fresh air.

A drinking water reservoir is located there, which is protected by state police, and I always have to get permission from them when I want to stroll around the area, enjoying the pristine nature. Although on the other side of the reservoir hidden high in the hills one or two--possibly more--oligarchs have residences, and I can always see Japanese SUVs with "pretty numbers" on their license plates jolt across the dam to get there. The area is simply gorgeous, and the most wonderful thing about it is the absence of development--no hotels, casinos, gaudy restaurants, nothing. Hopefully, no one will venture to touch it. Technically no one can, since its under government protection and the area must not be polluted. Then again, so are many wildlife reserves, and that doesn't keep the big shots from hunting.

Chi Chi cannot walk through the grass very well because of her diminutive height, as you can see from the video, so she essentially has to hop around like a bunny rabbit.

Labels: Armenian Dogs, Nature