I have been wanting to come here for a long time. Whenever my Armenian friends had the chance, they compared Yerevan to Moscow, and it wasn’t in favor of the latter. So, I decided to visit this city.
At the end of February, I caught myself constantly reading the news and not doing anything useful. After talking to my friends, I realized that this problem wasn’t unique to me, and the solution was to go somewhere. Armenia seemed like the perfect place to be without any further plans. Our travel chat, which started with just four people, expanded to 40, and unexpectedly, Yerevan became the place where I met up with many friends.
In total, I’ve been here three times, staying in five different places, and I’ve come to understand that Yerevan is very diverse. In the Kentron - the city center located on a plateau - you can easily see the urban plan, with wide streets and monumental buildings. If you spend all your time here, you might get the impression of a purely tourist city with an incredible concentration of restaurants. A funny observation: you won’t find any eateries without national dishes here; even in Italian restaurants, you can order a lahmajun.
Kentron becomes interesting and unusual for someone from Moscow as soon as you turn off the main street. You’ll see communal barbecue areas, shawarma stands selling food right from residential windows, locals playing backgammon on the streets (backgammon for streets, chess for home), and laundry hanging on outdoor clotheslines. The latter is perhaps the most noticeable feature - laundry lines stretch from residential windows to lamp posts, other buildings, anything that can be used to hang clothes.
Arabkir, a district north of Kentron, resembles a Soviet residential area with panel buildings and Khrushchyovkas. But if you go inside, you’ll realize that the similarity is only visual. Local houses are of much higher quality. Instead of concrete, there’s tuff, and the apartment layouts are more European. And in the western part, Aygestan, there’s a private sector in the most mountainous part of Yerevan, where you have to climb stairs between houses to get to the neighboring street. There are many dogs in this area, and if one barks, it sets off a chain reaction of barking throughout the neighborhood. Due to the landscape, you can see a car park on someone’s rooftop, a soccer field on the 6th floor, or a footbridge connecting the cliff to the entrance of a multi-story building.
The locals are very friendly. My friend’s host bought him some pelmeni (dumplings) when he found out he was arriving late at night. In Aygestan, our host fed us shashlik and mulberries. A taxi driver went with his acquaintances to check out an apartment when he dropped them off in what he recognized as a dangerous area. If you strike up a conversation with a local, they’ll likely offer to help you find an apartment. When they ask where you’re from, they usually mean the city, not the country. I was asked about my nationality only three times, and each time, they said they were glad I wasn’t Ukrainian. It was unexpected to hear that from these kind people. But later, they explained that it was related to the recent war in which Ukraine provided weapons to Azerbaijan. The topic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) is noticeable even to tourists - there are posters saying, “The fate of Artsakh is in your hands,” and the strongest protests during my stay were in support of this region. By the way, protests here are a common occurrence. There was a protest in support of a special operation, and another against Russian aggression, with police presence at both events, guarding the protesters. Besides these demonstrations, I encountered others just while walking on the streets.
Чаще всего тут именно спрашивают с какого ты города, а не с какой страны. Национальность у меня спросили всего 3 раза, и все разы говорили, что хорошо, что не украинец. Каждый раз было крайне неожиданно слышать это от этих добрых людей. Но спустя время нам объяснили, что дело в недавней войне, в которой Украина поддержала оружием Азербайджан. Тема Арцаха прослеживается тут даже глазами туриста — на улицах висят объявления “Cудьба Арцаха в твоих руках”, а самые сильные протесты во время моего пребывания оппозиция устраивала в поддержку этого региона. Кстати, протесты тут нормальное явление. С перерывом в несколько дней тут проходил митинг в поддержку спецоперации и шествие против российской агрессии. На каждом из них было много полиции, и на каждом из них полиция охраняла протестующих. Помимо этих шествий, я натыкался и на другие, просто гуляя по улице.
When I arrived, I had several formal goals. The first was to get vaccinated since they offer vaccines to everyone here. I made a mistake, though. The main reason for getting vaccinated was for my trip to the United States, so I got a booster shot on top of the Sputnik vaccine before realizing that they don’t accept boosters in the US. I had to get the full two-component vaccine a couple of weeks after the booster. So now I’m triple-vaccinated. The second goal was to sort out my finances, specifically obtaining local currency, which had suddenly disappeared in Moscow. This goal quickly turned into the task of opening a local bank account because the Armenian Central Bank prohibited giving foreigners more than $100 at once, and Russian cards were supposed to stop working abroad two weeks after my arrival. Opening a bank account at that time was a very interesting process. The key was to be liked by the bank clerk. Previously, an account was opened with just a Russian passport, but since there were unexpectedly many Russians wanting to open accounts, the rules changed. My bank asked for a work certificate, a tax certificate, a lease agreement, a labor contract, and required me to make a non-withdrawable deposit. During the conversation, I managed to negotiate giving them only my work certificate. That’s how I got my account and a card, which I can use to pay everywhere.
