Another reason I chose to travel to Armenia was for the sake of being immersed in something utterly foreign to me. Living in San Francisco, I can read menus in a ton of different languages: Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, French, German, and even Vietnamese. If the menu was in Hindi, it wouldn’t make sense to me, but I’m familiar with Devanagari script. ॐ मणि पद्मे हूँ (Jewel in the Lotus — om mani padme hum) is a common tattoo for Californians who do yoga.
Armenian script was totally foreign to me. Looking at etchings, signs and menus had a sci-fi feel to it until I finally memorized the alphabet a week later.
Even the tombstones I saw in Noravenk evoked the feeling of the tombs of Caladan in Denis Villaneuve’s Dune.
Arriving from San Francisco, there was also a utopian vibe. There were virtually unhoused people who were either drunk, drugged and/or suffering from a mental illness. There was virtually no crime. You could leave all your gear in the front of your car or at your table at a café and nothing would happen to it. Many of the old, Brutalist, Soviet buildings were dilapidated, but there were also very new and futuristic buildings as well as grand, monumental architecture like the Yerevan Cascade Complex.
But why all this seeming surfeit of good vibes? Housing is a right as well as social services in Armenia. They are written into their constitution. Unfortunately, on the downside, Armenia has little in the way of natural resources. 20% of its GDP is agriculture, so one bad year can ruin its economy. Moreover, its neighbor to the East, Azerbaijan, is so wealthy that it can use its vast resources to take bits and pieces of Armenia until once again, it is no more. That said, Internet is ridiculously cheaper than San Francisco by a factor of 10, and so is rent. The days I spent wondering from cafés to restaurants worry free is how a city should be.
