Persian new year in Yerevan

It has been now almost 2 years since I have been in Yerevan. I went there in March 2015 by train from Tbilisi.
Why? I was amazed by Georgia and especially be the progress that country made in only 10 years. I heard a lot of bad stories about the times before: police criminals, bribing everywhere, rotten roads, circuit breakdowns etc. Almost everybody told me that I just have to go to Armenia to see how Georgia was before the Saakashvili presidency.

I chose the train that run every second day overnight between the two capitals, see my older post. It was a short night with some Armenian beer but an interesting one. I met Gints, a Latvian journalist who had been in Azerbaijan before. He told me a lot about the politics between Armenia and Azerbaijan which helped me a lot to understand the country. You will see by my following posts how important the conflict with Azerbaijan is for the Armenian society and government.

In contrary to the Georgian beer, the Armenian
beers are not my taste.

Too strong taste and bitter for me.

Let's start with the Armenian capital Yerevan. We arrived early in the morning on a rainy day.

For this situation the song Young-Holt Unlimited - Soulful Strut fits perfectly.

The impressive railway station was empty except of the few passengers from the train. I felt that there were as many taxi drivers waiting for customers as passengers in the train. A short look at the smartphone showed that the inner city was only 2 km away. The hotel of Gints was in the inner city so we decided to walk there to see something. It was a strange walk because one taxi driver did not stop to molest us. Gints speaks Russian but there was no way to tell him to leave us. They yelled at each other louder and louder. The taxi price was lowered bit by bit the closer we came to the center but first when we could already see the Saint Gregory cathedral the taxi driver left us alone.

We found Gint's hotel and I went on to find a hotel as well. This was unexpectedly difficult since the season starts in April and in March many hotels are closed. Moreover the prices were unexpectedly high. A room for less than 50 € was hard to find but asking around was, as always, the solution. This way I met an incredibly nice Armenian and stayed in his large hostel as the only guest. Its location offers great views over the city.

I had to deliver two passports for Italian bikers stranded in Yerevan. Since the german embassies are obviously one of the most unfriendly ones in every capital (I reported here often about this topic), the German business association helped. Their office is in the Marshal Baghramyan avenue so it was the ideal street to start some sight seeing:

This is the Baghramyan statue. Baghramyan was a marshal
of the soviet army and is honored in Armenia as a hero.
The house is the American University of Armenia.

A typical house of Yerevan: red tuff stones
making it the "red city" and architecture
from the 1920/30s.

The presidential palace.

The building of the national assembly.

The Armenian National Academy of Sciences by day...

... and by night.

Yerevan was a mid sized town when it became the capital of the new constructed Armenian soviet republic. In effect is was almost completely rebuilt as planned city under the architect Alexander Tamanian. Therefore the inner city is a unique architectural ensemble. I love it! The architecture lives from strict forms with only few ornaments. One of the most impressive examples is the Republic Square:

  

  

At night the illumination is impressive.

 

3 different styles: An arch of Tamanian's trade unions
and communications building and a new building
partly made from walls from the pre 1920 era.

The National Gallery of Armenia. Unfortunately it was not possible
to enter it because it was visited by soldiers. The next day the same
and on my last day a week later the same and even with a public roll call.

The Rebublic Square metro station has
the form of a rosette, see this satellite image.
 

The inner city contains also some new buildings. This is for example the northern avenue:

View in direction of the Republic Square. 

View to the Opera Theatre.

There are only few residues of buildings from the era before Tamanian's rebuilding. This is an image of the Republic Square from 1916:

Note the small buildings and their simple style. Image from Wikipedia.

In the area south to the square are some old buildings from that time:

This part of the area was already under demolition to be rebuilt.

 

 

We met the evening to go out somewhere. It was hard to find something suitable. It was a normal workday and the only recommendation we got was a Persian hookah bar. Well, it was Nowruz (Persian new year) and so we learned a bit about Persian culture. By the way, the work of the lady that keeps the pipe smoking was impressive. The whole evening she had to suck on the many pipes to keep them smoking or to light them up. I wonder if these people don't get lung cancer sooner or later.

Gints and the large hookah.