My journey to Armenia and Moscow day by day (entry 6 Hovigs grave)

The first clear day since I’ve been in Armenia was about a week into the trip. Why is a clear day so important in Armenia? Because that’s when Mt. Ararat is completely visible. Its tough to get a clear day to see Ararat because its so high up and theres a bunch of lakes on there apparently so there’s always clouds at the summit. The group tour for that day was to go to the haghtanag (victory) museum so I figured it was either a museum about Artsakh (which I know it wasn’t) or it was a museum about morals, because the entire history of Armenia is all moral victories. From Vartanants on all we’ve had are moral victories so our victory museum must be a museum about morals. Since we didn’t want to go to the moral museum we decided it was the perfect day to go to Dzidzernagapert (Genocide memorial) and Yerabloor since we missed those activities. Some of the people who were stuck in London also missed those so they jumped on board the plan. So we get to dzidzernagapert and not only is it a very somber and powerful place as it’s the genocide memorial in Armenia, but they play the saddest possible music. It’s like they thought: just in case the history and the memorial aren’t sad enough and might not be able to affect you, lets play this slow and sad Armenian music just to get that little edge to put you on the verge of tears. Since Ararat was clear for the first time that just added another random factor to how powerful this moment was. The actual monument consists of a obelisk that is split in the middle which connects at the top which signifies historic Armenia and current Armenia and how they will one day be united. Ararat towers over the obelisk, the architects really knew what they were doing with this one. Then theres the eternal flame, which is exactly what an eternal flame should be, a flame that never turns off.
From there we went down to the genocide museum which is conveniently located right by the monument. The president of the European Union was there that day so there was a lot of press present. The museum was pretty good, it had a bunch of paintings by an artist that were really good, I wanted to buy a poster or something but then realized a poster of dead people probably isn’t the best thing to have on my wall. There was a list of every country that has passed a genocide resolution and when they passed it. Conspicuously missing of course was the United States. My favorite one was when the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh passed a resolution condemning the Armenian Genocide, I wonder if that was a close vote. So I move on to the gift shop expecting there to be postcards and posters and other stuff you see at museum gift shops, but once again the capitalists haven’t made their way to Armenia yet. There was just a few books (although the girl who works there was ridiculously hot, and I know its wrong to think that but its was the comment every guy who left that place was thinking so its ok).
Then we step outside and see the area where all the dignitaries who come here plant trees in memory of the victims of the genocide. There were trees planted by various heads of states and legislators from around the world. But far and away the country that was represented with the most trees (and its not even close to 2nd place) was the U.S. More U.S. Congressmen have planted a tree than any other country. This was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen and I’ve never been more ashamed of the U.S. than at this moment! A few minutes ago I was looking at a list of countries to have passed genocide resolutions where the US was obviously absent, but then I go to the tree planting area and see all the US politicians have planted a stupid tree. Ya, its easy to plant a tree but when push comes to shove and we actually look for the US to make a real statement by passing a resolution, they send us another member of Congress to plant a tree. Get those trees out of my face and give me a resolution. (By the way House international relations committee just marked up the genocide bill and even Lantos voted for it, so send your webfaxes so Mr. Dennis I take bribes from Turks Hastert, (check out the Vanity Fair article) can bring this up to a vote www.anca.org).
From Dzidzernagapert me, Sevag and Ara decide to check out the cemetery weve heard about, Yerabloor. We take a cab there and head up the hill. The first thing we see is a random monument which when we get to we realize its the ASALA monument and the members are buried there. I just thought this was a random cemetery where some important historical people were buried, now its looking like this is more than that. So while im checking out the names and the dates I see Ara walking around and is now randomly talking to someone who looks like a soldier. I go up to Ara and it turns out he’s talking to a former Karabakh soldier whose going to give us a tour of the entire cemetery. Also turns out that this is the equivalent of Arlington National Cemetery and that everyone cant be buried here. He gives us a tour of the place and is telling us the story of most of the people who are buried there, every single soldier has a crazy story that goes along with them. This is the cemetery for the karabakh soldiers. He was saying how the four graves that we saw at Dzidzernagapert, which we couldn’t figure out who those people were, were the first four people to die in the Karabakh war and they thought it was going to be a short war so they buried them there, but once they realized lots of soldiers were going to die they opened up this cemetery but left the original four at dzidzernagapert. We’re seeing the graves of all these diasporan Armenians who bought guns and flew in to Armenia to fight for their homeland. Turns out not that many came from the US. We like to talk a big game but apparently we don’t act on that (while I was 8-12 during the war I’m still not one to talk because I’m sure if I was older I probably wouldn’t have gone either, especially since I had never even seen the lands back then.). BUT one of the Americans who did end up fighting and dying in Artsakh was Arshag. The soldier is telling us the story of Arshag and how he bought his gun and flew to Armenia to fight in the war and ended up dying in battle. When he finishes that story he goes on to tell one of the craziest facts I’ve ever heard in my life.

He’s telling us how Apo from Fresno was friends with Arshag and helped out with his tombstone being built so to return the favor now his son Hovigs name is engraved in the tombstone too. He tells us that Hovig died last year in a car accident. That’s when chills went up all 3 of our spines simultaneously. I ask “you mean Hovig Saghdejian?” He replies yes did you know him? I cant even explain the emotions and craziness of that moment. I didn’t know Hovig had a tombstone in the most respected cemetery in all of Armenia where only soldiers are buried. The tombstone read “Hovigits yev Frensoyi Apoyits” Randomly I was with Hovigs cousin Ara and my brother only 3 of 5 people on this trip who knew Hovig. I was just at his one year memorial where I first saw his tombstone in Fresno a month ago, now I’m reading his name on a tombstone in Armenia. Words really cant express what went on at that moment. I thought I was coming to a random cemetery, boy was I wrong.

From there we went on to see Sosse Mayrigs grave, General Antranig, Vasken Sarkisian, and the soldier who was hacked to death by the Azeri soldier at the UN Partnership for Peace conference. We moved on to the chapel and lit a candle for everyone we just saw, gave the tour guide a few bucks so he can drink some beers with his friends Hovig style and went on our way trying to make sense of that moment. Then we went on to some gas shots and typical Yerevan style partying.

My journey to Armenia and Moscow day by day (entry no.karabakh part 2)

August 16 (cont.)
So we finally get back to hotel Shoushi and the blue bus is wasted. We go down and hang out in the central square right next to the church. Some of the people from the other bus decide to get the bbq going and were all having a nice party. We go inside to eat the khorovadz in the dining area and we see the LCO people are there. We eat and hang out with them for a while as of course we continue drinking. After dinner everyone is just hanging out until someone starts playing the piano in the lobby. Then Nayri starts singing some slow Armenian song while someone else is playing the piano, and Nayri has one of those voices that could make you cry when singing the right song, and it this song seems damn close to the right song. Then Tatevos and Vahe get on the piano and start playing a crazy duet. While I don’t play the piano I thought it was crazy how good they were playing together even though they had never played with each other before. We listen to them for a while then the party goes outside to the streets of Shoushi. The buses are parked right outside the hotel and we start blasting Armenian music out of one of the buses and people start dancing in the streets. This is what its all about this is what happens when you win the war, your people get to dance in the streets of Shoushi. Then they play the blue bus favorite new song Augustine. Sevag starts dancing a solo to this song, almost tripping with every step (theres video of this somewhere), little does he know that this is a song about the singer pouring his heart out to his gay lover, actually he did know). Then we go back to the Armo music and theres a shoorchbar going. I cant even explain what a great feeling it is to be dancing in the streets of Shoushi at around 4 in the morning. The crowd starts to dwindle and a couple of Karapaghtsi soldiers show up. They start drinking with us and want to sing heghapoghagan songs with us. This is great, this is exactly what weve been waiting for, to actually sing with the soldiers who the songs are about. So they tell us to start a song and they’ll follow. Uh oh that’s the same problem Sevag and I have, we cant lead any songs but we can follow them all, they say the same thing. How ridiculous was that, these two guys were exactly like us living the sausage life, except they were fighting in a war 10 years ago while I was trying to make out with the pimple faced girl in third period history. Sevag goes up to get the song book and we start singing Sardarabad with the boys (why we didn’t sing a kharapakh song I’m not sure). They soon leave and the night is winding down, Sevag notices that the flagpoles have been empty all day and starts to get mad about it so he decides to climb the flagpole for no apparent reason (theres a pic of this on his site). The rest of us decide that’s our cue to head back inside to sleep and he goes off to wander. Apparently he went lying down in some ditch somewhere he claims hanging out under the stars and got locked out of the hotel until some caretaker of the hotel had to let him in.

August 17
The next morning it is decided that were not going to go to the border villages that the Yerkir organization has been rebuilding. I’m very disappointed with this because the Yerkir villages are one of the main things I wanted to see in all of Armenia. Yerkir is an organization that builds homes and gives $1000 in cattle and other stuff to Armenians to repopulate the borders. (they do the best work of anyone in Armenia from what I could tell and if I had money I would definitely donate to them first). Apparently after the Ashan drive through the dirt roads nobody wanted to make another crazy drive to the border. So our new choices are going hiking by some river or to Gandzasar and the Nigol Tuman museum. I have no idea what gandzasar is but I know nigol tuman and I’d like to see his museum, I also have no interest in hiking so I decide to take option 1, apparently nobody wanted to hike because only 3 people chose option 2 so the hike was cancelled. They say Gandzasar is about 45 min away which in Armenia talk means its about 2 hours away. On the way there people say that they wanted to go to gandzasar because they heard you haven’t been to karapakh until you’ve been to gandzasar. So we drive about an hour on decent roads and an hour on dirt roads to get to the bottom of some huge mountain. Jesus this looks like a huge climb. So we start hiking up the mountain and it’s a ridiculous hike, I start bitching for the first time on this trip that if I wanted to go on a hike I would have taken that option. About 20 min later I get to the top of the mountain dead tired and only wanting water. But of course the capitalists have a long way to go in Armenia so they don’t sell water here. (on a side note I have a piece of advice for the AYF over there, just get a 10 year old badanee girl with some lemonade, do you have any idea how much I would have paid for something like that at that moment?!) So I get to the top of this mountain and see the church, I go inside the church and get a glass of tap water that Nara somehow got for us. I go outside and look at the insane view looking down the mountain. I see the walls surrounding the area and I collapse on it (theres a cool pic of that). After all that I went through physically and emotionally the past day/week my body decided that the gandzasar wall is the perfect place for this to happen. Apparently Sevag and Stepans bodies thought the exact same thing since they were passed out on either side of me. Then I hear the group all getting together with the priest of the church who is telling them the history of gandzasar. I decide ive seen enough churches that I really don’t care about the story of this church all I know is that its really cool. Then I see Stanford boy Sipan randomly there and I go talk to him. Apparently he got Stanford to pay for him to research in Armenia and Karabakh for the summer. He then yells at me for not listening to the story of the church and he proceeds to tell me. Apparently it’s the church of St. John the Baptist, and theres a shadow of St. Mary or something in the walls that just appeared on day out of nowhere so they consider it blessed. He then says that this is the area that enemy soldiers have never stepped foot on. I respond that obviously they haven’t it’s a ridiculous hike up a mountain with only one road, all you have to do is shoot down and they’ll never get up. But then I’m told that the Azeris tried to bomb it with a helicopter and actually got the bombs off which hit the wall but they didn’t detonate! How crazy is that, maybe this church really is blessed. So I go along the walls and low and behold you can actually see the bomb, its still in the wall! This was a crazy unexpected stop, we were here so long that were not going to make it to the Nigol Tuman museum but who cares because now our trip to Karabakh is complete because its true you really haven’t been to Karabakh until you’ve been to Gandzasar. So we head back to the hotel and had some real kick ass dolma. I cant even explain how good it was, kind of like the entire karabakh trip. So now were off to head back on the 8 hour ride to Yerevan. On the way back they say were going to stop at Noravank, yes another church. Once again I’m not that excited to see another freeking church, but I guess when youre the first Christians in the world youre going to have a few churches. So right as I start to fall asleep we get to Noravank. Wow, this place really is in the middle of nowhere, what made them build a church here? They say it has one of the only sculptures of a picture of god in the world so I guess weve got to see that. The key to the beauty of this particular church is its location, its in a canyon right between two mountains and we get there at dusk so it’s a gorgeous time of day. My brother decides to jump a small wall as a shortcut to get to the church and the caretaker comes out and yells at him that “gark ganon ga, harkank ga as inhe eh” and makes him go all the way around and take the stairs up. This was another really cool church, no real cool story with it besides that its looks great and once again is an extremely calming place. I now understand how religion connects with spirituality, back then the places they built these churches were really spiritual, not like a random huge church on brand boulevard.
So we get back on the bus and Lara busts out another bottle of cognac. At first there is a few seconds of hesitation then we all jump on board and start swigging out of the bottle and get to Yerevan a bit tipsy. So we go out hit up some gas shots, once again taking new people, go to the club Montecristo and end up crashing at some time or another.

I’m sure more happened but at this point in the blog you get a sense of the partying scene so im only gonna add particularly interesting stories from this point on.

My journey to Armenia and Moscow day by day (entry no.4)

August 16
Ah, theres no feeling like waking up in Artsakh after a good nights sleep. Actually let me rephrase that. What the hell is up with the roosters screeching at 4:00am. I thought they waited until dawn to wake you up. I guess since this is still technically a war zone the roosters even did their part by waking up the soldiers at such an earlier time. I still ended up with a great nights sleep compared to the absolute lack of sleep I was getting before this night. So I get up and start walking around Shoushi a bit more. Theres just so much to see here and it looks great in the morning. First thing I see is what was probably a 90 year old grandma herding a flock of sheep and jumping over huge rocks and stuff, man they really are agile here in the warzone. I go back to the hotel for breakfast and in the lobby I see a flyer for the local golf course and think to myself golf course? What the hell is a golf course doing in this area and how much is it to play. Turns out its $25 a round and you can rent clubs, too bad we don’t have time to go I’d love to check it out. So we start off our tour of Shoushi with Nara our local AYF tour guide explaining how they liberated Shoushi, the only problem was that we could understand roughly 50-65% of what she was saying, and the story is such a crazy one you have a million questions but cant even ask them because of the language barrier. So we go off and first check out the inside of the church which is a great church, the inside is pretty basic but its in the middle of town and it used to be used as a weapons cache by the Azeris (who they call Turks over there), because the Azeris figured the Armenians would never attack a church. We then go to a rug store where we see a girl who was no more than 14 making some rugs that people ended up buying. There was also a real estate agent right next door, I wanted to look into buying some property in Shoushi until I realized I have no cash but I do have massive amounts of debt, probably not the time to purchasing a home in a warzone. We then check out a bombed out school that lots of famous Armenians have graduated from. It is three stories high but mostly rubble, I end up climbing up to the third story, probably risking my life since it all looked like it was going to collapse, but I ended up getting a good picture (which I need whoever took to send to me). We then go to the Muslim Mosque in the area, first I really didn’t want to go to the mosque since for years we’ve been fighting the Muslims but then I heard the story how the Muslim council decided that Karabakh was an ethnic conflict and not a religious war because of the fact that the Mosques were not being attacked (what a great move on the Armenians part with that one). We go to the Mosque and while its still standing there really is absolutely nothing inside and apparently its going to be a museum. The inside is a two story building but I saw some stairs going to what I thought was a third story so I start venturing up the stairs. It was the narrowest spiraling staircase I have ever been in and I only thought it was going up one floor but it kept going up, and there was almost no light in that place so claustrophobia started setting in big time. I decide to try and run downstairs as fast as I can since I have no idea how high it goes and the claustrophobia was getting a bit crazy, too bad as I turn around I hear other people following me up the stairs and there is absolutely no room to go around them so I had no choice but to double time it upstairs, I finally get up there and its pretty cool how high up you are, people once again take a cool pick from the bottom (a pic im also waiting for), then once again the buses are getting mad that I keep venturing off and they have to wait for me, but oh well im in Artsakh trying to get to see everything.
Next we go off to an area that’s really cool, it’s a dirt area with a bunch of rocks thats at the edge of a canyon. As the vans go through this dirt path I see what looks like a flag and some people huddled around it and it turns out to be the golf course! I have no idea how you could consider this a golf course as I couldn’t even find a green let alone a hole. Just some locals with one club one ball and a flag for the pin. I even tripped over a rock that said hole 5 100 meters par 3. That was just ridiculous, it was a random rock in the middle of a dirt field and it turned out to be hole 5, even though I couldn’t figure out which direction it was in, the locals seemed happy to be playing.
The canyon was really beautiful, I have no idea what it was called but they were telling us some story of princes riding up on horses and stuff. Then one of the drivers starts telling my brother and I some story about helicopters and anti-aircraft guns and some cable that’s tied from one mountain to the other. We completely misunderstand his story (you try to figure it out when theyre using half Russian words for things like helicopter and landmines). The driver realizes that were not understanding his story even though were telling him we understand every word, and he tells one of the Hayastantsis the story who end up explaining to us that the cables are tied from one mountain to the other because they would hang mines off them so the Azeris couldn’t fly low with their helicopters and they would then be in anti-aircraft range. That gets me thinking to how much more has been lost in translation. Oh well its time to leave this golf course.
We then go to the Shoushi hospital where Land and Culture Organization is helping upgrade and rebuild the place with more modern equipment. Some people go inside the patient rooms to talk to the patients but I didn’t really find that appropriate so I just wandered around the place. We quickly headed off to Stepanagerd to check out the AYF/ARF agoomp there. Most people could care less to see the agoomp and just wanted to walk around stepanagerd, well we lost the bus with our guide Nara in it and nobody knew how to get there so we just pulled over and were told to go grab food and meet back in 3 hours. Well me Tatevos (our AYFer Yerevan tour guide) and my bro actually want to check out the agoomp so we walk into parliament and ask them where it is. We get to the AYF office and see the other bus that we lost over there, Nara shows us around the place and introduces us to a few people, its always cool to check out the agoomps around the world and for being in Artsakh this is a really nice and modern building. We even eat some apples we picked from the tree in the back. From there we go to get something to eat, everyone goes to the place across the street called Flamingo which looks completely like a European tourist trap. Sevag and I decide that this isn’t where we want our only meal in Stepanagerd to be so we start walking around and run into Roupo and Sako our two drivers who were about to grab some food themselves. They ask some guy on the street where we can eat and this guy takes us to a room with four walls that they call a restaurant. I actually entered through the window because there was no front door, inside there are about 3 tables, no pictures on the walls no tablecloths or silverware or anything to make you think that it’s a dining establishment. There was a backgammon board randomly on a table and one table of people eating, so we sit down. Some old grandma comes out, not with a menu or anything but just asks what we want, khorovadz is the only option and the only question is if we want pig, lamb or cow and if we want eggplants and other random vegetables bbq’d as an appetizer. We decide on the pork cause that’s what the drivers wanted and their the locals. Roupo and Sako are shocked that guys at the age of me and my bro are not married. We explain to them that in the US you don’t get married at 21 and they seem perplexed. We then shock their world by telling them that we don’t mind if our future wives are not virgins and that in the US its not acceptable to cheat on your wife as often as you like the way they do in Armenia. Then they start laughing at us and calling us pussies when we tell them about community property laws and what would happen to you if you treated a girl in the US the way they do in Armenia. They were literally laughing at us for not having mistresses and letting our future wives actually have a sexual history. (needless to say the woman’s rights movement probably still has a ways to go in the Stan). The food gets there end then once again theyre laughing at us because were eating the food with a fork and knife and they tell us here you eat with your hands. This was actually the best meal I had in Armenia, in a random shack where I had to enter through the window, there were no menus or even signs of it being a restaurant. We ask for the bill and the lady arbitrarily throws some number out there and it seems reasonable (like 3 bucks each) so we pay it and leave.
We then head to Ashan, on the way to Ashan we drive through Aghdam which was a city 3 times the size of Stepanagerd but it was populated by Azeris so now theyre just using the stones from those houses to rebuild Stepanagerd so the Azeris now really have nothing to come back to, the entire place was rubble, like a ghost town it was crazy. Then we go through ridiculous dirt roads and go into what seems like the middle of nowhere for about 2 hours until we finally make it to Ashan. We visit a school that was built with Armenia fund money and the principal tells us that over there is the sports complex that was built with ANC funds so I go check out where these ANC funds are going and realize that the sports complex is basically a bunch of dirt within 1 foot high stone walls, not exactly a complex (I actually have a pic of this one ill post, sports complex yegher). Then we go to the camp which the AYF Youth corps has been building for the past 6 years. At this point everyone is ridiculously tired and cranky since we’ve been going for hours through random dirt roads to this ridiculous camp site in the middle of nowhere where were supposed to have a bbq and drink. Too bad once we get there everyone was so miserable that they convinced the group leader Shant (who also hated it) to turn around and just bbq at the hotel. I actually like Ashan but that was more because it was Youth Corps people who built it, and it resembled a ghettoer version of AYF camp that I love. What are you expecting in the villages of Karapakh its not exactly gonna be a 5 star resort. I take a quick tour and we leave. Now everyones straight miserable so in our bus we realized there is only one cure, it’s a 3 hour van ride back to Shoushi so we need to start drinking now. Jiro says he has a bottle of cognac he bought for his dad but is willing to open it. We promise to buy his dad a better bottle (ah the empty promises of alcoholics) and he busts open the bottle and we get to drinking. Once that bottle is cashed then Ara says he has small airplane bottles of chivas, absolute and Johnny so we obviously drink those too. Now were starting to get drunk but were out of alcohol, we know there was alcohol in Shants bus because he had it for the bbq. We pull over and ask him for one of the vodka bottles and he says no he doesn’t want anyone drinking in the buses (a little late for that). We get mad and get on our way and in about 20 min I tell the driver Sako to pull over so I can go to the bathroom. He pulls over at a shack which I tell everyone I have to go take a piss but in actuality I realized it was a liquor store and I bought 2 bottles of vodka for 3 bucks total. So now were on our way to Shoushi and were wasted as Ara takes out a letter his dad wrote to him right before Ara left for Armenia, it talks about the places he will see and the emotions he will feel while in the motherland and it ends with the famous Saroyan poem about building a new Armenia. Now let me tell you that’s a crazy poem and letter to listen to while your wasted in karapakh. Then the singing obviously starts with me and Sevag leading the charge as were on our way back to Shoushi to bbq and party all night long.

Tomorrow: Drunk at night in Shoushi then Gandzasar and Noravank.