The ice-cream taxi to Yerevan

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Public transport: The Marshrutka

I'd been working on Russian; I had a few dozen words maybe, but no grammar because I'd been doing it myself from a book and a CD in the car. But my tutor in Aberdeen, Anya, gave me a couple of hundred more words plus some basic grammar so I should now be able to hold survival-level conversations about buying tickets, asking directions and ordering food. But that was last Summer and since then I've been a little slack about practising, as well as having a confused head with trying to get some Japanese in there too. Anyway, 4 weeks in the former soviet union countries of Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine should bring much of it back.

Last entry I mentioned something called a Marshrutka minibus and I think it'll be worthwhile to explain a little about what they are and how you use them. The name is a contraction of the phrase Marshrutnoye Taxi, but it's not a taxi as we'd understand it. I might have given myself a problem whilst learning about them as well, given I'm trying to improve my language: whilst sitting in one in Armenia going over a few Russian words to myself I realised that marshrutnoye sounds similar to marozhenoye, which means ice-cream. So now my brain has made that association, the odds have doubled I'm going to say it at some point.

So: a marshrutka is a privately owned minibus, I think each driver owns his own. They are about the best way to get around a lot of the former Soviet Union countries, so there's a few things you need to know if you ever come out this way and need to use one. Typically it's a Ford Transit with seats for about 15 people. Although they're named after taxis, they don't go just where you want them to - a marshrutka follows a route along main roads to a destination which is printed on a large board visible through the windscreen. Since the minibus is privately owned the driver might take detours if he wants to, or if his home is on the route he might even stop for 5 minutes to check with Mama there's nothing she needs whilst he's out.

Anywhere along the route a marshrutka will pick people up, drop them off and carry packages or urgent mail for people, so you can stand anywhere and flag one down, there is no need to walk to a bus stop. Generally you pay the driver when you get off, but if he needs to stop for fuel he might ask for the money right then.

There's no timetable as such, they tend to leave when they're near-full. However on popular routes the drivers will organise departure times between themselves. For example; a marshrutka leaves Tbilisi for Mtskheta about every 30 minutes or so because the driver's sure there will be passengers further on. If he waits too long, he'll eat into the next driver's time and passengers, so there is a little give-and-take between them. But on remote routes I've arrived at the bus-station then waited nearly over hour for one to set off.

Marshrutkas are cheap; so cheap that their equivalent of our National Express or Greyhound went out of business. They might even be quicker than the train as much of the track and rolling stock is decades-old and doesn't take a direct route. The overnight train from Tbilisi to Yerevan takes about 16 hours but the marshrutka does it in 6. Within the cities there are conventionally numbered buses where you put your money into a slot near the driver as you get on, but you will also see marshrutkas running numbered routes of their own.

So to catch one here's what you do: get to the bus-station and look for a bunch of guys hanging around some minibuses (being self-employed, the drivers don't wear any uniform). Ask them where you find the marshrutka to Yerevan, or wherever it is you need. It may not be one of the minibuses they're standing in front of; Didube bus station in Tbilisi covers many acres and is crammed full of market stalls and so far I've found marshrutkas to three different destinations from three different locations within it, none of them are signposted and they're not visible from each other.

I found the marshrutka to Yerevan, capital city of Armenia at Ortachala bus station in Tbilisi. I was told it left at about 8am and so I arrived by taxi from the nearest metro station at 7:30am to find it leaving right now. No time for breakfast of a khatchapuri and some fruit juice from one of the stalls. I had to get on as I didn't know the time of the next one, only then the driver spent 10 minutes fannying around with fuel, chatting and taking a late-arriving package and so I never did get breakfast. A six-hour journey was surely going to make a toilet-stop at some place where we could get food though.

We passed green arable land in South Georgia then climbed to the border checkpoint with Armenia. Being a UK citizen I could get a visa on arrival, about $30 I think it was but don't quote me. Then we continued to climb on the Armenian side to the Debed Canyon, where vineyards competed for space on steep hillsides with never-finished factories, building debris and power-stations around the town of Alaverdi. We stopped, as I'd hoped. A cafe with primitive squat-toilet, no lights and the surley woman running the place didn't appear to have anything behind the counter at all. My attempts to get served were ignored, but there was another marshrutka parked, so maybe prior orders were in. Or maybe it was the TV in the corner broadcasting a soap with some interference. Why the hell did he stop here? We passed kiosks in all the towns we went through and they had food - I could see it through their windows. Was he on a commission? What were they paying him with if they didn't sell anything?

So I turned my mp3 player up to take my mind off the hunger as we spent a spectacular next hour running through the canyon, then climbed higher again to the hills and snow-covered mountains. Then down again towards Spitak, the epicentre of the Armenian earthquake of 1988 in which 25,000 people lost their lives. Further downhill Yerevan appeared in the distance and I got to the top of the volume range on my player, it wouldn't go any higher and it took me 20 minutes to figure out I needed to pop my ears we'd been up so high.

Yerevan is quite unusual. The locals said they thought their city was a little drab with too many soviet-era apartment blocks. I see what they're getting at, but downtown there are some fabulous sights such as the Opera theatre and Hanrapetutyan Hraparak (Republic Square), which looks rather like St. Peter's square in Rome, but has traffic whizzing around it, and more cops yelling at people with buzzers and loudspeakers. There's a lot of building work going on, and they're still working on a very long stairway called the Cascade from which you get a fantastic view. I don't think Yerevan needs that much spectacular architecture though, just 30km South is the 5,100m high Mount Ararat, gleaming in snow. It dominates the skyline making Yerevan the only capital city I'm aware of where a mountain requiring high-altitude acclimatisation sits right next-door (Fuji-san was only 3,700m and you can acclimatise to that whilst you're climbing it. And it was on the horizon from Tokyo, not directly next-door).

Yerevan is also very European in street-culture. There are many cafe's, bars and restaurants everywhere and people don't dress in nearly so much black as in Georgia. I took a tour of the Armenian Genocide Museam on a perfectly overcast and depressingly rainy day which seemed to go with the mood of the place. Then another sunny day, toured the Ararat brandy company on the edge of the city centre. I learned how much you should pour into a brandy glass (when you lay it on its side, none should spill out) and also if you take a splash of their 20-year old (Nairi, the name for the ancient kingdom that predated Armenia) in the palm of your hand and rub it until it evaporates, you should be able to smell oak. Also it appears Stalin introduced Winston Churchill to Ararat brandy at the Yalta conference. Previously Churchill had been a whisky man, it helped him deal with his manic depression, but he switched immediately after trying it. The tour, and in fact the city, was full of Iranians; I found out it was their New Year festival and they were all across on holiday. Out of a muslim country, the women were all wearing t-shirts, jackets and jeans instead of hijab. And I told Vahid, the Iranian guy I chatted to during the tour that I thought Iran should be allowed all the nuclear power and weapons it wanted. I couldn't see what the problem was. There are bigger threats.

"Oh No! It's the Estonians!"

When I arrived in Yerevan I found a taxi easily to take me to Anahit's homestay. She was recommended to me by Irina whom I stayed with in Tbilisi. Seems Irina's a networker and every time I'd said I was going to a different town she pulled out a box of business cards and handed me one, telling me whom I should stay with. Recommendations are always better, so every time I followed her advice and because if it, met a bunch of great people who were helpful and provided me nice places to stay.

The thing about home-stays is, sounds obvious, I'm staying in somebody's home. The kitchen, bathroom and living-room I'm using is their own, so it's minding my p's and q's and I'm not to treat it like a hotel. Whilst I was there a bunch of Estonians came to stay at Anahit's place, 12 of them, to see the football game. Twelve people for 5 days was a lot of money and it was a prior booking so Anahit had told me I might need to shift myself to another homestay a couple of floors down in the same building. In the end she was down on 1 person so I moved to a bunk in her loft above the living room. I might have been better off though; they arrived at 5am off the flight, pissed and unable to keep the volume down. They went to bed, but were already awake when I got up at 9am to wander into the kitchen for breakfast. In the spirit of international friendship I felt I should accept their offer of a drink and so had 3 brandies with breakfast and they were adamant I join them to a restaurant that night as it was somebody's birthday. They wouldn't let me pay a cent come dinner. Now, I've heard stories about how Estonians drink, but this was my first experience of it and on this very limited experience, let's say there appears to two-sides to them: their hospitality and friendliness cannot be faulted, but their hospitality was singing and drinking, oblivious to whom was around them, where they were or what time it was. Poor Anihit, she didn't sleep too well the whole time they were there. I've been invited to a singing festival they have every year in July and have a phone number, but warned after 6 months away I might not have the luxury of time or money to visit Taillin.

Another taxi driver, another invite home for food

On the marshrutka to Ashtarak, curious to know why a foreigner was onboard, Artem and his wife, Lillith, spoke to me. I told them about my travels and learned he was an ex-patriate Armenian home to see family. I've got his business card and I said I'd keep in touch. Once we got to Ashtarak, Artem negotiated a fare for me with Yuri the taxi driver, with whom I spent the next 5 hours.

First of all we visited the town of Oshakan where St. Mesrop Mashtots is buried. He invented the Armenian alphabet in the early 5th Century and is a bit of a national hero. The Armenian alphabet is just as unusual as the Georgian one I described in the last entry, but not as pretty to my mind; too many sharp corners and right angles. Then on to see the partially derelict monasteries of Hovhannavank and Saghmosavank, 6km apart from each other, but each standing on the edge of the same gorge. More sunlight pouring in through windows and deep shadows and the odd pidgeon since most of the glass was out. They look more like churches than cathedrals, though maybe in earlier times there were more buildings surrounding them. At both was a stall selling dried fruits near the entrance. Armenia is famous for dried fruit and I'd already bought a box the other day at Yerevan's No. 1 Market. I spent the rest of my time here trying to refuse more. At the first monastery, the lady who lived opposite came out at the sound of Yuri's car and so I bought some, but at the second I tried to explain, holding up my bag as evidence, that I already had what I needed and that I was sorry I couldn't- ... to no avail; the woman disappeared for 2 minutes and returned whilst Yuri and I were inside taking pictures. When she came back she pressed into my hand a bag of apples, free. Apparently a tourist from Scotland is a bit of an event it seems. That evening Anahit's table in the kitchen was full again of fruit which the Estonians helped us finish.

Yuri and I managed to get by in broken Russian with much gesticulating. He took me to a cafe for soorch and he insisted on paying, waving off my money. Soorch is pretty much the same as Turkish coffee, but in Armenia it's less sweet. Then returning to Ashtarak, he invited me home for food with his family. Like I said, again in the previous entry, you can't refuse offers of hospitality lightly, and I enjoyed meeting his wife and two children and was thankful that since kids were involved this time, there was nothing like the alcohol intake I'd had in Georgia.

I was only in Armenia for a week, and saw only the area around the capital city. Like Georgia it's a small country, but best experienced in the Summer. I couldn't do much about the fact I was here too early given my timetable around the globe. So again I have to make a mental note to return. It's going to take years to re-visit all these places I enjoyed so much I'd promised to come back.

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I'm getting a little tired now of taking my paperback along for company when I go out for food, though I can handle eating alone (business traveller and all that). I can pack or unpack my rucksack blind and I know every pocket inside it and every item I possess by touch. I can even tell the t-shirts apart this way. Mostly though, what drags is searching for decent internet access wherever I go, and I'm tired of the expectations I place on myself for writing these entries. Don't get me wrong: I'm not unhappy about any of this, but whilst I'm writing about my travel experiences, blogging is also one of them, so worthy of a mention. It takes lots of time.

The photography isn't a problem. I enjoy taking my time around a location, looking for the best direction from which to shoot, waiting for people to move out of the way, sometimes even coming back a few hours or a couple of days later when the sun is in a better position - there's no-one tugging my sleeve because it's time we were somwhere else and I'm taking full advantage of it.

But the writing. I'm not sure I'll keep a blog again. If I do, I'll do a few things differently. For one, I'll take a laptop. I took a disliking to laptop-carrying backpackers as far back as Vancouver because every night, in every hostel, I'd walk into the common-room and each table had one person sitting at it, facebook up, earphones in, talking to nobody. If I wanted to sit down I had to "excuse me?..." and invade someone's personal space. Can't these people double- or triple-up on the tables if they're going to be anti-social? I bet they go home and say they enjoyed meeting people.

So I don't want to become one of them. But I have to balance this against the irritation of searching for internet access every city I go; the hassles of machines that are slow, possibly using pirated-software with security I can't be sure of because Windows is set to a foreign-language. And if I take my own laptop there's the risk of losing it with all it's passwords and banking details, so there is no best way. And I sometimes get a little tired of the editing, re-wording, self-censoring and proof-reading necessary before I hit the "Publish" button. Anyone who writes technical documents knows you can't proof-read your own work because your brain starts skipping things and you read what you think is there, not what actually is. I know you've found a few errors because I've caught them myself, often only minutes after publishing.

So: such is the stuff that concerns me as I go. Like I said a while back: I'm not on holiday, I'm travelling. It's different.

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Photos

The Marshrootnoye Taksi (Marshrutka)
With a bunch of Russian words bouncing around in my head, some I can't remember the meaning of, it's easy to get mixed up. A minibus taxi is a "Marshrootnoye Taksi" and unfortunately sounds very similar to "Marozhnoye" which means ice-cream. It's easy for me to say the wrong word if I'm not careful.

Yerevan, the Opera House (left) and Mount Ararat
Armenian's get a little misty-eyed about Mount Ararat. It's 40km away and 5165m high, which is acclimatisation territory for anyone wants to climb it, which the Armenians can't as it's inside the Turkish border now. Once it was Armenian and they haven't forgotten it, but the borders are closed as relations with Turkey aren't great.

Yerevan Shuka (market) No. 1
There are some great Soviet-era buildings like this purpose built market hall in central Yerevan. The entrance has fantastic filigree-metalwork showing fruit, vegetable and animal produce. Inside are concrete stalls for easy cleaning, and friendly vendors who wanted me to have a taste of everything, even if I didn't buy. Unfortunately there were also the most primitive toilets I've seen all trip.

Gas-pipe goalposts
All over Armenia I saw this shape - over the road or at the entrance to fields or people's front drive. It's the gas main. They don't bury it, so they have to stick a couple of supports up each time it crosses a road. It wouldn't take much: A few shots from a .22 or a drunken driver would be all it would take to break it, I can't believe it doesn't happen more often and I hope this is only the LP domestic supply, not the national grid.

Hovhannavank Monastery
Just up the road from the town of Ashtarak, about 40m Marshrutka-ride from Yerevan, is a gorge with a couple of spectacular, albeit partially derelict monasteries. Hovhannavank shows the typical Armenian architecture of a top looking like a half-folded umbrella. It sits [i]right[/i] on the edge of a gorge.

Saghmosavank Monastery
Just up the gorge from Hovhannavank Monastery is the Saghmosavank, also partially derelict, but the locals still come here to pray.

Watch your step
I'm taking pictures of man-holes again. I don't have a thing about them I haven't told you, it's just I thought you should know: like in Georgia, you have to watch your step because of the state the pavemements, roads and kerbs are in. You couldn't manage in a wheelchair here and it wouldn't take much to end up down one of these.

Comments

[Sharol]

Hello there
You are doing just great Martin.. Mistakes here and there are perfectly fine and to be honest WHO CARES bout them?? All we would like you to share with us is the excitement of every country you visit..the knowledge you spread here ...the photos you snapped and you are doing that. Till you write again.. take care..and keep in touch.

[Peter O]

Keep it coming
marty, it's not like your up for the Pulitzer, keep it coming, for those of us not able to carry out such an undertaking as you it's the next best thing. Keep it up!

[Dovie]

ditto
Yeah...don't forget there are a bunch of us living vicariously through your travels! It's like several miniature versions of Bryson novels. I totally appreciate the tedium of editing, censoring, etc...but having a love for writing myself understand the desire to do so, even if it's not fun and you KNOW you're reading over your own mistakes. It is what it is...and I for one would rather have the story with the errors and minimalist approach to editing than NO story at all!