By Tyler Guthrie Special to The Washington Post Sunday, March 21, 2010 The bus stopped at the Armenian-Georgian border, and as the only American on board, I was ushered past soldiers lazily holding assault rifles to a shed where my passport was checked. A shirtless border guard who had been cooking soup moments before quickly printed a $15 entry visa from an HP LaserJet but flatly refused Georgian lari as payment. Luckily, I was able to bum enough drams from a stranger on the bus to Gyumri, Armenia's second-largest city, to cover the cost. Rumors of an Asian brandy so good that the French once bestowed upon it the appellation "Cognac" had brought me to this podunk border crossing in the middle of the Southern Caucasus. In the land between continents, I was taking a side
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