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Published: October 2nd 2023
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Day 24 Yerevan, Armenia to Paris, France
Our flight is at 17.00, we decide to leave three hours for getting to Yerevan airport, checking in and all that malarkey.
So, after breakfast we walk north east from the Cascade Hotel to the Museum of Traditional Folk Art. We pass the polytechnic and the ‘College for Basic Medicine’ where they are blunting saws and putting mallets on the 'heavy hit' setting.
In fact, the whole area is made up of university department buildings.
There's an installation of the Armenian alphabet and I find Ken!
We spy the Museum Cultural Exhibition Space in the right sort of area to correspond with our map. We enter this brand new building and ........ the lights are all out........ a recurring theme in museums here. But, in this case, they’re just being thrifty. We’re the first to arrive in the day at 10.10am. A number of staff emerge from darkened doors and a light is switched on in the main space. On discovering we’re English a young women is tasked with welcoming us and showing us around. The first question she asks is ‘Do you know where you are?’ Our
reply confirms our belief that we’re here for Folk Art. ‘No’, she kindly advises, ‘this is the temporary exhibition of the Hovhannes Tumanyan House Museum, the permanent space is being renovated’.
In for a penny, in for a pound, the guide is very friendly, so we decide to learn a bit more about this writer who has a street named after him. The exhibition is all about his bookcases. He had many intellectual friends who like to come for conversation, a drink or two and borrow a book. Hovannes always rented garret apartments on the leafy edges of town and had a succession of them to house his wife and ten children. The furniture removal firm he unemployed must have made a fortune ‘cos there must be thirty or more wardrobe sized bookcases with glass doors on the front. Our guide explained that the wall paper which was placed behind the glass was to make his collection less available, i.e. not in sight. He never refused a chum a book loan, being a generous sort........... but he found that the reading material often wasn’t returned and he needed to guard his collection.
He is known for
his essays, poems and a set of children’s fairy tales. Marion bought a tale in Armenian and English. It’s like no other I’ve read. A synopsis:
Dad is thirsty whilst working in the fields. He calls for water. Daughter 1 comes and serves up a drink under the shade of a tree. But she has a dream, I will marry and have a son called Nikito and he will fall to his death from that tree. What am I to do? I am distraught. Daughter 2 then Daughter 3 then Mother are told of the dream in succession and all cry buckets together.
Dad comes home to find the handkerchief drawer empty and family in a heap. ‘Tell me all’, he says. Daughter 1: ‘I will marry and have a son called Nikito and he will fall to his death from that tree....... what can we do?’
Pater replies, ‘there is nothing we can do so let’s kill a pig and we feast tonight and have a wake for Nikito......’
I think I’ve got the essence of it there.
The guide has been a joy to spend time with, so knowledgeable and enjoying conversation rather
than delivering a script.
We make it over the road to the Folk Art Museum. It’s a complete contrast. Old glass cabinets and dark woods throughout a 19C building. Taciturn staff, a bit dour. .......But enlightening and well catalogued with wood carving, metal work, embroidery, pottery, and carpets from named crafts people.
A cup of tea in The Black Cat then our hôtel host calls for a driver using an Uber type app. We are given car colour, make, reg number at a cost of £3.20 and the driver arrives in five minutes. This is a 20 minute journey to the airport. Extraordinary value for money, and he gives us an apricot to sweeten the ride. We give him a couple of quid extra.
At the airport we eat a sandwich.... there are plastic gloves provided laid out like a doily on the plate. How is a plastic glove surface going to be any more hygienic than a plate or piece of bread?
The flight is delayed because of slow boarding and loss of time slot........ there are seven people in wheel chairs. I’m impressed that the services (lots of men in red tabards)
cope with that large number in a one flight. And so it should be. But the plane had been on the ground for hours and they could have started the process ~20 minutes earlier. No matter, we set off after some time on the tarmac and we’re in Paris by 20.50.
Orly Bus delivers quickly to Demfort Rochereau and we walk to Ibis Maine, then a bit further to Ibis Styles Maine (the correct one) and are tucked up at a reasonable hour.
Day 25. Paris, Montparnasse to irez and Villejésus.
Down ‘sous sol’ in Ibis Styles’ dining cellar we eat an extensive breakfast. The styling throughout the hotel is Mondrian colours in black borders on white walls, but in triangles rather than rectangles. I’m not sure it aids the digestion. We ponder upon whether a fruit squeezer with a hopper at the top and a marble run of oranges would be too over the top for our home. It certainly tastes very good.
We have an hour before vacating our room and walking to Gare Montparnasse. We’ll seek out a famous name in the Cimitière Montparnasse. It takes twenty minutes to get there...... we
find a map of graves and settle upon seeking out Charles Baudelaire. It’s a huge place packed with tombes célèbres. Simone de Beauvoir still arguing the toss with Jean Paul Sartre in the same grave. Serge Gainsbourg puffing away on an eternal Winston.
We head for the sixth division down Avenue de l’Ouest then right along Avenue de Nord. We’re at a loss. I find another map and realise that there are three BCs in division 6 and Baudelaire Charles is in a different spot to the zone we’ve been searching. We retrace our paths but time has run out........ we head back to check out at the hotel. En ivrez vous! We went at it six nought but at least we gave it a go....
The Ouïgo train to Poitiers costs £12.20 each and takes just 1 hr 28min to cover 336 km. We’re in car 18 which is past the middle traction unit. We have to walk a km or so down the platform, or so it feels. It’s a double decker. There are up to 1200 people on board, all second class, no catering and fast. You are invited to bring your own
picnic if you can manage to eat it fast enough on the way.........How egalitarian can you get?
The journey est bien passé.
In Poitiers walk down the road to Europcar and in minutes are driving to Villejésus in a brand new hybrid cinque cento. 1hr and 5 minutes. It’s over 30 degrees, a beautiful day.
Home from home, we are content to wind down from our Armenian adventures for a few days in this beautiful place in Charente.
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