Radio Jerewan

Well rested and well breakfasted, we head to the train station and the airport. Wizzair hadn't contacted us yet about the strike, we found out that the flight had been relocated to Poznan, but with over 4 hours of delay. That means we probably won't get the money back...but it would have costed us additional nerves... (bus to Poznan, arrival in Tbilisi in the middle of the night, no more connections to Armenia). Well... to hell with it, after all, the Caucasus is only once a year ;)

After various meals on the flights and in Istanbul, we arrived at the hotel in Yerevan 4 hours earlier (4:00 am) than planned (Who can, will). We had a short sleep and then headed to the city with 16 degrees and sunny weather. The ticket to Tehran was purchased after 30 minutes.

There's not much left to see of Yerevan being one of the oldest cities in the world, as expected there are many concrete blocks, Stalinist ostentation architecture, and some ruins. Nevertheless, there are some nice places like the Opera House, Saint Gregory cathedral, the Cascades or the statue 'Mother Armenia'.

On the way there, we passed through Victory Park. A park that seems deserted at least at this time of the year, the Ferris wheel somehow reminds one of Pripyat (Chernobyl), a bit creepy...

All in all, time seems to have stood still here after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which doesn't necessarily mean anything negative.

In the afternoon, we visited the Armenian Genocide Museum, which deals with the genocide of Armenians by the Turks. Even though we hadn't dealt much with the topic before, it is frightening to see how little attention the fate of the Armenians receives in our region. Just imagine if the Holocaust had been similarly hushed up. Hitler, in any case, seems to have taken this genocide as a model when he said '...Who after all cares About the Annihilation of the Armenians...?' If you think about it, it is actually more than incomprehensible why the German government took more than 70 years to call these acts what they are... Maybe we are only morally (superior) when it suits us... And even then only half... Something to think about maybe.

Afterwards, we quickly took the only metro in the country back to the hotel to give our feet a bit of a break. However, hunger and thirst quickly got us up again. For dinner, we treated ourselves to various local dishes and an Armenian brandy in a good restaurant, delicious!

While enjoying our well-deserved after work beer, we noticed that each of the 8 beers we bought was already expired, between 2 months and 2! years. Apparently, wine is preferred here, otherwise it can't be explained why the quite tasty beer is stored in the refrigerator for years. Nevertheless, it tasted good and our stomachs handled it. Maybe it's all just fake news about the best before date ;) Let's see how the Azerbaijanis handle beer, we will probably only drink tea in the next few days.