A kind of welcome

Coming to Armenia, the plan was to go to Alaverdi. However, two things happened:

- the bus that was promised wasn't running, and the marshrutka driver that was going to Alaverdi wanted to charge us the same fare as for Yerevan.

- the bus that was running at 9:30 wasn't going through Alaverdi, but the snowy wastes of Western Armenia.

So we took the 9:30 bus, together with an elderly Japanese-American couple who were doing some kind of research regarding development. Soon it became apparent why it was going to take 7 hours to cover 300 km. The slightest hill, and the engine began to roar and the bus began to slow down to 30kmph. The further we went from Tbilisi, the worse the roads got.

Finally, the border crossing appeared and I had the pleasure of using the worst toilet since the Mongolian/Russian border: no door, a hole in the floor, excrement deposited in and around the hole.

At customs, I had the pleasure of being personally interrogated by the Georgian police. Luckily, it was standard procedure. After, had to run ahead of the bus to the Armenian police post to score a visa.

As soon as we entered, it became apparent that time didn't exist within this small, empty booth.

The officer opened up our passports and began to slowly flick through them. Then came the questions: 'why are you coming to Armenia? where will you go? what will you do?' His conclusion was this: 'I'll give you a visa, but she... she is a problem... Syria, Sudan, Pakistan - theses are all terrorist countries. Why is she here? How do I know she doesn't want to make trouble? Why didn't she go to an embassy? If I give her a visa, and she's a problem I loose my job. Show me one European visa in her passport. You say she's a tourist... why didn't she go to France, Italy - those are beautiful places.' And so began the half hour argument, during which I managed to convice the moron that 145cm Junko was not a terrorist, but a tourist and wrangle a 2 week visa out of him.

I was expecting the other people on the bus to be furious at the delay. To the contrary; the first question was: 'Did they get any money out of you? How much did it cost?' When I tried to apologise, they told me: 'It's normal. Bloody mafia... that's what they are.' Then they all tried to feed us food - the Armenian couple coming back from a holiday Abkhazia, the old guitarist with a Polish friend, the boxer who'd been KO'd twice.

In Yerevan, a marshrutka ride and we managed to find accommodation at the house of the Anahit - a nutty old woman who likes things in their place: 'When you close the door do it like this, when you wash the dishes rinse the sponge and put it here, when you cook, put the lid here like this, when you wash the teflon pan use this sponge and put it on a newspaper so that it doesn't get scratched by other utensils...' I'm more convinced than ever that it's better to not really know what's going on.