Norman's Blog: May 2024

Wednesday 15 May 2024

Yerevan

I went on a tour of Yerevan promoted as a Tour of Soviet Yerevan.

First stop was Republic Square where several government offices are housed including a hotel for visiting diplomats and government officials where all the rooms were bugged.

Next was the main station, and altough the railway wa built before the Great Patriotic War, the station was only built in 1956. Trains used to depart to all major cities in the USSR and neighbouring countries, but since most of the land borders are shut, there are only a few local trains and a bi-weekty train to Georgia.

In front of the station is a statue of Sasuntsi Davit in Sasuntsi Davit Square.

There is a view of Mount Ararat but it was covered in cloud. It used to be part of Armenia but Arnenia lost several of its historical provinces after the First World War when those provinces became part of the new Turkey.

Inside the railway station, much of it very similar in design as a cathedral so the joke is that the Armenians got the Soviets to build them a cathedral.

...and the main hall until the guard approaching us in the photo told us that photography with a camera was forbidden. The rules predate the introduction of phones, so taking pictures with a phone is allowed,

Despite the resemblance to a cathedral, there are hidden elements of the Soviet influence such as at the top of on of the columns is a hammer and sickle.

We had some Soviet era local snacks in the underpass beneath the station. Then we boarded the metro. In the Soviet era, any city with more than a million people would get central funding to build a metro,Baku and Tbilisi had metros but Yerevan only had a population of 700,000. The government built more homes but there was doubt that the city had a million people. When Breznev visited, everybody drove their cars along the main roads causing a lot of congestion and therefore causing presidential convoys hours to get anywhere. The congestion was so bad that Breznev was convinced that the city ad a nmillion people and Yerevan got a metro.

Three lines were planned with 35 stations but only 10 stations and 12 kilometres were built. Two further stations are officially 'still under construction' but no construction activity has occured for decades.

Our next stop on the metro was Paradise. It s a huge former industrial area more than half the size of Central Park. Its main factory was to convert oil into rubber for tyres for cars, lorries, aircraft and any other rubber product. It employed over 10,000 people and contributed 40% of the country's GDP. It was the largest plant of kind and the sixth largest industrial complex in the world. The predominant wind is from the north so it was built on the south side of the city.

That might have sounded like a good idea as the pollution would be pushed by the wind away from the city. The downside is that the rich fertile farmland that produces much of the city's agricultural produce is also located to the south of the city.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was less requirement to be self sufficient. Natural rubber is cheaper and plentiful and the complex closed. The site is heavily polluted. It is too far from the city centre for the land to have nuch value so it remains abandoned.

One of the cooling towers.

Several pipe bridges that cross the road.

One of the many buildings on site.

Our next sto was the Bangladesh market, a huge covered market for agricultural produce.

It is a very colourful place with all sorts of vegetables, fruits and nuts on display, with different shapes, colours and smells. There is no storage areas provided so old cars and vans are parked down the centre and usedas storage. Some have such a thick layer of dust on them that they must have been here for decades.

A general view.

Some of the produce and cars used for storage...

...another view.

We drove onto the 16th Quarter. It is a huge development of dozens of 14 storey blocks of flats. Each block only has one entrance and one lift. in the cyrillac alphabet, USSR is written as CCCP. Looked at from the sky, the development was planned tp spell out CCCP.

The development was never finished. Some of the building sites have been abandoned and the 'P' of CCCP was never completed.

People now own the flats. Many of the former balconies have had windows fitted and have been incorporated into the living area. Some people have knocked through outer walls and inserted new windows.

There are schools and shops nearby to serve the community. We stopped and had some icecream, branded as Soyuz, made by Grand Candy, a large locally owned multi national company.

There are drinking fountains everywhere. This honours some of the dead who fell fighting for independence.

Down a back street on some derelict land next to a military barracks stands some remains of Lenin statues, unkown to many of the locals. There is a body of one statue and two giant heads. If their presence was discovered, they would likely be defaced or covered with grafitti.

The Children's Railway was our next stop. It is a children's attraction with the rolling stock replicas of the real thing but on a child's scale. It has three stations, a tunnel and runs for two and a half kilometres.

The main station.

Some of the coloured glass windows inside the ticket office...

The chandelier.

And lots of rolling stock...

The station from the platform.

Some modern art near the entrance.

The former road tunnel, now a 400 metres long pedestrian tunnel from the Children's Railway back to the centre of the city.

The city centre entrance to the tunnel.

And lastly, a beer tasting session.

Lake Sevan, Armenia

We left Dilijani and took the road up the valley to the pass towards the pass at an altitude of 2,114 metres to reach Lake Sevan. There were multiple hair pin bends to negotiate. Frida was struggling on some of the steeper stretches. Luckily for us, we didn't have to cross the pass as a new approach road and tunnel has been cut through the rock. It hdulesaves a ot of time, distance and fuel.

We dropped down to the shore of the lake. Its surface currently stands at an elevation of 1,900 metres. Its surface dropped 20 metres when Soviet engineers installed an HEP plant on the outflow. In recent years and combined with a lot of environmental campaigning, the lake level has risen two metres.

Soviet engineer plans to harness more of the lake's HEP potential and reclaim land for agriculture, which would have also reduced the area of the lake to just a sixth of its former area, were luckily never inplemented.

A view of the Free Beach near Sevan looking down from the Sevananasnk Monastery.

The Sevananank Monastery.

A detail of the door and the surrounding carvings.

A close up of the carvibgs on the wooden door.

Another view.

A smaller chapel on the same site.

A view across the lake to the south.

The monastery was originally built on an island in the lake. Since the water levels dropped, the buildings now sit i[on the end of a thin peninsula.

An iconic Soviet vehicle, a UAZ 452, also known as a 'bukhanka', meaning a loaf of bread as the shape is similar.

The Vaskenian Theological Academy and behind, out of sight, the St Jacobs Chapel.

There had been a brief lull in the showers as we visited the Sevananank Monastery. Just as we were gettng back to the truck for lunch, the heavens opened. Our schedule was to circumnavigate the lake and spend a night in a bush camp.

Whilst we prepared lunch in the rain, there was a ground swill of opinions against another wet bush camp. Three people opted to leave the trip and had booked a taxi to get to a hotel in Yerevan. The mutiny had started. Thr rules are very clear. If everybody votes to change the schudule, then it will happen as it is our trip. But if just one person votes for the schedule, in this case not to pay for an upgrade to a hotel, then the schedule will be followed and people are free to leave and do their own thing.

John was commandeered as the leader of the mutiny. He checked with every passenger, and everyone was prepared to pay for an upgrade from a cold, wet, bush camp to a dry, warm, confortable hostel. He confronted Mark, who readily agreed and got on the phone to arrange things.

We had lunch as Mark got talking on the phone.

By the end of lunch everything was arranged. The Envoy hostel had sufficient space for all of us and even space for some upgrades. We set off tpwards Yerevan. It was still early in the day so we could fit in some more site seeing. There was another monastery and being in doors, we could visit and not get too wet.

On the road to Yerevan, there were two hail storms. We were all thankful that we had changed the schedule. On the outskirts of Yerevan we turned east and drove to Geghard Monastery. It is the oldest cave church in Armenia dating from the sixth century. En route, the weather changed. It stopped raining and the sun came out to raise the mood of the group.