Amsterdam --- the last stop

Back to the west --- everything works, people speak English and smile at you and everything is comfortably familiar.

Amsterdam is different from previous cities: hundreds of canals (60 Km of canals), bridges of all kinds, charming narrow streets with lots of bicycles, quaint little stores, pubs, cafes, restaurants. We took a boat tour through the canals and then walked and walked and walked… We must have covered every street and canal in the center at least twice.

The city is old, beautiful, and well maintained. There is good infrastructure. The 17^th and 18^th century houses are built on wooden piles (not apparent) since the ground is soft. If you look closely one can see some buildings leaning.

We have a basement flat along a small canal in the center of town. Very convenient to everything. The owners, a young couple with 3 children live above. They work for KLM and travel a lot themselves. Maybe that’s why they equipped this studio with everything a traveler might need (unlike the apartments we had in Yerevan and Kiev, which were very sparsely furnished and lacked the essentials).

The food here is great. Everything we have had from restaurant to deli take out was excellent. There are tons of bakeries with a huge variety of delicious pastries. We’ve been eating way too much.

There are several streets dedicated to shopping. They were densely packed with people on Saturday. Shopping must be a national pastime here too. With the dollar up, prices here are not bad at all.

Warsaw -- Friends & Family

We spent most of the last two days in Warsaw visiting friends and family. Tuesday was a glorious fall day – sun, blue sky and multicolored leaves everywhere. We walked a lot. Warsaw changed even since last year when we were here. One of the main streets, Krakowskie Przedmiescie, was being renovated then and now it’s all done. One of the nicest things they did was to install descriptions of all historical monuments. The descriptions (in Polish and English) are on glass cubes, and each also includes the 18^th century version of the same building taken from paintings of an Italian painter Canaletto who lived and painted in Warsaw in the 18^th century.

In the evening, we visited my (Bo) friend Malgosia and her English partner, Terry. We had a great time talking about travels – theirs and ours, and eating Malgosia’s delicious food. She is an amazing cook.

On Wednesday, we walked through other parts of the city, mostly the area where Warsaw Ghetto once was. We saw monuments of the Ghetto uprising, the Umschlagplatz and the monument of the Warsaw uprising. The weather was cool and misty. Then we spent the afternoon at my father’s. Luckily, he and my stepmother are doing well and have not changed at all since we last saw them a year ago. We spent our last evening in Warsaw with Marek, Ania, Jasio and Ania’s mother in an Italian restaurant in their neighborhood.

Poland

After 100 plus degrees of heat in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Dubai Poland’s 44 degrees was quite a change.

When we landed in Warsaw, Bo’s godson Marek together with his totally cute 5-year old son Jasio picked us up at the airport and took us to their new apartment in the suburb of Warsaw. His wife, Ania was visiting her brother who works for the EU in Brussels. It’s a new development of attractively designed residential buildings with a 4-storey limitation. It’s near a forest and a lot of green areas. In Poland, new apartments are completely bare (no floors, no interior doors, no kitchen or bathroom fixtures). They have done a magnificent job decorating the apartment. It’s spacious, uncluttered and very modern. We had a dinner of home-made pierogis made by Ania’s mother. Yummy.

Change of plans. The plan was to go to Wroclaw to meet two friends. The friends had change of plans so we took a train to Gdansk (formally, Danzig formally Gdansk ….) Between WWI and WWII it was an independent city state. The old town is very picturesque. October is low season for the Polish coast so there weren’t many tourists there. Especially, in the evening it was a stark contrast with Kiev and especially with Yerevan.

The next day, we took a commuter train to Sopot, which is part of what is called a tri-city (Gdansk-Sopot-Gdynia). It’s only a 20 minute ride from Gdansk, but it has a completely different character. It’s a small very pretty beach community on the Baltic. It boasts the longest wooden pier. In the summer, it’s probably the most crowded city in Poland. People even call it the summer capital of Poland. We were told that the number of German tourists in this area is overwhelming. We got very lucky with the weather. It was an absolutely perfect fall day – sunny, relatively warm, with gorgeous fall colors all along the coast.

Rainy Kiev

Kiev is a great city. Beautiful buildings, nice parks and wide sidewalks. The sidewalks are so wide that cars park on them – one set on the inside next to stores and another set on the outside next to street. When they want to leave and the sidewalks are full of people it is very interesting.

Last night, we walked down the main Kiev drag – Khreshchatik. It was very lively, full of young people who were gathering in some places to watch street performances. Then, we started looking for a grocery store. It was harder than we thought to find one, but we finally did.

Our apartment is close to the center, five minutes from the main market Bessarabskiy Rinok, and close to a very popular Ukrainian restaurant Puzata Chata where we had dinner last night. The place was unbelievably mobbed.

Today was a rainy day. We did a tour of the main sights – Golden Gate, Sophia Monastery, Mihailovski and Andreevski monasteries, down Andreevski Spusk towards the Dniepr river. Much has changed since I (Bo) was here last in 2005, many new buildings, new Hyatt near Mihailovski, new Intercontinental on the other side of the street, many new shopping malls, including one in “our” street.

Yerevan summary

The city is very pretty. There are many nice parks throughout the city, each with lots of outdoor cafes. There is also a lot of new construction in the center. Old buildings are being torn down and replaced with new, enormous and attractively designed apartment buildings. We were told that government officials buy apartments in these new centrally located buildings at very low prices and then sell or rent them at huge profits. People whose buildings are being torn down get little compensation for their apartments and can’t afford to live in the center any more. They are being forced out into distant suburbs.

There appears to be no or very little city maintenance. Garbage collection seems to be sporadic. Walking in the evenings in dimly lit streets can be hazardous to your health because there are holes in the sidewalks and quite a few missing manhole covers.

Yerevan is definitely an evening town. At 8 am there is no one outside. From 2 till 11 and later it is jumping.

We have eaten in several non tourist Armenian eateries. No English, no Russian. We had to order by pointing. We went to a place were everyone eats lahmajune (“Armenian pizza”). We ordered 2, but an order is 2 so we got 4 (for $1). A lady behind us ate 4 of them, and they are not small (the size of a 9 inch pizza, but the crust is much thinner. It is covered with a very thin layer of meaty substance with spices. It is served folded in half)

We also ate at an outdoor café. We had 2 bottles of beer, coffee, and 4 dishes for less than $10.

On one of our city walks, we walked into the American University of Armenia. After a few phone calls they arranged a tour for us and Diana, a PR person took us around. Turns out it is only a graduate university with no undergraduate programs. Diana introduced us via phone to her sister who works at Yerevan State University. The sister in turn introduced us to her boss, head of the linguistics department. As a result, we spent a very interesting hour in her office.

Traffic is horrible and so are the drivers. Lane markers mean nothing and traffic signals are ignored. Crossing with the green walk signal is dangerous.

Even more Yerevan..

We went to Garni and Geghard (about 30-40 km from Yerevan) by minibus. The first is an old pagan temple built in 7th century BC. It was the only pagan temple not destroyed. The second is a unique church built in the 7th century AD. It consists of five little churches, three of which are carved out in the rocks and two larger ones were added to them in the 12th century. Geghard is the lance that was used to pierce Christ on the cross. This lance was kept in the church until a few years ago when it was moved to the museum in Echmiadzin. The weather was totally gorgeous – sunny, warm --- a perfect fall day.Last night, while walking around, we came across a brand new café (small one store front) selling lahmajune (which is also called Armenian pizza). They told us they were opening tomorrow and we told them we’d come back to try their pizza. After coming back from Garni, we went there for lunch but they said the oven broke down and they did not know when it would be fixed. So instead we had lunch in one of the dozens outdoor cafes near the opera. In the evening we were walking home and passed the pizza place again. The owner invited us in to join the table of ten people sitting and eating and drinking.. At first we refused but they insisted. After several vodkas we understood what was going on. Armenia still practices animal sacrifice. Any time there is a tragedy, they kill a lamb or a chicken and invite all friends to share the boiled meat (it has to be boiled, can’t be grilled or baked or fried) and accouterments. The tragedy was a fire that broke the pizza oven. We spent 2.5 hours there drinking and eating. Bo was able to talk to them in Russian comparing Polish and Armenian history and complaining about corruption in American and Armenian politics. They accused me of selectively pretending not to understand Armenian. Fortunately there were some youngsters who had English in school who could help me. A really nice evening.

More Yerevan

We took a tour to Echmiadzin (about 20 km from Yerevan) to see 4 ancient churches. It was a mini bus tour with about dozen others – a couple of Australians, 2 Bulgarians, a German, an Armenian from Argentina, an Armenian from New Jersey and his local girlfriend + two very obnoxious Russians who were constantly talking loudly on their cell phones when our guide Annushka was giving explanations in English. She had to repeat everything in 3 languages – Armenian, English and Russian to accommodate the group. We saw the ruins of a historic church from 7th century (Zvartnots, place of angels) built for St. Gregory the Illuminator by Catholicos Nerses II the Builder. Reputedly it was one of the most beautiful churches in the world, but the earthquake in 930 caused it to collapse. Two other churches Gayane and Hripsime are from 7th century and still working churches.
Echmiadzin was the most significant. It is the Armenian Apostolic Church’s equivalent of the Vatican. We were lucky enough to get there during mass. At the end of mass the head of the Church, the Catholicos (Pope’s equivalent) entered the church. Bo missed getting a personal blessing by inches due to a pushier believer. The mass was impressive with traditional vestments including black hooded cloaks, and a choir of 40 virgins (Bo’s spin) dressed in blue gowns and white veils. When we got back to the minibus, the Russians redeemed themselves by producing a big bottle of Armenian cognac + a set of plastic cups and treating everybody in the group to a round of cognac and some chocolate. We drank to Armenia. After that, the bond was established and all the bad feelings towards the Russians were gone. They sure know what it takes to make friends.
In the afternoon we walked to the Cascade, a set of terraces leading up to the top of one of the hills overlooking the city. A very impressive monument. ** This is the first place I’ve been that whenever I am asked my name I am not subsequently asked to spell it.