Ex Patria

The road more traveled

We are going to Karabagh for Labor Day weekend.

Even if you do not know anything about the Caucasus, the various wars and secessions that occurred after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, you will probably have heard of Nagorno Karabagh.  It's a funny little exclave of Armenia within Azerbaijan, nominally independent with its own embassy in Yerevan, but actually really belonging to Azerbaijan, only it doesn't and is really Armenian but then again... you get the idea.

One has to get a visa to get into Karabagh, and one can only go through the Lachin corridor, one has to register with the Foreign Ministry upon arrival, etc., etc.  Also, you ought to get your visa on a separate piece of paper. Once once it is physically attached to your passport, that was it for ever going to Azerbaijan.  They don't like that sort of thing.  Most Americans and Germans here in Armenia can't go anyway as they are diplomats and them traveling to Karabagh could be interpreted as an acceptance of the status quo. 

But we can because nobody really cares about us.

Lucky us.

One of our guide books is peppered with expressions like, "avert unnecessary risk", "at LEAST four uncomfortable hours", "stick to the road MORE traveled", "DANGEROUS HOLES".   You could feasibly ask, why go there, what with the mines, the occasional shootings, the horrible roads, the iffy political status.

Why, because it's interesting! It's a beautiful country, full of monasteries, mountains (Nagorno = mountainous in Russian), gorgeous views... and because we can.

Reasons enough.

Musical child

When your sons starts making up songs like these:

Kryptonite, Kryptonite,
We are ready for a fight...

...should you be worried that he clearly identifies with the Legion of Doom?  Or should you be worried that either he or you or possibly both know way too much about Superheroes?

Not all those who wander are lost

We are at a turning point again - once more, the (remote) prospect of a new job in a new country surprised us, has our imagination captivated, has us excited and anxious.  It makes us want to go on and want to stay at the same time.

As always, it also makes us stop and think about our life and whether we are still okay with wandering around the globe year after year after year. 

So far, the answer is yes.  We feel no compunction to move to the US at the moment, even though the last home visit made us realize just how many comforts we miss in our daily lives. (Book stores, so plentiful!  Ice cream, so yummy! Good roads!  Safe swimming pools!  Deep-fried Oreo cookies! [Just kidding.])

However, the housing market is still strong, we do not want to be part of the rat race in an international consulting firm's home office, our trust in the Democrats to turn the current political trend around is fickle to say the least, and we believe that our kids (and we ourselves) do ultimately profit from living abroad.

But this last visit also confirmed a growing sense of loss.

My niece and nephew went away for summer camp this year, and as part of the preparation their mother pre-addressed and pre-stamped envelopes for the children to "make it impossible not to write" to their parents, grand-parents, and godmother.  Doug is the nephew's godfather -- but there was no pre-addressed, pre-stamped envelope for him in that pile.  It hurt.

This is only one example of how "outside" we feel when it comes to family matters.  We hear about news last, phone calls are rare, birthdays are often forgotten or remembered belatedly, family affairs are discussed without us.  We keep being surprised by events just because nobody thought of telling us.  When family members bought a lake house last year, it came as a complete surprise to us.  But apparently, this had been in the making for two years, with everybody but us in the know.  It's hard to swallow that sometimes, and it's hard to complain about it, too. After all, the individual event is rather inconsequential.  The cumulative effect, however, is grating.

Almost two years ago, I wrote a series on Halfway down the Danube [link to new site] about what is like to be an Expat - about those little things that non-Expats rarely consider but that determine our daily lives.  In the light of recent events, I decided to repost it, heavily  edited and updated. 

Here we go.

Lake Sevan revisited

We spent the weekend at Lake Sevan.  We have been visiting Lake Sevan before, we toured the peninsula and visited the Monastery.  Sevan is high up in the mountains, always a bit cooler than Yerevan, and a popular destination during the summer heat.  So, this weekend, we decided to drive to the far end of the lake (which means, the East coast), and hike almost into Azerbaijan.

We stayed at the Tufenkian Hotel which is nice but very pricey (we paid almost $200 for a suite).  It has stunning views of the lake and is located in one of the nicest villages I've seen in Armenia so far.  The Tufenkians, btw, are very busy and engaged Diasporans/Repatriates.  The best guide to hiking in Armenia was co-written by one of them, Jeffrey Tufenkian.  (The other author is our landlady - that's Armenia in a nutshell for you.)  Despite the price and the fact that the restaurant is located a 10 minute walk from the hotel, we liked it quite a bit.  We had a bed for Alan and David downstairs, a double bed upstairs, and a little seating area and another sofa upstairs.  It was roomy enough for us, something that is important when you have five people in a room.

(My favorite Tufenkian hotel remains the one in Lori, though.)

I can totally see why Tufenkians built this hotel in Tsapatagh -- which is quite remote.  You have to drive around the lake, from the peninsula it's about another 60 km on a so-so road but with gorgeous views. It's a very nice drive with interesting vistas - old crumbling Soviet-style spa hotels, small summer houses, interesting rock formations.  Very recommended.

But it's the village that makes the place. Tsapatagh is small and located along a rolling dirt road off the main street.  And it's gorgeous.  It's green, there are small well-kept gardens along the way, apple trees, apricot trees (with apricots!), sun flowers, poplar trees, chickens, cows, sheep... it's good for the soul to walk around there. You can drink the beauty like cool summer wine.

We wanted to hike up the path towards Azerbaijan but the boys refused to walk that day.  They are usually quite good hikers but last weekend, there wasn't anything we could do.  We also forgot the baby carrier, d'uh.  But it's so gorgeous that we decided to try again in spring.  Hopefully, the boys won't keep us from doing the hike then! So we just walked along the main road, watched house builders, looked at gardens, the boys chased some chickens and we build a little stone tower at a crossroads to commemorate our visit.  It was peaceful and quiet and good for us.

(Never mind that the border is only 4 km away and there are still shots exchanged now and then.)

View of the lake from the village (mind the chicken!)

Evening sun in Tsapatagh

We were here!

War on all

From the Wall Street Journal:

Under legislation signed by U.S. President George W. Bush last week, travelers from the European Union and some other regions of the world could face delays of 48 to 72 hours between when they buy an airline ticket to enter the U.S. and when they are allowed to board their flights.

The law also says all cargo containers shipped to the U.S. should be screened for radiation at their ports of departure. The EU exported $333 billion of goods to the U.S. last year.

I'm not sure whether that would apply to me as I'm a legal resident of the US but under the current administration, I have learned it's safe to assume the worst, period.

So, if there was a family emergency, I might have to wait three days before I could travel (probably missing the emergency, as those are often of a temporary nature).  Likewise, if one of my kids had to be flown to the US for medical reasons, I could not go right away.  Or if we were to decide to do a last-minute-trip to the US just for fun.  (We are known to have such rash travel plans.)

Speaking of containers, if we ever moved back to the US, our containers could be delayed by months because we could feasibly have bought some shiny stuff in Iran, or so.

I'm not even going to get all riled up about the latest wiretapping foreigners nonsense.  And here I thought the Dems would be a bit more, hm, morally upright.  Hah. Stupid me.

Good times were had by all

We are back in Armenia.  It feels nice, to be back home after almost eight weeks of absence. I know where things are in the kitchen (and which things are). I can buy a kilo of ripe, delicious peaches, a kilo of scrumptious tomatoes, a kilo of eggplant,  a five-kilo watermelon,  and two kilos of cucumbers for all of five dollars at the little corner store down the hill.  Of course, we had no water for 18 hours on the first day, it's been raining hard for two days, and the little bakery across from us closed shop while we were gone - so all is relative.

We had a great summer - the kids especially loved New York, the Montgomery County Country Fair, the various comic book shops, the waterpark at Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg in Virginia, playing with their cousins, and the day camp they went to for a week in Bethesda.

There will be extensive blogging on our adventures, plus our worry about the current developments in Iran, with what it being just down the street, so to speak.  Here just a few impressions and some pictures of our summer to start you off.