Lost on the Way to Armenia

  Reflections on two months in Armenia.   Language. Armenian is a very, very distant cousin to Latin, so trying to apply any words we know in English, French or Spanish to anything Armenian doesn't work.  And their written language was invented in 405AD and is used only inside of this country. Their neighbor Georgia has their own unique spoken and written language.  Another neighbor,  Turkey,  used to use written Farsi but changed to the Latin alphabet about a century ago and saw their literacy rate explode from 10-20% to 80-90% in a generation.  Another neighbor,  Russia, has their own written language,  but it's based on Greek, which Latin is also based on,  so that's not quite so strange.  Proto-Indo-European began just north of here around 4500 BCE between the Caucasus mountains, the northern shore of the Black Sea, and the Asian Steppe. From here it spread southeast and became Farsi,westward to become Latin and Germanic, a...

 It was time to move on to Armenia.  We had planned to spend more time in Georgia exploring the country but, fate had other plans.  As you already are likely aware from previous posts, I have an Armenian heritage on my father's side.  My grandparents arrived in the USA as a result of deportations from their Armenian lands in Turkey which left them country-less in their home lands.  The Armenian government has been actively assisting those who were displaced by offering repatriation to Armenia.  I took advantage of this program by visiting the Armenian Embassy in Washington, DC back in December of 2025 and applying.  While we were in Sivas, Turkey, I received an email notification from the offices in Yerevan that I had been given citizenship to Armenia.    With this exciting information, I realized that getting my passport and citizenship papers was of the utmost importance going forward.  Knowing this, we began an accelerated trip o...

 Tbilisi, Georgia. I had heard it's a nice place, but wow. Affordable, modern, historic, eclectic, creative, artistic...What's not to love? The country is bordered by Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey and the Black Sea. The Caucus mountains dominate the border with Russia, all the way to sea level. There's glaciers and palm trees, all in a country a little larger than Massachusetts. I'm starting to really like this place.  Other countries erect monuments to soldiers, generals, military leaders. In Tbilisi's parks we find Rustavel, a poet. Lado Guliashvili, a painter. Giorgi Chanturia, politician and proponent of non violence. Sulkhan Orbeliani, story teller, teacher, politician.  Seeing Soviet era infrastructure and architecture is to be expected. Blocky, gray, concrete, cheaply built, often decaying. They ruled here in the 1920s. But there is also much wonderful, classic architecture, with ornate balcony railings, caricatures car...

We have spent the past two months traveling across Turkiye, starting in the west and moving, somewhat stochastically, ever eastward toward Armenia.  As most of you, if you have read any of the previous posts, know that I have a heritage of Armenian ancestry in Turkey.  As we moved eastward from the western parts of the country towards the central and eastern regions, I began, oddly enough, to feel "more at home".  Turkey is a large country.  It's 1,000 miles across, about the distance of Boston to Chicago.  It's 400 miles wide from south to north, about the distance of Boston to Washington, DC.  Just like in the USA, there are different cultural "feels" to specific regions.  Moving into the central and eastern parts of the country brought us into contact with people more similar to my family.  In Elazig and Sivas as well as in Malatya and Erzincan, it seemed like every other person on the street looked like my dad or my grandparents on his side....

Turkey has a storied past. We visited the archeological museum in Kars, the eastern-most city in Turkey. We've been experiencing similar discontinuities in museums and archeological ruins in other locations here.  The Silk Road came through here, and also through Armenia to the east. And a major hub of that trade network was centered in Greece. Like the Oregon Trail in the US, it was not one pathway. It also wandered through Georgia, Persia, Russia and some aquatic routes. It carried much more than silk and spices and pottery and other physical trade goods. It mixed people, brought slaves and livestock, transported ideas and religions, and occasionally brought diseas Over thousands of years, what it left behind was a patchwork of peoples holding different languages, religions, cultures, styles of dress, music, food, and so much more. Ironically instead of mixing with each other and growing and learning, they all hated each other and would routinely go out and wage war on each other...

Nobody visits Karaman as a tourist. It's a agricultural town, famous for apples. It sits at about a thousand meters elevation. Sprawling concrete apartment boxes. A hundred km from Konya, home of Rumi. Ah, but east of here is the town of Taşkale, the Manazan Mağaraları caves, and Inescu. And while there are no busses, and it's well off the tourist trail, it's worth visiting. Fortunately our hotel front desk knows of a taxi driver that we could hire for the whole day. Sold! At 9:00 our ride shows up. He's expecting typical tourists. We get in and off we go. His English is sketchy so we're making good use of Google Translate and a proprietary in-ear translation earbud called “EarDance”. Kristen tells him about her ancestors from Turkey, from Harput, Malatya and Azerbaijan, and that we're traveling all over Turkey exploring where those connections are. Soon enough we arrive at the Manazan Mağaraları caves. These date from 300-500 AD, or about 1400 years ago, simila...

June 7 Konya, The land of the Whirling Dervishes After a 10 hour bus ride from Malatya west and south across rugged mountains and long stretches of green farmland plains, we arrived, hot tired and ready to just relax in our Air BnB into the city of Konya. Once the beating drum of the Ottoman Seljuk Empire, it is now a city of whirling dervishes and tranquil parks, where the saffron glow of the day dissolves into cobalt nights. From the towering Alaeddin Mosque to the mystic legacy of Rumi, Konya is a bridge between the ancient past the modernity of the present day. From the main bus terminal, we donned our backpacks and walked the short distance to the modern tramway that whisked us into the heart of Konya, and, as it happens, only a few short blocks from our Air Bnb. The next morning, we made our way to the Aladdin Keykubad Mosque. Built on Aladdin Hill, it dates back to the 12 th century and serves as a spiritual anchor for the city. The Mosque itself is quite a pilgrimage sit...