Armenian Tbilisi

The Holy Mother of God Church of Bethlehem

            Tbilisi is often referred to as the “jewel of the Caucasus” and it is not terribly difficult to see as to why the city has been bestowed with such a title.  It hosts numerous ethnicities, languages and religions with few, if any problems.  It has numerous sections much like any city does, each with its own identity.  In the Old City/Old Tbilisi there is a mosque and next to this lays an Armenian Orthodox Church followed by a Georgian Orthodox Church, a synagogue and finally a Catholic Church all within the vicinity of a few hundred meters.  Ernest Hemingway once wrote in perhaps his worst novel (by his own admittance), To Have and Have Not, that there is an Estonian in every port city.  Well you could easily subtract the noun ‘port’ and replace ‘Estonian’ with ‘Armenian’ and you would be dead on.  Armenians made up much of the Caucasus historically and appear in historical records practically everywhere.

            On Friday, 23.09.11, Tigran (Tyko) and his friend Davit came to visit from Armenia.  Immediately the depths of Tbilisi became apparent.  We had agreed to meet up at what we thought would be the easiest of landmarks and perhaps America’s most notorious gift to the world: McDonalds.  Unfortunately there is more than one McDonalds and we stood waiting, somewhat impatiently at different ones.  My phone sang 30 minutes past our meeting time: 

            “Mike jan, where are you?”

           

“McDonalds, Tyko jan.”

            “Yes, Mike jan, but which?”

“The one on Rustaveli,” I replied.

            “Yes Mike jan, but which?”

            “Uhm…which one are you at?”  While I knew that there was more than one McDonalds in Tbilisi I couldn’t fathom that they’d all be located on the same street.

            “Mike jan, there are three McDonalds,” Tyko continued.

            “Yes, so which one are you at?”  This continued.  Finally, we started to text each other.  Cities bring about great wonders in terms of opportunity, selection, history, views etc, but Tbilisi also carries the gift of terrifying traffic that seems to respect no authority and with such rebellious commotion comes the succession of car horns being blared as they pass by.  It’s as if everyone is discovering this device for the first time and are amused by its powers.  After all, you just press down in the center of the steering wheel and you basically have your own marching band announcing your arrival, which only hinders a phone conversation.

            Finally we met up, but not at McDonalds but in front of the most recognizable building of any country’s capitol:  Parliament.  Once they arrived we caught up, it had been a little more than a year since we last saw each other with the exception of our less than frequent meetings via Skype.  We proceeded on with a list of goals in no particular order: find our hotel, exchange money, send a wire transfer to Estonia, eat, get sim cards, etc.  After we secured a map, with the general location of our hotel circled we headed to Beeline so they could get sim cards for their phones and avoid exorbitant roaming fees. However youth brings about the passion of being at the front of the technological wave and Davit’s Iphone 4 surpassed the technology of Beeline.  To be precise his sim card was too large for the phone and we needed scissors. 

We marched into a bank and after some debate over exchange rates stood in different lines.  They had American dollars that needed to be exchanged (it’s surprisingly difficult to exchange Drams for Lari) and I stood in my queue to begin my wire transfer.  This would prove to take an extreme amount of patience. 

My teller spoke excellent English and told me that I needed to open an account.  So we filled out the forms to complete this and settled on what currencies the account would hold.  Then came the tasks of copying the information from my passport, photocopying the passport and finally a bunch of signatures.  Once that was completed she asked me for the information as to where the money was going.  I produced my notepad with all the information on it which bewildered her and rightly so.  It is terribly hard to find a printer in Urbnisi, or anywhere for that matter and so I had to copy by hand what I thought to be relevant information from the invoice.  As we progressed with the transaction Tyko and Davit came to my side.

Davit asked her for scissors.  In Russian.  As a rule here, if you speak English and the person in question speaks it like a native (and knows that you do), unless you both speak Georgian then you speak English.  It’s not terribly hard to understand.  She looked at him and he repeated the request in English.  Perhaps more bewildering to her than being spoken to in Russian by someone who was speaking to me perfectly fine in English was that he was indeed asking for scissors (far from a common request) for his sim card at a bank, I needed a wire transfer to someplace in Estonia (an even less common request that borderlines suspicion) and that an American was hanging out with Armenians in Georgia.  She looked at him, quickly took out scissors and said “I don’t understand or care what you are doing.” 

“I only need scissor to fix my sim card,” Davit tried to explain in vain.  She shot him a glance and he backed away, slightly out of fear and a fair amount of general awkwardness.       

As the day continued it quickly became apparent that there was an agenda to fulfill:  to visit everything Armenian in Tbilisi.  So we ventured forth to Old Tbilisi in search of the Armenian Orthodox Church.  On the way we stopped at a café for some tea and coffee.  There we asked our waiter for directions.  He said it was to the left.  Not entirely convinced we asked another passing waiter who claimed that the church lay to the right.  We picked the latter. 

An Azeri Wedding in the Distance
and the Wrong Direction

As we approached Heydar Aliyev Park I noticed an Orthodox priest strolling by and prodded Tyko to ask him for directions.  I figured if anyone would know where an orthodox church was it surely would be an orthodox priest.  The translation came to be ‘to go up the hill’ and we slowly climbed up the steep, partially paved road diagnosed with age and being remedied with construction.  As we climbed higher I noticed Tyko and Davit being exceptionally quiet and I was soon to discover why.  We were approaching the mosque frequented most by Azeri’s and if you are unaware of the history of the Caucasus just know that Armenia and Azerbaijan are far from being friends.  A wedding was occurring at the mosque and cars lined the one lane (literally just one lane) road hoisting flags of Georgia and Azerbaijan.  We passed the mosque and stopped, our path was blocked by a park secured with a gate and guarded by a fierce elderly lady who wanted tickets.  Obviously our church didn’t rest beyond those thin steel bars and so we headed back down. 

The Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi

Ejmiatsin Church

            And down we went, past the wedding and past the construction.  Someone else passed by, wearing a cross and so Davit asked him and he gave his version of directions and those turned out to be correct.  We entered the church, the Holy Mother of God Church of Bethlehem, whose interior was stunning, during mass and stayed for its duration. 

            We headed across the bridge that looms over the Mtkvari/Kura River and continued onwards to the opposite reaches of the city.  There we stood perplexed.  While Davit knew the general direction of the second Armenian Church, Ejmiatsin Church, he didn’t really know where it was.  So we again randomly asked people as they passed.  Finally one man, dressed in a blue track suit walked by and Tyko and Davit immediately recognized him from the previous church.  He introduced himself and we shook hands; which is when I noticed, rather uncomfortably that part of his small finger was missing.  The conversation quickly switched tongues and I was left in the dark.  He led us literally across the street.  We were maybe 30 meters from the Ejmiatsin Church.  But instead of entering we headed towards the Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi.

The Armenian Cemetery Behind the Holy Trinity Cathedral

            We walked behind it and followed a path that led us to an Armenian cemetery.  The cemetery obviously had some work done to it and rightfully so, in the 1930’s when Lavrenti Beria was exploiting the patronage network of the former USSR he started to destroy the cemetery but never finished in doing so.  After a few moments we headed back and went into the breathtaking Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi.  Then continued back to Ejmiatsin Church and went inside and roamed about.

            As we left our Armenian guide departed us and Davit started walking while we followed him.  It took us 30 minutes to realize Davit had no idea as to where he was going.  We turned around and heading back to the heart of Tbilisi on the way to the metro I spotted a small store that proudly displayed a sign that read ‘Armenia’.  We rushed inside and there before us lay numerous cured meats, hundreds of pieces of candy that glittered under the fluorescent lights like stars in the night, juices and compote, cognac and Jermuk sparkling water lined the shelves.  We couldn’t resist and left with our arms full of things which didn’t make it to the metro station before being hastily devoured.

            The night ended at the local expat bar, the Hangar, and it was there that it became quite apparent to not just myself but everyone in the bar that my companions were not skilled in the fine art of drinking.  Potvaliance tugged away at their reason and to make matters worse they still hadn’t quite grasped the concept of using English.  After much debate over how one actually consumes beer we left for a bar whose name is not displayed anywhere but is simply known for having Jimmy Hendrix posters and an old working Nintendo with Super Mario that is free to play. 

Tyko and Davit over the Mtkvari

            The next day we had a mission: Tyko’s grandfather 30 years ago lived and owned a house in Tbilisi and had requested that Tyko find the house and to capture its image with his camera.  He drew out a map, complete with the address and street names.  He warned Tyko however that this task would prove challenging for the street names have since been changed and many of the landmarks may no longer be there.  Losing our map the day before and we went into another hotel in hopes of replacing it.  There we explained our mission and they helped us with the dilemma by providing the street names and their interpretations of directions.  To be honest my attitude was riddled with skepticism, after yesterday’s experiences, directions here appeared to be more like opinions of where places should be instead of where they are. 

When we left we walked up to a taxi and began talking to the driver.  Tyko displayed the maps, asked for directions and was trying to extract a price.  The taxi driver named a price and when we bargained and agreed on the price he left and sent someone our way.  Maybe he was just practicing because he wasn’t a taxi driver and so we did the routine all over again.  The driver took us straight to the place, getting lost only twice. 

Tyko's Grandfather's House

The Doors With The Armenian Design

It was the doors to the place that immediately captured Tyko’s attention.  The wood of each door while bearing the stains of time hosted an ornate design from thick, twisted metal wires.  They were shaped in letters of the Armenian alphabet.  The doors were already at least two hundred years old when his grandfather was born and had run in the family.  Above us, on the third floor there was a balcony that stretched out from the room that his grandfather lived in.  A resident walked by and started asking questions and Davit informed her of our reasons for being here as Tyko stood and looked in awe at his family’s history.  She then started to talk to Tyko and he pointed out the designs on the door, now convinced she started to gather some neighbors and wanted to take us to the room where his grandfather lived but unfortunately the owner of the apartment wasn’t there.  The neighbors amassed and we all chatted, the Armenian and Russian languages becoming blurred.  They remembered his grandfather and told him a story or two much of which I’m sure has been repeated to his grandfather already by Tyko since he’s back in Yerevan. 

Tyko and some stranger on the Mtkvari River. 

The day came to close.  Davit’s extended family had planned a gathering at some village about 80 km south of Tbilisi and I had to be back in Urbnisi.  We shared a taxi as they went to meet with Davit’s family and I headed to the Didube Station.  We parted with promises to meet up again, this time in Yerevan, photos, an adventure and a satisfied grandfather.