This is a new city, about 100 years old. Very planned and orderly. Here’s a view from a weird day-glo, roof top shisha bar. The city feels almost European. Wide avenues and plazas with fountains (and ugly statues), opera house, folk dancing theater, but then you notice all the Soviet apartment blocks. But it’s still Ottoman-ish. They eat shauarma instead of chawarma. Everything is with eggplant and cucumber.

Armenia is only 10% of the size it originally was. Turkey stole most of it, coupled with the genocide … And the Russians dicked them over. But there’s no evidence of long ago wealth or flourishing culture – for such a literate, cosmopolitan people. There have always been Armenians in every important city throughout history. They were the wealthy traders and benevolent philanthropists. And poets and artisans. They left all the beautiful civic buildings and town houses and mansions. But no evidence of any of that in Armenia. The conquerors that passed through over hundreds of years must have had a scorched earth policy.