Jan 29 A Sunday in Yerevan

For breakfast, I had gata from the Tumanyan St Bakery. Looks like the top crust was added on top separately, hence the gap between the top crust and the filling. Anyway, quite tasty - the sour cherries, apricots, and walnuts all had good flavor.

Then I went to Hayk's Coffee Roasters which focuses on sourcing quality coffee beans. I had their Armenian coffee 100% Arabica version (they also had a 100% Robusta version for the caffeine?). When the coffee was hot, I felt a bit of the fine coffee grounds on my tongue but they later settled (after about an hour?) There was a toasty flavor, but not too bitter especially when I didn't drink any of the grounds.

For lunch, I dined at Rehan which was pretty upscale since it was near the Cascade. I had the Fishne Kebab, which consisted of bread, lamb meatballs, and sour cherry sauce. The lamb meatballs reminded me of Swedish meatballs - probably because they had allspice and/or nutmeg in them. The sour cherry sauce was pretty pungent, but it was mellowed out by the meatballs and labneh on the side. There was probably some warm spices in the sour cherry sauce as well. The bread was like a pan bread, similar to what Maela made. It was quite crusty and didn't have too much rise. It had a sweet aroma - almost like challah. There was definitely sugar and maybe an egg in the bread dough.

Then, I popped by Mirozyan Library which has a nice patio and balcony, likely better when it isn't snowing.

And for my excursion of the day, I visited the Sergey Parajanov Museum. Parajanov was known as a revolutionary filmmaker, though only two of his films hit the spotlight before imprisonment by Soviet authorities. His films were extremely visual and plots nonlinear. While in prison, he created collages from any materials he could find. He continued with the same medium after being freed and those works are displayed in the museum. 

Made while he was in prison using aluminum bottle caps and his finger nails.

The collages in the museum gave a view on how eccentric he was and I loved it! There was little gems everywhere that caught my attention. The closer you look, the more details you notice. Some of these collages remind me of the stagings in Beryl Sherewesky's videos, so Parajanov likely influenced many later filmmakers.

A collage about his sister's death

There were also cool dioramas and dolls. What also made my eyes light up was his use of broken china to create flowers or clam and mussel shells to create fish.

Mirror selfie!

I wouldn't be surprised if these Mona Lisas are some of his more famous works. He was inspired by a friend's Mona Lisa tattoo, which changed expression as his friend moved around. So here Mona Lisa is smirking, mischievous, smiling, etc.