Jan 30 - Jan 31 Cultural Activities in Yerevan

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JAN 30

In the morning, I hung out with Joe and Melissa. 

ST. GREGORY'S CATHEDRAL

This church was huge! The smooth stone definitely made it feel extra monumental. No pictures were allowed inside.


BAKERY

We visited a bakery near St. Gregory's church that basically doesn't show up on Google. Potato pastry had some herbs and salty sheep's milk cheese. Quite good!


A cat kept meowing at us outside the bakery.

GUM MARKET

We revisited GUM Market - I didn't get much better at bargaining but I learned a little bit while watching Melissa. Got some dried pears and juicy dried apricots with pits.

Lots of lavash!

LAHMAJUN GAIDZ
Arabic Lahmajun - beef, onions, pomegranate molasses, warm spices. pomegranate molasses added sweetness and tang!



GATA CAKES & BAKERY
Another type of gata! This one was basically like soft sweet bread - not much gluten. The filling had relatively coarse sugar!


OPERA
The opera house itself is quite grand, but the audience was rather normally dressed. At least compared to the gowns people wore to the ballet in Milan. There was also a surprising number of young people here. Surprising in that most concertgoers in the US are older. To be far, there also seemed to be a class trip. Also, this seems to align with my impression that Armenia has a robust young population - a large part of the workforce appears to be around my age.


The opera Anoush by Tigranian, centered on the ideas of friend vs foe and romantic love, itself was quite enjoyable. The music, costumes, dance, and plot all felt pretty Armenian. The plot focuses on a village girl, Anoush, and the shepherd, Saro. These two lovers are torn apart because Saro defeated Mossy, Anoush's brother, in a friendly wrestling match. The Armenian part is that the match should have ended in a draw, as is custom. Like all operas, however, someone dies in the end - in this case Saro followed by Anoush. One of my favorite parts was when the villagers were dancing at a wedding. The male dancers did a cool shimmy all in a line as well as lots of eyecatching jumps. The female dancers also danced in a line and had fancy footwork. Also, one funny part for me was when one of Saro's friends is really milking his sadness in the shadows of stage.


MANTE
  • Beef mante served with tomato sauce and yogurt sauce - mante dough is more bread than dumpling/noodle like, a little bit of sumac dashed on top of yogurt, level of acidity in tomato sauce reminds me of Chef Boyardee ravioli
  • Pumpkin kufte - bulgur is pumpkin flavored! Filling is probably aveluk, but pretty mild. Also a bit of walnuts and lemon. Overall, clean flavors but still some complexity

JAN 31

ARAM KHACHATURIAN MUSEUM
Here, I learned that Khachaturian was more than just a composer; he was a public figure. Throughout his life, he traveled around the world and met with miners, scientists, and the Queen of England, along with writers like Hemingway and of course musicians.

Also, one thing I noticed is that there was a lot of Japanese text / concert programs, alongside Armenian, Russian, English, and French. The staff informed me that one of his pupils at the Moscow Conservatory was Nobuo Terahara who was a proponent of Khachaturian in Japan.

I also discovered Khachaturian's violin concerto and cello concerto, which I will listen more closely to.


Khachaturian's famous Masquerade Waltz

LAVASH
  • Pumpkin soup - earthy flavor (almost like bay leaf but maybe not), pumpkin seeds for crunch and nuttiness, garlic croutons (actually softened pretty quickly)
  • Lamb Tzhvzhik (pronounced tesh-ve-zhik) - liver, lungs, tail fat, onions, a few slices green chili, a bit of sumac. predominantly liver flavor, so couldn't tell if it was lamb lol, but other pieces were definitely lamb. would have preferred more evenly distributed chili and more sumac/lemon
  • Buckthorn compote - the buckthorn I've seen in the past in orange/yellow in color but this was red. tasted almost like raspberry and pear combined
It was also fun to watch a waiter training one of the busboys how to lift a platter above his head (by twisting the wrist)!

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