The city of Tbilisi is not so far from the border to Armenia. This was good news because we knew we’d have to be awake when the train crossed the border so as to pass the immigration inspection. The system was actually pretty easy. A stop or two before the border a crew of Georgian immigration officials get on the train and ride along checking and stamping passports. Then, at the the border they get off and are replaced by Armenian immigration officials who do much the same thing. Unless you come from certain countries.
Armenia and the USA have a pretty solid relationship and so I could stay in my cabin and the officers would come to me and stamp my passport. Other countries need to have a visa or buy one as they cross the border. At the border the guards escort people who need to buy a visa to a special building, where they wait in line, pay for the visa, and then can go back to the train.
Kuniko was thinking ahead and bought a visa online before our trip, so as to make things easy. Unfortunately not many Japanese people travel these rails, and they still wanted to inspect the visa (and Kuniko) outside the train car to fully understand the situation. That meant she had to get up around midnight and join the queue of “visa on arrival” passengers outside. I sat inside the cabin and wondered vaguely what would happen if she was somehow refused entry. Should I jump off the train? Charge the border calling her name?
Luckily the question was moot because she came back pretty quickly, and we could sit back and relax and try to get some sleep.
Sleeping on the train was fun. Sometimes we moved, sometimes the train stopped for a long time. Nobody came to take the extra beds but we didn’t sleep completely comfortably because we didn’t know if someone would show up or not. We had a tiny blanket and a good sized pillow, and we were pretty comfortable overall.
One of the water bottles that we had bought at the station sprung a leak at the very bottom, so we had to hold the bottle upside down to prevent water from spilling all over, and it turned out to be a little tricky to drink water from the bottle without getting wet. It was a little game to keep us occupied while we traveled through the night.
Unfortunately for me I had to run to the toilet now and then to take care of the churning in my stomach. The toilet wasn’t clean and beautiful, but it wasn’t a pit either. Luckily there weren’t many people running to the restroom throughout the night, and there was plenty of toilet paper. Still, not ideal for me – I had some kind of stomach bug.
We woke up early with the sun just starting to rise out the window. The view of the desert outside of Yerevan was absolutely beautiful. On the other side of the train to the southwest was a brilliant view of Mt. Ararat, shining with snow on the peak even during summer time. It was on the side of the train where the windows didn’t open, so I figured I’d wait and take a picture on the return trip – but this turned out to be a bad strategy, which I’ll explain later.
Something about waking up on a moving train to a new day really struck a chord with me. Maybe I have been reading a lot of Paul Theroux lately and that has influenced me, but I really enjoyed it. If I could just have a hot cup of coffee the moment would have been perfect.
So the train slowly rolled into Yerevan, and we could disembark there and get our bearings. I felt a little dirty and a little tired, but facing a new city in the morning is really the best. Coming into a new city late at night and searching for a hotel can be stressful, but here we had plenty of time to figure things out in the light of day.
We started by hitting up a taxi driver outside the station. In contrast to the taxi drivers back at Tbilisi airport, the drivers here seemed much more relaxed. We asked an older guy about a ride to the city center and he said “no English”, but a younger guy came up and was willing to work things out by gesture and phone. I liked his attitude; he knew he’d have more work on this fare but potentially more income.
We showed him the hotel on the map, but he didn’t quite get it exactly. Instead he saw that we had the phone number, so he called the hotel and spoke with them directly and got directions. Then he waved us to the taxi. Kuniko pressed him to find out how much it was to get there (since nobody was using meters) and he held up four fingers. I asked him about changing money, and he used gestures to indicate that first he’d take us to the money changer, then to the hotel. Perfect.
The money changer was quite close in fact, and the taxi driver parked across the street in a temporary parking spot, and then indicated that he’d come with me inside to help with the exchange. We started to cross the street but another taxi pulled up behind and started honking at our taxi to move. Our poor driver went back, and waved me to continue on to change money. Inside I changed the money, and the taxi driver came back just as I finished and made sure that I had exchanged to small enough bills to pay the driver correctly – good idea!
We went back out and got back into the relocated cab, and the driver took off down the road. It wasn’t far to the center of town, and when we got close the taxi driver again called the hotel and zeroed in on the correct address. Soon enough he brought us to the doorstep, and we got out and paid. I paid 4+1 as a tip, and the driver seemed satisfied. I liked his style and he certainly earned his extra money.
We went inside the hotel, and announced ourselves at the desk, at around 8 am in the morning. The initial plan was to park our suitcase here, go out and do sightseeing in the morning, and finally come back in the afternoon and do check-in at the normal time. Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling very good, still sweating even though it really wasn’t that hot, and I thought going out might be a bad idea. The hotel staff were apologetic that the room was occupied and we couldn’t do an early check-in, but they said that we could use their bathrooms and showers to freshen up, and that they had a common room where we could spend time and relax while waiting for check-in. I jumped at the chance to use a clean toilet and to take a shower, and then we went into the common room to rest.
The room was pretty nice – a big clean room full of cushions, beanbags and pillows, with two PCs, a TV and DVD player, and most importantly an air conditioner. We laid back and rested here, and Kuniko was nice enough to go buy me some more water and a bottle of Coke – which my Hungarian doctor had recommended last year to recover my strength quickly.
We spent more than four hours here, and I sometimes drifted off to sleep, sometimes Kuniko napped in there too. I know the room wasn’t really intended for people to sleep in, but we made it into an emergency bedroom. Sometimes people would step inside, but few people stayed long, especially with the two sleeping corpses in there.
At some point we were half asleep and two little kids came into the room with their father. The father set them up on one of the PCs, and they started playing a loud game involving pop music and a lot of clicking. I was in a common room so I couldn’t really complain, but the dad must have been desperate to entertain his kids and miss the two exhausted people laying down in the corner. At some point I got my tired body up and went out to the front desk to see what was going on with our room.
Apparently the staff had taken pity on us, and they said that we could get into our room in 10-15 minutes. Hooray – almost two hours before the official check-in time. I told Kuniko the good news, and then we got organized and soon enough we were being led to the elevator by the hotel staff. He said that although we had reserved a standard room he was upgrading us to a full sized apartment, and that was good news, too. I was dead on my feet as we got out of the elevator, and after letting us into the room, the staff beat a hasty retreat and left us there. Privacy at last!
The apartment was really nice – a bedroom, a living room, a big refrigerator and kitchen, even a clothes washer. We didn’t really look around much before jumping into the inviting bed. I got under the covers still sweating and feeling the chills setting in, and I knew that I was in for a rough patch. After that I crashed out, and then it was only brief moments of consciousness for the next 24 hours. But at least we were in our own place behind locked doors with a clean toilet that worked.
Kuniko wasn’t in great shape either, but she was better off than me. At some point she went out to buy supplies: chicken soup, water, Powerade, and a dinner of dolma for her. I remember sometimes I woke up and she was watching k-pop videos, other times she was asleep. I lost track of time and just slept and slept, and sometime during the night my fever broke and I was just thirsty and sleepy.
The next morning I slept late, and Kuniko went out and did some preliminary sight-seeing without me, taking pictures and exploring Yerevan. I woke up and made some chicken soup, and the salty broth was like the nectar of the gods. After a few swallows of that, I was feeling much better. At some point we decided to go get some breakfast in the hotel dining area, and I started eating solid foods again. My appetite wasn’t completely back, but I could see I was on the road to recovery. Kuniko was also feeling better, so it was good news all around.
We’re not sure exactly what happened, but our best guess is that our extended exposure to the heat wave kind of lowered our natural resistance, combined with maybe some weird bacteria from some food or the ice from my lemonade in Tbilisi – everything worked against me and forced a 24 hour recovery on my body, like it or not. After this, we were more careful to stay out of the heat and to stick to air conditioning in the afternoons.
So it was time to do a little exploring of Yerevan together. And we wanted to start with the brandy.
