Gyumri and Dilijan

We arrived in Guymri after dark and with the help of a flashlight and a map managed to find our way to a B&B where we received a warm welcome, as usual. We had time for a delicious dinner in a Georgian restaurant and a short walk around the dark town before it was time for bed.

Guymri is a small town with charmingly irregular houses and gardens bordering muddy streets where chicken, dogs and cows wander peacefully around. There are no high buildings left after the 1989 devastating earthquake destroyed most of the old ones, and those that were left standing were deserted in fear of another disaster. Our host's sister had lived in a caravan for five years after the earthquake although her apartment was still intact.

The following day, after visiting a couple of churches and a scruffy cafe where most regulars seemed to be Russian soldiers (Guymri is near the Turkish border, and Armenians have outsourced most of their borderguarding duties to Russians) we took a taxi to Dilijan, a town called "the Switzerland of Armenia" where many great artists like Shostakovitch, Prokofjef and Khatchaturian went to seek for inspiration. The town was not unpleasant and setting on mountain slope definitely is nice, but most of the inspiration it seemed to us had already been used, or drunken, and thrown away to the river flowing through town.