Day C5A: Gyumri City Tour

July 30, 2024

Sleep was amazing last night but I had gone to bed running a nasty fever and was shivering. Then during the night I had all these weird dreams like there was a delegation with Pashinyan and it was of the utmost important that I meet him and he would give advice for my trip. Really bizarre stuff. I woke up nearly 12 hours later sweating all over and now with food poisoning. That would explain the feeling of weakness and cold yesterday.

So who knows what this was, maybe somewhere I picked up covid or a cold, or it was the food or both. At any rate it would better to have a rest day and explore the city. The prospect of climbing another 800 meters worth of hills to the Georgia border would only make me feel weaker.

I enjoyed breakfast with the host couple and they said sure, absolutely stay another night. They also gave tons of advice for a city tour and I planned my day based on that. Somewhere along the line we talked about the Russians and how they fly planes to patrol the Turkish border. I asked "Why are the Russians still here anyway?" They said something like it's an agreement from the past. They're somewhat pulling back it would take Armenia joining NATO to really send them out. But apparently the Russians are allies with Turkey regardless.

Maybe it was a case where Putin found his lackeys to work his agenda on the inside, such as his buddy Erdogan and of course that good for nothing Viktor Orban in Hungary.

And there we have a village in Turkey across the river

What they also said was quite telling: "If the locals see white people like yourself they assume you're Russian".

That one comment came very close to answering the question of the origin of Caucasian people and what the point of this journal was. This trip was, among many things, an attempt to find the source of my heritage. But why did it have to be connected to the Russians?

That comment would also explain why the vibes were so cold and the women in particular giving me a cold shoulder in the city and all these suspicious eyes. It's because they thought I was a Russian! It would also explain the countless people trying to speak to me in Russian. The husband basically said that the locals revert to Russian if they can't understand you at first since most people can speak it. But it's not that they like speaking it.

That is an absolutely insane amount of alcohol. And this was just one supermarket. There were literally hundreds more I could show.

But a lot of this was starting to make sense. The locals here weren't fond of the Russians at all and why would they be? They couldn't stop Azerbaijan reclaiming the land in Karabakh. From the Aremnian side of things, this was a massive betrayal. With all the Russian resources tied up in Ukraine, they didn't have the capability to follow through on the agreement. Azerbaijan seized the opportunity to swoop right in. Or maybe the Russians had other competing interests with Azerbaijan all along.

While riding into the city, I happened to pass by an adhoc Russian military base. They were training on some outdated piece of shit artillery device. I dared not take pictures, they were certainly looking at me ride by.

Later on my host said that it was very smart not to take pictures or attract attention. In the past they've had many guests get into trouble. They end up going too close to the Turkish border on purpose and they get apprehended by the Russian military. What happens in some cases they even get a knock at the door and the Russians will ask to see the passport of the guests, look at the photos, and insist on deleting them.

So this Russian artillery was cool to see firsthand but it confirmed what I thought. The Russian military is a joke. When they tried to invade Kyiv in February 2022 they sent these massive tank columns on a highway and the whole world was gasping in horror. Then a few days went by and the tanks just stopped moving and sat there. Nobody understood why until we figured out that the Russians didn't send enough fuel trucks to supply the massive tank column. The tanks at the front ran out of gas and that is what mainly caused the whole 'special military operation' to fail spectacularly, and the entire world got to see this on display.

But while their military might be a joke, quantity has a quality of its own. Imagine you were to combine hundreds of thousands of these shitty artillery pieces and send them to the front lines. This is how the Russians are fighting in Ukraine: relentless artillery and constant meat waves of untrained soldiers at the front lines. They have a seemingly limitless supply. But eventually they'll burn through it all, it might just take five years. Prolonging all of this is how the Biden administration keeps on sending Ukraine these hand me down weapons in dribs and drabs, less than 1% of their stockpile. Ukraine deserves much better than that.

Sad to say the West is not much different from Russia. We can't follow through on the agreements we make to our allies.

Having now cleared the military base thoroughly, it was time to head into the city and explore.

Some interesting museum of architecture. There was no information here either.

Next stop was an ancient church. For this one you could just walk inside. There was no need to worry about someone stealing the bike here.

The atmosphere at this place was pretty surreal. You weren't supposed to take pictures, but I saw other people making videos and I snapped a few quietly while nobody was looking. While looking up at this gigantic mural of Jesus on the ceiling surrounded by unicorns I couldn't help but wonder if this is religion or folklore, and is there any difference between the two? It all seemed very bizarre. I had been to many churches before but nothing like this.

Next stop, the fish restaurant. I had been recommended this by my hosts and so the challenge was going to be finding someone who spoke English. Amazingly, there was a waiter who did and he was very helpful.

Next stop, the Museum of Illusions. This was something designed for high school math and science teachers so I was keenly interested. Real learning takes place in these kind of contexts, not a classroom.

They assigned me a friendly tour guide who explained everything very well. She made tons of photos and videos and let's face it, this was all supposed to go on social media. It then occured to me that this is how museums in Armenia operate. Information is provided by a guide who walks along with you and explains stuff verbally.

No doubt that could have happened at the Genocide Museum also if I made the arrangements for it.

Next stop, the Mother of Armenia statue. But before I could get there, I passed by all these plaques, written in Cyrillic, that were predominantly the names of Ukranian cities mixed in with some Russian ones. Most telling was how they spelled Kyiv as 'Kiev' and so I didn't take a picture of that.

I also noticed they displayed cities in Crimea which Russia illegally annexed in 2014 and claims as their territory. The next entry will go more into this.

On the way back unfortunately I forgot to head to the ATM and get more cash, so that backtrack added another 15km to the biking. It also meant having to go past these big vicious dogs twice. The first time was a mes. The second time I prepared defensive weapons in case the dogs went on the attack which they did. Bricks were picked up earlier. They raced after me and I threw the bricks back at them as fast and hard as possible. Although I missed, it provided enough delay and distraction for them to halt their chase and for me to pedal hard out of there.

Today's ride: 52 km (32 miles)
Total: 606 km (376 miles)

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