Yesterday was an adventure, and as great a day as we could have hoped. After some wrong turns and some bad roads, we got to the right border post in twice the time I had calculated. The electrified fence was opened, and we saw at least a dozen soldiers in the building that looked like it should contain about 2-4 pop their heads up to watch eventually. The soldiers were mixed Russians from Russia, and local Armenian boys serving in the Russian military for the better pay. So after the right calls and all we drove into the border zone, across the raked floor and barbed wire electric fence. We had brought some treats for the soldiers, knowing they are not so well off, but not nearly enough Lahmajo, Pringles, Snickers or vodka for them all. They were quite happy to get it though of course. From here we drove to a mini-base which is closer to the actual border. From here the commander greeted us with a few words of English, a few words of Armenian, and lots of Russian, which my dad seemed to understand and reply to pretty well, although I can't be sure :-)

He gave us another Russian who spoke "some" English (precious little, but no matter) to take us to the actual church, where we were instructed not to even point our camera's towards Turkey or our camera's would be taken, and we'd be in trouble. So it was not far and as we got to the church which was just below the road on the hill/cliffside we could see the beautiful ancient tile roof. From there we climbed down to see this octagonal church and it was a very nice one, which if I am not mistake is from around the 8th century. We were free to look at the Turkish side of the river which was flowing quite well, and we can see two Turkish soldiers, no doubt watching us with binoculars. We naturally made faces at them, Lena pulling the best ones. I was tempted to moon them, but suspected our escort might not be as amused as we, nor probably the Turks would be. Along the border there are these tall guard towers too, which the soldiers watch from, and even the ones in the Russian one near us were watching us closely. This was probably from curiosity as much as anything else, since I think we must have been the only tourists they got all year. After a ton of photography (Jack had a field day), we returned to the base for some 'Haykakan Surj" as the Russian commander put it, and the commander played backgammon with my dad, getting beaten in good humor. When the game was close to a 'mars', he would say Mars, Snickers... He was the only one on the base allowed to have a wife and kids with him, and she was the one who brought us the coffee, and the cute Russian kids shot at us with toy guns as they hid inside behind the door. Their dad said something like they thought we were the bad guy Americans or something pretty funny I can't quite remember.

So we headed off, with the kids and some soldiers enjoying their little Australian koala souvenirs that Jack seems to bring an unlimited supply of, and headed back to Yerevan stopping only once for dziran (apricots). The woman was picking them still and when we asked if there were any pesticides (which looked doubtful from the appearance of the fruit) she said no, she had only watered them three times and thats it. So we got 9 kilos (she sells them by the big bucket) which are now sitting at Lenas after we ate as much as we could on the way home. (And they were delicious).

Off to Karabakh in 2 hours...