Together with my parents, I visited my best friend A.'s family in Spitak, my "Armenian family" (A.'s parents jokingly call me their third and youngest daughter). It turned out to be a very memorable visit both for me and for my parents and for our hosts as well. My parents were able to communicate directly only with A., with her brother-in-law and two of the elder children around, who all speak and understand some English. Nonetheless, everyone was able to understand each other with my translating from and into Russian, Dutch and English and with the help of hands and feet. We spent the evening eating khorovadz, drinking (I had to translate all the toasts, and drink some myself.....), talking and laughing. Not only A., her parents, brother and his wife and two kids where there, but also A.'s sister and her husband and children, an uncle who happened to drop by but ended up staying all evening and a niece who is spending part of her summer vacation with the family.

A's brother-in-law had just returned from Holland, where he had spent two weeks looking around in the health care sector. He is a family doctor / general practitioner and heads a G.P.'s practice in Spitak. In Armenia the G.P. is a fairly new phenomenon, most people still go immediately to a hospital and/or to a specialist if they need to see a doctor. However, in Holland G.P.'s have been around for a very long time, so it was an interesting opportunity for A.'s brother-in-law to look around, see how a Dutch G.P.'s practice is organized, etc. With my parents both working in the health care sector as well, the three of them had a lot to talk about (but they had already found that out when they first met a year ago).

Often friendship with local Armenians turns into getting to know the extended family - parents, uncles, aunts, siblings with their spouses, grandparents, etc. Sometimes this gets to be a bit of a pain in the behind, but in the case of A.'s family it definitely doesn't. Over the years I have got to know most of her relatives who live in or near Spitak. Especially A.'s sister and brother-in-law and their two kids are wonderful people, with whom I get along very well and who have become friends in their own right.

The next day A. took us to the center of Spitak. The town has a nice, big park with a lake which is now very dilapidated with old benches partly falling apart and an old playground with caroussels that are still working but by the look of it have turned into a safety hazard for anyone using them. However, the park is still covered with large, old trees, which, if you think of it (which I obviously never had before ;-) ), is a rare feat considering that due to the energy crisis in the mid 90s, the population has cut down almost all of the trees growing in Spitak and on the slopes surrounding the town in order to heat their homes in winter. Even though I had been to the park so many times before, I somehow never realized how old the trees in the park are and that it is special that they are actually still standing there. A. told us that during the years of the energy crisis, the trees were continually guarded by policemen to make sure they would not be cut. These trees in the park are probably the only ones or among the very few (old) trees left in the town.

A. also showed my parents where she and her family lived before the 1988 earthquake and in the years after it, before they moved to the house they live in now. She also told us about how her family experienced the earthquake. I already knew most of her history, but it was very moving to hear it again. Everyone in Spitak has similar stories to tell, but no matter how often you hear them, they remain spine-shivering. The earthquake is not something that comes up in every conversation, but it is always there, not too far beneath the surface. A. expressed this very well, when she said that most people in Armenia only saw the earthquake on tv. For those people, and also for the children born in the earthquake zone after 1988 and now growing up there, the event is history, hearsay. However, for those who lived through the earthquake and its aftermath, it is not just history, it is their own history, it is part of their lives, something that will always be with them, wherever they go, until the day they die.