August 1 - Hello, Armenia

The Armanian border was only some 20 km away - but it was uphill and very windy (it's headwind a biker usually has) and it was quite a relief to reach the border. The countryside was very barren, hardly any trees to see, it was moon-like in nature, not that I have ever visited to the moon.

The border crossing went quickly, though the officers on both sides were a bit unsure about the Hungarian document I was holding in my hands, one even asked if it was a passport. Guess not too many had crossed from Hungary.

It was quite a difficult roller-coaster on the Armanian side as well, one include following the other. From the top of a hill, I had a nice view of the surrounding, including Gyumri, the second largest city of the county. Rolling into it, I met a group of Armanian bikers on their very first road trip, two of the five actually fell when I wanted to shake their hands, guess they were not used to having bike bags.

I was impressed by Gyumri - the town is nicely kept, has some large churches - that place could have been easily confused by a city in Italy or Spain. I looked in vain for a bike shop, in vain, but did meet up with Chris for a short while.

Now I was on the M1, the main road in Armania. It was in OK condition (not always) and traffic was light to moderate. However, as a strom was comign in (yet again), it was howling strong winds, which made the advancement really hard. This probably was a section I disliked the most on this entire trip.

I told myself, oh well, you'll find a nice hotel and get a good night's sleep - it was not to be. It turned out that there was no hotel/motel, but somebody did mention a B&B. I started searching for it and a man on the road said he could help. He took me to a nice house with a lofty garden and I thought my troubles were over. Then he told me to follow him and we walked in akward silence (one broken by his repeated spitting) to a desolate row of flats, where he took me to the third floor of a run-down apartement, which had neither electricity, nor running water. I was quite tired and did not want to expose myself to the thunder. The best part was that he initially wanted some Eur 40, we finally agreed on Eur 6 - and that he would provide a large canister of water.

The apartement itself was nice - it even had a piano, a patio, about 120 years ago, I'd have given him the Eur 40. The way the place was now, even my six euros was a bit of a rip-off.