What we thought was a quaint little
park, turned out to be a domestic violence haven and breeding ground
for conniving and thieving jerk-children. While little children
simultaneously asked for money and laughed at us, blatently making
fun of us in a language we could not understand, we witnessed a woman
running as fast as her high-heels would allow toward us. About 75
feet from us, her beer-bellied husband caught her by the arm,
slapping her in the face and pushing her back in the direction she
came from. This back and forth of running away, followed by
violence, yelling, and being led back went on for sometime, until it
resulted in all park patrons running towards the sound of a slamming
car door. We couldn't see what happened, but the woman was freed and
the man took off in a run of sorts, well the best run his belly
could muster toward us and the main road. Police slowly made their
way in his tracks, but by the time they hit the street found
themselves distracted by jokes and friendly slaps on the back by the
male witnesses.
We took this as an omen, and decided to
spend the extra money by calling our host instead of continuing to
wait for his text message. As it turned out, our host was not quite
aware of how couchsurfing worked and was not actually in town and
could no longer host us, but might be back the next day.
Strike two Vanadzor.
While trying to leave Vanadzor, we
experienced cat-calls, whistles, car honks, and yelling by literally
every car and man that passed us. I didn't count, but I would
estimate that on our 20 minute walk (at 7am) we were honked at 30
times, and given kissy-faces at least 20. To rub salt in the wound,
when we arrived at the bus station (30 minutes early) there was only
one space left, on the only bus for the day – I shrugged my
shoulders and said to McNabb, well I'll see you in across the border
then.
Kidding! I would never leave my
glamorous ginger behind! We then started the negotiations with
drivers to get to the border (in our pathetic Russian, mind you). We
got a decent price and headed out. Driving along canyon cliffs, at
high speeds, with a cigarette, our driver also decided to make
numerous phone calls – all of which seemed to be about “Alaverdi”
a town just ahead....once we reached said town our driver tried the
ignition (although the car was already on) pulled over and said the
car was having a small problem. He popped the hood, took out a
screw-driver, and I unbeknownst to him watched as he simply tapped on
things to create noise as if he were fixing it. We were still a good
50 kilometers from the border, but he so generously called a taxi
friend of his to come pick us up.
To shorten this ridiculously and
unnecessarily drawn out border crossing process, We paid only the
originally agreed upon price, did not fall for the taxi driver lies
of there not being any buses to cross the border, and simply walked
ourselves across Armenia and into Georgia. The clouds parted
immediately as we walked towards the border crossing, greeting us
with a lovely and most pleasant border guard, and a super kind man
who offered to drive us to the capital (albeit a frightening drive,
due to McNabb's ginger beauty distracting him in the front seat).
In the end, we defeated the villain
known as Vanadzor, but it has left a dark scar on our Armenian
memories, and will henceforth always be known as the world's worst
city.
