20. ARMENIA

First of all: Armenia was probably the country on my entire trip that surprised me the most. I did not expect a lot and as always was just open and happy to explore a new country and Armenia had such an abundance of natural and architectural beauty that I never heard of before.

Before we had to decide to travel to either Armenia or Azerbaijan because it was hard for us to combine both of them for political reasons and tensions due to the ongoing war between the two countries. In the end, we decided to travel to Armenia since they issue a free visa and had smaller COVID restrictions. Without seeing Azerbaijan yet, I can tell that was a great decision!

We took the completely new night train from Tbilisi to Yerevan, where we were one of the first people to sleep on that newly installed cabin. It was the cleanest and comfiest train I have been on, even the shower on board was amazing. At 7 in the morning, we arrived in Armenia's capital Yerevan where two wild stray dogs welcomed us at the train station and followed us the full 3 km to our accommodation. Warm welcome.

We spent in total 15 days in the country and visited 3 places in different regions. Armenia is famous for its rich ancient history, being the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion and its diverse landscapes of lakes, valleys & canyons. For such a small country there is a really big variety of landscapes and climates. Sometimes we had a temperature change of 15 degrees of traveling from North to South within a small distance in one day.

So we started to explore Yerevan for a few days which was a really beautiful city! Until now we still say that this would be the city in Europe where we can imagine ourselves living a lot. It's a neo-classical constructed city with wide avenues, tons of amazing cafès, parks, galleries and a romantic atmosphere. The atmosphere and city style reminded me a lot of Paris and Vienna. All of that in combination with some Soviet architecture makes it a really interesting city to explore. Behind the city lays the majestic snowcapped peak of stunning Mount Ararat.

After 5 days in the city, it was time to dig into nature and explore nature in the North of the country. In Dilijan, also called "Armenia's Switzerland", we had some very pleasant hikes in a mild climate between densely forested valleys and mountains with alpine meadows. The region reminded me a lot of the National Parks in our countries Germany and Poland.

From there we went from North to South (which is not long in Armenia) to have a completely different hiking experience. From wet forests to an extremely dry canyon landscape. We chose the town of Yeghegnadzor as our base for the south. Both hiking days we had there, were fantastic and surprising! The deep canyon full of eagles, badgers, bears and beautiful churches was a real adventure. Especially when we ran out of water at 35 degrees and managed to find a spring dehydrated as hell at a church. The second day was all about exploring Noravank Monastery. The real adventure on that day where the two hitchhikes. First with a super friendly Iranian truck driver (the border to Iran is very close here) and back with 2 weed-smoking Armenian kids driving a car out of Soviet times.

Since we had a flight at the end to our next destination we were lucky enough to return to Yerevan for 3 days again. Actually, we planned to cross into Iran from Armenia but the Iranian government had a different idea and closed its land borders. One door closes and another door opens. That's what traveling during a mass hysteria meant and it was not too bad.

3 Highlights:
- Armenia's noble capital Yerevan

- Dilijan and the surrounding forests

- Canyons and monasteries in the south