Today started taking the van to Cascade Park, which is the center piece for the City’s center. It has lots of art and lots of history. It was originally designed to make the city truly the capital, and change the landscape from dry and tree-less to many trees and an open homey feel.
The cascade part of the design, is a large open building, with cascading terraces that would allow water to spill down into the center, raising the humidity of the area above the dryness it was. It took a while to get it approved through Moscow, but they finally approved it and started construction.
In 1988, it was nearly finished, when a 6.8 earthquake hit Armenia. Somewhere between 25,000 to 50,000 people died, a half a million plus were injured, and another half a million plus were without homes. The catastrophe was so bad that the Soviet Union could not cope with it, and Mikhail Gorbachev had to ask for international community (the US in particular) for help (which just didn’t happen). Switzerland and Germany were instrumental in providing technical mountain assistance. All of the money out of Moscow for construction of the Cascade were shifted to disaster recovery.
It was shortly after that in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, and with no funding the project was never finished. Our guide told us that the City just recently approved the funds to finally finish the Cascade, and the residents are excited to see it completed in the near future.
The art in the Cascade park was from around the world, from countries like Spain and France. It also included several well known artists, like Fernando Botero (Columbia) who had several very unique pieces in the park.
This art piece is of a lion. The artists travels a LOT on a motorcycle, and so his art is made from his used motorcycle tires as they wear out… so 100% tire art…
And this series is from Fernando Botero (in case you can see a similarity between them):
And there were a pair of these stallions, made all from used horse-shoes. These statues came from Great Britain and were made for and used in the 2012 Olympics:
After walking through the park, we walked up the first flight of stairs, before deciding we would take the escalator up the rest of the way. To our happy surprise, there was art inside as well, on each floor as well as along the escalators.
And of course the art on the inside:
After the park, we started walking to the Opera House. On the way we walked through “Painter’s Corner” where painters come to display and sell their works of art. There were some very impressive paintings!!
The Opera House was very impressive. It is hard to imagine how impressive it would have been had it been constructed as designed, however, before they finally got approval and money to build it, it had to go back and forth (being scaled down each time) to Moscow, who kept saying “nyet”. It was revised 30 times before Moscow finally green-lighted their plans.
The Opera House had ballet on one side, and symphony on the other. They have performances nearly every day, and pretty cheap ticket prices so that everyone can afford to attend.
Walking on from the Opera House, we walked to (and through) a pedestrian shopping area. There were stores and restaurants both above ground (in the pedestrian street/way), as well as underground along the same path.
After the shopping area, we walked on to Republic Square. (We’ll be back here tomorrow, so further information then.)
From Republic Square we got back in the van and drove to the Armenian Genocide Memorial & Museum which was very depressing, but a stark reality. Over the course of a few decades, there were several waves of genocide which exterminated over 2 million of the approximately 3 million Armenians. The genocide couldn’t be discussed during Soviet times, but in 1965 the Armenian government received permission to erect a memorial. The museum was built in 1967.
On the way back from the eternal flame, Blake, Jay, and Sondra passed the Prime Minister of the Netherlands. They saw a floral wreath at the monument and Sondra had noticed it said “Netherlands”. Since there’s a big United Nations pow-wow in town this week, perhaps he decided to stop by and pay his respects. Interesting….. no massive entourage or security guards.
We then drove to a large cafeteria style restaurant for lunch, which was chaotic. (Great desserts though.)
Our next stop was the “Armenian Vatican”, which is of course the center of the Armenian religious world.
Our last stop of the day was the Zvartnots archeological site. This was an old ruined cathedral that had collapsed, but was a great way to see how Armenian construction was done back in the day.
We wrapped up the day walking down to dinner at an ‘upscale Italian restaurant’ that we had noted the evening before had filet mignon’s priced at roughly the $20 range (after conversion). Tim, who knew better than to order a steak at an Italian restaurant (in a foreign country to boot), ordered a chicken parmesan type dish, while all the others ordered steaks. Unfortunately, everyone was brought a steak, and Tim, who had known better had to settle for a well done, tough and chewy piece of meat that was not good at all. Luckily, everyone else’s steak was at least in the “medium” range and the remainder reasonably enjoyed their dinners.
A pleasant surprise of the evening was the live dancing and singing. The dancers danced over to a fabric wall, where their upper bodies came through the fabric and they continued to dance with their arms for the evening. A single lady came on stage and using a small digital player for the music, sang several songs (both American and Armenian). She was very good.
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