Dresden May 26 to May 29

May 26

A 2-hour train ride from Prague to Dresden.  We check into the new Swisshotel.  Very nice, but rooms have a strange set up with the bathroom essentially part of the room.  There is a very large indoor shopping center nearby.  We bought another computer at the Saturn electronics store.  Saturn seems larger than any Best Buy and offers a huge variety.  We bought an HP Pavilion.  Over the next couple of days we spend the usual hours getting set up.  Victor's tips are very helpful.

We dine at a Thai restaurant.  Nice change.  Excellent duck.


May 27.

Dresden, once one of the most beautiful German cities, largely survived WWII intact until February 1944, when the allies bombed it to shards. Around 25,000 were killed.  Large swathes of downtown Dresden remained vacant during the Communist period. Beginning in the 1990s, the historic center buildings were restored and the surrounding neighborhoods rebuilt with modern buildings. There is some unavoidable sadness to this place.

A large parcel of land to the south of the old center is being built on now.  The archaeologists have been called in to evaluate the site.

The development will be called "Judenhof," the area's pre-Nazi name.

We visited the Zwinger. We spent most of the time at the Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, the old masters gallery.  It has this iconic Vermeer:

Bruce took a quick turn around the porcelain collection. We both looked at the old scientific items.

We celebrated Leslie's birthday at Eidelweiss with roesti potatoes Zurich style with veal and mushrooms in a cream sauce and venison and potato dumplings in a cranberry sauce with salsify. Very good.

Wednesday May 28

Today, we spent a lot of time a getting to know the computer and getting out the blog backlogs.

We visited the Schloss.  A so-so exhibit on Dionysos Greek and modern, ottoman stuff, armory.  Then the famous Green Vault - a collection of all the gaudy precious stuff that monarchs collect.

Sandwich lunch. Dinner at Dresden 1900 Museumsgastronomie.  Just from the name, we had to try it.  There was an old trolley car inside and the wait staff wore conductor's caps.  Pork and gravy over bread.

Finishing Armenia May 16 to 18

Still trying to catch up.  We are writing this from our tiny room in Amsterdam on May 29.


Friday May 16, 2014

We headed back to Yerevan, stopping at a recently discovered Jewish Cemetery.  A local bishop looking for a source of water came across some stones with lettering that was later identified as Hebrew.  Scholars from Hebrew University dated the 70 odd tombstones to a period straddling the 13th and 14th centuries.  It is not known where this community came from or where the went. There is no documentary evidence of a Jewish community there.  Apparently, they were there about 100 years.  The symbols accompanying the Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions suggest some connection with the ruling class from Georgia.

Lunch was the usual salads and grilled pork, perhaps the best meat we have had.

Our last stop was the caravanserai at the top of the pass linking Armenia with its eastern panhandle and the Ngoro Karabakh region, about 7500 feet up.  It served to shelter merchants and their animals using this part of the Silk Route:

 There was a small group of horses nearby.

Our group departure dinner was hastily arranged.  We shared the dining room at the Ararat Restaurant with a group of 20 Russian military personnel.  They were very large and determined to get drunk.  Public drunkenness is very rude in Armenia.  The band stopped playing and walked away.

May 17.  The group departs, but we remain in Yerevan a couple of days.   We are exhausted.  We revisited the manuscript museum (incorporated in earlier report) and slept.

No lunch. Dinner at Yerevan Tavern:  soupy dumplings, tolma, "province chicken stew".

May 18.  We went to the National Art Gallery which shares its building with the History Museum.  The quality of the art was not enough to keep Leslie, who returned to the hotel for more sleep.  Bruce continued with the paintings and went on to the historic maps and ethnology sections.

Bruce then walked across town to the Cascade, a public park with a lot of opportunities for people watching.

 The main shopping street in Yerevan is closed to autos:

Armenia May 11

Sunday May  11

Up early by bus to Armenia.   At the border, we must change buses and drivers, so we trudge our baggage a couple hundred meters and change our money from Georgian lari to Armenian dram.

 Like Georgia, Armenia has a unique alphabet.  Georgia's has 33 characters...

and Armenia's has 39.

 Each alphabet was devised to fit the language (one sound per letter).  The first version of the Georgian alphabet was being used by the end of the 4th century.  The current Georgian alphabet is said to be derived from grapevine tendrils.  The Armenian alphabet was created by Mestrop Mashtots in 405.  He was sainted for his effort and is very well known in Armenia.

Both Georgia and Armenia are Christian:  Georgia is Orthodox; Armenia is Apostolic.

 The Armenian Apostolic Church is so designated as the first to bring Christianity to Armenia were Saints Bartholomew and Thaddeus, two of the apostles, the followers of Christ.  In the late 3rd century, Saint Gregory the Illuminator was imprisoned for 13 years by the king for evangelizing. He was released when the king was sick and Saint Gregory's prayers healed him. The king therefore declared Christianity the state religion in 301 and Gregory became the first head if the church, the Catholicos.  To enforce the state religion, all pagan temples were destroyed (except for Garni, infra) and churches built on them.  However, to make the new religion more palatable, some pagan ritual was incorporated.  This included animal sacrifice which is still practiced today.  To what extent we do not know, but we saw this sheep being led out of the church where it was possibly blessed for ritual sacrifice.

Our main stop is at the Hagphat Monastery, perched above the industrial town of Yesayan.  The monastery was built in the 10th century.

It has very thick walls to resist earthquakes.  Also, the main church has clever interlocking blocks.

Everything is beautifully carved.

. 

YeSayan has a seven-hundred-year-old bridge.

Lunch was at the home of a couple who belonged to a sect (name unknown) that separated from the Russian Orthodox Church. They split over issues like icons.  They resemble the Amish in their rejection of modern technology.  Our host had the only TV in the community. We were not allowed to take pictures lest they end up on the internet.

The meal was a cup of tea, meat borscht, and compote ( sweet fruit juice).  On the table were the usual salad, bread stuffed with cabbage and carrots and fried potato bread.

Dinner was a stuffed baked lavash stuffed with beef and chicken.  We had a lecture from Boris, a local archaeologist who is excavating a site we will visit.  He found evidence of cannabalistic offerings.  More on this when we visit Areni.