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June 28, 2006
The devil went down to Georgia, then got ready to fly to Azerbaijan
TBILISI, GEORGIA -- They say that New York has a lot of restaurants, so it must have a lot of actors. (Who else would work in all those restaurants?) Here in Georgia, they have a lot of grand old buildings, so they must have a lot of banks. (Who else would occupy the buildings?)
Eventually I'll post Tbilisi pics, including some great bank shots (yippee!), when I download them from the camera. For now, the batteries are running low and I need them in Azerbaijan, where I fly tomorrow afternoon. I'll overnight in Baku, the oil boomtown on the Caspian Sea coast. (Actually, the Caspian Sea is often considered the world's largest lake.) From there, I'll make a two-night trip up to Quba and Xınalıq.
I'm occasionally asked how I choose destinations to visit and rarely have a good answer. Sometimes it comes down to relying on the guidebook and a travelogue or two. Here's what Lonely Planet says about Xınalıq:
This dramatically located, remote mountain village is perhaps the single most fascinating tourist destination in Azerbaijan. Located on a mountain peak with stunning 360-degree mountain views across the Caucasus Mountains..., Xınalıq boasts its own distinct language and culture, along with impossibly picturesque stone houses that, were it not for the sattelite dishes, could have been transported from the Dark Ages. Often wrapped in a spooky cloud that gives a haunted medieval feel, this is the ultimate adventure in Azerbaijan.That said, annual tourist figures are probably under 100 people, mainly due to the remote location and difficulty of getting here. The dirt track from Quba is only passable by 4WD and, even then, the route may not be clear to those who have never been there, and changes depending on the weather conditions and the strength of the numerous rivers that need to be forded. [Fording a river = driving the jeep through it.]
The guidebook goes on to note ruefully:
Rates [for a mountain guide] from one individual to another, but you should pay a minimum of $20 per day to a maximum of $40. However, you will probably be charged extra for the horse. They are more valuable than people here; expect to pay $40 for each horse.
The guidebook should also mention that the village has a single phone line and electricty for maybe an hour or two a day. I'll probably stay overnight at some random Xınalıqi's house, but the Caucasians have proven themselves might hospitable to random visitors, so it will be quite interesting.
Further, we'll see if Xınalıq lives up to these lofty promises. Lonely Planet usually doesn't disappoint.
Posted by adrianjo at 01:54 PM
June 27, 2006
Looking for curly sperm, horseshoe, curly sperm
TBILISI, GEORGIA -- When in Yerevan, a group of people decided to catch a mini-bus (called a marshrutka) and ride it as long as they could. It didn't sound fun to me, but apparently they enjoyed it.
Both here and in Yerevan, it's hard to know where any of the 300-odd marshrutka lines go, since both Armenian and Georgian scripts are quite cryptic. Indeed, there's no English or Russian on the windscreen destination signs.
Today I wanted to go to Mtskheta, the original capital of Georgia until the 4th century, about 20 minutes from the city. This involves first going to Didube bus station and finding another marshrutka to Mtskheta. At the hotel, I got on marshrutka 39, which the guidebook says hits the bus station, going in the direction of the bus station. It ended up in a Soviet housing project, where I wandered a mile or two looking for a bus station. I took the same marshrutka back to start over. I then got on trusty number 61, which I've taken several times with good success at getting to the old city. It left me in a forest preserve. Three hours after starting, I remembered the Russian word for bus station, wandered out of the forest preserve, and found the nearest taxi, a 1970s-vintage Volga who charged me US$4 for what turned out to be a lengthy trip to the bus station.
The Tbilisi Didube bus station serves the whole country, and it's a giant chaotic mess of hundreds of small shops peddling pigs feet, clothes, smelly fish, gambling, and vodka (to the drivers, one presumes). Hundreds of busses and marshrutkas from around the country terminate here, in no apparent order, with signs in Georgian only. Fortunately Caucasians (as people here are known) have a strong sense of hospitality and responsibility towards visitors. The cabbie, an old grandfather, drove all around the station asking everyone who he could find. Eventually we got me onto a marshrutka, a Ford Ecoline retrofitted to carry 18 people.
It was time to figure out the Georgian alphabet, which I did by giving the letters nicknames. For example, there's დ (curly sperm), ო (McDonalds), ც (thirteen), ი (horseshoe), and რ (cat with tail). Looking for a marshrutka to Didube station therefore would involve finding a destination sign with a six-letter word starting with curly sperm - horseshoe - curly sperm. "Mtskheta" becomes an 8-letter word starting with curly d - round hoe - fish hook.
Incidentally, when I was leaving Mtskheta, a cabbie offered to take me back to Tbilisi for $9. I would have taken it, but by now I knew I could get there for 40 cents by flagging down a marshrutka starting with round hoe - down delta - horseshoe.
Posted by adrianjo at 01:40 PM
June 26, 2006
Georgia on my mind
TBILISI, GEORGIA -- I'm listening to Warren Buffett give a fascinating press conference as he discusses how he plans to give away almost all of his $44B fortune. I admit that there's a bit of disappointment that Warren won't endow something big at Wharton or Columbia, the business schools he and I both attended. But really, Warren couldn't have chosen a better cause. His letter to Bill & Melinda is worth a read. Interestingly, this means that about 1/3 of the profit of Berkshire Hathaway (which has major interests in Dairy Queen, NetJets, Pamered Chef, Clayton Homes, Helzberg Diamonds, and Geico), will go to charity.
A Korean newspaper has an interesting commentary:
Among American entrepreneurs, there is a venerable tradition to accumulate fortunes ruthlessly but, once successful, to give back to society unsparingly. Examples include Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, Henry Ford and Paul Getty. The vitality and health of the American capitalism that leads the world originates here.Korean business culture, by contrast, keeps records only when companies make money but none about how the money is used thereafter, while a pre-modern state power forces donations of private property by applying pressure through public opinion. Perhaps it is because of this climate that charity on the scale practiced by Buffett and Gates seems a kind of miracle.
The idea of private charity is a uniquely American concept. In Europe, government taxes everyone and forces them to pay for the government's philanthropic (read: welfare) efforts, so there's no need to give more. Most Asians I've met seem to have no idea why Americans give money away. When we were raising money for the Columbia class gift, a couple of non-Americans wondered aloud why they'd give money to the school after paying $85,000 tuition. I hope Buffett's message on the importance of giving back to society sets an example for the world.
***
This doesn't leave much time to talk about Tbilisi, which is a fabulous and beautiful city almost on par with the world's A-list cities like Krakow or Riga. Tbilisi was founded in the 400s and reached its zenith in the 1200s, when Georgia's position along the Silk Road made the city wealthy. Yet it all came crashing down in 1220 when Ghengis Khan's Mongol army sacked the city, and Tbilisi fell asleep until the Russians reunited the old Kingdom in the early 1800s.
Tbilisi spreads out along the Mtkvari River.
Today the city has an elegant shabbiness. Although considering that the city has recently been wracked by civil war, gang violence, and a refugee crisis, it's pretty impressive. The buildings combine graceful elements of late Byzantine, neoclassical, Victorian, or art nouveau with giant porches one typically sees in India and points east. (By contrast, Yerevan was laid out in 1924, after the better architectural styles like art nouveau faded, and its buildings tend to be more Soviet-style.)
An example of a typical shabby but graceful old building on a small side-street. Notice the elaborate 2nd-floor porch. I'll get pictures of some of the more flamboyant buildings later.
There still isn't much middle class, but unlike Yerevan, Tbilisi men don't have a creepy veneer of false machismo that they wear by driving big Mercedes with dark-tinted windows. The women here also dress a bit more modestly. Like Yerevan, there's a building boom here that demonstrates the strengthening economy but threatens to mar the newer parts of town with buildings barely more attractive than the 1960s-vintage Soviet krushchevas (sp?) they're replacing.
Cafe culture isn't nearly as developed here as in Yerevan, but a handful of small restaurants line streets of old town.
I will write more in a few days about this, but I think that Tbilisi could become a major tourist hub in a few years. It probably won't be the next Tallin, Prague, or Dubrovnik (all beautiful cities with far too many tourists), but Tbilisi has the history, beauty, and transportation needed to be a great destination. Its success will depend on Georgian authorities' ability to reduce further the armed robbery epidemic created by Abkhazian refugees here and to expand the almost non-existant air links here.
The Metekhi Church stands on a bluff that has hosted notable buildings since the 400s, including an early church, a palace, and a prison (where Maxim Gorky spent time). The bridge was the site of forced conversion to Islam in 1226 and 1522; those who chose to remain Christians were free to do so at the bottom of the river.
Posted by adrianjo at 02:11 PM
June 25, 2006
At this rate, it'll take forever to get from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo
TBILISI, GEORGIA –- They’re separated by only 107 miles as the stork flies, but getting between the Caucasian capitals of Yerevan and Tbilisi takes the better part of a day. If you were wondering how slow Soviet busses go, consider that it takes 9 hours to make the trip, or an average of 12 stork-miles per hour.
A taxi would do the trip, but not for less than $150. So I ended up on a marshrutka (маршрутка). Marshrutkas are big vans built for 9 passengers, but retrofitted with seating for up to 20. They run a fixed route and leave whenever they’re full or the driver fancies it. (They’re called a dolmuş in Turkey and a collectivo in South America.) A marshrutka makes the trip in just 6 hours and costs about $17.
A marshrutka bound for Tbilisi.
Thus, I turned-up today at the bus zoo and was immediately found by the driver of the Tbilisi van. The sign was in Cyrillic, which looks a lot more like Tbilisi (Тбилиси) than the Georgian rendering (თბილისი). I was the second person there, and I duly hustled for a seat. It was 9.30. I figured we’d leave at 10AM (like the schedule indicated), but there were only 2 of us. The bus next to us, also bound for Tbilisi, rumbled out with maybe 10 passengers. The van was steaming hot as we sat in the sun, windows covered with fabric. 10.30 came and went. The driver changed into a red “criminal instinct” shirt. 11.00 arrived—-surely we must go now. Another 3 people turned up. At 11.30, the driver came, got in, adjusted the windows, and got out. We now had 10 passengers, and I decided to take the front seat, not realizing the terrible case of trucker’s arm it would give me. Some arguing ensued with a passenger and the driver, but no action.
Seen at the bus station: Barf brand laundry detergent gets clothes brighter!
Finally at 11.45, a full 2h15 after I arrived, we headed out. The drive to Georgia took about 3.5 hours, plus a half hour for lunch and a half hour to cross the border. It was the slowest and most confusing border crossing I’ve ever endured, but the ill-reputed Georgian border police were spit-shine-polished and even laughed at our driver’s bribe. (The driver had small notes ready for bribes, including $1.25 we paid to Armenian police running a roadblock.) In the end, I suppose we beat the bus by an hour or so, even including the slow getting-out-the-gate.
The drive north from Yerevan to Tbilisi involves a drive up over the Lesser Caucasus. The Armenian mountain roads are in lamentable condition. Many of the heavy lorries that tear-up the road are from Turkey. Anything from Turkey comes in on lorries traveling via Georgia even though Armenia and Turkey share a land border—-which is closed and heavily guarded. Turkey still refuses to admit that from 1896 to the 1920s, Turkey and their Ottoman predecessors carried out a state-sponsored genocide that killed 1.5 million Armenians. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who is revered in Turkey as almost God-like for so advancing Turkey (like changing Turkish script from Arabic to Latin), was a key player in this nearly-successful attempt to eliminate the Armenian race. With Turkey stubbornly denying this holocaust, despite overwhelming evidence that the Ottoman Sultan and Atatürk committed crimes against humanity, it’s doubtful that relations will improve any time soon. Until then, anything coming to Armenia from Turkey has to first be trucked through Georgia.
The Caucuses Mountains, roughly at the Lori Valley, Armenia
The Lesser Caucuses have a few attractive valleys, but the population is tragically poor, with many living in tiny metal sheds, shipping containers, or even large storage tanks with a door cut out. After a half-hour at the border, it’s immediately apparent that Georgia is on a better path than Armenia, starting with the fact that roads are actually maintained here. Some of the Soviet-era housing blocs have new pink paint. The Georgian attitude towards Russia is apparent from the near total absence of Cyrillic lettering.
Wheat, other grains, and sunflowers grow on the plains a few miles into Georgia.
Coming out of the Lesser Caucasus, Georgia spreads out into large plains with wheat, grain, and sunflower farms. Along with Ukraine, Georgia was the USSR’s bread basket, and the bread lines common elsewhere were not found in Georgia.
Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, is a beautiful city of more than 1 million people. St. George’s cross is everywhere, and the city has large blocks of crumbling but elegant Art Deco buildings. I’ll have more pictures in a few days...
Posted by adrianjo at 03:56 PM
June 24, 2006
Last day in Yerevan
YEREVAN, ARMENIA –- We’ve laid a few hundred square feet of concrete floor, moved perhaps 10 tonnes of sand, and plastered hundreds of square feet of wall—-all in 6 days of working, of 13 total days.
***
We’ve worked on two job sites, each very different from the other. We started and ended with an old Soviet building purchased by Habitat for Humanity in 2006. It’s a 24-unit hulk of rough concrete and tufa block that was started in 1989, just before the USSR disintegrated. By 1993, the economy had collapsed and Armenia was in the final stages of fighting Azerbaijan for Nagorno-Karabakh. Work came to a stop half-way to completion, and nobody touched the shell until recently.
Click pics to enlarge
The Gavar worksite.
The structure lies on the outskirts of Gavar, a village near Lake Sevan, a beautiful big lake near the Azeri border that the knuckle-headed Soviets considered draining to make hydro power. Set beautifully between snow-covered ridges of the Lesser Caucasus range, Gavar is a ghost town that’s still inhabited. Nobody has maintained the parks, the roads, or many of the buildings in the town in 16 years. Groups of unemployed men loaf about the public square, but nobody bothers to beg, probably because there’s nobody to beg from. In the center, an office building has been turned into makeshift lofts, the windows covered with whatever sheets could be found. On the outskirts, laundry hangs from the balconies of dank Soviet-era housing blocs. A third of the population left in the early 1990s, and those that stayed did so only because they had nowhere better to go.
Typical Soviet-era housing in Gavar
Many in Gavar are nostalgic for the 1970s, when Leonid Brezhnev ran the USSR and Armenia’s factories boomed. “You didn’t even really have to go to work,” one old timer recalled. “If you didn’t feel like working in the factory that day, your supervisor would just change the records. Nobody cared, so you really worked very little.” The reality of the market economy hit hard.
Today’s Gavar homeowners are an interesting bunch, ranging from the young one-armed man to old Salomon, a grandfatherly figure who looks like a friendly version of Saddam Hussein. Salomon always turns up to the job site wearing an old three-piece suit with a fat 1970s tie. It may be his only decent set of clothes, but he’s still a fiercely proud guy.
The hardest-working homeowner in Gavar (center), a guy with one arm
The Gavar homeowners face a huge task still. Successive Habitat teams aim to have the building ready for move-in by early September, shortly after the Armenian Pope and Jimmy Carter headline a 400-person effort to finish the project.
***
We also spent two days in Khor Virap, a small village on the Turkish border in the shadow of Mt. Ararat, where legend says Noah’s Ark came to rest. There, we helped two brothers’ families (the Haroutyunyan families) plaster their walls and make concrete for around the house. The Haroutyunyans are tomato farmers who have relatively large plots. They sell their tomatoes to a paste-processor for about 2 cents per pound, while it costs hundreds of dollars a year per hectare just to irrigate the fields, not to mention the backbreaking labour required to grow a pound of tomatoes. (They nearly fell over when I told them what tomatoes sell for at Whole Foods.) Overall, the families net about $2000 per year, or about $1.22 per day per person. That’s actually a decent income by Armenian standards, and the Haroutyunyans have spent more than a decade saving and building their house before Habitat became involved. It will be finished by the fall.
Mixing cement in Khor Virap.
Perhaps the cutest experience was when I was plastering the high walls of a room in the Haroutyunyan house. The 10-year-old daughter found a putty knife and some plaster and began plastering the walls as I was doing. Somehow she understood what was going on.
***
Yerevan itself is an interesting city with a lot of history nearby. The café culture here is huge, as seemingly every square inch of available parkland is filled with semi-permanent open-air café tents, some chic and trendy, others more like divey sports bars. Drinks run $1 or $2, and every café is busy almost every night. Who needs a dark, smoky bar when one could just relax outside?
Knock-off Evian water, available for 50 cents at any Yerevan café
Accordingly, Yerevan’s bar and club scene sucks, which is fine by me. The women compensate by wearing club attire-—skimpy shirts and high heels—-everywhere they go. It means that many of the women here walk around at noon looking like cheap Vegas sluts or sorority girls doing the walk-of-shame. Then again, the men tend to sit in cafes and drool at whatever walks by, so I guess it all works in favor of the reproduction of our species.
Last night we found a Russian karaoke joint, where successive Armenian men got up and crooned out old Russian favorites. I even got up and rapped Eminem’s song “Stan,” which garnered quite a healthy ovation from the crowd.
There isn’t much of a drug scene here, which is a good thing. It’s also surprising because poppy, the plant from which is made heroin, grows as a weed here. Alanna picked one and put it in her hair, but it mostly grows unmolested in the southern part of the country. [Update: heroin is made from a close relative of this plant, but its narcotic content is minimal.]
The poppy plant (Papaver orientalis) grows freely here. Heroin is derived from a close relative of this species of poppy.
Our group of random strangers also bonded well. We had (among others) a 58-year-old cabinet maker, a 28-year-old pastry chef, a 26-year-old kindergarten teacher with her i-banker husband, a late-20s former Mormon missionary making his way around the world, a 30-something Paris-based lawyer who’s contemplating a career change, two high-school-age brother-sister pairs, and a chilled former radical who “spent much of the Reagan administration in-and-out of the San Francisco jail.” Over the course of 14 days, we debated topics including whether the French Laundry is better than Per Se (nobody was a big fan of either) and whether “fri’ chicken ‘n’ mash’ potata” is the ultimate meal. (OK, so we talked a lot about food, because it was generally really good here and meals take 3 hours with Armenians’ generous sense of hospitality.)
Two of the shorter members of the group with one of the taller members
Tomorrow I will brave the mini-bus zoo to try to find a mini-bus to go up to Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. Destinations are written only in Georgian or Armenian, neither of which uses either Roman or Cyrillic letters. It only costs $15, but the vans packed with 20 people really don’t look very comfortable. I considered buying a plane ticket, but I was informed upon entering a travel agency that only one airline flies the route, and that airline no longer exists.
The alternative is a taxi:
Posted by adrianjo at 06:17 AM
June 18, 2006
Yerevan Day 7
YEREVAN, ARMENIA – A visitor to Armenia is never really sure if he’s in Europe, Russia, Asia, the near east, or the middle of nowhere.
The Soviet state lives on through strong appreciation of the arts and a decidedly Soviet approach to architecture. The hotel staff here also haven’t realized the USSR is dead, and planning ahead seems not to be the forte of anyone in Armenia. The Indian in our group remarked that Armenian Standard Time is remarkably similar to Indian Standard Time, where a ballet might well start 15 minutes late because most of the crowd turns up 10 minutes late. In fact, that’s exactly what happened when we went to see the state dance troupe and a piano/violin recital at Yerevan Conservatory. The state dance troupe did over 20 ballets showing classical European and Russian influences blended with the gypsy, Oriental, Persian, Indian, and Anatolian flavors that have been added over the years.
As for the work sites, we’ve so far worked 3 days on Habitat homes and done sightseeing the other 3 days. These 3 days of sightseeing have particularly annoyed at least one member of our group who expected to work every day--no, not me.
I think it’s important both to sight-see and build houses in order to put the present issues faced by Armenia into a historical and social context. That said, I also welcomed Sunday brunch this morning at the Marriott, the best Western oasis we’ve found so far. We’ve actually been very well-fed, including lunch yesterday that was prepared by the wife of the homeowner whose house we’re helping to build. It’s a small stone structure of perhaps 1200 sq ft; they started building it in 1988 and are just now getting close to finishing.
The apricots here are quite tasty, though they might also have been responsible for the barfing or the runs that have afflicted several of our team members. (I'm doing my best to follow the colonial mantra of "cook it, peel it, boil it, or forget it.") At the lunch where we chowed-down on local apricots, a number of us washed it down with a couple of shots of homemade mulberry vodka to attempt to kill any weird bacteria we might have acquired. Tomatoes and cucumbers have also been popular, along with huge helpings of bread and lavash, which is basically a soft square tortilla shell. Big trays of sweet breads are very common, along with cherries and watermelon. Borsch (Ukrainian beet soup) comes in many varieties, though it’s far too hot to eat much soup. One homeowner’s wife also cooked-up some ground beef wrapped in aubergine (eggplant). Mutton (lamb) is also common, including a very nice lamb shank last night, washed down with a 2000 Areni wine that was a great buy at the restaurant for $7.50. (The high schoolers on the trip have enjoyed the non-existent alcohol rules here, as one might expect.)
Here are some pictures. Click to enlarge.
Yerevan’s skyline lies below Mt. Ararat, the mountain where legend says Noah crashed his arc. It’s in present-day Turkey but historically was part of Armenia. Although the Armenians hate the Turks (who perpetrated one of history’s largest genocides against the Armenians—and still deny it), references to Ararat abound, including in the local brandy.
A distressingly large portion of the population here smokes, everywhere from the airport to restaurants to the job site. In a country where the average person's income is less than $1/day, a pack of ciggies costs about $1.25. This kid's claw game might be part of the reason for the national addiction.
Republic Square is the center of Yerevan. It’s more crowded at midnight than at noon, as the normal waking hours in Armenian Standard Time run from perhaps 9AM to 1AM.
The monastery at Khor Virap, at the border with Turkey, sits under Mt Ararat. Here, Saint Gregory the Illuminator was imprisoned for 12 years in a deep, dark well by a pagan king in the third century. The king was known to throw snakes and scorpions into the well, though he eventually converted to Christianity and released St. Gregory, who went on to be the first Catholicos (equivalent of Pope) in the Armenian church. The well can be visited today by climbing down a manhole-like hatch on the altar of a church on this hill.
This is the team with the homeowner in Khor Virap, where we helped him and his family plaster concrete walls. As noted earlier, he has been working on the house since 1988, so he was quite appreciative of our help. He is on the very far right.
Our other project is this old Soviet building in Gavar, in the north near Lake Sevan. Habitat recently acquired the structure, which had lain half-finished since the USSR collapsed. It will be a Herculean job to finish it, as we spent two days hauling sand up to the second-floor to make cement to finish the floors in four small rooms. Notice the pimpin’ vintage 1970s Mercedes-Benz bus we’re using.
Posted by adrianjo at 10:20 AM
June 13, 2006
First day on the job site in Armenia
YEREVAN, ARMENIA -- It's 11PM, and most of us are bushed from the work today on the Habitat apartment block. It's in an impoverished village just south of Lake Sevan, a small provincal capital of 30,000 that the guidebook describes as "struggling to survive." There's no industry or employment to speak of, and the streets haven't been maintained in many years. It's as if time stopped in the town when the Soviet Union fell apart, though the town has aged substantially in the 16 years since then.
Habitat's apartment block was started (3 of four stories) in 1989, but when the Soviet Union collapsed, construction stopped until Habitat bought the shell in 2006. Construction might have re-started in the early 1990s, but many townsmen left to fight the war against Azerbaijan over the Karabagh region. Like Poland, Armenia has a long history of being run-over by more powerful neighbors, which contributed to the dispute over Karabagh.
We spent the day hauling sand, cement mix, and water up to the 2nd floor, where it was mixed and spread. It was great to have the future homeowners working alongside, though at times we weren't terribly productive as decisions had to be made through interpreters. One of the wives even brought us a very tasty sweetened dough/pastry for lunch!
Posted by adrianjo at 02:17 PM
June 12, 2006
Armenians aren't so mean
YEREVAN, ARMENIA -- I made it to Armenia Sunday morning at 1AM, but my luggage didn't. I suppose that by country #62, my number was up. Fortunately it arrived on the next day's flight from London, although one person who took Air France from Paris hasn't been so lucky as to get hers. The unfortunate teenager has been wearing green pants with pink trim for some time now. Clothing seems hard to find, though I actually spotted a Victoria's Secret here today. But who knows if it's the real thing: we also found fake Evian water for the impossibly-low 35 cents a litre. (There was also a detergent called BARF and some nasty $2 vodka.)
Armenia, part of the former USSR north of Turkey and Iran, was devastated shortly after the Soviet Union broke apart, and 1/4 of the population fled the country as unemployment hit French-like levels of 70%. Although it was Europe's fastest growing economy in recent years, the base is so low that even 15% GDP growth has yet to make more than a few people rich. Unlike the Baltics, where signs of both a wealthy elite and middle class were obvious, the most common car on the streets of Yerevan may well be the Zhiguli, a Russian-made sedan that resembles the Yugo.
The Armenian language is as cryptic as Thai, and for once, I'm thrilled to have signs written in Russian Cyrillic. I pointed out to our group the most important sign, PECTOPAH ("restaurant" in Russian). That wasn't even necessary, because the food has been excellent, though Armenian food is overshadowed on the Yerevan restaurant scene by Georgian food, which tends to be very spicy, meaty (lamb and beef), and a bit oily.
Tomorrow we start work on our house for Habitat for Humanity, the point of coming here in the first place. Habitat has bought a half-finished Soviet-era apartment block where construction stopped when the USSR fell apart, and volunteers are finishing off the units to be sold as condos to middle-class Armenians. (Unlike in the States, Habitat in Armenia tends to benefit the middle class, since the poor cannot afford the no-interest mortgage required to occupy a Habitat house.)
Meanwhile I've put an offer on a condo in Manhattan, though thanks to some unwritten rules in my 401k plan, the negotiations are proving complex. This sort of thing always seems to happen when I'm away!
Posted by adrianjo at 12:42 PM
June 09, 2006
Departing for the Caucuses
I am departing shortly for Armenia, the Republic of Georgia, and Azerbaijan. These are often known as the Caucasian countries, from whence the term "Caucasian" originated to describe a racial group. The Caucasian actually race includes not just Europeans, but also many Arabs, South Asians, and even many Africans. (Caucasian ≠ white)
I'm working on a Habitat for Humanity building project in Armenia, then visiting Georgia and Azerbaijan for fun. (I can't wait to see the Caspian Sea, the world's largest lake.) I'll try to update the blog as often as I can while abroad, and I return July 7.
Posted by adrianjo at 06:38 PM
June 05, 2006
Yet another death on Lenox Ave
I've written tongue-in-cheek before about the various murders (link 1, link 2, link 3) that happen on a regular basis in Harlem, but today's news is really tragic. At 122nd & Lenox, the nearest intersection to my apartment, a 30-year-old law student tried to stop traffic so his crutches-using girlfriend could cross. He was struck by an SUV and killed on the spot. The driver braked then accelerated and kept right on going.
It's not unusual for cars to speed down Lenox at highway speeds, and at 4.15AM, the only people driving in Harlem are either high, drunk, or mentally insane. With any luck, this driver will be brought to justice. Peace be upon the victim and his family.
What's wierd is that if the young lady is on crutches, why didn't the cab turn onto 122nd and let them off right in front of the house? It puts an extra 30 cents on the meter, but it's some of the best 30 cents that can be spent.
Posted by adrianjo at 12:05 AM
June 01, 2006
Shout-out from Harlem Fur
The guy who runs the blog Harlem Fur sent me a shout-out this morning. His blog covers Harlem much more extensively than I can, since I seem to be here so rarely. He even has regular postings about the various street shootings here. ("Street shootings" = crews shooting film for movies and TV shows, of which there's at least one a week in Harlem.) He's also had a couple of mentions on the venerable curbed.com. Check it out.
Posted by adrianjo at 10:15 AM
State of the NYC housing market
I've been thinking about buying a place here in Harlem, but obviously it's a decision fraught with risk. Here's a very interesting analysis on the state of the market from a guy near Wall Street:
I live in 88 Greenwich St. (Financial Distict) and was just notified that they are planning a condo conversion. This is the 2nd in our area (120 greenwich was just recently converted).Anyways, they're trying to get more than $1000/sqft (even on the insiders price) which my wife and I thought was laughable. (120 greenwich is the same). [Note: a typical house in Indiana costs $100/sf, includes a yard, and doesn't have a mandatory monthly maintenance fee.]
Don't get me wrong, I understand the prices in Manhattan, but this is seriously crazy. I mean this is the Financial District not the West Village. The Pussycat Lounge is just downstairs and there isn't a single decent restaurant in the area.
There are 400 units in this building and they are absolutely Rental quality only. Fixtures/appliances are cheap, our windows don't even close correctly so the heat and cold flow through and the wall are paper thin (which is annoying and sometime humorous).
I pay $2985/mo (market rate) for my apt (1br-800sqft used to have a nice view of the statue of liberty until another building went up last month) and they want $850,000 for this. On top of this (for those who may not know) closing costs and title transfer runs about another $50,000 (condos have a title transfer tax). So I'm thinking wow I can buy my apt for $900,000 what a fantastic deal. I only have to put down $125,000 and my payment will only be $5200/month (taxes and common charges). I'll save about $1,400/month on taxes so my net payment will only be $3,800 month!
Wait a minute! What the hell. I only pay $2895 now and I have $125,000 in the bank at 4.25% so net of taxes I'm making about $275.00 a month in interest (RISK FREE FDIC INSURED). So really my net rent is only $2,620.
Hmmm $2,620 or $3,800 which is better?
And for those who are banking on appreciation, at this point why would anyone expect this appreciate any more than the inflation rate of maybe 2% or $17,000 a year? Sounds like a lot, but if you bank the savings of $1180 a month vs. buying you can save $14,000 a year so really you're only ahead $3,000. Once you factor in selling costs of 6% it would take you about 17 years to cover this with your "profit".
Last if these things even depreciate 5% in the next 2 years and you want to sell you're dust. You've lost the $50,000 in closing, plus $28,000 in rent savings plus the 5% or $42,000, plus you'll have to pay broker charges to sell your place which could be another $20,000-$40,000. So you could walk away in the hole by $100,000.
Leverage works both ways, on the way up it's great but on the way down watch out!
It's a good argument, but the problem is that his 4.25% risk-free return is stupid. He ought to be invested at least in equities, which return 6.5 to 7% above the rate of inflation, or about 10% nominal. Even if it costs more and there's little appreciation, owning at least gives an investor the upside. Furthermore, an owner can't be told to vacate the apartment at a moment's notice. A risk-averse individual would rent, while a risk-seeking individual would strongly consider buying the right place.
P.S. Congrats to CRB on her 21st. Drink up!
Posted by adrianjo at 12:04 AM