This summer in Yerevan, Armenia is my first ever study abroad adventure, and while the bulk of my time here will be spent in class improving my Russian, I also hope to collect memories and moments that will stay with me and help shape me as a thinker and scholar.
When I was getting ready for this trip a week ago, one thing that I kept telling myself was to make sure I get out of my comfort zone and push myself to interact with people in Russian. I decided to stay in a Russian-speaking hostel in the centre of Yerevan to maximize opportunities for language practice, and to make it easy to find vibrant, welcoming spaces. But I knew pushing myself wouldn’t be easy. Having previously faced mockery for my English as a teenage Eastern European immigrant in Ireland, I knew it would take real effort to commit to exposing myself to the possibility that Russian speakers in Yerevan might react similarly to my far-from-perfect Russian. It took just a day of Russian interactions for Armenians to prove me wrong. Russian conversations outside of class are stressful, yes, my first instinct is always to say nothing. But this is a summer of firsts, and I am doing less and less in silence. Although I have only been here for three days, I can only hope that the trend continues, as I just made plans to introduce myself to one of my roommates tomorrow over breakfast.
As for Yerevan itself—it feels like home to me. I have lived in five different countries so far: Poland, Ireland, Romania, Austria, and the US, and visited many more, among them Iraqi Kurdistan, Jordan, Japan, and Russia. Yet, Eastern European places speak to me in a way no other places do, or perhaps ever could. It is the way the paths are paved with small bricks; it’s rows and rows of pickles and kefir in supermarkets; it’s endless glasses of kompot with dinner; and terrible (though multilingual!) graffiti on walls everywhere. It’s the way my pierogi-making skills transfer directly into correctly flattening dough for lavash, and the fact that indoor spaces are not air-conditioned into oblivion.
But Yerevan is more than that too. It is a beautiful, yet sometimes chaotic, blend of many cultures, owing in large part to its tumultuous history of colonization by various powers, including, of course, the Soviet Union. Being here, for me, is feeling at home in many ways, yet in many others it is a rich learning experience. When I described Yerevan to my husband on the drive into the city from the airport, he commented that it is remarkable when places really look like their history and geographic location suggest they would. Since then I’ve been wondering whether there really are places that do not, in fact, fit this category? This is a question I certainly cannot answer with any authority, but it does take me on a journey of memories of other countries and cities where history is a palpable and visible feature, especially east of Germany.
Over the next two months I am sure I will learn much more about Yerevan, and discover more ways in which it feels like Warsaw, or Bucharest, or Belgrade, other ways in which it reminds me of Erbil, or Amman, and still more ways in which it is entirely unique—and this is what I’m looking forward to the most.