“The expensive cars in Yerevan are just show off” Dutch student Jochen Haalboom finds it strange that in Yerevan there are so many cranes and unfinished or empty buildings. “The first thing is when you see the city, you see all the cranes, buildings, huge flats but they aren’t finished and on the way here you see, well, it’s not like in Holland because in Holland we have highways that are very-well built with all sorts of farms around it: everywhere there is something, but here you just see nothing. From our first perspective it’s very strange. And also in the countryside there are very big areas where there is nobody,” Jochen said. In April he spent 2 weeks in Yerevan with his friends Sietske Broekhuizen, Jelske Struik, Clarinda Jongerius and Derk de Vos. All of them are 3rd year Journalism Department students at Christian College Ede in Holland. According to the collage curriculum all the students in the 3rd year have to go abroad for 2 weeks as an assignment. They first wanted to go to Dagestan, Chechnya or Georgia and study the conflicts there but as these are dangerous areas they decided to come to Armenia following the advice of the girl working in their college who had visited Armenia three years ago and knew a contact person here. Jelske said that Yerevan was different from what she expected. “When you think about Central Asia, I thought it would be more narrow streets, lots of people walking, not so many cars in the streets, not big shops,” she said. When she entered the city, it was very big and a bit European with all the patios and porches, very relaxed atmosphere and high buildings. What Jelske really liked during those 2 weeks, was that everybody was on the patios everywhere. “It’s amazing; so many in such a small place. People are very friendly, not like in Holland,” she said. The Dutch students rented a house on Mashtots Ave. for the two weeks and noticed that there is a considerable difference between the center and suburbs of Yerevan. “Like within 100 miles you only have one city Yerevan. In Holland you have like small villages around the big cities. You see lots of western cars here in the streets, a lot of expensive shops, and lots of bars, restaurants, and clubs. But if you drive 2 kilometers further, you see like more poor buildings, real small shops and small apartments and I think there is a big difference between the inner part of the city and around it. We went to a community center in Nork. Here you have like big supermarkets like Sas and Star, but in Nork you have like one or two square meters and that’s a grocery store there and you see small homes there,” Derk said. “For me, if you go there, you’ll see what Armenia is about and that’s the real Armenia. I think that’s more real than just this little part of Yerevan,” Clarinda added. The polluted air in Yerevan has made the most negative impression on the Dutch students. “In Holland when spring comes, you can just smell it and it looks nice. And here it’s like you smell all the gas come from the cars in Yerevan. You don’t smell spring her,” Derk and Jochen said. The foreign students are very surprised there are so many expensive and big cars in Yerevan, since in Holland they don’t have so many expensive cars and would rather to spend money to buy a comfortable and big house and drive an OK car, rather than do the opposite. “All the guys, the “real” men, they’re just driving big cars. It’s all for show, you know. They are driving Hummers and big jeeps. They don’t need such a big car in the city. It’s not 1 or 2 expensive cars, I think right at this moment there are at least 100-200 real expensive cars driving in Yerevan. They are always in the city. In Holland we have Hummers, but it’s already over now. In Holland you can count all the cars, like “Oh, there is another Jeep”, “Oh; there is another 200.000 Euros car”. In Holland if someone would drive a car like that, we would say “What a show-off. Do like everybody else does,” Dutch students said. They had seen four guys in Yerevan sitting in the car playing loud music and said that these guys behaved as though they were the kings of Armenia, and “there are lots of such guys.” In Clarinda’s words, in the city where she lives, it takes longer to drive to supermarket by car than by bike and may Dutchmen use a bicycle. “I see the minister in the train sometimes,” Jelske said. Foreign students: there are a lot of different stories about Karabakh in Yerevan The Dutch students have paid for their trip themselves. The whole trip has cost 800-900 Euros per person. Each of them has paid 450 Euros for plane tickets, 200 Euros to rent the apartment and spent about 300 Euros to cover everyday expenses. Their collage has paid only for part of the trip, 150 Euros. They will try to publish articles about Armenia when they return home to cover the costs of the trip, at least partially, though they say that it would be rather difficult to publish articles about Armenia in the Dutch media since Armenia is far from Holland, there is no close relationship, and so the Dutch media are not interested in Armenia-related topics. Besides, they have their foreign correspondents traveling to Armenia. “I think it’s OK. I think we learnt a lot here and it’s nice to see. You won’t go to Armenia if you go on a holiday or something, and it’s a nice opportunity to see your country that you never planned to go to,” Clarinda said. Anyway, they are going to write articles about Armenia. The articles will cover different topics: the Jewish community in Armenia, mountain biking facilities in Armenia, the political process between Turkey and Armenia and Artsakh conflict. When asked whether they are going to portray Nagorno Karabakh as an independent state or a part of Armenia in their article, Derk answered that there are “a lot different stories about” Nagorno Karabakh; one person says this, and the other person says that. So, the foreign students have not been able to understand the essence of the conflict, even being in Yerevan. “I think it originally belonged to Armenia, but as I see it now, it wants to be independent,” Derk said. The Dutch students have been told that the Armenians living in Artsakh don’t want to be part of Armenia but to be independent. So, in Derk’s words, they are trying to talk to as many people as possible “to get main views on topic.” “I was wondering how very early Christians were thinking about God” In the opinion of the Dutch students, Ararat is mentioned everywhere in Yerevan. “I knew it didn’t belong to Armenia but Armenians still see it as a part of Armenia and then we came to Yerevan and we saw it all over, like we saw Ararat brandy here, you see it in restaurants, you see the symbol of Ararat. So we were wondering what the story behind it was. On the top of Cascade we were filming and we got a pretty good view of Ararat,” Derk said. His friends also knew about the mountain from the story of Noah. “It’s a beautiful mountain. I don’t know if the Soviet Union built the Cascade just to have a nice view on Ararat,” Jochen said. During their stay in Armenia the students visited the churches on the Lake Sevan peninsula and the Mother Cathedral in Etchmiadzin. They said they were planning to visit the Garni pagan temple, as well as the Tzitzernakaberd Genocide Memorial on April 24. “The Mother Cathedral was very beautiful and also the place especially. It was very quiet. And I think I had problem to look at what is old and what is new because there are also new buildings and also very old,” Jelske said. As for the churches in Sevan, Jelsk finds them to be very mysterious. “It was very mystic. It’s very old and I don’t know exactly the history, but I was wondering how these people, very early Christians were thinking about God,” she said. In Jochen’s words, in Sevan they had eaten a typical Armenian meal with fish, lavash, and cheese. They haven’t had enough time to get very familiar with Armenian cuisine, but they have tasted kabab and tolma, lavash, and liked it. “It was so nice and before we hadn’t eaten any real Armenian food”, Clarinda said. “I’m going to make it at home I think some day like that you have a table with lots of things and you can put something from everywhere,” Jelske added. On the other hand, the Dutch students find it uncomfortable that meals were served almost simultaneously in the restaurant they have visited in Yerevan. “In Holland you have appetizer, you have a little rest in between like 20 minutes to half an hour and then you have your main dish and then you have like another 15 minutes and take your coffee. And here I was still eating my appetizer and the main course came,” Derk said. Sometimes people stare at the foreign students in Yerevan streets. But in the words of the Dutch students, in Holland, they would also pay attention if someone looked really different. They never felt unsafe in Yerevan. “When you go to talk to people, you see that it’s not that they think you are an alien or something, but they are just, everyday they see Armenian people, but they never see someone with blonde hair, blue eyes. In Yerevan the traffic is crazy but the people are polite” Jochen said.