On the wall opposite me a Canadian flag is hanging. The CD player is giving out Polish Patriotic songs and a Komitas CD is waiting for its turn on the table.

I am at Julius's apartment. Julius is from Canada, Polish by nationality, and has been living in Armenia for the last year. He is here on an AIESEC exchange program.

We've mixed Bailey's Irish and Armenian Cognac together, and sipping that not very good mixture are giving the Armenian Police a drubbing.

To tell the truth, initially we had no intention of discussing Armenian policemen. Actually we were talking about Julius' hiking around Armenia. There seem to be almost no place in Armenia this Canadian guy has not visited. If the organization where he is currently working in gets closed some day he can work for a tour agency as a guide.

Julius is really gifted at falling into adventures. And some of the most ridiculous of them are connected to the police.

Armenian policemen do not cease to astonish him with their corruption. The fact that for any crime one can pay some amount of money to a policeman and get rid of any headache has been has been clear to him since his first days in Armenia.

And on the first trip. There are six of them in the car - two Armenians in the front and him and four foreign girls behind, going to Lori. It is raining cats and dogs and the passenger in front, Stepan, obviously to show off in front of girls, pulls down the window and sits on the door, his shirt off. Some minutes later, they are stopped by the police. Hakob, the driver, takes the documents and goes up to the policemen.

A while later he comes back with a pleased smile on his face and recounts the dialog between him and the policeman.

Hakob: "Sorry my friend is a German, and foreigners, you know, are all a bit nuts."

Policeman: "But this is hooliganism! Pay a 5000 dram fine."

Hakob: "But I've already paid 3000 drams to policemen today on account of him."

Policeman: "OK, OK, give me 2000 drams and move on. But don't tell your German friend about it, or he'll get a bad impression of Armenians!"

So when some months later in the village of Vanq in Nagorno Karabakh Julius is stopped by the police, the guy sighs deeply, trying to guess how much the policeman will ask and for what reason.

This time he and two Dutch and one German girl are traveling around Karabakh. Four pairs of blue eyes and four blonde heads. They immediately appear to be the center of everyone's attention.

Near the posh hotel that doesn't suit the poverty of the village a policeman comes up to them and asks Julius for his documents. Julius hands him a passport and visa.

It takes the policeman a very long time to study the papers. Once he has learned every word by heart, he hands the documents back. Julius and the girls continue on their way to the only cafe in the village. Suddenly they hear the policeman's voice.

"You, come here," says he to Julius in Russian.

"Get into the car," he orders, " and close the door."

Then after a little pause with a softer, not policeman's voice he says, "My boss has invited you to a dinner. Will you come?"

Gosh!

Sure we will.

The dinner with "the boss" lasts for five hours. Wine, vodka, and traditional long Armenian toasts.

Making toasts on every occasion captivated Julius so much that now when he has time he practices creating them so that when he is told at the table "No, no, don't think, say something fast," he'll have something to say.

Armenians are what Julius likes the most in Armenia.

"Armenians are so warm, hospitable and sociable. You can't see that in Canada nowadays," he says.

And immediately remembers his first trip out of Yerevan, to Garni and Geghard.

"In Geghard someone asked me to take a picture of his family. It was perhaps the first time in his life that he'd seen a digital camera. Then he invited, or more exactly, pushed us to join his family in the feast they were having.

"After the dinner came dancing. We were dancing to live music of a clarinet, duduk, and dhol. There was an old man there in his seventies. He'd had a hard life, was exiled to Siberia in the sixties and seventies, but kept making toasts about how he loves all people, be it Armenians or Turks or even. blacks."

Julius can talk about this grandfather, another old postman, the children living in his building, his neighbors, for hours, and always with the same warmth.

After another sip of cognac-Baileys I ask him, "Well, isn't there anything that makes you nervous about Armenians?"

After a small pause he says, "I can't say it makes me nervous, but for me it's very unusual how much you pay attention to your appearance. Girls walking down the street, all in heels, with make up, even if they aren't going anywhere special. It's good if it's their wish, but I don't know if they do it because they want to or because they have to do it. Have to follow the fashion, have to not stay behind.

"In Canada there's another extreme. People walk down the street in jeans and loopy T-shirts, don't take care of themselves, often are so fat that they roll, not walk, down the street."

With the last drops of our drinks we recall famous Armenians spread all over the world. After the useless attempts to find anybody in Canada but Atom Egoyan, I suggest that Julius to dig into his roots in the hope that I'll find some Armenian shoot.

I do not find any shoots but there are, however, links to Armenia. Julius tells me that in his house in Poland there was a carpet on the wall, he never knew where from. When he saw carpets here with similar patterns he asked his mother about it. It turns out that his grandmother's aunt' s husband was a military man working in Armenia. He was a soldier of the tsar and after the 1917 revolution he was sent to prison. His wife and children escaped to Poland and the only thing the woman took from Armenia was the Armenian carpet.