Bird on an old metallic wagon wheel at a rest stop en route to Yerevan from the Iranian border
One of those claw crane games filled with packs of cigs for kids who like to suck ash
In Soviet Armenia, ice creams you!
Marko playing for a pack o’ smokes
Natural gas pumps
View across from the rest stop
Picked up a pack of Bieber stickers back in Sri Lanka and decided to unleash the Biebz all over Armenia
It’s hard to get used to the driver being on the right side of the car when car’s drive on the right side of the road especially when the wheelman is a maniac who blindly veers into the oncoming lane to pass slow-moving trucks on skinny, winding mountain highways.
View from a different gas station
Awesome view from that same spot
And yes, another view from that same gas station
Pringles rip-off
Hilariously, this claw machine had smokes mixed in with stuffed animals and soccer balls
Armenians just hangin’ out and bein’ Armenian at the gas station
Horribly fuzzy photo of a roadside homemade wine vendor
Underpass bums in suits out in the countryside
Armenians love to booze
Statue bro as seen pulling into Yerevan, the capital
I’m thinking this is a Persian-style mosque we’d been driving past but since only less than 0.1% of Armenians are Muslim, I can’t be sure.
Jaundice guy with a little indication saying that Yerevan was the 2012 World Book Capital – A recognition of the quality of the city’s programs to promote reading and books and other things of the sort
Another Beatles Bar – any affiliation with the one in Tbilisi?
The Fans of Facebook Club. “Got way too wasted last night at Facebook and was friend requesting everybody. Even tried ‘poking’ a bunch of hot chicks – none of whom poked me back.”
“Do what you want couse pirates are free” So it’s okay if I piss on the wall at Tortuga Pub? How ’bout on the drum set? Can I piss on the drum set?
Face!
Woody Harrelson was here
Hell yeah, Bieber! Get some!
What ees dees?
Pull on his beard, it’s not real
Yerevan Gogh. Yerevan Morrison. Yerevan Dyke
Armenian flags waving in the wind
Out for a stroll
Giant crack pipe?
Statue in front of Armenian Opera Theater
Locals chillin’ on the statue
In da club
Shout out to Trayvon!
Armenians reppin’ the red, white & blue
Phil & Alian, the two Frenchmen, posing under Place de France
Palette boy
Front of the opera house
Armenian couple on a date?
Da po-lice with the Yerevan Cascade in the background
Looks like someone sliced off the upper part of this dude’s hairdo
Yerevan street scene
Dark-colored leather jackets are a dime a dozen in the Caucasus. That red hair on the other hand…well, that’s a different story.
“ANELIK BANK” – Not sure how this is supposed to be pronounced, but the way I said it was as if I had been trying to say “anal lick bank” in a stereotypical Russian accent
The Yerevan Cascade
Some art in the park at the base of the cascade
Big strapping Botero bro with a baby penis
I pulled out my camera a second too late to catch this kid in a green jacket hanging from the statue’s pee-ner. It’s probably for the best.
Armenian couple on an ice cream date
Badunk
Sniffin’ on each other’s butts
Marko gettin’ some. Totally consensual. He asked, she said yes. It’s all good.
Ferocious
View from about halfway up the cascade
What it would look like if Steve-O from Jackass and the liquid metal guy from Terminator 2 had a baby together
Sunset
View from the top of the cascade
The rain, the park and other things
Armenian bros
“Hey lamppost, whatchya knowin’?” – Simon & Garfunkel
Bieber strikes again! This time on the front window of a day care center
Hey, fuck you, shadow of me!
Pube face
Traditional Armenian dancer
Folk band playing their rendition of “Forgot About Dre”
Yeah, you better blow that thing, buddy
My man Ryan in the background with Bieber lookin’ all cool ‘n’ shit on the wine bottle
Part one of my tip left for the waitress
Part 2 of 2
I guess Bony M once ate at this restaurant. If you don’t know this band, do yourself a favor and YouTube their song “Daddy Cool.” It’s fuckin’ amazing – not as cool as their coked-out dance moves though.
The tastiest
“You have to pay the troll toll, if you want the boy’s hole”
A Bieber sticker placed in the hostel room Bible next to my favorite passage – Deuteronomy 23 – which lets us know that dickless cowards ain’t allowed into the kingdom of heaven
Looks like someone left Meatspin on the hostel computer…that someone was me
Bieber sticker on the hand back behind Marko’s head
“Damn, we ended segregation years ago. Can’t believe that shit’s still goin’ on here in this day and age.”
I wanna suck your stache
Leavin’ Yerevan…
Goris
The road between Yerevan and Goris in Armenia’s southeast was mountainous and foggy as fuck
Enjoy?
Our mashrutka driver…a mashrutka being a long-distance shared taxi typa deal
Dog at a rest stop
The Commie’s make damn good ice cream
On the left wall up above this toilet, take note of the two-fingered shit smear someone had left after digging out their asshole with no TP. Nasty!
Statue I saw in passing
Rock tunnel
Beater
Beater bus
Can’t remember the dude’s name – maybe cuz he fed me too much of his homemade wine? – but the dude on the right had an amazing collection of all things Soviet
Birth Certificates and other official Soviet documents
Soviet Birth Certificate
Lenin Bucks, redeemable at your local Commies-R-Us
Knick-knacks, patty-whack give my dog a boner
Damn, check out those jugs
Paper
I actually have one of those Commie banners hanging in my bedroom. How you like me now, Senator McCarthy?
Mr. Girly Man’s got no marbles!
Comrades
Flags of the Soviet Union
Commie boy
This dude from Bulgaria I used to work with told me that listening to the radio was banned back when he was a kid so they’d discreetly take it up on his roof and see if they could get stations from far away. He could and told me his favorite song growing up was “You Sexy Thing” by Hot Chocolate.
Commie headz
Propaganda targeting Latin America
Cash Money
“It’s like Lenin said…” “I am the walrus?” “…you look for the person who will benefit…” “I am the walrus?” “SHUT THE FUCK UP DONNY!!!”
What time’s Commie Idol start?
Alain, the crazy sword-wielding, wall-barfing Frenchman
An authentic Communist DuckTales plate
DJ Iron Kurtin in da house!
Jerry Lewis lookin’ ass
Sleepy Armenians
Stamp collection 1 of 5
2 of 5
3 of 5
4 of 5
5 of 5
Millie-whiffer (noun) – “Someone so desperate for female attention that they resort to smelling women/girls bicycle seats”
Eastern Europeans love tracksuits. Or super far Western Asians, I guess, since Armenia is technically not part of Europe
Armenian Dram. 1USD = approximately 405AMD
Interracial salt ‘n’ pepper orgy
So hawt
Marko, who’s fluent in Russian, asked the taxi driver why so many windshields in Armenia have cracks like this across them. The guy explained that most Armenians don’t wear seatbelts and when they slam on the brakes, which is pretty often given how reckless they drive, it’s most often drunken, half-asleep passengers that go flying and hit their heads on the windshield.
Although it was mid-April, it snowed a few inches overnight
To stay warm, I turned up the heat in the hotel…if ya know what I mean…
Come and get it, ladies. Grrrrrrrr
“I Love You M”
Goris crib
Another old, busted-ass bus I saw similar to the one the day before
On our way up to the hills
Local shopkeeper
Still trekking
Still steppin’
Church – 93% of the population belongs to Armenian Orthodoxy
Alain tugging on something he probably shouldn’t
Church within a church
Jeebus
Heading back out to continue the trek
View of Goris from the church
Finally up in the hills. Similar to Cappadocia, Turkey – here they got strange rock formations that people had once upon a time lived in.
Looks like the type of building you might come across in the snowy-ass level of Goldeneye for N64
Marko said that tying plastic bags to the trees up in the hills is considered good luck
They were all over
Alain delivering a powerful speech in French that neither I nor Marko could understand and he refused to translate for us
This part of the climb was extremely steep. I slipped and went sliding on more than one occasion.
Jagged Edges
Okay, first check out the photo that I took of this rock with my camera…
…then check out this one that Marko took. If you look really closely in that hole there you can see me mooning the camera. When “posing,” I was worried I was gonna back too close to the edge and fall out and be found dead or crippled with my pants at my ankles in a pile of snow.
Hills
Hills + fog
Foggy hills as seen during the descent
Gate leading to a cemetery at the bottom of the hill
In the Caucasus, a lot of the graves had the person’s face etched on the headstone
Tales from the crypt
I wonder who decides what picture goes on the grave
Dude’s last dying wish: “Use the photo of me in my striped shirt on my (coughs) headstone” (gurgles), (croaks).
I did like this cemetery though. Very cool.
That’s the position my brother used to squat in when he’d hide under tables and crap his pants
Casualty of the Nagorno-Karabakh War?
3 bodies 1 grave? Funerary Groupon?
Da boss
Kid
Goris man
Couple bros pushing their buddy’s car which apparently wouldn’t start until it reached a certain speed
A Goris gammy
Couple bros
Eagle on a government-type facility
Face on the same building
Woman in a little cigarette hut
Local dudes hanging out
“What happens in Armenia stays in Armenia”
Alain riding the spinner at a Chuck E. Cheese type facility
Sexually suggestive coaster at the aforementioned Chuck E. Cheese type establishment
They had a guestbook at the pizza place which we all signed. This is Marko’s letter.
Here’s mine. I didn’t include Alain’s cus he wrote it in French and didn’t explain what it meant.
Closest I got to any sort of pussy in Armenia
Painting in the lobby of the hotel
We went back to the same memorabilia restaurant for dinner the next night. Here’s the one dude serenading his lover, Vladimir Lenin.
Me, Phil, Ryan & Marko
Jumpsuit boy ’bout to cap Ryan
Marko with an ancient calculating device called an abacus.
Nerd!!!!
Check out my man checking out a Lenin poster
Feast/Drunkfest
Geghard Monastery
At the base of the monastery, a bunch of vendors had been selling baked goods
Bread vendors were by far the most popular
They were also pretty annoying. They were yelling at everyone. They were yelling at potential customers who walked past, urging them to buy a loaf.
And they got especially jealous and started yelling at the other vendors when a dude like this guy would buy 3 or 4 loaves from one vendor and none from any of the others.
“Imma smacka ya face-a!”
“Even though our bread is practically identical in every way, yours tastes like shit compared to mine!”
The uphill climb to get to the monastery
Gettin’ closer
I don’t know what this guy was doing, but he was just hanging out up in the grass stomping around, talking to himself all weird ‘n’ shit. Definitely made a point of staying away from that guy.
You ain’t Armenian if you don’t wear a black leather jacket.
Inside Geghard
The main chapel of Geghard was built in 1215 but the complex was founded in the 4th century by Gregory the Illuminator – no relation to the battery-powered, glow-in-the-dark football I had as a child.
Dome
Cross
Front door
Chapel with mass in session
Choir
For a dude who hates church as much as I do, I gotta admit that attending this Mass was really something special.
Da whole crew
Preist
Candles in the vestibule
Armenia!
God speaking to Ryan
“We like church and we don’t care who knows!”
Ciggy break
Around the complex
Being surrounded by foggy mountains made the experience feel more mystical
Alain climbing a staircase
Church
Yep
Somewhere on the complex had been a bridge where a lot of foxy ladies had been posing for pictures
Case in point
Raven-haired ladies. I call the one on the left!
Awesome mustache
Damn, son! Check out that Jesus piece!
Holy Trinity
“So I held the gun out like this…and I shot that motherfucker right in the head.”
Gut Guy
What’s the deal with all this bending over to sweep nonsense? Get a longer broom already! What the fuck
Awesome tracksuit
Garni Temple
Dudes walking in the gate to Garni Temple
Dudes at Garni Temple
Garni Pagan Temple
View of the surrounding area from the temple
Different view
Bros discussing bro shit
SUCK IT! Marko!!!
Pre-colorful Armenia hat
Post-colorful Armenia hat
Same mustache guy we saw at Geghard
Suck it Garni Temple!
Agarak
Agarak is a border town just north of Iran where Iranian truck drivers head up to when they want some action at the local strip clubs
Bunch of Agarak cabbies
Old Agarak women…
…young Agarak women who could possibly be strippers.
I love all the old cars in the Caucasus.
Heard some yelling in the morning, looked out my bathroom window and realized our hotel was right up against an army base.
So many vodkas to choose from
Local Lays
“Parental Advisory, Explicit Taste”
Commie Food product. Hope it’s as good as the ice cream.
Cereal?
More Commie shit
“New Cream” – the Armenian Nutella
Who wanna take a bite of my Snickers Super? Better not if you’re allergic, ‘cus I guarantee a mouf full o nutz…
