%cgTraditional Armenian Music in the Streets%c* and other Armenia Local Custom Tips

If you've ever been to the Geghard Monastery in Armenia, you may have come across musicians playing traditional Armenian instruments outside by the car park. The instruments consist of the Accordion, the "Zourna" which is a wind instrument with a very loud noise and the "Dhol" which is a form of percussion....
The picture is of the musicians playing traditional music at a wedding outside the reception hall before the bride and the groom enter the hall.
You will also see traditional instruments playing the music at "Old Yerevan" restaurant in Yerevan.. For more information please click Old Yerevan link.

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Armenians are overwhelmingly members of the Armenian Apostolic Church, whose head, the "Katholikos" has his seat at Ejmiatsin. Armenians are the first nation to adopt Christianity as the official religion of their state (301 A.D.).

The Armenian church is sometimes called the Gregorian Church because it was founded in Armenian by St. Gregory the Illuminator.

When visiting any Armenian Church it is normal on entry to buy candles and then light them while making prayers and then placing them upright in the trays of sand. The candles usually cost somewhere in the neighborhood of US 10-20 cents.

One other fact about visiting churches in Armenia is that it is correct to leave a church walking backwards so as not to turn one's back on God.

This photograph was taken at Geghard Monastery. To read more about Geghard Monastery and its unusual architecture, please visit Gehard Monastery

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Another frequent sight outside churches in Armenia is a tree or shrub to which numerous scraps of cloth are tied. Each scrap is attached by a person making a private prayer.

We witnessed this phenomenone at nearly all the churches we visited in Armenia. The photograph is taken at Haghartsin Monastery by a khachkar where people have tied articles of clothing, usually handcershiefs to the tree outside the main church structure.

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Many families except for those living in flats grow as much food as they can with all the family members, children included, working hard planting potatoes, corn and other vegetables by hand and subsequently harvesting them, again by hand.

In late summer women can be encountered in the villages winnowing grain, preserving fruit for the winter by drying it in the sun, and making fruit juices and home made vodkas to last through the winter.

Perhaps the most conspicuous problem is that of water supply. Leaking mains mean that water supply in most towns and cities has to be restricted to a few hours a day to prevent large quantities running away to waste.
In rural areas water has either to be obtained from the village spring and carried in buckets, or else there might be a well in the garden. In both urban and rural areas water has to be stored in quantity for use when needed. I am sure you will come across this fact very early into your travels within Armenia even if you're staying in hotels with no water supply problems.

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Many families through out Armenia keep their own livestock and even in towns cattle and sheep can often be seen being tended by a family member. In some areas free-range pigs wander freely through the village foraging for food.

Armenians are very hard working, even more important now when so much work has to be done by hand because machinery, fertilisers, weedkillers and pesticides are all unaffordable. This fact ofcourse has the incidental benefit of making much Armenian food organic.

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Despite all the difficulties of life, Armenians are generous to a fault. Desperately poor people welcome you into their homes and provide refreshments, often unintentionally embarrassing western visitors who feel awkward about accepting from those who obviously have so much less. (Trust me on this, you will know after you've visited a few families in the villages how it feels).

Especially in rural areas, people are fascinated by the few westerners who appear and are genuinely touched that people from so far away could even have heard of Armenia let alone be interested enough to come.

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