"Hayastan" a Armenia Travel Page by kr_en

Հայաստան. A country without McDonald's. And without Friends with capital F. You will either fall in love with it or hate it, nothing in between is possible. Provided that you have read (and understood, of course) Saint-Exupéry's "Le Petit Prince" and that you like culture, you'll certainly like it.

(will be continued soon)

Armenian (Հայերէն) is the official language of Armenia. Actually eastern Armenian. If you belong to Armenian diaspora and your ancestors managed to escaqpe from the Armenian genocide, you might speak western Armenian. Some letters are pronounced differently but everyone will understand you.

If you don't speak Armenian then it's compulsory to learn at least some basics of Russian as everyone speaks and is willing to speak it. Many signs are written also or only in Russian.

Mesrop Mashtots is probably one of most important men in Armenian history, he even took over from Lenin one of main streets in Yerevan. Bui probably he's not so popular among visitors as most of them feel illiterate because of him. Yes, he' s the author of that unique Armenian script. If I could learn Russian Cyrillic in a day it took more than three months and I still couldn't learn all of 39 Armenian letters which is necessary if you intend to travel by public transport.

If Armenia celebrated massively in 2001 for 1700 years of Christianity it will probably remeber the birth of their alphabet in similar way in 2006 when it's 16 centuries old.

Do you know the Armenian word for "stupid"? It is written as ապուշ and in western Armenian pronounced as . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "abush". Well, the word definitely arose before 2000 AD. If you visit Armenia, you'll notice that they developed a rich culture in ancient times so they know about it for sure :-)