We're married! Or that's what we started telling people in Armenia, given the locals' insistence on dragging us to the church. A man and a woman, travelling together, living together, and not married — it's too much for them. So after a while we decided to settle the argument by saying yes, we do. Or rather, by telling them we already had.
The problem is that if we're married... why don't we have children? What are we waiting for? We'd have to get cracking, or tell them we left the kids at home with the grandparents — which apparently makes more sense to them than not having any.
But let's go back to the beginning. Our welcome to Armenia consisted of a single question: Have you been to Azerbaijan?
We arrived at the Armenian border after a well-deserved winter break in Tbilisi, Georgia. The guard in the border control booth greeted me with a smile and decent English. He was friendliness itself, asking about our cycling trip — but the moment I mentioned we'd been travelling for over a year, his smile evaporated and he asked, very seriously: Azerbaijan?
Armenia and its neighbour Azerbaijan are at war. Not the kind of war that makes headlines every night, but a cold war that heats up regularly. Both countries put a significant percentage of their budgets into their military forces, and the situation is not to be taken lightly.
No, we haven't been to Azerbaijan. My answer was unambiguous, but it didn't seem to convince him — he went through every single page of my passport one by one. Satisfied at last, he stamped the entry to Armenia, which grants us 180 days in the country with no paperwork or visa required — a convenience we'd grown used to in Europe, and one that would soon disappear when we pushed further into Central Asia and its bureaucratic horrors.
The Caucasus — Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan — is sometimes called the balcony of Europe on the Asian continent. But after several months in those lands I can't say I felt particularly European, unless we're talking about a Soviet Europe stuck in the past and isolated in the present. It felt more Asian than European to me.
Armenian hospitality
We kept pedalling alongside a river, with beautiful mountain views. A very green part of Armenia — but where there's green, there's rain. A couple of hours after crossing the border the rain started, and night was closing in.
We stopped at the first petrol station we saw to take shelter, and the workers there quickly invited us in for a coffee. This warmth and easy friendliness reminded us of what we'd experienced in Turkey.
A few minutes later they were already inviting us to sleep there. Since the sky was completely overcast, we accepted and spent the night in the car wash without even needing to pitch our tent. Another night we'd wake up without a soggy tent.
The winter that wouldn't end
This winter apparently still had a few surprises in store, particularly as we pushed further into the Armenian mountains.
The rain turned into a blizzard — again, just like in Turkey — and we ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere. Again, Armenian hospitality stepped in and took us in for 2 nights at another petrol station, where we were bored out of our minds with nothing to do — but at least we were spared two days confined to a tent or cycling through an endless white storm.
A night with the firefighters
Our pedalling brought us to Vanadzor, where we did our first shopping in Armenia before pushing on towards Yerevan. Food prices in Armenian shops seemed slightly lower than in Georgia — local produce quite cheap, and imported European goods more expensive than in Spanish supermarkets but cheaper than in Georgia, where the close link between the Georgian lari and the dollar had hit hard.
We were just leaving the town when darkness fell and a light drizzle started, so as we passed a fire station the obvious move was to ask if we could spend the night.
They weren't long in opening the doors and inviting us in for tea. The tea turned into dinner. Dinner turned into vodka... But after previous experiences in Georgia I declined — once you start drinking in the Caucasus, you can't stop.
The drinking offers kept coming every time a new firefighter sat down at the table, and that was when I made my mistake. One of them offered me a taste of the local beer, and that was harder to resist. I said yes to one.
Beer and cognac
I thought he was going to get it from the fridge, but he told us to put something warm on. I thought we were going to a shop, but we ended up at a brewery. Once there, we were taken straight to a little "VIP" room — quite peculiar. It's common in Armenia to have separate rooms for each table in local bars, a bit of extra privacy and comfort. To our eyes it looked more like someone's living room than a bar.
Beers and a few local snacks kept appearing. One beer, two, three, four. The Armenian cheese caught our attention — it goes perfectly with beer, a hard, very salty variety formed from threads of cheese coiled together that kept disappearing from the table between rounds.
— Have you tried Armenian cognac?
— No, I haven't.
— You have to! It's the best in the world!
— Oh, no, no... Thanks.
Back at the fire station a bottle of cognac appeared — as if from nowhere — on the table, and we didn't leave it until a firefighter and I had finished it between us. This is the downside of drinking with locals in Armenia: they don't stop until everyone's on the floor.
Armenia is very traditional
Between beers and shots we talked about all sorts, cycling through the usual questions. But the biggest difference in how the conversation developed was the part that involved Ilze and me.
— Are you married?
— No.
— What???
— No.
— How old are you?
— 27 and 31.
— She's 31 and doesn't have children?
— Correct.
— You have to get married now! It'll be too late otherwise. Look at me — I'm 25 and I have 2 kids.
— Congratulations...
— I'll call the priest right now and tell him to prepare the wedding for tomorrow.
— No, no...
— You have to get married! You have to have children as soon as possible!
Countless conversations with locals in Armenia went like this — not just that night. In Armenia, women are expected to get married and have children. A woman without a husband and plenty of offspring is a failure — at least that's how they see it. And that's how women are treated. A woman can run a successful business, but if she doesn't have a family she'll be treated like a loser. A very traditional culture that, in practice, turned out to be more restrictive for women than somewhere like Iran — where the legal constraints go further but society's actual attitude is far more modern.
After that night we started telling people we were married to avoid endless arguments — something we'd already planned to do in Iran, but Armenian persistence meant we had to move the timeline forward a few weeks. We're married!
Climbing hungover, sleep-deprived
That night with the firefighters wasn't such a great idea after all. We ended up going to sleep at 4 in the morning, and with that much alcohol in us it was impossible to get any real rest. A dozen firefighters snoring in their bunks, the TV blaring, cigarette smoke from the sleepless ones — none of that helped either. At 6 it was time to get up and pedal uphill without having slept.
A particularly brutal day, but after a decent breakfast I found some of the energy I thought I'd lost, and we enjoyed a beautiful climb through the mountains, through snow, under a blazing sun.
Celebrating our marriage without needing to buy a ring or organise a wedding. Olé!