Viaggio nel mondo virtuale: Armenia (#9)

Բարև բոլորին:

Just for fun, I began to do a “virtual world trip” of all* the countries in the world without leaving my home. Each week, I “visit” one country by looking at live cams, cooking some dishes, listening to the radio, and checking the news.

I know it’s not like visiting the country in real life, but time and money are two limiting factors, and this is (sadly) the closest I will be to experience the country. My first posts were about South Africa, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Saudi Arabia, England, and Argentina. Here we go with the ninth country on my list: Armenia.

Let’s begin with the “What I knew of the country”: sadly the only thing that comes to my mind, when thinking about Armenia is the tragic incident which happened in Türkiye between 1915 and 1923. It’s a very sensitive theme, so I will not bring any comments about it, but I will use these two weeks to go pass it and learn more about this country.

On YouTube, after some research, I found an interesting [live cam of Nalbandyan Street in Yerevan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgkM3UVR1xE). It seems to be quite an important street leaving the Republic Square and crossing the city all the way to… well, Mozart Karaoke Club. We still only get a restricted peak of it, and I still don’t understand the reason to stream this spot in particular. It even says Channel 4, so where are Channel 1, 2, and 3? Anyway, if you ever pass in front of this camera, say Hello to the World for me.

As I checked for some Armenian radio station, I stumbled upon AYP Radio, which is based in France. Being French I found it interesting and after searching the Internet a bit I found out that the two countries seem to have quite a strong relationship between one another. Armenia is part of the “International Organisation of La Francophonie” even though only a small proportion of the population speaks French.

France was also one of the first European countries to publicly recognise the Armenian Genocide.

Charles Aznavour, even if it’s not my music style, is/was a very famous French-Armenian singer that every old lady in France still worship to this day.

While looking for recipes to try, I particularly like to read the Wikipedia article concerning the cuisine of a country. For Armenia, I found the Ղափամա interesting and decided to make it.

This dish even has a song, “Hey Jan Ghapama,” sung by a true sex symbol, [Harout Pamboukjian](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/42/ef/8e/42ef8e7f6f9cbc93324134115bc71032.jpg). This song even has a cover by System of Down.

Another recipe that I made this week is գաթա and the interesting thing is that this cake tastes a lot similar to the French galette des rois. But գաթա is usually eaten for Candlemas in February and galette des rois for Epiphany in January. I read that you can put a coin inside the cake, and it brings luck to the person finding it. In the galette des rois, we usually put small Christian figures in ceramic.

All right, guys, this is it for the first week. I hoped you found my post interesting. If you have any recommendations about dishes, places, songs that I should make, check out, or listen, I will be happy to do so. See you next week for my update post.

Հաճելի հանգստյան օր:

* At least I will try…