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An industrial city in the past, Charentsavan has never been any special town. "A totally lousy town," someone said to us before we were leaving, "why Charentsavan?" We did not know why exactly.
So naturally I thought once there we would start wondering why we ever came over. And it really did happen that way. Empty bus-station and a square, and an unfinished deserted local "Culture House".
Actually, we visited Charentsavan twice this month. The town left us in "secrecy", and we returned.
Both first and second time we were there we went to the booth next to the station. The booth was not an especially attractive one; we went there for water, what with the dizzying ride and the sun. The lady working in the booth seemed sweet, so I began chatting with her. Her name was Galya, a teacher of painting, knitting and what not in the local school after Garzou, the French- Armenian painter. On our second visit it turned out Galya had a son, who looked older than her. You couldn't talk much about Charentsavan with him. We found out more about Ukraine. We thought around and decided that Ukraine was far from our planned journeys, so we just drank the coffee and left.
On our first visit to the town it began to rain after we went out of Galya's booth. As we walked quickly down a street towards were there would be "a lot of people" we went into a building to wait for the rain to stop. We decided to climb up the last floor to photograph the town from above.
The place was strange. The whole building was silent but the sixth floor. Weird looking little girls in fancy-pink-kindergarten dresses dancing around bending the bodies in strange manner, staring at us and our cameras. Two older girls next to them told us they were organizing a "camp" for the children.
We left the building and wanted to know the name of the street. So on the next trip we asked a man what it was and he said either Khanjyan or Proshyan. Then he turned around, showed his pockets and said, "Need any silver? Parts of watches?" Could even get us parts of camera, or even a camera. We decided to order something from him, but then his friend came over and asked him to "leave the two lawful people alone."
Farther in town we talked to Geghamik. A ten-year-old boy, school, friends... He dreamt a little standing in front of a garage as I took a picture of him.
"There aren't a lot of people here now," said a lady there washing a carpet, "most of them work in Yerevan during the day. They go and come back by train."
The train. The station looked deserted enough until 5:30 pm when people began gathering for the 6 pm train to Abovyan and Yerevan. So we thought we could go back by train. Two homosexuals there offered us to sit between them. We sweetly declined and walked up and down the train. The controller didn't let us photograph but we somehow forgot about it. |
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