The North-South Highway

Driving the North-South Highway of Armenia was a study in borders. Crossing from Yerevan into its outskirts, we saw stork nests hover above a village. Beneath them, children returned to school from lunchtime at home. Only a few minutes later, we turned onto the highway proper and the landscape changed. Those borders, city to country, road to highway, were more physical and tangible than the infinitely less cross-able ones that would then exist all around us.
Somewhere on the mountain range to our right, Armenia ended and Turkey began. We drove along the border line for a while, with Mount Ararat peaking over the white(-capped) picket fence like a smug neighbor. The fabled mountain is planted in Turkey but remains an omnipresent part of the Armenian landscape, symbolizes a common history and even shared identity that has all but been erased by some pretty terrible recent history.
Just below, in the town of Yeraskh, we ricocheted off another border at such an angle it felt like the road planning equivalent of whacking a pinball away from the loser's abyss. We were led eastward toward the southern provinces of Armenia, Turkey in our rearview, Azerbaijan out my passenger window, the self-declared republic of Nagorno-Karabagh ahead (a whole other can of border issues).
It felt so strange, driving through the mountains on the beautiful highway, so simply laid it was named after its directionals. The North-South Highway is not built up at all. Almost all of it is a two lane stretch which many people call the 'backbone' of the country. Looking at a magnificent unending landscape of mountains and thinking about insurmountable border lines drawn somewhere within them felt like imaging a spot in the ocean where salt water gives way to fresh.
The borders within Armenia, between the provinces, were defined and enjoyable. Up we would go until we switch-backed through a mountain pass to find the sign welcoming us into a new region. The Tukh Manuk Pass brought us from the Ararat province to Vayots Dor then the Vorotan Pass acted as an escalator to the Syunik. Volcanic peaks with chimney-like stone protrusions in one place, sweeping round mounds in another. Between, life creeped up to the roadside, giving us some sense of what existed beyond the highway in each area. Painted fish signs springing up in bulk out of nowhere made us realize that we were passing the Armash Fishponds, easy to spot once we knew to look.
A veritable strip mall of roadside wine sellers made us notice the vineyards right there in Areni. We didn't stop for a taste, even though this woman invited us to park and sample. We marveled at the fact that the Coca Cola bottles in which almost all the multiple inventories were stored still had the red labels affixed. Later, we learned that this wasn't laziness at all. Highway wine is mostly sold to Iranian truck drivers who are heading home to their alcohol-free country with "soda."
In the southern corner of Armenia, Syunik province, many people are heading toward Iran. A man and woman about our age peddling heavily weighed bikes along the side of the highway were almost certainly tourists heading for that country. Unlike the ones with Turkey or Azerbaijan, this border is open, but - with our passports - is closed to us. It makes a place feel different to sit snugly in the corner of it knowing that the horizon, in almost every direction, is off limits to you. As we approached Goris, a mist began to set over everything in front of us. Snowcaps floated like clouds in some spots
and completely disappeared in others. We crossed a final mountain pass and dropped directly into the fog.

A Talysh Retreat

With only one day trip out of Baku under our belt, we were antsy to head out of the big city and start seeing the rest of Azerbaijan. We arrived in the country by overnight train. So, even though we've technically traveled the width of it, we didn't really get a good look at anything. I know Merlin just extolled the virtues of our new carless existence - but we never said we wouldn't rent a car now and then.
A highway stretches down along the coast of the Caspian Sea from Baku to Astara and into Iran. It was mostly flat, though the scenery did vary some. We were excited to get up into the Lesser Caucasus of the Talysh Region. There are basically two mountains roads in the region that are deemed "readily passable by car." So, obviously, we took them both to the towns they led to: Lerik and Yardmili. The drops down to the hillside below were sometimes staggering and always beautiful. Along the drive from Lankaran to Lerik, there were a number shuttered resorts and riverside rental huts. Signs promised shashlyk and fresh bread. Grills and tandirs sat on the roadside. I imagine that, in summertime, the route must feel like a long, fragrant cloud.
We may have seen more sheep than people for a good deal of our time driving through the Talysh region. Young boys, who were just tall enough to see into our windshield, herded groups of sheep with flimsy sticks. Now and then, a man would gallantly ride past us on a horse. Sometimes, a donkey would pass by with a heavy load on its back. But the sheep, those masters at hanging out diagonally, were definitely most abundant. They spotted the scenery and clogged the road.
Lerik itself felt unremarkable - but that's sometimes the point. It was simply a town that was reachable, so we reached it. Legend has it that, in 1990, a local shepherd donated his flock to refugees and President Heydar Aliyev wanted to honor the man with a visit. He was told that the road to Lerik was simply too bad for his car. So, he repaved it. I guess, in a way, every foreigner who makes a trip to Lerik simply because they can is really paying tribute to that nameless shepherd.
The town of Yardmili was more picturesque and slower paced. We should have stayed longer,. There were so many things to do: visit a carpet weaving factory, see the Shalala waterfall, gaze over Tangi Canyon from a recommended tea spot. Sometimes beautiful weather and a sleepy town have a way lulling you right into contentment.
That night, we slept on the road between Yardmili and Masalli at a bizarre hotel - the only we could find. The gold-toothed manager wore a full suit and there were at least ten people on staff - about five times as many workers as customers. There was an artificial pond, gazebos and talk of peacocks on the premises (though we never saw any). The epitome of life on the road.

Miles of Groceries

A shopping trip along the roads of Azerbaijan's south could take hours - the ducks and onions are miles apart. Each town has a specialty and we found ourselves passing through districts where only one thing was for sale.

Xirmandali is a small town with no real features other than a slight bend in the road. The residents raise chickens to sell, live or plucked. We stopped and looked at some eggs. This man wanted to show us his rooster.

In the rich plains around the Mughan Salyan river there are potato fields stretching beyond the horizon. The black earth was being plowed when we passed through, horses and men dotting the landscape. We stopped and talked to this group in broken Russian - neither we nor they spoke it well. A friendly man brought us some ways out into the field to show us the seed potatoes and the slow progress of the horse plows. The women offered us tea. A cold mist was beginning to creep in from the distant sea. All along the roadside, sacks of potatoes leaned in piles, waiting for buyers.

Orchards must be hidden somewhere near Sharvan and Chukhanly. Vendors set out their apples and pomegranates in the road dust, then spend their days polishing the fruit with rags. We learned about a peculiar hybrid of lemon and orange, peculiar to the Talysh region, that's sometimes available too. "Mehr" lemons don't taste much sweeter than regular lemons, but they're oranger - so they seem like they should be edible. They're certainly sour, and it was difficult to choke one down. We learned later that they're just Meyer lemons.
In Shorsulu, people sell fish out of roadside bathtubs. There are two options: nominally alive or dead. Boys tend to sell the dead ones, arranged on boards or hung from lines.

People waved ducks at us in one town, rabbits in another. The road changed to highway as it swung back towards the Caspian, and men came up across the coastal desert with poached sturgeon. Onions in bags, lamb by the piece. Close to the salty shores of Lake Duzdag, there were waterbirds dangling by their long legs.

In Masalli, hay was sold from overloaded trucks - not really foodstuff, but an amazing sight.

People do stop to buy things. The vendors crowd around cars that pull over - especially the nicer vehicles and the better dressed customers. We were mostly given bemused looks. I think it was pretty clear that we weren't interested in a few live hens.

This is the coop that the man dived into for his rooster. For a few seconds he was completely obscured by beating wings and feathers. The commotion was understandable - it's unlikely many birds get put back after being taken out. An older man without teeth tried to interest us in the plucked hens that he had in dirty plastic bags, but we demurred.

A New Type Of Travel

We traveled by car for the first fifteen months of the trip. Now, the car is back in America. A lot has changed in the way we get around. Above, the Tbilisi train station at dusk.
The biggest difference is the amount we are able to carry with us. We used to have a tent and folding table, a gas stove, pots and pans, spatulas and cheese grater, sleeping bags and wine glasses. We had to leave behind our tripod, our bags of books, our bigger bags of clothes, our thermoses and CD's. We used to feel as though there was a complete home in our car, ready to be unfolded at a campsite or rented room. One bag was called "the kitchen," another "the library," our tent was the bedroom, put in next to "our closets." There were times when we contemplated buying houseplants (or, car-plants?).

Now, everything we carry must really be carried.

Above, an uncrowded moment on the Tbilisi subway, which is actually quite convenient, fast and clean.
Another difference - we now have to know more precisely where the next destination will be, and how we are going to get there. With a car, it's easy to pull over for the night at some roadhouse or inn. We could wander at our own pace. There were no prescribed routes - we could take a back road or continue beyond where the busses ran. Now, we are at the mercy of our drivers, conductors and pilots, whose job is to go from one point to another.

We took a plane from Tbilisi to Mestia, which we never would have done before. On our flight there, we were the only two people aboard (there were sixteen seats, supposedly - I counted fifteen). On our flight back, the plane was full of Svans journeying to the capital for Christmas - it seemed most of them had never flown before.

Of course, in this part of the world, people travel by marshrutka, and so we have too. We'd been on them before, of course (our most memorable ride being into Transnistria), but not as often as most travelers in Eastern Europe.

Marshrutkas are, essentially, private busses - usually vans, actually - that run along predetermined routes and pick up or drop off passengers as they go. Sometimes they are quite pleasant. Sometimes, they are over-packed and uncomfortable.
We took a slow sleeper train from Tbilisi to Baku in Azerbaijan. It was, at one time, probably very luxurious, but was now tattered and faded. We felt that the journey - especially in between dreams, waking to darkness and clanging - was decades-old. The curtain rod was rusty, the fabrics musty. The porters had raucous laughs and a tiny room where they drank tea. They spoke Azeri to each other, hard-edged Russian to us. Outside, only occasional lights in the desert. We felt, for many hours, the slow tilt of the land downward to the caspian sea.

It was wonderful to drift in this relic of empire and Brezhnev, letting the miles pass unnoticed. We could read and play cards, drink Georgian brandy and use the bathroom. We miss our car very much - but this kind of travel isn't so bad.

The Bilbao to Portsmouth Ferry

Air travel doesn't do justice to distances, or to journeys. Getting on a plane in one place, getting off in another, feeling nothing but blankness in between - it reorders geography into simple equations of hours-between and time-zones crossed. It's nice, every once in a while, to go more slowly and deliberately, and to have time to ruminate on the change.

We left the continent in grand fashion this time, setting sail for southern England with our car and a few days before our flight home. The trip took a little over 24 hours, beginning in darkness, traversing a full day and ending late the next night.

Above, morning breaks over the Bay of Biscay
The Brittany Ferries boat that plies the water between Bilbao and Portsmouth is much bigger than we expected. Because of some bad weather that we never saw but heard a lot about, the ferry was late in loading. During a few hours spent sitting in the vast holding lot, idling truck engines and the crackling radios of the customs men settled into a kind of dreamlike white noise. A few hundred other cars sat in the gloom with us. Truckers talked by their rigs, drinking beer until unsteadied and laughing over old stories.
When we finally were ushered on, it happened in a rush. We left the car with our overnight bags, found our cabin, settled in. Our cabin smelled faintly of seawater, the ship rolled heavily, we slept lightly, always aware that the ocean was beneath us.The morning brought brief sun, followed by spitting rain and strong wind as we entered the Celtic sea. We worked and sat, wandered from shop to restaurant to bar. There are events on board, of course, and movies playing, but we didn't take part in any of it. A certain pleasure can be found in being hemmed in for a finite amount of time, and in drifting into a soft-lit daze. The day passed very swiftly, in a cornerless line of rolling waves and quiet music.
There were two restaurants on board, and two real bars. Rumors of a third bar spread, and were confirmed by a vague mention in the directory, but we weren't able to find it. It sounded intriguing - the "chauffeur lounge," reserved for truck drivers and, one imagines, the more unsavory types.

The other bars were predictably bland, though they did a brisk business. People like to drink when they're on a boat, and to eat. We had sardines and bread for our chilly, on-deck lunch, followed in our cabin by some dates and oranges.

Night fell again, and with it came a certain edginess. The passengers were informed of another delay, minds were turned toward solid ground. In the last few, long hours, it was as if the boat had awakened. Passengers stretched and paced, standing restlessly in the hallways and congregating more anxiously around the televisions and bars.

The lights of England and Portsmouth brought people out onto the decks. The air was heavy with moisture, but the rain had cleared. Most of our fellow passengers were British, and the sight of their homeland seemed to calm them.

We slipped into our berth around nine-thirty at night. Driving away, speeding down a misty English motorway, the breadth of the water behind us felt immense.

24 Hours or Less

Sometimes, the towns you find yourself in when you just need a break on a long road trip wind up defining a country. You turn off the highway toward that hilltop church in the distance because you know there must be a place to get coffee nearby. You drive toward the water in hope of some seaside spot for lunch. Many of these towns remain nameless in our memory. There are so many times that we regret not bothering to bring our cameras out of the car. But in a way, that's what make these stopover towns special.
A long, tired drive after a night full of goodbyes and an early morning family drop-off at the airport, lead us to Olite. Halfway between Barcelona and San Sebastian, the land had flattened and a golden haze had overtaken the day's blue sky. Wind towers turned like pinwheels across the ridge line and each side of the road dropped down into fields of gold and yellow. Vineyards in autumn. We stopped in Olite because there was a castle icon next to its name on our road map. Sometimes, it's just as simple as that.
The next morning, we awoke bright and early, hoping for a bluer sky for castle hunting. Hoping, also, to get an early start on the rest of our drive. The sunrise was magnificent and we ran out of the cobbled old town, past the railroad tracks, over toward the apartment complexes on the outskirts of town to get a great shot of the castle. We snapped until the sun had fully risen and then had coffee with the other early risers. Most men in the bar had brought their own breakfast, wrapped in aluminum foil. A James Bond movie played on the television set.We did a lot of driving in Spain, traveling across its belt from Portugal to Barcelona, then from its Mediterranean coast to its Atlantic coast. The Spanish countryside is vast and beautiful - sometimes red soiled and mountainous like the American Southwest, sometimes lushly forested or dramatically peaked. The region of Castilla y Leon was our introduction to Spain. Eagles soared overhead as we drove through the positively ancient feeling terrain. There were stone ruins, whitewashed hamlets and impressive churches everywhere. People walked the lengths from one town to another, hugging the side of the road with sticks in hand and covered heads. We spent the night in Covarrubias, where we were immediately greeted by a trio of old women walking arm in arm down the street, arranged from tallest to shortest. Hola! they said in unison, without breaking stride. Our pension's dining room was lined with taxidermy and ham legs and didn't open for dinner until 9pm. Until then, we visited each of the four bars in town, where we stood on discarded peanut shells and ate too much morcilla. In the morning, we wandered around the squares hoping to find a mailbox and our bewildered looks prompted each and every person to ask us what we were looking for, how they could help. This would continue to be our experience in Spain - Covarrubias gave an excellent, accurate first impression.
Then, there are the daytrips. On the Costa Brava, from our home base of Palafrugell, we had all sorts of lofty plans. Swim here, hike there, if only the weather had cooperated. On one of the less stormy days, we made it out to Tamariu, a cove surrounded by clifftop pines. It is said to have the clearest water in the Spanish Mediterranean. But it was difficult to tell through the froth, as waves crashed up onto the beached fishing boats and against the rocky coast. The beginning of our hiking trail was impossible to reach, obscured by the whitecaps. The scene was absolute natural drama.

Northwest up the coast was Begur, where we stopped in one afternoon for lunch. Our meal at a restaurant named Rostei was delicious and the rain stopped just long enough afterward to allow for a quick walk around town. It's a wonderful thing when a casual stroll leads you up to a 10th century castle ruin with views like this. In most towns that we spent 24 hours or less, we could have spent days.
Our final night in Spain was spent in Errenteria - a town outside of San Sebastian. We'd made a reservation weeks earlier for an anniversary dinner at Mugaritz, which sat on a nameless road in this easily forgotten town. Most people that dine there simply sleep in San Sebastian, a half hour's drive away. We stayed in a guesthouse down the road, and walked to dinner in nice clothes and headlamps. The local bar seemed to always be open. Cider and eggs in the morning, cider and sandwiches at lunch, wine and beer at night and coffee through it all. A flyer on the wall advertised a hunting rifle for sale and a local raffle collection was set up by the gambling machine in the corner.
Rolling fields were filled with sheep and cows. Vegetable gardens stretched in grids of cabbage. Burning brush puffed another cloud into the already full sky as the sun set at a wintery early hour. We sat with our pre-dinner coffees and took it all in. Our last day of Spain, our last day of this leg of the trip. In just a week we'll be home and this will all seem so incredibly far away. We will most likely forget Errenteria's name, but that's okay. It's the essence of it, the feelings that night that will forever be infused into our memory of Spain. The same is true for Olite and Begur and Covarrubias and Tamariu and all the other short-lived, long-remembered locales.

The Andorra Ferrari Convention

At one time - before I could actually drive a car - I could have told you the exact horsepower output, zero-to-sixty times, top speed and general desirability of every Ferrari in production. Nowadays, I don't even know the names of the different models. It was thus only mildly exciting when the 5th annual "concentración Ferrari" arrived in Andorra, and the streets and valleys began to vibrate and thrum under the onslaught of pistons and tailpipes.
There's a nostalgic charm about the way people worship the cult of the supercar. It's reminiscent, in some ways, of antique modes of aristocracy - a car is deemed superior by birth rite, mumbled approval is given as it passes, heads are turned. They are given free reign and police escorts as they rumble along closed roads, speeding expected, laws not applicable. We stood at a bus stop with our cameras one morning, watching as a long procession screamed along the main Andorran road, dozens of (mostly) red, sleek things traveling at high speed and full clamor. It seems impossible, but we could actually feel the heat of the engines as they whizzed past. Mystifying and slightly gross.
Really, this is the culture of car longing. Ferrari has retail stores all across the globe, selling branded polo shirts and sneakers, pens and luggage, watches and cufflinks. The allure of the car is the marketing ploy; the red glow extends eventually to knickknacks. Although the concentración probably boosted sales, the Ferrari store in Andorra is almost always busy. The owners of the cars wore special red and yellow fleeces, given to them by the event organizers, unavailable to the public, the distinguishing marks of the elite.

It must be a strange convention to attend, a kind of fellowship of the envied and the gas-guzzlers. One wonders if there is jealousy within their ranks, if the older owners look down on the recent-purchasers, if they talk about their Ferraris or about Andorra or about something less mythical.
The convention ended on Sunday, but a few stragglers have still been growling around the mountains. Parked, they draw perhaps even more attention than they do when driven. Maybe that's because empty seats are easier to imagine sitting in, or because they are suddenly, curiously inanimate. Admittedly - even now that my lust for them has dissipated with age - a revving, moving, exhaust-scented Ferrari is still captivating in a way that few other vehicles are. At rest, though, there's something hair-raising about their stillness, as though they might suddenly awaken of their own accord and pounce.
A less publicized and more romantic (for us) convention of Volkswagen bugs and vans was held in Andorra on the same weekend. We joked that it was organized to protest the Ferraris - a populist uprising, maybe - and that Andorra was much too small for all of this driving. It doesn't take long to traverse the main road and suddenly come up against a border. Why hold a car "concentración" in such a small, congested place? Possibly - and this is especially pertinent for Ferrari drivers - because gas is about €1.50 per gallon cheaper in Andorra than it is in France.

Czech Forts

In the Czech Republic, it seems impossible to drive more than half an hour without running up against some castle or chateau. Because of a plethora of border conflicts at the margins of the Austrian empire, along with Bohemia’s wealth and prosperity during Hapsburg rule, this part of the world built and kept a huge number of defensive fortresses – many of them later turned into country seats for affluent families. Most of these buildings were enlarged versions of earlier relics, left over from the times of Germanic, Swedish, Lithuanian, Polish and Russian conquests in the region. The Thirty Years War also spurred a rush of construction, and today it seems that there aren’t many places in Europe with more historic defenses than this country. Here’s magnificent Zamek Bitov, which we just happened to be driving past on our way to Telč.
Close to the border with Austria is this confoundingly elaborate fortress cum palace, Vranov Nad Dyji. We didn’t take the tour, but spent a few minutes marveling beside the road. In Telč, we did take a tour of the castle, but weren’t allowed to take photographs. Because there are so many buildings like this in Moravia and Bohemia, the tour was small and the rooms felt disused and dusty, opened up just for us. Requisite fixtures in any building like this: family heirlooms of questionable value, dented suits of armor, glass cases of collected weaponry, portraits of forgotten aristocracy and a few threadbare tapestries. Also, there’s always a ghost story.
Another castle we visited recently, Pernštejn, offered all of that – plus amazingly intact defenses and a still-surviving medieval air. Again, like most tourist sites in the Czech Republic, photography wasn’t allowed inside. Making things more difficult, the castle is surrounded by thick woods and was very difficult to take pictures of. Still, we fell in love with its towers, halls and blunt walls.
Built and extended in many stages between the 1280’s and the end of the sixteenth century, the castle is still very much a stone monument to the wartime periods that birthed it. Instead of rebuilding it when rock walls and old ramparts fell out of fashion, the family that owned Pernštejn ran out of money and let it be. Still, it was lived in until the beginning of the twentieth century, and was never allowed to become derelict or fall apart. Some of the interior rooms are actually quite strikingly appointed, though it doesn’t feel nearly as grand as some other homes.
The defensibility is largely reliant on two factors: the elevated foundation of the main keep and a series of interior passageways built to control access to the building. Resting high up on a rocky perch, the central stronghold features only one small door, set off a balcony about thirty feet above the ground. Attacking the entryway was made difficult by this strategic location, and the stairs leading up to it are vulnerable from above and easy to hold. Inside, a narrow, spiraling staircase leads from the door up to the main floors, forcing enemy soldiers to fight their way upwards one at a time. The steps winds clockwise, which made fighting with a weapon held in the right hand awkward on the way up, but advantageous for the defender. At the top of this staircase, the doorway is low and must be ducked through – which provides a last moment of vulnerability.
The advent of gunpowder weapons caused the owners of Pernštejn to enlarge the crenelated walls and to add a second tower complex further along the ridge. The idea was to make it more difficult for enemy ballistics to reach the main castle. This new, round defense was outfitted with lower and more open firing positions so that canons could be used from within. Steep embankments drop into the woods on either side of this point, which could be navigated on foot, but not with any kind of heavy equipment or larger weapon.