Somusing

Dad (Jon) and I are roughly three weeks into a month-long trip around Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region. We started in Armenia, made our way through Georgia, across the Black Sea to Ukraine, through Moldova and now to Kyiv, Ukraine. We have one more stop, Lviv, and then it’s back home to Idaho. I’ll cover our first two weeks(ish) in this post, from the start to the Black Sea ferry. This trip may sound familiar, as many of our destinations match up with a trip Dad and Phin took in August 2013. They wrote about their trip in several posts: Let sleeping dogs lie in Kiev Kiev Pechersk Lavra More Kiev churches and sights Ukrainian miscellany Tbilisi, Georgia Enlinking the Caucasus from Tbilisi to Yerevan Yerevan, Armenia sights Burning rubber in Yerevan, Armenia Garni & Geghard, Armenia Ejmiatsin, Armenia Dad and I have been interested in Eastern Europe for a long time, so this trip has been a great opportunity to see a lot of new places in the east. A lot of plac...

Just around the other side of the hill Nebet Tepe from our house, about 5 minutes' walk, I came across an Armenian area with a church, a couple of schools, and an Armenian holocaust memorial. The church is called St. George Armenian Church (in Bulgarian: Арменската църква "Св. Георги", Пловдив), or St. Kevork as St. George is rendered in Armenian. First a view of the church from part way down Nebet Tepe: This is the church up close: The church interior: A water tap and basin on the side of the church that reads 1818 on the right and ‎١٢٣٣ (1233) on the left in Eastern Arabic numbers, where A.H. 1233 in the Islamic calendar is the same as A.D. 1818 in the Christian calendar. A reminder that Bulgaria was ruled by the Ottomans at the time this was built, and Turkish was written using the Arabic alphabet until they switched to the Latin alphabet in (A.D.!) 1929. A neat stone drain in the cobblestone courtyard: Memorials commemorating the approximat...