architecture, pleasantness, monuments.
-the Caucasus region/ countries (britannica.com) are between the Black and Caspian seas in the transition zone between Asia and Europe -Jay's inspirations for this trip: views of Baku, Azerbaijan shown on TV when Azerbaijan hosted Eurovision Song Contest 2012; an interview with the former President of Georgia (educated in the USA) who tried to transition English into being the second language spoken in his country (supplanting Russian); an Armenia friend from Fresno Jay met in the 1970s, and other Armenian connections -Jay's sense of adventure is landing in a country where he does not speak the language and figuring it out -the family from the U.S. he has never seen in the U.S. -Nobel in Azerbaijan -security in Azerbaijan and into Georgia -Armenian genocide (Wikipedia.org) -Jay's blog on the Caucasus (Blogspot.com) -it was in the San Francisco, CA bar called The Stud and not the one called The End Up that I first heard about the Armenian genocide -Levi jeans were, at least at the time, produced mostly in developing countries in South and South East Asia, so the driver and Jay were closer to where the jeans were made than they were to San Francisco, Levi's corporate headquarters 51 minutes 04-19-21 debug comment |