By Kris Mole 7 Dec, , My friend and I had just hitchhiked into Gyumri in Armenia, from Georgia. Night had fallen but the streetlights were off. The city, if you could call it that, was in darkness. We had the address of Luis, a Portuguese Couchsurfer who had said he would put us up for a couple of nights.
Finding his place, though, was proving difficult. After wandering around following vague and contradicting directions from various men we asked on the street, we found ourselves walking just behind a bloke in his early twenties who told us that he would lead us to where we wanted to go. He looked exactly like the two lads that had driven us in to the city: Short black hair, thick dark eyebrows, large brown eyes, and dressed completely in black. Eventually we entered a large unlit block.
The man knocked on the door of one of the ground-floor flats and a little old lady answered. As soon as this word was put out there, though, the lady sprang into life; she knew exactly what we wanted. We wanted the American who lived upstairs. Our guide led us up to the second floor and knocked loudly on a door. It was answered by a man who looked Portuguese.
We thanked our guide and entered the flat, to be met by a group of ten or so energetic young things in their late teens, all drinking from a large punch bowl and speaking to each other in second-language English. We introduced ourselves to everyone. All had been placed in Gyumri by the European Voluntary Service, a European Commision project that gives young people the opportunity to volunteer in a developing country for anything up to twelve months.
I feel pretty dirty. We have no running water of any kind for most of the day. As we walked, Luis and Iustina β a larger than life, both physically and in character, Romanian girl β gave us a bit of a local studies lesson.
