This will be a short story about me hitchhiking with my host in Armenia, a different type of story, but it really happened like this. The front picture is not the car from the person out of the story.
Where is Armenia located?
Armenia is a country which is located at the south of the mountain range of the Caucasus. It borders in the north and east by Georgia and Azerbaijan. Other borders are with Turkey and Iran.
In the region there is a lot of tension, especially when last year another fighting happened between Armenia and its neighbor Azerbaijan, also Turkey as an ally of Azerbaijan and other big countries involved. It is about the Karabakh region. This topic is more intensense than most things, so I won’t get into a lot of detail here in this article.
What exactly happened?
I was with my host in Armenia hitchhiking to nature, to go for a little trip and doing some hikes. It was a normal trip. We had many nice people helping us and hitchhiking itself was also really simple. Both of us were not strong in Russian, which would have been in general helpful.
We were not super far away from his place, when the guy, who is the main person of this story, was stopping for us. He let us in and drove in the direction where we were wanting to go, which was amazing. Generally speaking, there was nothing weird about this person, he just seemed normal. Probably also, because we were not his target. His car was decent and also really clean.
After a short amount of time, which was less than a minute. the driver was starting to show us a video, where he and friends of his were murdering a azerbaijani soldier in the forest, by cutting his throat through. The young soldier was slowly bleeding to death. After that he was showing us pictures of his group.
How did it feel?
It was a weird situation being in his car after seeing the video. We both didn’t know how to react and how to feel. It would have been not a smart idea to leave the car, because we didn’t know how dangerous that could have been. When thinking of it in general, probably the worst thing to do in moments like this is to freak out.
It is always important to stay calm, no matter how bad the situation in general is. By staying calm, you are signaling to him that everything is fine and that he doesn’t need to worry about everything. He gets the feeling that we are agreeing with him and being on his side, which was of course not the case. Discussing or disagreeing would be the most contra productive thing to do.
You are just not feeling safe in the situation, but just don’t show it, that is important, then everything is going to be fine. He was not threatening us with anything, just wanting to show what kind of “great” group he was in.
What for a group was he in?
I honestly don’t remember the name of the group. After being back at the home from the host I was researching the name of the group. While reading about them, I found out, that they were a “inactive” international recognized terrorist organisation. Obviously they were not fully inactive.
The group was doing murder attacks in Europe and even in Germany against citizen from Turkey and Azerbaijan.
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What is important to know?
Of course it is terrible what groups exist in Armenia, still that doesn’t make the other sides innocent. Azerbaijan and Turkey also have groups which target citizens from Armenia. No side is better than the other.
You can hear the hate from both sides and it is just terrible to see. It is nothing that should be happening in my opinion. Still this is not the only part of the world where things like this are happening and it needs to stop!
Hate doesn’t help, it just makes everything worse!
Summary
It was a situation which sounded like a dangerous one, but it didn’t need to be. It was also a situation, which opened my eyes a little bit, this is because you were not able to see it. The driver was a really nice and friendly person, who was smiling and happy to help us. He didn’t seem like a terrorist, but just because someone is seeming to be innocent and a nice guy, that don’t need to mean, that he or she is.
It is easy to hide everything, if you want to. If you would have seen this guy on the street, you would never have thought of anything bad, he seemed to be just normal.
I would love to hear your experiences about this place, or questions. Share it with me in the comments.
Some of my travel gears + supporting me
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Not as cheap but worth it, when using, it can filter up to 4000L
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Any other fast drying towels are fine, they are small, cheap and doing the job.
