Outside the city looks like nothing has been repaired or painted since the death of Stalin

Outside, the city looks like nothing has been repaired or painted since the death of Stalin. Tomorrow we will drive round half of Armenia and it will cost me only $55.Later I am watching TV in my room It's Euronews, in English Suddenly the channels start to change by themselves Polish TV, then Romanian TV, then BBC World Then a sexy woman taking her bra off Then TV Espana Then back to the sexy woman Finally I get it. But more endearingly honest people you could not hope to meet. What might a tourist want, they ask me? What does a tourist do? What in fact is a tourist? I tell them everything is lovely They look pleased Perhaps too pleased. Either that or they combine their tourism business with trade in agricultural machine spare parts and fishing rods.

I nominate floor attendant in the Hotel Dvin as the saddest job in the world. Was there ever a time when these bedside lights, sofas and curtains seemed new? When the sculptured totem poles, tile murals, wooden ceiling panels, dark maroon table cloths and plastic flowers in the dining room looked funky? When the two Russians drinking vodka for breakfast looked out of place? Come to think of it, did the designers of the great square fountains and pools (now defunct and rubble filled) in the city centre ever feel good about themselves or their work?In the morning I drop by the office of my tour firm to meet Shakih and her boss; they seem to be squatting at a desk in someone else's office. It is attended by a somnambulant Russian staff who cannot grasp why there are no guests any more. The pillow on my bed is so heavy and bulky I can hardly lift it The toilet has a plastic seat that falls off when touched.

The television breaks into a loud humming noise just as I am getting to sleep. Does this mean, I wonder, that Soviet civilisation will never disappear?The vast and gloomy Hotel Dvin is a perfect example of an unreconstructed Soviet hotel. Some local storm in a tea cup, I suppose.Around my hotel I notice the ruins of mud huts with feral cats picking over them; it is as though nobody has bothered to remove the wreckage of previous civilisations before building the new ones. By most people's standards, Yerevan is a dump, though I find this an attraction The air is yellow Probably these are what toxic chemicals smell like. The town rises and falls - mostly falls - across brown hills and valleys. Pretentious police Ladas career about with loud-hailers and flashing lights. "Welcome to our improving country," she declares in a proud voice. I'm back in the former USSR all right.

My Swiss Air flight from Zurich is nearly empty; when I arrive it is 4am local time and Soviet-looking military men are standing on the tarmac. I'm met by a representative of a local tour firm: a dark, glamorous woman called Shakih with big hair and nasal voice. One of those admirable Soviet people who has learnt English without ever having met a native English speaker. What bad luck! To have been born between two such big and unfriendly powers and in a chronic earthquake zone to boot! I'm talking about the peoples of Mount Ararat. All but exterminated by Turks and suppressed by Russians, the Armenians surprise me today by having a country at all. I fly to Yerevan, the Armenian capital, to find out what they are doing with that country. When Blanche escapes the convent, to discover that her father has been murdered, the melody stretches upwards with cat-like sensuality. But perhaps it is this unlikely meshing of the bourgeois, the erotic and a deep religious conviction that gives the music its power.