I could love a country that would elect a librarian as president.
I meant to add the name and a link.
It's more than just a national library.
The Matenadaran (Armenian: Մատենադարան), officially the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts,[a] is a museum, repository of manuscripts, and a research institute in Yerevan, Armenia
. The collection was complied and used to be maintained by the Armenian church and dates to the 5th C.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MatenadaranI thought Matenadaran was its name, but it's actually a fancy word for a library repository, and used for a handful of other institutes around the world.
It's an imposing building up on a hill and one of the main streets of Yerevan, Mesrop Mashtots Avenue ends right at the museum. So from the museum you have a commanding view of the city.
It's a nice tribute to Mashtots who created the Armenian alphabet.
And the research and preservation is meant to keep Armenian language and culture alive, so it's an important institution in the country, and obviously politically connected.
What was funny is that we were on a free guided tour in English. Just our little group. The tour was just finishing around 4:30, giving us another half hour to poke around more on our own. So just before it ended I remarked that it was nice they had extended hours to a full day open on Fridays, just making conversation. I thought it might get her to talk about her job or the work or whatever.
And the guide said it was designed to get more tourists, but today the president was coming for a reception to dedicate a newly renovated room/exhibit. We asked when and she said it was scheduled for 5:PM but would probably start around 5:30. I asked if she'd met the president before, and she said that she used to work with the president's wife who used to be a researcher there.
And sure enough while we looked around -- the old maps and illustrated manuscripts were pretty impressive -- they started setting up and guests started arriving, and they put out at table with champagne and some parfait-like desert. And I kept an eye out for who I could get to know so as to get in to the reception, which was going to be held in the next room.
I always like to ask questions, even inane ones, just to get folks talking. If it wasn't for my question and that last minute exchange at the end of the tour, we would have had no idea the President of Armenia was on the way.
Btw, Armenia last year just overthrew its corrupt old leadership. the opposition leader, now president, led huge protests in the main square. The police beat people up. Then arrested the opp leader. Who kept demanding the president resign. Protests continued. They let the opp leader out, he met with the prez, told him he was corrupt and should resign. And amazingly a week later he left. So when we were there, people were ready/waiting for a change. Some were dissatisfied, others hopeful. A few said the police stopped taking bribes, as the new gov't cracked down on that ish. What was amusing is every photo I saw of the opp leader during the protests, jail, and meeting with the old president, the opp leader was wearing a camouflage t-shirt. I assume it meant to show he was one of the people. The Armenians have a lot of tough looking non-military guys with regulation short hair wearing camouflage clothing. We had one large taxi driver that looked like that, with a rather cracked windshield, and he turned out to be a sweetheart, pointing out famous sites in Yerevan in his limited English.
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