Airport to airport

Greetings, reader. I write now from Vienna International Airport's business class lounge. Yes, I get to fly business because I am traveling on official orders with a transit time of more than 14 hours. This is actually only my second time in a business class lounge. My first was in the Alaska Airlines lounge in Seattle, which was actually much nicer than this one. They had comfy couches. Here, the decor is typically European (at least in my limited experience, which mostly involves airport hotels). The colors and furniture appear straight out of the kids' section of the IKEA catalog. Though the egg chair I am sitting in is actually quite comfortable, I just had a free croissant and free cup of tea, and I don't have to sit on the floor in Terminal A, so I really have no business being snarky.

My Washington-bound flight will depart in about three hours and 15 minutes. My computer battery will die about an hour before that, just in time for me to board.

And ... I've left Armenia. Perhaps for good, or perhaps Jeremy and I will go back sometime to show our children where we met. Either way, it won't be the same. New buildings are going up all over town, the road to the Renco apartments is PAVED (see pvs post), and an ice-cream bar costs 43 cents, up from about 27 cents two years ago. The roads are more crowded, the drivers more aggressive, the SUVs bigger, and the rest of the population no better off than they were in 2005. The times, they are a-changin' ... but maybe not that much. And I'll miss Yerevan.