I entered the hotel dragging my luggage and made my way to the reception desk.
Behind the counter, a plump woman rose, greeted me with a false smile on her round face, and regarded me from head to toe.
“Hello,” she said. “Your name, please?”
My eyebrows knitted, I looked at her askew. The slight smile on her face faded instantly. She wasn’t the reason for my displeasure. I had flown into Munich International Airport, sat on a train for half an hour, taken a bus after I had missed my station, and still had to drag my luggage for over a kilometer in the pouring rain. That’s what had me pissed off.
“Bro, for God’s sake, how did you manage to walk through Munich in the rain for a kilometer,” one of my friends would say every time we meet. He laughed and I would too. It seems funny now, remembering, but at that moment it wasn’t, not at all.
Back in the lobby, I sucked in a deep breath.
“Alen Sargsyan,” I told her.
I glanced at my white trousers spotted with dirty raindrops and I thought, why the hell did I wear white trousers for traveling?
While she was consulting her list, my eyes traveled over the counter and met a slim German girl sitting in the corner. Catching my glance, she smiled. For a moment I forgot my anger, my welling insides calmed and I smiled back.
“Here you are.” The plump receptionist brought my attention to her. “And here’s your key. It’s on the second floor. Take the stairs on the left.”
I pocketed the key and climbed to the second floor. I remember clearly, my room was number eighteen. A long balcony was wrapped around the rooms of the second floor which overlooked the hall downstairs. Mine was on the opposite wing of the stairwell just in front of the footbridge connecting two balconies.
Changing my clothes, I hurried downstairs. According to the slim German girl, the wireless internet was available only on the left side of the first floor where the resting area was situated. There I met a young Ukrainian man – Dmitri – sitting on a sofa, the notebook on his legs, video-chatting with his parents. I called home, too, told them I’d arrived safely.
Here’s an interesting fact: at that very moment The Soviet Union had been broken up for twenty-two years. I’d just begun to go to school when the union collapsed. Those post-Soviet years were the worst of my life. Only now do I understand the difficulties that my parents had to go through, there were economic problems and the country was at war for three years. I can’t consider myself a Soviet citizen but something in those people continues to live, something invisible that drags them closer to each other when they meet in a foreign land.
Dmitri and I got on pretty well. I’d brought a bottle of Armenian cognac which had been famous in the Soviet Union and still was today in the broken countries the union had become. Dmitri’s eyes shone as I invited him to my room to have a drink of the cognac.
Before going upstairs with my new friend, we entered the canteen. I filled my plate with a few foods from the smorgasbord and scanned the area for an empty spot. Dmitri waved to me from a distance to join him.
I settled into the chair next to him. Across the table was sat a young man with curly black hair.
“Alen,” Dmitri said, “this is Hasan.”
We looked at each other in muted greeting.
“Where are you from?” Hasan asked.
I was pretty sure he wouldn’t like my answer. Nevertheless, I told him I was an Armenian and, as I’d guessed, he was an Azerbaijani. You might wonder why he wouldn’t like my answer, so I’ll explain. Our countries had been fighting each other for three years, many people had died but, and in the grand scheme of things, peace had not been achieved. All for a piece of land known as Artsakh, a historical land belonging to Armenia which very respectful comrade Stalin had gifted to Azerbaijan in the years of the Soviet Union. But the Union no longer existed, the Armenian people of Artsakh had refused to stay in the territory of Azerbaijan in response to a new genocide against them, and the war had begun.
“I’m from Armenia,” I told Hasan.
He looked at me awkwardly. “Ah.” The word hung in the air grasping for more.
We were in a neutral zone, at a conference about genocides and the personal problems of nations weren’t relevant here. There were youth from thirty countries all over the world. The meeting preached peace and friendship.
After I wolfed down the food on my plate (I was starving), I invited Hasan to our evening party in my room, but he wasn’t one to drink alcohol and accordingly declined. It was his choice, of course, but Dmitri and I liked to drink a glass of whisky or a bottle of beer in my room every evening (we drank the cognac on the very first day).
Dmitri and I became closer, though this is not his story. I’ll talk about him next time, maybe.
Regardless of the hostility between our countries, Hasan and I hung out together a lot; we had breakfasts at the same table pretending neither of us was concerned with the conflict in Artsakh. He was younger than me by five years, so I took the responsibility of being pleasant with him.
During the fourteen days in Munich, only once I asked him about our conflict in Nagorno Karabakh (the land of Artsakh). I remember it well; it was the day before our departure.
“Oh, bro,” he sighed. “Whatever they decide, whoever conquers that land, I hope it won’t be done by war.”
I hoped so. I believed he’d be right; I did not want warfare but it was a false hope.
On our third day, when the sun was about to leave the sky, the organizers took us to an evening party in a club to relax after our discussions. We’d been discussing the Holocaust all day long, argued about Hitler, debated other genocides like the one perpetrated by Ottoman Turkey against the Armenian people at the opening of the twentieth century. But, to be honest, those conversations were meant for something else.
We covered some distance on foot that day. My legs throbbed when we reached the club. Couldn’t they just order a bus or something? They could’ve given us the address and we could have taken cabs. Anyway, it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. I got into some good conversations with girls. It was fun after all.
We had some beer in the club. Predictably, Hasan didn’t drink. A few bottles of booze and Dmitri and I were on the dance floor.
There was an Italian girl, a stunning beauty with black hair and eyes so radiant that I had never seen the like before. I’ve been wondering what was kept behind that look of hers, what she was thinking while looking at me. Her eyes were bestowed with unearthly power, just looking into her eyes, my consciousness was involuntarily dragged into the abyss of her black pupils.
I liked talking to her, I liked her Italian accent.
“You dance?” she cried in my ear. The music was loud, I’d only heard her because I’d bent my head forward to her mouth.
“Yeah. But I doubt I’m a good dancer like you.”
She was really a good dancer, the best on the dance floor, that much was obvious.
“Fine. Come here. Let’s dance together.”
“Okay, I’ll try. But when you see how bad I am, you have to teach me how to dance properly. Deal?” I winked at her.
She gave a sly smiled in return.
“I know where you’re going with this. Don’t rush things or else you’ll lose everything.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me to her.
“Yeah, right. Everything at the right time,” I said into her ear. She laughed and punched me lightly on my chest.
We were dancing forgetfully, me trying to keep up with her, but she was too good. She worked hard to keep me in rhythm shouting advice from time to time. An hour passed by in a minute and I felt weakness in my legs.
I was holding her in my embrace, her forehead pressed against my chest. We’d slowed down and were circling calmly. The heat, the loud music, the light effects had sucked a lot of energy from me. The club reeked of sweat and booze.
“Hey. Let’s get some fresh air,” I said. I took her hand without waiting for her to reply and led her out of the club.
As we exited, we simultaneously inhaled.
“Good idea.” She shook her collar. “I’m soaked.”
Our eyes met and we laughed. An interesting observation, why do people laugh in such situations? It would seem silly if you could look from outside of yourself. I believe we try to buy seconds to gather our thoughts or maybe by smiling we try to show sympathy toward each other.
A park was situated a few steps ahead of the club entrance. The pathway in front of us was lined with scarce streetlamps and faded into the black of the park’s heart. We walked onward into the semidarkness.
“Where did you learn to dance?” I asked.
“Self-taught,” she answered. “I like dancing and singing. I even have a few songs recorded.”
“You’ll send them to me, won’t you?” I smiled. We were pacing the pathway, the club music dying away behind us. “I promise to come back with comments, I want to see if you sing as well as you dance. You know, people always think they can sing like Adele, but I know that you can, so let me appreciate your talent.”
“You’re kidding, right?” She punched at my shoulder. “You’d better have some good compliments while having this chance to walk with a girl in a dark park. Never thought the Armenian guys get the ladies like this.”
“I’m not sure I agree with you. I assure you, Italians and Armenians are too alike. You’ll see soon.”
“Some say Italians are Armenians wearing expensive suits.” She laughed at her words. “Our guys aren’t as tough as you are.”
“Well, I’m not tough.”
“Yes, you are.”
We came to a halt at a bench illuminated by the dim light of a streetlamp. We sat down.
“You’re very beautiful,” I said before I could stop the words.
She blushed.
“What about the Armenian girls?” she asked.
I didn’t answer right away. I didn’t answer at all. I just stared into her eyes, admiring her beautiful face, enjoying the moment charged by the energy emanating from her glance. This was one of the rare moments when words are useless, powerless, irrelevant. Even if I tried, I wouldn’t find anything to tell her. The silence completely fit the moment.
She ran her tongue over her lips colored with red lipstick.
I don’t know how it occurred, not that it was relevant. My inner voice had warned me about what would come next, that which I longed for. In a second, I was kissing her passionately and she was answering me the same way.
The kiss pulled out every thought from my head. I inhaled deeply, silently, to immerse myself in her smell. Time seemed to elongate, nature grew silent, the world had started to darken, squeezing itself smaller and smaller until there was the Italian girl, me, the bench, and the streetlight.
It was one of my favorite memories, the one I relived over and over afterwards.
We didn’t return to the club. The barren streets of Munich were calmly asleep. We walked, talked, laughed, stopped, and kissed all the way back to the hotel. As it turned out, we had an instant attraction to each other from the first moment we met in the hotel, on the second-floor-balcony; I’d been watching the hall below and she’d been climbing the stairs.
Without giving too much attention to where we were walking, I realized I had no memory of this place. We were lost and couldn’t find the way to the hotel. Cars did not pass by. We had to wait, watch the map on my phone screen. A few minutes later a BMW sedan approached from down the street. I raised my hand.
The driver was a Greek man of my age.
“I’m not from here,” he told me after I told him the name of our hotel. “I’ve bought this car and am heading back to Greece, but I happen to know your hotel. Get in.”
Although the hotel was not on his way, he didn’t mind taking us there.
I woke with a bad headache the next morning. Too much to drink the previous evening. At three o’clock in the morning, I had left my new girlfriend in the bed and left the room. The rooms didn’t have private toilets.
There was another Ukrainian guy in the meeting – Bogdan. He was sitting on the floor of the balcony alone, preoccupied with his own thoughts. He beckoned me with his hand.
“Alen. Come here, bro.”
I approached and took a seat next to him. He had a bottle of tequila, the reason my head was throbbing come morning.
Our conversation lasted for two hours. Bogdan surprised me. He was a well-educated young man and a patriot at the same time. His point of view about the world, the Jews’ and Armenians’ genocides, was different. Ten months after our intriguing conversation, the war in Ukraine began. We’d talk on the phone in a year using Whatsapp or Viber and talk about the military operations in Donbass. He would never be discouraged; on the contrary, he’d always tell me they’d win this war.
He asked me something that night.
“Alen, why all Armenians are so hot-blooded?”
I couldn’t answer right away.
“I’ve got two brothers-in-law,” he went on. “They’re Armenians. They are good men and I respect them. But, you know, they usually don’t like to solve problems in a calm manner.”
“I get what you mean.” I skulled the drink. “That’s not only Armenians but all people from the area–Caucuses. Like Georgians. Maybe that’s what keeps us alive in this world, Bogdan. The hot blood destroyed our kingdom and we had to live under other countries for a long time. I’m not complaining. We have what we have. You see only a few fragments, particular situations. Globally our people like peace, I guess because we’re an old nation. Therefore, we don’t wake up until the enemy is right in front of our doors.”
I thought I had deduced the cause.

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