A year of working from Yerevan

It's been a bit more than a year since I moved to Yerevan. I promised a couple of friends I'd write down what working remotely from here is actually like, so here it is, in no particular order.

Internet

Better than I expected. Fiber is common in the center; I pay about 8,000 dram a month for a symmetric connection that's been down twice in a year, both times for under an hour. Mobile data is cheap and fast enough to work from a phone hotspot in a pinch.

Places to work

The city is full of cafes where nobody minds a laptop for a few hours as long as you keep ordering. My rule is one drink per ninety minutes. Coworking spaces exist and are fine, but I mostly work from home and go out for the afternoon.

Things I didn't expect

• How walkable the center is. I haven't needed a car once.
• The pink tufa stone everywhere — the tufa grid sketch is a small homage.
• Ararat on clear mornings. You stop noticing it after a while and then one day it's just there, huge, and you stop on the street like a tourist.
• Summers are hot. Really hot. August is a good month to be somewhere else.

Language

My Armenian is still at the "thank you, the bill please, how much" level. Russian and English cover almost everything. People are patient with the rest.

I'm staying.