The Intellectual Renaissance Foundation, within the framework of the "Saroyan House" project, started the construction workս of the well-known novelist, American-Armenian playwright William Saroyan's house-museum in Fresno, the Intellectual Renaissance Foundation told Panorama.am.
To remind, the foundation acquired the writer's house in 2015, and for about a year the foundation was engaged in studying the life and work of W. Saroyan, was searching and collecting the materials about him, as well as working together with the "Storaket" architectural studio was busy to develop a house-museum concept. And now, it is high time to start the construction work.
The construction work starts with exterior appearance reconstruction, and after getting the corresponding agreements with Fresno City Municipality, interior work also will start. The house-museum is scheduled to open on 31 August 2018, on the 110th anniversary of the writer.
On the occasion of the French Republic’s National Day, President Serzh Sargsyan visited today the Embassy of France in Armenia, the press service of the President’s Office told Panorama.am.
The President offered his congratulations and best wishes to Ambassador Jean-François Charpenter, the embassy staff and the friendly people of France.
Taking the opportunity to reaffirm that France is seen as a friendly country for the Armenian people, as well as a reliable and good partner for Armenia, the President assured that our country will continue to strengthen bilateral relations and deepen the friendship between the Armenian and French peoples. President Sargsyan asked Ambassador Charpenter to convey his warm greetings to President Emmanuel Macron of France.
As they looked at ways of expanding and deepening bilateral relations in different fields of activity, the President of Armenia and the French Ambassador highlighted the need for close cooperation ahead of the Francophonie Summit to be held in Armenia. Ambassador Jean-François Charpentier thanked President Sargsyan for the visit to the Embassy, as well as for his congratulatory remarks and good wishes.
On the occasion of the National Day of France, President Serzh Sargsyan sent a congratulatory message to President of the French Republic Emmanuel Macron.
“The centuries-old friendship between Armenia and France and the privileged relationship between our two countries, including the high-level political dialogue and the wealth of mutual trust provide a solid groundwork for the furtherance of the Armenian-French cooperation. I am confident that through joint effort we will be able to build on the ties in both bilateral and multilateral formats to the benefit of our two peoples.
Armenia highly values the efforts made by France jointly with Russia and the United States to achieve a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group for the sake of peace and stability in our region.
I highly appreciate France’s support for rapprochement between Armenia and the European family, as well as the close ties of cooperation maintained in the international arena, including our interaction in the framework of La Francophonie.
Reiterating my congratulations, I wish every success and all the best to you, as well as progress and prosperity to the friendly people of France,” President Sargsyan said in his congratulatory message addressed to the President of the French Republic.
The Azerbaijani authorities are intentionally hampering the Abkhazian railway construction plan in an attempt to keep Armenia in isolation, says Stanislav Tarasov, a Russian expert specializing in Middle East and Caucasus Affairs.
According to him, Russia and Georgia are currently in serious talks over accelerating the process, with the Russian foreign minister who recently visited Abkhazia having already given his approval to the project.
“I think the opening of the Azbkhazian railway will re-establish the communication between Russia and Georgia in the nearest future. Baku is hampering the process through Georgia, and so is Turkey in a way, with the official Ankara’s attention being currently focused on the Middle East,” he told Tert.am.
The expert said he thinks the Azerbaijani authorities have serious fears that the plan, if realized, will open up new opportunities to Armenia, expanding its communication network. “It offers us a new opportunity to deepen the ties with Russia. As a member of the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization, Armenia has numerous trade, military and other agreements implying an active cooperation with Russia,” he noted.
As for the official Ankara’s stance, Tarasov said he feels that the Turkish authorities are now preoccupied with absolutely different problems.
“Turkey is playing football on its own court, and playing football on one’s own court implies defeat at times or evening the scores at others and victory in very rare cases. Ankara can exercise influence on Baku to make it adopt a more consistent position on the issue. But Turkey currently doesn’t have the time,” Tarasov added.
In his words, the railway will have real chances to open only after establishing relative peace in the region.
“Armenia will sooner or later join NATO,” says Davit Shahnazaryan, Senior Analyst at Regional Studies Center. He adds that the regional processes lead to membership, “In current geopolitical instable situation, the question of withdrawing from the CSTO or the Eurasian Union is out of question. But NATO is expanding, moreover NATO isn’t expanding itself, but the neighboring countries of NATO lead a policy so that NATO expands.”
The political expert notes that Turkey is already a member of NATO, and Georgia is directly moving towards NATO. Armenia simply has no alternative, “I don’t think that the CIS has chances to expand, vice versa, it seems that we have no partners in the CIS, except legally established partner- Russia. CIS is a club of countries having relations with Russia.”
Mr Shahnazryan cannot predict when Armenia will join NATO. Boris Navasardyan, Head of Yerevan Press Club, has difficulty even in predicting whether Armenia’s membership is possible or not, “I am not Vanga, anyway.”
The current developments in the region, according to Mr Navasardyan, make the predictions on Armenia’s possible membership even more difficult. But in all cases Armenia is attractive for NATO at least as a threat, “For NATO any region, which has a border or is close to NATO member states, is a potential threat or a country, nation, territory having a solution to potential security issue, and Armenia is not an exception, taking into account that there is fire very close to us and at any moment Armenia’s role may be important.”
Armenia can use NATO as a platform for discussing concerning issues, says William Lahue, NATO representative in the South Caucasus, “Every time, when Armenia goes to NATO, it speaks of Karabakh, Azerbaijan and Turkey and tries to convince member states of the alliance of Armenia’s viewpoints. Consequently it is an important platform for Armenia.”
By the way, touching upon the participation of servicemen from NATO member state Turkey in April War in support of Azerbaijan, representative of NATO Magnus Eyjolfsson noted that everything which NATO 29 member states do within the frames of independent politics, isn’t business of NATO.
UAE Ambassador to Armenia gives lecture at Diplomatic School in Yerevan
YEREVAN, 11th June, 2017 (WAM) — The UAE foreign policy priorities and bilateral relations with Armenia were the focus of a lecture presented by the UAE Ambassador to Armenia, Dr. Jassim Mohammed Al Qasimi, to students of the Diplomatic School of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia in Yerevan.
During the lecture, the Ambassador also reviewed with the students the UAE's developments in all fields, discussed international issues in various fields, and answered students' questions related to regional issues, bilateral relations, Islam, extremism and other topics.
The director of the institute and students expressed their appreciation to the Ambassador, who provided a full explanation of all international issues.
From a vertiginous 1,476 feet, the almond-coloured cityscape of Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, looks bewitching. A 572-step stairway has transported me to the Mountain Terrace of Cascades, a contemporary art museum and sculpture garden, from where I am soaking in a panorama of terracotta-roofed houses, statuesque buildings and green pastures stretching out to snow-swathed mountains. Above it all soars Mount Ararat where Noah’s Ark is believed to have lande ..
Bucolic locations, monasteries set in tumbling landscapes, gurgling streams, lapis lazuli lakes — Armenia is picture-postcard turf. One of the cradles of civilisation, the pint-sized country was also the first in the world to officially adopt Christianity as the state religion in AD 301. With doughty neighbours (Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Iran) hemming it in, the nation is also at a geopolitical and cultural crossroads.
The History Museum at Republic Square in Yerevan
Much of that eclectic heritage is on view at the city’s numerous historic sights. At Matenadran, the museum of ancient manuscripts in Yerevan, we inspect fascinating memorabilia, including scroll upon scroll of medieval parchments and complex documents expounding on everything from geometry and cosmology to theology and poetry.
As the world wakes up to the charms of this Caucasian nation of 3 million people, tourism is galloping — at about 25% per year. Effervescent eateries, cafes and malls are mushrooming and stylish hotels are replacing vapid, Soviet inn-type accommodations.
Yerevan — located 12 km from Turkey — is where Armenia’s heart beats. It has street art-splashed alleys and leafy boulevards sprouting olive, cherry and mulberry trees. Cafés and wine bars remain open until early morning as punters hold chinwag over coffee and gelatos. Locals and tourists stroll along promenades or congregate around musical fountains prancing to classical tunes.
Buildings hewn from pinktuff (an igneous rock, formed from the debris ejected by a volcano) give Yerevan a pink glow as well as its moniker, the Pink City. The majestic Republic Square is studded with buildings. I take it all in one evening from a cafe on Abovyan Street while nursing my soorj ( in pic below ), the Armenian coffee prepared in a long-handled, bronze jezve coffee pot that derives its name from the sound of slurping made by a contented coffee drinker ..
Volatile Past Despite its cosmopolitan facelift, Armenia’s turbulent past still lingers. Roiled by bloody invasions by Romans, Persians, Ottomans and the Soviets, the scars of vicious ethnoterritorial conflicts and economic despair remain.
A visit to the Genocide Monument in Yerevan is a stark reminder of a mass extermination — the Armenian Genocide that killed 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians between 1915 and 1923.
Set on a hilltop, the spot also houses an underground gallery recreating the horror. Outside, a Spartan memorial stands over an eternal flame. There’s also a garden of trees planted by representatives of various nations that recognise the genocide, including the UK, US, France and Russia.
Not all of Armenia's troubles are in the past.
The country is still bedevilled by the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan that has left it with closed borders. Human rights issues and wrenching poverty add to its woes.
"Today, over two-thirds of Armenians live outside the country and have settled as diaspora communities," says our guide Sira. The country's most famous surname must be Kardashian – the socialite Kim Kardashian's family escaped from Armenia to America in 1913 but they still have strong ties to the country. In 2015, when the Kardashians went on an eight-day tour of Armenia, it created quite a kerfuffle in the tiny nation.
Magic Mountain The image of Mount Ararat is a leitmotif in Armenia. Though the mountain was ceded to nearby Turkey in 1923, it continues to be the country's cultural signature, adorning everything from chocolates to wine bottles to apparel as well as Yerevan's coat of arms.
The mount isn't the country's only enchantment though. As I travel through dramatic, photogenic gorges and canyons which carve their way across the Caucasus Mountains, monasteries hewn out of the tuff rock, pagan temples, glutinous lakes and churches nestling in desolate locations add to the visual delight. From the Khor Virap Monastery, on Turkey's border, I take in the view stretching from vineyards to Ararat's 5,137-m-high summit.
The monastery – lying 30 km south of Yerevan – is a popular, out-of-town retreat. It was in a snake-filled pit below this monastery, the story goes, that St. Gregory the Illuminator, who brought Christianity to the region, spent 12 years.
The Tatev monastery, a ninth century shrine located on a large basalt plateau, stands on the precipice of a deep gorge of the Vorotan River.
A UNESCO World Heritage site, it played a pivotal role in the region's spiritual, political, cultural and educational history. The trip to the monastery isn't for the faint-hearted though.
We huddle into the world's longest reversible cable car line, a 5.7-kilometre engineering feat that spans a spectacular gorge. The car line runs from Halidzor village, connecting Yerevan to the village of Tatev, within walking distance of the monastery.
As we glide over an eye-popping landscape – misty mountains, bridges and glittering rivers – the guide explains that the $18 million cable car was mostly funded by private donations.
"It is part of a $50 million public-private project to develop tourism at Tatev and in the surrounding region, one of the 15 provinces of the ancient kingdom of Armenia," she adds.
From Tatev, we drive through a mountain bowl at an altitude of about 2 kilometres above sea level to Sevan. The Alpine Lake is one of the largest in the Caucasus region and located 1,897 metres above sea level. Its pristine beauty and powdery beaches are a big lure for tourists, especially the Russian oligarchs who land here discreetly in private jets. Also known as the Armenian Riviera, the lake's chameleon-like transformation – from Azure to mystic dark blue in the span of a few hours – is mesmerizing.
From the seaside promenade, merely gazing at the waters and beyond is a meditative experience.
Cradle of Wine
You know you are in wine country the moment you land at the Yerevan airport where a 20-feet-tall inflatable wine bottle greets you outside the terminal ( in pic ). Armenia, along with Georgia, Azerbaijan, northern Iran and eastern Turkey constitute what is called the Cradle of Wine in the Caucasus Mountains. Wine-making supposedly originated here in biblical times.)
The meticulous Armenians have kept records of viticulture since Noah's time when the biblical patriarch planted the first vineyard at the foothills of Mount Ararat. Some of the highest wine-growing regions in the northern hemisphere, diverse microclimate and rich, volcanic soils lend distinct flavours to an array of indigenous grape varietals.
Armenia is also known for brandy production.
Driving around the country, the advertisements for Ararat brandy are everywhere. I take a tour of its factory located in an imposing brick building on a hill overlooking Yerevan.
Here, I learn all about the production of the country's favourite tipple. Though fruit brandies from apricot, black plums, apples and other fruits, grown in orchards, are quite popular, seasoned Armenian vintners stick to grapes, the guide explains, as we amble down Charles Aznavour Alley stocked with "President's Barrels" dedicated to Presidents of various countries who had visited the factory, and which were being aged until a President asked for them.
The guide goes on to narrate an apocryphal story about Armenian brandy: during the Yalta Conference in February 1945, after dinner, the host and Russian leader Josef Stalin asked British Prime Minister Winston Churchill if he wished to have a drink. "I'd like a brandy with my cigar," boomed Churchill.
Stalin then offered his guest Ararat Dvin, the best Armenian brandy. So enamoured was Churchill of the honey-hued liquor that Stalin instructed that Churchill is presented with a case of Ararat every month. Thereafter, Armenians say, Churchill swore by the three Cs that made his life worth living – cognac (Armenian), cigar (Cuban) and coffee!
YEREVAN, June 8. /ARKA/. Starting from , nominal coupon bonds issued by “UNIBANK” OJSC will be listed on NASDAQ OMX Armenia and included in the bonds' secondary Bbond list, NASDAQ OMX Armenia stock exchange said today in a press release.
It said this issue of the company’s bonds comprises 25,000 coupon bonds with nominal value of AMD 10,000, coupon rate of 13.5% and maturity period of 24 months.
The bonds (ISIN – AMUNIBB22ER6) will be traded under UNIBB2 ticker symbol and will be allowed to manual and REPO trading as well.
The list of securities listed and admitted to trading on NASDAQ OMX Armenia, is available on “Financial Instruments” page of NASDAQ OMX Armenia official web-site (www.nasdaqomx.am).
Unibank" OJSC was founded in October 2001, as a closed joint stock company. In 2015 "Unibank" CJSC was reorganized in "Unibank" Open Joint Stock Company. One of the bank's main objectives is the financing of small and medium enterprises. Currently UNIBANK has 45 branches together in Armenia and in Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as a representative office in Moscow.
Unibank became a member of NASDAQ OMX Armenia on September 29, 2008. The Bank is also a Regulated Market Settlement system member and Depository System Account Operator.
NASDAQ OMX Armenia is the only stock exchange currently operating in Armenia. On January 26, 2009, “Armenian Stock Exchange” ojsc was officially renamed as “NASDAQ OMX Armenia” ojsc. On June 5, 2009, “NASDAQ OMX Armenia” ojsc became the owner of 100% of the shares of the “Central Depository of Armenia” ojsc. NASDAQ OMX Armenia and Central Depository of Armenia are among the main securities market infrastructure institutions in Armenia. The exchange offers to the market professionals a fully automated electronic trading platform. -0-
Jean-Christophe OgierfranceinfoLaetitia de GermonRadio France
Mis à jour le 27/05/2017 | 17:49 publié le 27/05/2017 | 17:49
DE LYON A AMIENS (GUILLAUME LONG, GALLIMARD BD / BRÜNO)
Dans la BD, ils forment un duo sympathique. Elle, sérieuse, compétente, est la pro du piano, qui maîtrise les cuissons et les assaisonnements. Lui, maladroit, vite fatigué, toujours en retard, est l’innocent apprenti à qui il faut tout expliquer avec insistance.
Dans la vie… Eh bien, dans la vie, c’est presque pareil. Il n’est qu’à entrer en cuisine à Lyon, où ils résident tous deux, pour voir Sonia Ezgulian, ex-journaliste gastronomique à Paris-Match qui avait fini par ouvrir son propre restaurant, et le dessinateur Guillaume Long, jouer en direct leur partition comme s’ils venaient de sortir des pages du quatrième volume d’A boire et à manger, le recueil de portraits et de recettes qui nous emportent en Arménie, en Italie, au Japon pour mieux nous ramener sur les bords du Rhône et de la Saône.
Avant tout, Guillaume, il faut que je te parle de gens très importants. Car derrière ces recettes, il y a un philosophie de la vie.
Sonia Ezgulian
La chef italienne Donna Muratore, les arrières grands-mères arméniennes Louïcia et Ossana, l’idole américaine Bill Buford ou encore le complice Damien Gateau nous invitent à déjeuner sur l’herbe ou à passer à table.
Miracle, même les lecteurs qui n’y connaissent rien et qui ne trouveraient pas le courage de se lancer -on a le droit- peuvent déguster avec plaisir ses pages de BD pleines d’anchois, de gnocchis et d’aubergines à l’ail.
A boire et à manger avec Sonia Ezgulian, Guillaume Long, chez Gallimard BD.
Direction Amiens pour les 22e Rendez-vous de la Bande dessinée le week-end prochain. Quelque 80 auteurs en dédicace, une rétrospective du travail du dessinateur Brüno, la venue de celui de Walking Dead, Charlie Adlard… Amiens, les 2, 3 et 4 juin.
INFO MANGA (FRANCEINFO)
Tous les 15 jours, Jean-Christophe Ogier accueille ici la chronique "Info manga" de Laetitia de Germon. Pour vous guider parmi les nombreuses parutions, Laetitia vous livre sa sélection et ses coups de cœur.
A Marseille, en 1815, le jour de son mariage, Edmond Dantès, capitaine de vaisseau promis à un bel avenir, est emprisonné injustement au Château d'If, une prison pour criminel politiques. Pendant cette longue incarcération, il va découvrir qu'il a été victime d'une trahison. C'est ainsi que débute sa vengeance qui va durer le reste de ses années de prison et celles qu'il lui reste à vivre en liberté.
Bien que ce soit une adaptation du roman d'Alexandre Dumas, condensée en 12 chapitres, on y retrouve tous les ingrédients qui ont fait son succès. On est porté par la vengeance d'Edmond Dantès et on vit avec lui les trahisons amicales et sentimentales, le tout sur fond de crises politiques et de misère sociale. Malgré quelques raccourcis, la version d'Ena Moriyama nous tient en haleine, d'autant plus que les planches sont très détaillées et les personnages très expressifs.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan after scoring for Manchester United against Tottenham Hotspur in December.Credit Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
MANCHESTER, England — Henrikh Mkhitaryan would be forgiven for not wanting to take his work home with him. His first season in the Premier League has, after all, been a demanding one, enough to make anyone cherish any chance at all to switch off.
There has been the battle to win a place and establish his presence at Manchester United; a collection of wonderful, occasionally gravity-defying goals once he settled in; and then, as the campaign reached its climax, a relentless workload — games piling up in great drifts, culminating in Wednesday’s Europa League final against Ajax in Stockholm.
That would be enough, but Mkhitaryan has always been one of those players who struggle to relax. Early in his career, he tended to switch off his phone for “three days before a game,” so determined was he to focus on the task in hand.
Looking back, at 28, he knows that such intensity was unhealthy; he often felt “sad” for days after games, brooding over every perceived error, reproaching himself for every defeat, screening the calls of his friends and family in case he took out his frustration on them.
Top, Henrikh Mkhitaryan striking the ball with his heel to score for Manchester United against Sunderland in December. Above right, Mkhitaryan, left, challenging for the ball with Savvas Poursaitides of APOEL F.C. in a Champions League game in 2011, when Mkhitaryan played for the Ukrainian club Shakhtar Donetsk. Above left, Mkhitaryan, left, trying to get past Georg Niedermeier of Stuttgart in a Bundesliga match in April 2016, when Mkhitaryan played for Borussia Dortmund.Credit Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Sergei Supinsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Matthias Hangst/Bongarts, via Getty Images
He is better at it now, he says, persuaded that it was counterproductive if his “muscles were tense all the time,” but even now it remains a deliberate thing, requiring a conscious effort. He finds it hard to take it easy.
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He tries, actively, to take his mind off soccer as much as he can. Mkhitaryan has a regular supper club with his teammates Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Paul Pogba; he goes to the movies as often as time allows. He seeks distraction so he might focus better when needed.
He makes just one exception. No matter how draining his week, Mkhitaryan, the $34 million superstar, always spends hours on YouTube watching grainy coverage of dubious-quality soccer from his native Armenia.
He does not do it for pleasure, particularly; the standard is not a patch on what he experiences in England, even in training. Because there are only six teams in Armenia’s highest league, he admits, he finds the games a little repetitive.
He does it partly out of loyalty, to Pyunik, the team where he first made his name, and to his friends still playing in his homeland. Mainly, though, he does it because no matter where he is or who he has become, a little bit of Mkhitaryan is always in Armenia, at home.
It is eight years now since Mkhitaryan left. In the intervening years, he has played for four clubs (Metalurh and Shakhtar Donetsk, in Ukraine; Borussia Dortmund in Germany; and now United) and picked up four languages (English, German, Russian and Ukrainian) to add to the three that he already spoke (Armenian, French and Portuguese).
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He has traveled thousands of miles. His journey has been long, and often lonely. “I did not want to leave, especially,” he said. He did so because of his “dream of playing for one of the world’s biggest teams, in the biggest stadiums, against the biggest opponents,” but it was not easy.
He initially agreed to go to Ukraine “for six months, maybe a year,” assured by Metalurh’s Armenian owner that he would be able to return home if he could not settle there. He found being “so far away from my family” a challenge.
When he moved across the city of Donetsk to Shakhtar, he lived in the club’s training facility; he was nicknamed the President by his teammates. It was only at Dortmund that he agreed to take a club-recommended apartment. It was still difficult — he said he needed a year “to understand German, and 18 months to speak it.”
In retrospect, of course, it has all been worth it. Mkhitaryan already ranks as the finest player his country has produced, and should United beat Ajax on Wednesday, he will be the first Armenian to win a major European trophy.
In his eyes, that is more than a piece of trivia. There is a particular burden on high-profile athletes from low-profile countries; voluntarily or not, they are compelled to play the part of ambassador and evangelist for their nations, charged with presenting the country’s face to the world.
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Mkhitaryan says he does not resent it; he would like to think victory against Ajax would not only provide him with a medal but also give others the chance “to find out what Armenia is, where it is.”
It is a subject that came up, again and again, last Friday when he sat in a changing room at Manchester United’s youth academy at Carrington, just south of the city. “Wherever Armenians go, they create a new Armenia” around themselves, he said. He has done just that in Manchester: As well as watching as much soccer from home as he can, he has found an Armenian Apostolic Church — “we were the first country to adopt Christianity, in 301 A.D.,” he points out, with the air of an earnest schoolteacher — although he has not yet had time to visit.
He has become a regular at the Armenian Taverna, sandwiched between a dry cleaner and a bank in the heart of the city. It has been there since 1968, but only since Mkhitaryan started popping in, once a week or so, has it started to attract the flashbulbs of the paparazzi. It is his little echo of home. “The new Armenia in Manchester is in the city center,” he said. “Near me.”
He seeks out other reminders, too. His last trip to the movies was to see “The Promise,” set in 1915, when as many as 1.5 million ethnic Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were killed in what historians have long accepted as a genocide.
It is a subject close to his heart, one he learned in school that remains “central” to the identity of all Armenians, he said. The film is not the usual cinematic fare for players — Mkhitaryan has not discussed it with his teammates, he said; he suspects they would not be interested — but it left him profoundly moved. “To watch it, I was sad in one way and proud in another,” he said.
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That word recurs: proud. He is proud that he is, if not the world’s most famous Armenian — an honor that he would admit goes to Kim Kardashian — then at least a standard-bearer for his homeland on the world stage, in a social sense as much as a sporting one.
To some extent, he has an even broader symbolism in the sporting sense. Mkhitaryan is one of only a current handful of players from the former Soviet states at one of the biggest teams in one of Europe’s elite leagues. Schalke’s Ukrainian winger, Yevhen Konoplyanka, is the only other active one he can name.
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A region that was once a hotbed for talent, to Western eyes, from Andriy Shevchenko to Kakha Kaladze, has all but dried up. Many English clubs contend it is too hard to scout in Russia and Ukraine because the standard of teams varies so widely; scouring for gems in a place like Armenia would not even occur to them.
“No scouts come to Armenia,” Mkhitaryan said. “And in Russia and Ukraine, because the money is good, the players prefer to stay there, not to come to Europe and develop as footballers.”
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Mkhitaryan is the exception. He has made it out, as far as he could have ever dreamed of going. He has not, though, forgotten where it started. He still watches, even now, for that little taste of home.
Posted on 1:10 am by Fotis Konstantopoulos (Greece) // 1 Comment
photo: EBU / www.eurovision.tv
IRELAND – Ireland’s Eurovision song may not have been a big hit in the competition but there was one positive for Brendan Murray. The former Hometown singer was beaten in the semi-final of the competition with his song “Dying to try”. However, while Europe didn’t love the song, one eastern European country certainly did.
Speaking on TV3’s The Six O’Clock Show Brendan revealed that his single had gone to number one in Armenia surprisingly. He said: “Funnily enough, my single was actually number one in Armenia, number five in Slovenia and number 11 in the viral charts in Belgium. I didn’t believe that I’d got to number one in Armenia when I was first told, but then I saw it and I was like ‘that’s ridiculous, so weird'”.
The Galway man also left the door open for him to perform at next year’s contest but said to win it is very tough nowadays. He explained: “It’s such a different competition now and it’s going to get bigger every year, from what I’ve heard. There was a Chinese delegation there this year. It’s getting so big. There wasn’t 42 countries competing back in the 1990’s when Ireland did well.”
If Brendan does decide to go again next year he will be hoping that more countries like Armenia will be big fans and at least get him to the final. Ireland have not made it to the final since back in 2013.