Dino's book of travels

… I asked myself as my feet touched the rough pavement. I’m trying to remember but for some reason the obvious answer is out of my reach. I feel like I should be scared as there is something important that I was about to do. But instead, I feel a laugh building up in my stomach – an unmistakable sign that I am facing a slightly perilous situation: when other people usually panic, I tend to laugh at myself. I am an easy-going person – accustomed to look on the bright side of life; and the absurdity of my position makes me remember situations when I would enter a room just to forget why I went there in the first place.
But I have to focus. I'm aware that I need to act fast, my journalistic instincts kicking in, demanding to get an answer to the most important questions: where and why, ignoring the other W’s I was taught during my studies. I look around, letting each one of my senses to take in the feeling of the place.
My eyes see a small shop, with a man inside. He looks ordinary with his dark hair and dark eyes, his skin far from pale. There are some newspapers lying in front of the shop but I cannot read them as they are too far. I squint, putting to test my excellent vision and I manage to see outlines of letters… But they look made up! “Slightly elvish”, I add to myself. My nose instantly picks up the smell of fresh fruits – apples, oranges and apricots laid under the sun on a nearby stand. I keep turning around myself as I feel a small breeze brushing of my hand, carrying a smell of cheap perfume and a deafening sound of cars. There is a group of girls with similar features as the shop-keeper, giggling at boys, nearby. And a lot of traffic lights. A square. Suddenly I hear a non-recognizable chatter, with a feeling it is directed at me. I turn around to be met with a closing door of a car wreck – too old for me to identify it. My mind picks up the conversation I was apparently a part of as I recognize Russian language.
Pieces of the puzzle fit together as only one word forms in my mind – Yerevan. I experience flashbacks of my past 10 days spent in Armenia – the oldest church in the world, poverty and slightly bad taste, great big spiders made of tires and… a project I attended! I remember the taxi driver was supposed to take me to the airport for me to catch my plane home. But this doesn’t look like an airport.
The tires screech as the tailpipe coughs and car goes away. “How did I end up here?”, I ask myself again. This time I don’t suppress my laugh.