Interrogated in Armenia

Երևան, Հայաստան

Yerevan, Armenia

March 29th 2025

Rant: Yerevan, a masterclass on how to alienate foreigners in your public transport system.

Bus routes are not available on common map apps, only the single metro line.
A recent system overhaul means tourist information online is all outdated.
Physical tickets can only be bought from machines that I only found in the stops of the single metro line, which are not always conveniently located. If you want to pay with cash at these machines, they do not give change. A single ticket costs ֏150, but coins below ֏100 are not accepted. So really, it's ֏200. You can somehow get a digital refund if you use their app, except you need to make an account first and it requires an Armenian phone number.
Tickets can be bought online, except not single tickets. The lowest value you can buy is a day ticket or a 10-ride ticket. To buy tickets, they must be linked to a card that you tap on public transport. Either a Yerevan Transport Card (only available at metro stops) or a bank card. However, it did not accept my foreign bank cards, despite these working without problems or charges in all ATMs I used.
Signs about directions in the metro are in Armenian or Russian, no English, and the Russian names are different from the Armenian names. Most common map apps use the Armenian names transliterated to a latin alphabet, so if you are working based on that and you can read cyrillic, you still cannot work it out.
Yerevan is very hilly, I had to walk an hour up 200m to my hostel when I first arrived. I couldn't get a bus, because I was no where near a metro station to buy a ticket.
Taxis are cheap and widespread, but the taxi apps all require you to register a phone number. And yes, they do not work with foreign numbers (or at least, my EU numbers).
The metro stops do not have wifi, or if they do, they barely work.
From these machines in the metro, you can buy a more expensive special ticket to use the airport bus. On the bus, the driver didn't accept this tickets, and wanted me to pay. I went back to the metro information to ask what exactly is this airport ticket, how can I use it. I show them the option to buy this ticket on the machine. They ask me, what is my problem. One policeman who was 'helping' took me to the back office after I asked if I could get a refund because what exactly did I pay for. Just to note, this isn't a dodgy scam ticket machine, it's the cities official ticket dispensers in the metro stops. Another policeman in the back room demands my passport, flicks through every page until he finds the Azerbaijan stamps at the end. That's when being unhelpful to a foreigner trying to use your public transport system transformed into a full interrogation. They demand to see photos on my phone, on my camera, look in my bag, call up people and talk through my documents with them. 30 minutes of this, I am polite but also say that hey I will miss my flight. To be fair they could have been worse, I'm not one to be rattled by this sort of thing, but it was just one problem too far. I broke the seriousness by joking with them that I don't smoke, no really I don't and they calmed a bit. At the end they said they were suspicious because of Azerbaijan but that my 'personality' shows I'm okay, at least according to Google translate. They also say no bus to the airport, take a taxi. But again, the taxi apps don't work, so the loop was complete.

Conclusion: fuck you basically. Maybe a ridiculous thing to say, but I need a holiday.