Good luck to a new Armenia
www.telegraph.co.uk

It has a tragic past but Douglas Rogers predicts a change in fortune for this fascinating country.
It was after the third glass of 50 per cent proof vintage Armenian brandy that my host for the evening, a garrulous Armenian-American property developer by the name of Vahak Hovnanian, suggested a game of golf. Usually, after a few glasses of top-shelf cognac, I'd be up for a round, but it was 9pm, we were in the basement of his mansion on a half-built residential village on the outskirts of Armenia's dusty capital Yerevan, and the chances of finding a floodlit golf course in the vicinity seemed pretty slim.
I shouldn't have been so sceptical. "We are the Jews of the Caucasus," Vahak told me five minutes later as he smacked a drive straight down the fairway of his floodlit golf course, a short walk from his home. In the distance, the outline of Mount Ararat shimmered in the moonlight, while in a clubhouse decked out with leather chairs emblazoned with the Hovnanian family crest, a dozen members of his family cheered and ordered more brandy. On a barren field of rock and stone in central Armenia, a New Jersey property tycoon was building his own Jerusalem.

further text: Travel to Armenia