“Beer, if you plant, will it grow?”

On our way from Yerevan, capital of Armenia, to Tbilisi, capital of Georgia, during the 28th day of our trip, we decided to stop in the small village of Alaverdi. We checked in at Iri’s Guest House, a small and charming hostel with a nice view of the river, which cut through the mountains of the region. Ms. Irina, the owner of the place, was very happy to know we were Brazilians. “You are my first guest from Brazil. I never saw any Brazilian in Alaverdi.” On the next day, during breakfast, her husband came to tell us that they’d just received a booking from another Brazilian. To help the new guest to have a happy stay there, we left two beers in the fridge with a name card from our expedition and clear instructions to Ms. Irina that “these two beers are for your new Brazilian guest.”

Today, on the 36th day, in Brodum, which is on the southwest coast of Turkey, we received a email in Portuguese from Anna Stein with the subject “Beer, if you plant, will it grow?” In this email, she tells us how lovely it was to have two cold beers waiting for her on the mountains of Armenia. “Too bad we didn’t meet, it would be nice to have talked to you guys and had got some information about visas in Central Asia. It’s hard to find Brazilians going there.” In return, Anna sent us lots of information from the countries she had recently traveled through, like Macedonia and Albania. At the end of the email, she attached a photo of herself drinking one of the cold beers.