Fascinating article about Armenia’s so-ugly-it’s-awesome mammoth of a vanity project: their new national museum.

“Imagine an Art Deco version of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon stretching nearly the height of the Empire State Building, its decorations coded with Armenian symbolism.

Did I mention the artificial waterfalls?”

Great snapshot of Armenia’s desperate, wallowing struggle to advance both economy and cultural standing.

“The so-called enfants de Boches — roughly, children of the Huns — born during the war to French women and German soldiers, are seeking to fill a hole in their lives, hunting for long-lost German fathers they never knew and speaking openly of the maltreatment they suffered from their French neighbors. It is estimated that 200,000 children were born of these wartime love affairs.

Photos of the time depict young women, their heads shorn in shame, being hounded through villages, clutching the children of German fathers. About 20,000 women had their heads shaved. Many rejected the children, gave them up for adoption or placed them in orphanages.

But now these children, in their late 60s, are struggling to put their lives in order while there is still time. They have formed an association and sought the help of the German and French governments to try to identify their fathers, in many cases already dead, or families that their fathers founded in Germany after the war.”

Absolutely fascinating article on the children—now into their late middle-age—born to French women and German soldiers during World War II. According to the Times article, Germany has just begun issuing dual-citizenship to any child born of the two nationalities, signaling an acceptance of the liaisons. Of course, most of the negative feeling is on the French side, so the olive branch is somewhat nonplussing.