I prefer a small town to a well known big city. The city is usually filled up with tourists. "So if you want to touch with everyday life of the local people, you should skip the big city" That's my belief.
It's all reason why I'm here in Vanadzor. I'm not sure the regional town is the place to me. But gathering from the location and town size on the map, I have some sort of certainty that I'll be able to take a good picture.
As soon as I get an accommodation, I open up a map app on the phone. What industry does the town have while Alaverdi was a town of copper mine? Actually, it looks no intensive icon like copper smelter of Alaverdi. Let's see, there is ... a chemical factory. Well, Vanadzor sounds like an insecticide spray.

There are three main avenues and streets which cross over the avenues in a grid. While Alaverdi was located in the canyon, the flat land space is much wider here. The mountains in the background have a distance, although the streets make a slope at the edge of town. Is the regional capital in Lori region, same to Alaverdi, on the fluvial terrace too? If so, the ancient river may had a wider mouth here, I guess.

The second main avenue looks the busiest. Show windows are lined. Clothing store, fast food shop, restaurant, college, barber shop ... all you need is given. The area behind the street is a market. In a Russian style market complex, which look alike an old gymnasium, meats and dairy products are sold. Vegetable and fruit stalls surround it. Clothes, car parts ... everything are sold.
A train stops twice in a day. A room in the station is renovated to cozy atelier by a local painter.
Armenian church, of course, is settled in the town. Parks are here and there. It has indoor pool too. Autumn is deepen. People are walking under the lined yellow trees.

Rest of the town is residential area. Mixture of old housing complexes and folk houses in traditional style. The housing complex is bigger than the Alaverdi's one. A point in common is that those are old enough.
I get same reaction to Alaverdi when I step into the housing complex yard. I'm found by the residents immediately. Fortunately, in most of the cases I'm welcomed. In Armenia, I saw the first floor of housing complex is often renovated to a bread factory and house wives as a part timer work on it.

Oh, one more impressive picture on the housing complexes is washing on the line. A line is strained from one building to the other. It has spools on the both end. After a resident on the one side hangs the washing on the line, the clothes are advanced to the air. Then the resident on the opposite side draw the line and hang the washings over the rope. It's a collaboration by the both families. Finally colorful laundries are flapped on the rope between the buildings.

Meanwhile, the old folk houses are mostly made by wood. Some of them have an antique terrace, the others have a barn like loft on the roof. Must be a decoration, or a remain of work place.
On the other hand, some of the newly built houses have very eye-catching design like the Antonio Gaudie's. But even so I feel nostalgia on them. And those are well match to the air of the town.

The local residents are not too much aggressive on the visitors. Nevertheless Vanadzor is an important place for the regional traffic, there are not so many tourists make it as a destination. Maybe that's the reason. It doesn't mean the locals have closed-in personality but the well rounded off and mild one, friendly in a word. A resident whom I met in the town told me."How's Vanadzor? Good town, uh? This is my home town" I envy what they can say it with proud. Yeah, this is a great ordinary town.

In the evening, I'm in the parking lot of the medical center where I can look over the town. Must be came back from visiting somebody in the hospital. An old man is putting a luggage into the trunk room of the car. In the background, mountains are lighting up by reddish sun. What is the patient on the bed thinking on the evening landscape of the home town?
Meanwhile a woman with stick is walking down the slope from hospital to the home may see the same evening scene.
I don't know the long story in their life. But I touched the piece of it from time to time. Whenever I see it, I try to scoop up the gleam with my camera.