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Surroundings had changed considerably for me – not just from Yerevan, but from having just returned after 10 days of journalism training in London.

I settled into the Lori region solitude, with London on my mind. But, first, let me complete the Lori midnight rhapsody . . .

Golden light reflects from rural houses standing in groups and shining on the slopes of Armenian mountain ranges. The rays of the light they spread seemed trying to reach the reflecting rays of the thousands of scattered silver fragments in the obsidian sky.

The full orange moon would slowly come out from behind the mountains as the midnight silence was interrupted with the monotonous chirping of crickets and the conversations of village dogs.

Lori. London. I compared the moon. I forgot the one that rose in the UK; Lori seemed to own the only moon.

Traveling to two different realities, I arrived at a single conclusion: Different is good, but not always better . . .

London is an astonishing world center where human perfection has reached its utmost expression. In Lori, nature works out its on version of perfect.

In London, evidence of the nature was found in a shaded sun, and in the River Thames, where some 800,000 discarded bottles are collected daily.

The trip to London with some 30 colleagues from Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan was organized by the British Council. The aim of the visit was to get the Caucasus journalists acquainted with the British mass media experience, and its role and influence on the government’s activities in particular.

During daily seminars and meetings we met numerous experienced journalists and editors from BBC, Reuters, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph.

The program included visits to the BBC World and Reuters newsrooms, News of the World newspaper, as well as the Dow Jones Newswires agency (the latter cooperates with the Wall Street Journal and CBNC TV Company).

I wonder what the honored news agencies would report about Lori. Maybe that Odzun cricket noise penetrates in singular melodies while the Tube, buses and the famous London Taxis create a general roar.

Or maybe that while Heathrow wasn’t allowing carry on, this village house also encouraged discarding unnecessary “baggage” . . .

White griffons fly over the Odzun mountains, higher than the London Eye, and above a forest thicker than Hyde Park. Flying far, too, away from two cities – the UK’s capital, and mine – neither of which captures the beauty of an August night as surely as this little village, this glittered sky, these dogs and crickets, and this one journalist happily escaping.