In his quest to experience extremes, Stephen Bailey travels to the very edge of eastern Europe and finds that despite its quirks, life is not so different there after all.

Ever since learning that bread crusts created curly hair I’ve been fascinated by experiencing the edge of things. Not living on the edge like a crazed attention-seeking adrenalin junkie, but checking out what it is like.

As the homemade brandy is brought out, my mouth wretches, my oesophagus remonstrates, but my wallet happily opens to procure a sample of goods that will go straight in the bin- Stephen Bailey

It’s often got me into trouble: falling down a waterfall and a strange experiment with hair straighteners are just two examples. But where is the edge of Europe? It is hard to define given that Israel play in European football competitions and most islands in the South Pacific belong to European nations.

Squeezed into the back corner of a shared taxi by three sturdy women with infinite shoulders I experienced a Newtonian moment of clarity. I saw the sudden and dramatic change in landscape and instantly knew I had just journeyed to the edge of Europe.

But where? Gazing out to the ocean from a windswept coast? An arbitrary line in Siberia? Admiring grand minarets or perennial snow.

It is 11 a.m. and I am caught up in the intrinsic verve of the capital city: old women beaming rows of gold teeth natter in the park, men in suits do business washed down with beer, and stylish young women gaze in shop windows and discuss the summers latest fashion.

Outside the fruit bazaar two men with deeply wrinkled faces play an animated game of backgammon. Inside, each stall sells practically the same goods at an almost identical price.

But store owners are intuitive. “Welcome my friend, I show you something special.” I head behind the counter where the animated storekeeper pours out shots of fruit vodka from a plastic bottle.

Then I am invited to try a variety of dried ghastly fruit before the nauseating vodka makes a second and third trip down my grumbling gullet.

Very soon I’ve sampled his whole store and the deal clincher is brought out: a five-litre tub of homemade brandy. My mouth wretches, my oesophagus remonstrates, but my wallet happily opens to procure a sample of goods that will go straight in the bin.

Under the oppressive regime of the 20th century many of the country’s creative talents perished for their ingenious and unique approach to life and art. Some have lived on as martyrs with their houses turned into museums, but one talent survived the regime with a secret flagrantly displayed under the nose of the rulers.

Alexander Tamanyan was the chief architect in the design of the capital city. His circular compass design measured exactly 1,600 metres in diameter – a mile – a distance used by the UK and US and banned by the authorities.

Leaving the bazaar I am told this by joining a free walking tour of the city. Over two hours I get a bombardment of other random facts about the city’s tumultuous past, including: the country changed hands 14 times in a 200-year period as powerful empires flexed their muscles; natives believe that making a phone call to God is cheaper here because it’s a local call; and Michael Jackson dangled his ridiculously named child off the balcony of the country’s only Marriot hotel.

The tour takes me to the city’s most iconic features. Desirable and marketable land in major capitals is usually gobbled up by luxurious high end apartments, designer shopping stores, or parliamentary buildings.

Here it’s inhabited by two gargantuan alcohol factories the size of multiple football pitches; a serious and commendable commitment to drinking. Brandy emissions hang in the air around both complexes and standing next to the considerable stone walls I am feeling dizzy from the fumes.

I lose the flip flops and backpack, raise my chin three inches skyward, and ask for a tour of the wine and cognac factory. Believing I might actually buy something, I am soon treating myself to tasters of 10- and 20-year-old cognacs.

Do you want to try the wine? Of course, but I was not expecting a glass of 1924 vintage.

Inhaling the vapours, I initially baffle my guide with some aristocratic descriptions: “Smells of daffodil fields at sunset, Parisian love affairs, and freshly cut Wembley grass”. But then I swill it around and swallow, “hmmm, yep, just tastes like a pot of syrupy jam.”

We finish the tour at the recently redeveloped central shopping street that bisects the heart of the city.

Polished metal gleams, glass sparkles, and cafes sell coffees that cost the average weekly wage, but the whole area seems characterless and has an unnecessarily fake lavishness. Its apparent prosperity also masks the social problems inherent in the rural regions of the country.

I head to the countryside where my hosts are two American Peace Corps volunteers who have been working in the region for two years.

One is commencing a research project on bride kidnapping, a local phenomenon. Men literally kidnap women off the streets, usually ones that have rejected their advances, and imprison them in their home.

Perversely, going to such extreme lengths to acquire a woman is sometimes interpreted as being romantic, but alarmingly, the women have virtually no legal recourse and struggle to find a partner as the community views them as impure.

They take me on a tour of the surrounding fairytale landscape. Cylindrical formations of volcanic ash jut out of the ground, defying the laws of physics by maintaining their mushroom-like shapes.

The entrances to caves dot the surroundings, dwellings that were permanently inhabited from the fifth century until less than 50 years ago. One is particularly special: an ancient theatre carved into the rock with seats, two separate stages, and fire holes, now abandoned and overtaken by cow manure.

The following morning I take a shared taxi into the farthest corners of Europe, passing men in body armour clearing land mines by the side of the road as the regularity of villages decrease. Trees cling to the verdant mountainside at impossible angles, the canyon seemingly afraid of gobbling them up. As the cliffs rise the taxi splutters under the effort. Then the scenery changes dramatically from green to red.

Ahead of me are the barren massifs and mud brick minarets of Iran, behind me the fertileness of Europe: two continents separated by an electrocuted barbed wire fence inspired by Jurassic Park, but with crueller penalties for those who illegally cross it.

So this is the edge. The verve of capital city Yerevan a few hundred kilometres away, the anxious women of rural Goris two mountain passes away, and the thick forests of Armenia abruptly terminating.

Over this frontier everything changes: Christian to Muslim, green to red, wet to dry. Scanning my surroundings I realise there is something ineffably homely about the land that lies behind me.

So, despite its quirks, gazing into Iran makes me realise how Armenia embodies some classical European traits that mean I am not too far from home: quaint cities, white lies, impromptu alcohol drinking, shrewd shopkeepers, and going to incongruous lengths to obtain women... these things have been the backbone of Europe for centuries.