Mike and I have spent an amazing 2 weeks in Salzburg. We've seen all the relatives, gone second-hand shopping and found some great things, spent time going through my grandma's apartment and taking things we liked (old Salzburg postcards, complete with Hitler Deutsches Reich stamps; a great hat that can be seen in my current facebook picture; some traditional Austrian jackets with goat-horn buttons, etc...) and of course eaten delicious food to the brim. We've probably each gained at least 5 kilos. But it was worth it! Schnitzel, Marillenknoedel, Eis, Kasnockl, Zwiebelrostbraten, Mohr im Hemd, the list goes on... yum! We haven't done much in terms of real touristy sightseeing, but Mike has gotten a good sense of what Salzburg is like. The weather hasn't been that great either. We definitely didn't pack right for the weather we've had. Every other day has rained and been freezing. Blah. Typical Austrian summer. We should have expected it.
On Saturday morning my parents and my sister Susi are taking a train to Freiburg to visit my sister Nici, and Mike and I are taking an afternoon bus to Brasov (25 hours from Salzburg), located in Transylvania in Romania. We'll explore for a few days, then spend a day or two in Bucharest, and then catch either a bus or a train back to Istanbul and back to real life. Mike got the EF job we wanted, I didn't, so he's set. I'm still searching for one, there aren't many options on the internet. I'll have to start going to language centers with my CV, or start finding private students. Not looking forward to that! There's a part-time job that I got, but I'm still looking for something else. Still apartment hunting too... we found the perfect one on craigslist, but it's a bit out of our price range.
Not much else new- I got a haircut with bangs and Mike got a cavity filled today after 4 hours in the dentist waiting room (and learned that he needs a wisdom tooth pulled ASAP). Hopefully he'll be able to enjoy our adventures in Romania even with a toothache!
I finally got all my Central Asian pictures posted on facebook. Hopefully that's the last you'll have to see of me in Central Asia for a long, long, long time.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Istanbul Introduction and More Current Events
I am currently in Austria with Mike, my parents, and the rest of the Euro family. Unfortunately my brother isn't here, even though he was supposed to be. He noticed the day before leaving America that his passport expired the next week. After spending 6 hours on the phone, my mom learned that he couldn't get an expedited appointment in CT, and the Prague Airport Police wouldn't even let him into the country (and that's assuming that the JFK Airport Police would have let him out). So he stayed how with his new boa constrictor, and my parents came alone. It's been nice having Mike 'Meet the Family' and having him around has made everyone practice their English pull out some good old 'hilarious' stories of me as a baby/kid. It's also been amazing to have great food again, good, non-fatty, non-teeth-breaking, non-mutton, non-drowning-in-oil food. We have another week here and then, somehow, we're going back to Istanbul, but we don't really know yet how. Maybe by bus, maybe by train, maybe by plane, but we haven't decided if/for how long we want to stop off in Budapest/Bucharest/Sofia/somewhere else. Blah. It's too bad that Europe is so expensive, and especially compared to the prices we're used to it's downright impossible to buy anything without feeling the hangman's noose of bankruptcy closing around my neck.
Our first week in Istanbul was great. We spent two nights in a hostel, which was nice because we met a great Australian couple, but not so nice because of course we had to pay, and the employees were jerks. We moved in with a friend of a friend, and were in a great part of town with an amazing Bosphorus view and great company. We spent the week looking at tons of apartments, but didn't find any that really spoke to us. We are looking for somewhere in the center with a view of the Bosphorus and without our price range, but nothing had everything we wanted. We're still busy emailing craigslist people, hoping to have places lined up for when we get back. We are still deciding if we want a flat for ourselves, or just a room in house/flat. We also had a job interview and stopped in a a handful of language schools we found on our wandering of Central Istanbul, but only got a response from one school we emailed. Everyone says that schools in Istanbul are desperate for teachers, so why don't they respond?? No one knows... We are hoping to hear back from EF by the end of the month, and hopefully we get the job. It's teaching at a foundation course for university students who need to get their English to an Intermediate level before stating university in English. It's a lot of money and not too much work, so it'd be ideal. We'll see!
We didn't do many touristy things but just walked around marvelling at the beautiful scenery that was all around. We watched a Turkish movie on someone's rooftop and had an unbelievable view of the entire city. The night pictures of Istanbul on facebook are taken from that very rooftop. We took a ferry across to the Asian side of Istanbul, which is just as modern and hip as the European side.
There's so much to do before we are really settled, but it will be great getting to know the city and find our way around. I'm looking forward to entertaining all the people who promise to come and visit! :)
Our first week in Istanbul was great. We spent two nights in a hostel, which was nice because we met a great Australian couple, but not so nice because of course we had to pay, and the employees were jerks. We moved in with a friend of a friend, and were in a great part of town with an amazing Bosphorus view and great company. We spent the week looking at tons of apartments, but didn't find any that really spoke to us. We are looking for somewhere in the center with a view of the Bosphorus and without our price range, but nothing had everything we wanted. We're still busy emailing craigslist people, hoping to have places lined up for when we get back. We are still deciding if we want a flat for ourselves, or just a room in house/flat. We also had a job interview and stopped in a a handful of language schools we found on our wandering of Central Istanbul, but only got a response from one school we emailed. Everyone says that schools in Istanbul are desperate for teachers, so why don't they respond?? No one knows... We are hoping to hear back from EF by the end of the month, and hopefully we get the job. It's teaching at a foundation course for university students who need to get their English to an Intermediate level before stating university in English. It's a lot of money and not too much work, so it'd be ideal. We'll see!
We didn't do many touristy things but just walked around marvelling at the beautiful scenery that was all around. We watched a Turkish movie on someone's rooftop and had an unbelievable view of the entire city. The night pictures of Istanbul on facebook are taken from that very rooftop. We took a ferry across to the Asian side of Istanbul, which is just as modern and hip as the European side.
There's so much to do before we are really settled, but it will be great getting to know the city and find our way around. I'm looking forward to entertaining all the people who promise to come and visit! :)
The End of Uzbekistan
So, after a long pause in updating that has left all of you I'm sure hanging in suspense, I am back online to complete the tale of Uzbekistan.
We arrived in Khiva with a mix of different kinds of transport. We took a bus to Burani, a town north of Khiva, then took a shared taxi to Urgench, and then another shared taxi to Khiva. Transport plus waiting for taxis to fill up ended up being most of the afternoon, but we spent 7000 sum each instead of 20,000 each, which a non-shared taxi door-to-door would have cost from Nukus to Khiva. We opted for price rather than speed, since of course we were on vacation and were not in any rush.
Khiva is a beautifully preserved old city, complete with city walls, mosques, medressas, and minarets. Lonely Planet complains that all the life has been squeezed out of it as a result of all the restoration that has kept the old town looking as good as it did, but I think that it's just the opposite. Many locals live in the Old Town and go about their normal lives in among all the mosques, it was easy to imagine ancient days with the hustle and bustle of market day.
Immediately when we got out of our shared taxi, a man stepped out of another taxi and recommended a homestay to us. We didn't have any preference, and for $10 per person per day with breakfast, it sounded like a great deal. And it really was a wonderful guesthouse. We had a private Western bathroom, an air conditioner (that really didnät work) and our own balcony, and there was a rooftop terrace with an amazing view of all of Khiva. We had dinner in the guesthouse on the roof and watched the sun set over the old fortifications and the minarets.
It was quite hot, and we spent two days just wandering around. We didn't pay to go into any museums or mosques, because we'd already seen our fair share of souvenier-shop-filled old brick buildings. But even just walking around the Old Town there was a lot to see.
We spent our last day in Khiva not even in Khiva. We got a taxi for $40 to take us around to some old forts in the surrounding desert of Khiva, about 1.5 hours from the Old Town. The driver knew where to find the forts, which are spread around a large area of desert. Archaeologists believe that there may be 50 forts in the area, and it is therefore named Elliq Qala, which means, of course, 50 Forts. We went to three forts, 2 of which we could walk around. They were quite well preserved, and even though they are more or less just different shaped piles of packed dirt, part of the fun was imagining how different it looked in its prime. We also stopped at lake Ayaz, which is a salty lake right in the middle of the desert. We had wanted to swim, but when we got to the lake and saw that it was quite gross-looking, with deep stinking sand/slush and lots of flies, we decided to just dip our feet in. It was still strange to see a bunch of seagulls in the middle of vast expanses of sand!
We then took a bus to Bukhara, where we spent a few days when we were in Uzbekistan in winter, but at that time it was so cold that we really didn't see everything there was to see. We spent most time in our hotel room watching satellite Arabic girls dancing around trying to get men to call in. This time, I was determined to do more sightseeing, even though all the tourists we'd met said that Bukhara was the hottest place they'd been. We were directed to a hotel by our taxi driver, who of course wanted us to stay in his friend's hotel. It was quite a swanky one, with a great courtyard. Tourist season was over, so we got a double room that was normally $50 for $25 including breakfast, satellite TV (broken), an air conditioner (not broken!!) and a shower with HOT WATER. Not too bad. I did the bargaining myself too, which made me feel quite good considering I usually hate it and I'm pretty bad at it. Mike is the master at haggling. I'll just leave it up to him whenever I can.
The thing we spent most of our time doing was looking at antique pieces of Uzbek fabric. I had wanted to buy one in Khiva but didn't, and then it turned out that the pattern I had really liked was unpopular and most of the people I talked to in Bukhara had thrown out their fabric in that pattern because no tourists wanted to buy it. But I learned from different salespeople the exact description and origin of the pattern I wanted, so it was quite easy to go from stall to stall saying I wanted Urgutskie suzani, and it makes shopping so much easier when sellers don't try to interest you with this and that that you really don't want. It was in-and-out, and finally I was able to find exactly what I wanted, and get them for amazing prices. I was even congratulated by the owner of our hotel for getting them so cheap! He asked how much I paid and I said 15,000, and he said '50,000? Good price!' and I said 'No FIFTEEN' and he couldn't believe it. He said it was local price, and that tourist price is MUCH more. So Bukhara was a good place for my haggling :)
In Bukhara we found a nice restaurant that had the first good fried laghman since we left Bishkek, and we found the mauseleum where Somoni was buried, the man who the Tajik currency is named after. Both Bukhara and Samarkand are predominantly Tajik towns, so it's not surprising for him to be there. We also found yet more medressas that we hadn't seen the first time around. It was really hot, but not as bad as we'd been expecting after all the stories.
We took a night train to Tashkent, and it was probably one of the most uncomfortable nights I've ever had. The train was HOT, and it was a newer sleeping car so instead of windows that pulled down to open, the tilted out, so there was barely any breeze. A bunch of policemen took up the sitting room under our beds, so we had to lie in bed the whole time while they were all underneath drinking and doing crossword puzzles. When we arrived in Tashkent I was terribly sweaty, tired because I hadn't really slept, and super dehydrated. When we arrived in Tashkent the hotel we wanted had no double room, so then I really wanted to cry and not have to find another place. We decided to go to a Lonely Planet guesthouse that it said was hard to find, and we got a taxi driver who looked at the map and seemed to have some idea where he was going. He didn't of course, and didn't believe when I told him he was going the wrong way. Finally we just got out because he couldn't find it, and luckily we weren't too far from where we were supposed to be. We found a nice driver who knew the place exactly and dropped us off there for free. It was $15 per person per night, but it had air conditioning and breakfast and I was way too narky to want to find another place.
I took a nap and a MUCH needed shower, and then we wandered around Tashkent some more. We spent 6 days in Tashkent in total in winter and Mike really didn't want to have to go back, but I thought there were still some things we could see. It was the hottest it had been the whole trip so we didnt feel like doing much, but the best thing was Aqua Park, possibly Central Asia's only worthwhile waterpark. Lonely Planet said it was 3000 sum ($2), but the price had gone up to 15,000 sum for 3 hours. We paid it and dogeared the page as yet another complaint to write to Lonely Planet about, but really enjoyed a few different swimming pools and some much needed tanning time.
We repacked our bags and caught an early morning flight to Istanbul. I worried that I might have some problems at the airport, as I had a felt rug, 2 antique pieces of fabric and a bullet from the Tajik-Afghan border in my bag, but it turned out that Mike was the one with the problems.
In his words...'At the airport in Tashkent, I went through all various checks until I go to the Passport Control. The guy behind the desk looked at my passport for a split second before telling me in Russian that there was a 'problem.' My passport, apparently, didn't work and I needed to pay the guy some money to get through. I suddenly lost all ability to understand anything he said at the mention of money and played dumb. I knew my passport was fine, just as it has been for the last 10 years. The guy called his supervisor who then tried to tell me I didn't have a visa. I pointed it out to him. Then he told me that I didn't have the correct stamp. i pointed it out to him. Finally, he dragged me off in the direction of a third guy. This one spoke some English and then tried to tell me that the picture in the passport wasn't me. Usually, this is an understandable mistake. The picture was taken when I was 16, I have short hair and no beard. This time, though, I had shaved my beard off and had an haircut so for the first time in years I actually DID look like my passport picture! I explained how time works and that no man is left unaffected. This didn't deter them... now it was a challenge. I wasn't going to pay them a penny, but they couldn't put so much effort in for nothing. Their last trick was to claim my passport was fake. I stood my ground and told them I'd wait for them to verify. Finally, they gave in and threw my documents back at my with contempt. '
Thus ended almost one year in Central Asia. All in all, it was a great experience, but I can't say I'd recommending life in Bishkek to anyone.
We arrived in Khiva with a mix of different kinds of transport. We took a bus to Burani, a town north of Khiva, then took a shared taxi to Urgench, and then another shared taxi to Khiva. Transport plus waiting for taxis to fill up ended up being most of the afternoon, but we spent 7000 sum each instead of 20,000 each, which a non-shared taxi door-to-door would have cost from Nukus to Khiva. We opted for price rather than speed, since of course we were on vacation and were not in any rush.
Khiva is a beautifully preserved old city, complete with city walls, mosques, medressas, and minarets. Lonely Planet complains that all the life has been squeezed out of it as a result of all the restoration that has kept the old town looking as good as it did, but I think that it's just the opposite. Many locals live in the Old Town and go about their normal lives in among all the mosques, it was easy to imagine ancient days with the hustle and bustle of market day.
Immediately when we got out of our shared taxi, a man stepped out of another taxi and recommended a homestay to us. We didn't have any preference, and for $10 per person per day with breakfast, it sounded like a great deal. And it really was a wonderful guesthouse. We had a private Western bathroom, an air conditioner (that really didnät work) and our own balcony, and there was a rooftop terrace with an amazing view of all of Khiva. We had dinner in the guesthouse on the roof and watched the sun set over the old fortifications and the minarets.
It was quite hot, and we spent two days just wandering around. We didn't pay to go into any museums or mosques, because we'd already seen our fair share of souvenier-shop-filled old brick buildings. But even just walking around the Old Town there was a lot to see.
We spent our last day in Khiva not even in Khiva. We got a taxi for $40 to take us around to some old forts in the surrounding desert of Khiva, about 1.5 hours from the Old Town. The driver knew where to find the forts, which are spread around a large area of desert. Archaeologists believe that there may be 50 forts in the area, and it is therefore named Elliq Qala, which means, of course, 50 Forts. We went to three forts, 2 of which we could walk around. They were quite well preserved, and even though they are more or less just different shaped piles of packed dirt, part of the fun was imagining how different it looked in its prime. We also stopped at lake Ayaz, which is a salty lake right in the middle of the desert. We had wanted to swim, but when we got to the lake and saw that it was quite gross-looking, with deep stinking sand/slush and lots of flies, we decided to just dip our feet in. It was still strange to see a bunch of seagulls in the middle of vast expanses of sand!
We then took a bus to Bukhara, where we spent a few days when we were in Uzbekistan in winter, but at that time it was so cold that we really didn't see everything there was to see. We spent most time in our hotel room watching satellite Arabic girls dancing around trying to get men to call in. This time, I was determined to do more sightseeing, even though all the tourists we'd met said that Bukhara was the hottest place they'd been. We were directed to a hotel by our taxi driver, who of course wanted us to stay in his friend's hotel. It was quite a swanky one, with a great courtyard. Tourist season was over, so we got a double room that was normally $50 for $25 including breakfast, satellite TV (broken), an air conditioner (not broken!!) and a shower with HOT WATER. Not too bad. I did the bargaining myself too, which made me feel quite good considering I usually hate it and I'm pretty bad at it. Mike is the master at haggling. I'll just leave it up to him whenever I can.
The thing we spent most of our time doing was looking at antique pieces of Uzbek fabric. I had wanted to buy one in Khiva but didn't, and then it turned out that the pattern I had really liked was unpopular and most of the people I talked to in Bukhara had thrown out their fabric in that pattern because no tourists wanted to buy it. But I learned from different salespeople the exact description and origin of the pattern I wanted, so it was quite easy to go from stall to stall saying I wanted Urgutskie suzani, and it makes shopping so much easier when sellers don't try to interest you with this and that that you really don't want. It was in-and-out, and finally I was able to find exactly what I wanted, and get them for amazing prices. I was even congratulated by the owner of our hotel for getting them so cheap! He asked how much I paid and I said 15,000, and he said '50,000? Good price!' and I said 'No FIFTEEN' and he couldn't believe it. He said it was local price, and that tourist price is MUCH more. So Bukhara was a good place for my haggling :)
In Bukhara we found a nice restaurant that had the first good fried laghman since we left Bishkek, and we found the mauseleum where Somoni was buried, the man who the Tajik currency is named after. Both Bukhara and Samarkand are predominantly Tajik towns, so it's not surprising for him to be there. We also found yet more medressas that we hadn't seen the first time around. It was really hot, but not as bad as we'd been expecting after all the stories.
We took a night train to Tashkent, and it was probably one of the most uncomfortable nights I've ever had. The train was HOT, and it was a newer sleeping car so instead of windows that pulled down to open, the tilted out, so there was barely any breeze. A bunch of policemen took up the sitting room under our beds, so we had to lie in bed the whole time while they were all underneath drinking and doing crossword puzzles. When we arrived in Tashkent I was terribly sweaty, tired because I hadn't really slept, and super dehydrated. When we arrived in Tashkent the hotel we wanted had no double room, so then I really wanted to cry and not have to find another place. We decided to go to a Lonely Planet guesthouse that it said was hard to find, and we got a taxi driver who looked at the map and seemed to have some idea where he was going. He didn't of course, and didn't believe when I told him he was going the wrong way. Finally we just got out because he couldn't find it, and luckily we weren't too far from where we were supposed to be. We found a nice driver who knew the place exactly and dropped us off there for free. It was $15 per person per night, but it had air conditioning and breakfast and I was way too narky to want to find another place.
I took a nap and a MUCH needed shower, and then we wandered around Tashkent some more. We spent 6 days in Tashkent in total in winter and Mike really didn't want to have to go back, but I thought there were still some things we could see. It was the hottest it had been the whole trip so we didnt feel like doing much, but the best thing was Aqua Park, possibly Central Asia's only worthwhile waterpark. Lonely Planet said it was 3000 sum ($2), but the price had gone up to 15,000 sum for 3 hours. We paid it and dogeared the page as yet another complaint to write to Lonely Planet about, but really enjoyed a few different swimming pools and some much needed tanning time.
We repacked our bags and caught an early morning flight to Istanbul. I worried that I might have some problems at the airport, as I had a felt rug, 2 antique pieces of fabric and a bullet from the Tajik-Afghan border in my bag, but it turned out that Mike was the one with the problems.
In his words...'At the airport in Tashkent, I went through all various checks until I go to the Passport Control. The guy behind the desk looked at my passport for a split second before telling me in Russian that there was a 'problem.' My passport, apparently, didn't work and I needed to pay the guy some money to get through. I suddenly lost all ability to understand anything he said at the mention of money and played dumb. I knew my passport was fine, just as it has been for the last 10 years. The guy called his supervisor who then tried to tell me I didn't have a visa. I pointed it out to him. Then he told me that I didn't have the correct stamp. i pointed it out to him. Finally, he dragged me off in the direction of a third guy. This one spoke some English and then tried to tell me that the picture in the passport wasn't me. Usually, this is an understandable mistake. The picture was taken when I was 16, I have short hair and no beard. This time, though, I had shaved my beard off and had an haircut so for the first time in years I actually DID look like my passport picture! I explained how time works and that no man is left unaffected. This didn't deter them... now it was a challenge. I wasn't going to pay them a penny, but they couldn't put so much effort in for nothing. Their last trick was to claim my passport was fake. I stood my ground and told them I'd wait for them to verify. Finally, they gave in and threw my documents back at my with contempt. '
Thus ended almost one year in Central Asia. All in all, it was a great experience, but I can't say I'd recommending life in Bishkek to anyone.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The rest of our trip- almost
So, I haven't written for a long long time. It's just because I'm lazy, but also because there isn't really much to say about the rest of our trip, especially compared to all that happened on the Pamir Highway.
Mike and I spent 3 days in Dushanbe, where there wasn't much to do. It was too hot to have done anything anyways, so we just sat around in some of the many leafy green parks and read books.
We took a shared taxi up to the northern Tajik city of Khojand. It was a tough mountain road to get over, but luckily for visitors to Tajikistan in the future, there is a tunnel being built as we speak by Chinese road crews. Our driver seemed like a good guy, almost too good- he offered to tow two cars up different stages of the mountain pass, so we wasted a lot of time starting and stopping as the rope connecting the car to our car snapped/came untied/who knows. In the end we didn't get the up the mountain, which isn't surprising considering the steepness and muddiness of the road.
We found a great hotel in Khojand- it was a modernish apartment bloc converted into a hotel, which meant we had a bedroom, an enclosed balcony, a living room, toilet, bathroom and a kitchen (all unfurnished but for 2 twin beds, a table, and a TV with no working channels) all for less than 10$ for the 2 of us. It was a needed break since we paid 15$ each in Dushanbe. We didn't do much in Khojand either- it was really really hot. We spent a few hours swimming in the Syr-Darya river, which was full of businessmen stripping down to their underwear and little children cooling off. If we floated all the way down the river, we'd have ended up in the Northern Aral Sea in Kazakhstan! In an internet cafe, we met up with 2 Tajik guys, one who went to school in Prague and spoke good English, one who spoke very very little English, and they wanted to meet up later on to talk. They took us to a park that evening, where there were tons of people riding on Soviet rides, using paddle boats in the river, and generally just having a good time enjoying the evening coolness. We went up in the ferris wheel to see Khojand from above, ate some ice cream, and then Mike and I took a taxi back to the hotel. There are a lot of Soviet things still left in the city- a giant hammer and sickle statue, and a bust of Marx and Lenin on the side of an apartment bloc. There were many streetside cafes, where we spent most of the days just playing cards and drinking cold drinks.
We took a shared taxi to Penjikent, close to the Uzbek border. We stayed in a Lonely Planet-recommended homestay, but the owner of the homestay Nematov had let the "fame" of Lonely Planet get to his head, and he was sort of an ass. Lonely Planet said that it was full board, but he said that food wasn't included, but wouldn't give us a price as to how much meals would be. He said "whatever you think it's worth," which is never a good way to do business in my book. Lonely Planet also said that he arranges good reliable transport, but it seemed like he arranged very overpriced transport. We met up with 2 English girls at the homestay and wanted to arrange a day trip into the Fan Mountains to see a string of very beautiful turquoise lakes. We found our own taxi for much much cheaper than the Nematov had offered. He took us to the first 2 lakes in a string of 7 (the first one was meant to be the most beautiful), and the taxi driver gave us a few hours to walk around. The lakes were full of the bluest water I've ever seen. We wanted to swim, but the water was horrible cold. We had a picnic and walked a bit around the mountains, and then went back to Penjikent.
In the evening, we said goodbye to the English girls, who were heading to Dushanbe, and set out to find and explore ancient Penjikent, the ruins of the old city. A nice man offered to drive us there when we were asking around for directions, and he took us around the old city a little, telling us the history, and even drove us back to the homestay- all for free! It was the first real hospitality we'd seen in a long time, and after the jerk Nematov and a really not nice guy we met in a cafe, we'd started to think that Penjikent was just full of bad eggs. Luckily, it wasn't so. We also met a nice kid who loved speaking English and, though only 18, already worked as a translator for a tourist agency. He had great aspirations of how to improve Penjikent and make it a more international place, which is always good to see in young people in Central Asia.
The next morning, we got a taxi to the Uzbek border. We had planned on another day in Penjikent, but we got such a bad vibe from Nematov that we just wanted to get away. It's only 30 minutes to the Uzbek border, and from there only 40 minutes to Samarkand, so it didn't take long. We didn't have any problems at the border, but I was really worried because I had the bullet I picked up along the Afghan border in my purse and worried that might set off the metal detector. The Uzbek guard saw my jewelry box in the metal detector and I had to get it out from the very bottom of my backpack to show a few silver chains to him. He said I should have declared them on my customs form, and that if he were a jerk he could confiscate them and get me in big big trouble, but luckily for me he was in a good mood and just sent on our way, suggesting we buy a donkey since our bags were so heavy.
We got to Samarkand and immediately got a taxi to Shakhrisabz, Tamerlane's hometown. We checked out the Ak-Saray Palace, built by Tamerlane and at one point was more beautiful than all the sights in Samarkand. Now it's gone except for a few pieces of it, but it was nice to imagine how big the palace once had been. There was also a giant statue of Tamerlane. He had built a crypt for himself also here, but when he died the pass between Samarkand and Shakhrisabz was closed, so his body was buried in Samarkand instead. We spent 3 lazy days resting in cafes and in our homestay. The homestay was the best place I've stayed in Central Asia. The grandfather was wonderfully nice and hospitable, and just all around a super guy. He gave us 2 free meals even though they should have been 6$ each, and always had bottles of water to give to us and even gave me his granddaughter's Uzbek fan when I said I was interested in getting one. Instead of a plastic/wooden fan that you open, it's a wooden stick with a piece of fabric on it. You spin the fabric around on the stick and it creates a great breeze. The homestay also had a functional shower with warmish water (!!! the first GOOD shower since April in Bishkek!!!!) and a nice tapchan (tea bed) too that was usually in the shade. One night after tea and watermelon we even fell asleep under the stars. If you ever want to go somewhere just to relax, Shakhrisabz is the place for you!
We then took a taxi back to Samarkand, where we spent the day walking around and re-seeing all the sights we saw in winter. I'm so glad we saw it in winter, because it was a huge construction site this time around. All the main roads around the center were torn up and all the store fronts were being "beautified," so all the shops were closed. It took ages just to find somewhere selling cold drinks. At midnight we got a train to Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakstan, the westernmost region of Uzbekistan.
The people of Karakalpakstan are not Uzbek but Karakalpak. They speak their own language, which is Turkic, but more similar to Kazakh than to Uzbek. My rudimentary Kyrgyz translates Karakalpakstan as "the land of the black hats," but I'm not sure if that's really what it's supposed to mean. A kalpak is the Kyrgyz national black and white felt hat, but it might have some other meaning too...
The train wagon where our beds were was full of children who had just finished up a summer camp in Tashkent and were headed home to Nukus. All the kids (aged about 8-16) were very interested to talk to us, and one boy who spoke Russian acted as the translator between Mike and me and about 30 Karakalpak kids. They were all orphans, which was so sad since they were all so nice and polite! The Russian speaking kid, Vladimir, looked a lot like Freddie Highmore (Charlie from the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie) and I would have adopted him in a second! He said he had a mother, so I don't know why he lived in an orphanage. All the boys on the train had a hobby of making animals with little folded pieces of silver paper, like gum wrappers, and they showed us some of the things they made. They were amazing! Hundreds and hundreds of little folded silver papers made a giant swan. They gave us a little swan and a snake they'd made, and even though they've fallen apart in my luggage since then, I really hope I can put them back together when I get to Istanbul because they are really pretty. After about 18 hours in the train driving through a very sandy desert for the entire day, we arrived in Nukus.
We found a hotel and spent a bit wandering around the city looking for food. Nukus is definitely nothing special- the only thing Lonely Planet lists is an art museum, which is meant to be the best in Central Asia. Since Mike and I don't like art, that wasn't anything for us. We found a Georgian restaurant and had some pretty good lagman.
The next day, we caught a bus going up to Moynaq, a fishing village that used to be on the shores of the Aral Sea, once one of the world's largest bodies of water. However, because of the Soviet desire to turn Central Asia's deserts into successful cotton producers, the Aral Sea was irrigated much too much, and the lake shrunk, creating one of the world's worst environmental disasters. Now, the sea split into two parts, and the fishing town of Moynaq is now hundreds of kilometers from the water's edge. We were going to see the former shoreline and rusting hulks of fishing boats that are now resting in the middle of the desert. It was terrible to see and hear about what life is now like in Moynaq. Our taxi driver talked about how the economy used to be back when there was water, and the welcome sign at the entrance of the town still has a fish on it. Now it's just a little desert village. We walked up a hill where we could look over where the water used to be. There were 6 fishing boats lined up, and 2 more a bit further away. They used to be located all around the city, but sometime recently they were all brought to this one place, to serve as a memorial (and maybe make it easier for tourists to find them). There were big posterboards showing arial pictures of the sea in the 1960s and the sea now, and articles explaining how the fishing and muskrat industry was great back then and now Moynaq has lost everything. It was definitely a depressing day. We caught an afternoon bus back to Nukus, and the next morning spent some hours getting to Khiva by bus and shared taxi.
I'll write about our time in Khiva, Bukhara, and Tashkent soon. Early tomorrow morning Mike and I are flying to Istanbul! We'll be there a week looking for a job and an apartment, exploring the city, and hopefully swimming a lot, and then we're going to Austria to meet up with my parents for 2 weeks. Yay!
Mike and I spent 3 days in Dushanbe, where there wasn't much to do. It was too hot to have done anything anyways, so we just sat around in some of the many leafy green parks and read books.
We took a shared taxi up to the northern Tajik city of Khojand. It was a tough mountain road to get over, but luckily for visitors to Tajikistan in the future, there is a tunnel being built as we speak by Chinese road crews. Our driver seemed like a good guy, almost too good- he offered to tow two cars up different stages of the mountain pass, so we wasted a lot of time starting and stopping as the rope connecting the car to our car snapped/came untied/who knows. In the end we didn't get the up the mountain, which isn't surprising considering the steepness and muddiness of the road.
We found a great hotel in Khojand- it was a modernish apartment bloc converted into a hotel, which meant we had a bedroom, an enclosed balcony, a living room, toilet, bathroom and a kitchen (all unfurnished but for 2 twin beds, a table, and a TV with no working channels) all for less than 10$ for the 2 of us. It was a needed break since we paid 15$ each in Dushanbe. We didn't do much in Khojand either- it was really really hot. We spent a few hours swimming in the Syr-Darya river, which was full of businessmen stripping down to their underwear and little children cooling off. If we floated all the way down the river, we'd have ended up in the Northern Aral Sea in Kazakhstan! In an internet cafe, we met up with 2 Tajik guys, one who went to school in Prague and spoke good English, one who spoke very very little English, and they wanted to meet up later on to talk. They took us to a park that evening, where there were tons of people riding on Soviet rides, using paddle boats in the river, and generally just having a good time enjoying the evening coolness. We went up in the ferris wheel to see Khojand from above, ate some ice cream, and then Mike and I took a taxi back to the hotel. There are a lot of Soviet things still left in the city- a giant hammer and sickle statue, and a bust of Marx and Lenin on the side of an apartment bloc. There were many streetside cafes, where we spent most of the days just playing cards and drinking cold drinks.
We took a shared taxi to Penjikent, close to the Uzbek border. We stayed in a Lonely Planet-recommended homestay, but the owner of the homestay Nematov had let the "fame" of Lonely Planet get to his head, and he was sort of an ass. Lonely Planet said that it was full board, but he said that food wasn't included, but wouldn't give us a price as to how much meals would be. He said "whatever you think it's worth," which is never a good way to do business in my book. Lonely Planet also said that he arranges good reliable transport, but it seemed like he arranged very overpriced transport. We met up with 2 English girls at the homestay and wanted to arrange a day trip into the Fan Mountains to see a string of very beautiful turquoise lakes. We found our own taxi for much much cheaper than the Nematov had offered. He took us to the first 2 lakes in a string of 7 (the first one was meant to be the most beautiful), and the taxi driver gave us a few hours to walk around. The lakes were full of the bluest water I've ever seen. We wanted to swim, but the water was horrible cold. We had a picnic and walked a bit around the mountains, and then went back to Penjikent.
In the evening, we said goodbye to the English girls, who were heading to Dushanbe, and set out to find and explore ancient Penjikent, the ruins of the old city. A nice man offered to drive us there when we were asking around for directions, and he took us around the old city a little, telling us the history, and even drove us back to the homestay- all for free! It was the first real hospitality we'd seen in a long time, and after the jerk Nematov and a really not nice guy we met in a cafe, we'd started to think that Penjikent was just full of bad eggs. Luckily, it wasn't so. We also met a nice kid who loved speaking English and, though only 18, already worked as a translator for a tourist agency. He had great aspirations of how to improve Penjikent and make it a more international place, which is always good to see in young people in Central Asia.
The next morning, we got a taxi to the Uzbek border. We had planned on another day in Penjikent, but we got such a bad vibe from Nematov that we just wanted to get away. It's only 30 minutes to the Uzbek border, and from there only 40 minutes to Samarkand, so it didn't take long. We didn't have any problems at the border, but I was really worried because I had the bullet I picked up along the Afghan border in my purse and worried that might set off the metal detector. The Uzbek guard saw my jewelry box in the metal detector and I had to get it out from the very bottom of my backpack to show a few silver chains to him. He said I should have declared them on my customs form, and that if he were a jerk he could confiscate them and get me in big big trouble, but luckily for me he was in a good mood and just sent on our way, suggesting we buy a donkey since our bags were so heavy.
We got to Samarkand and immediately got a taxi to Shakhrisabz, Tamerlane's hometown. We checked out the Ak-Saray Palace, built by Tamerlane and at one point was more beautiful than all the sights in Samarkand. Now it's gone except for a few pieces of it, but it was nice to imagine how big the palace once had been. There was also a giant statue of Tamerlane. He had built a crypt for himself also here, but when he died the pass between Samarkand and Shakhrisabz was closed, so his body was buried in Samarkand instead. We spent 3 lazy days resting in cafes and in our homestay. The homestay was the best place I've stayed in Central Asia. The grandfather was wonderfully nice and hospitable, and just all around a super guy. He gave us 2 free meals even though they should have been 6$ each, and always had bottles of water to give to us and even gave me his granddaughter's Uzbek fan when I said I was interested in getting one. Instead of a plastic/wooden fan that you open, it's a wooden stick with a piece of fabric on it. You spin the fabric around on the stick and it creates a great breeze. The homestay also had a functional shower with warmish water (!!! the first GOOD shower since April in Bishkek!!!!) and a nice tapchan (tea bed) too that was usually in the shade. One night after tea and watermelon we even fell asleep under the stars. If you ever want to go somewhere just to relax, Shakhrisabz is the place for you!
We then took a taxi back to Samarkand, where we spent the day walking around and re-seeing all the sights we saw in winter. I'm so glad we saw it in winter, because it was a huge construction site this time around. All the main roads around the center were torn up and all the store fronts were being "beautified," so all the shops were closed. It took ages just to find somewhere selling cold drinks. At midnight we got a train to Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakstan, the westernmost region of Uzbekistan.
The people of Karakalpakstan are not Uzbek but Karakalpak. They speak their own language, which is Turkic, but more similar to Kazakh than to Uzbek. My rudimentary Kyrgyz translates Karakalpakstan as "the land of the black hats," but I'm not sure if that's really what it's supposed to mean. A kalpak is the Kyrgyz national black and white felt hat, but it might have some other meaning too...
The train wagon where our beds were was full of children who had just finished up a summer camp in Tashkent and were headed home to Nukus. All the kids (aged about 8-16) were very interested to talk to us, and one boy who spoke Russian acted as the translator between Mike and me and about 30 Karakalpak kids. They were all orphans, which was so sad since they were all so nice and polite! The Russian speaking kid, Vladimir, looked a lot like Freddie Highmore (Charlie from the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie) and I would have adopted him in a second! He said he had a mother, so I don't know why he lived in an orphanage. All the boys on the train had a hobby of making animals with little folded pieces of silver paper, like gum wrappers, and they showed us some of the things they made. They were amazing! Hundreds and hundreds of little folded silver papers made a giant swan. They gave us a little swan and a snake they'd made, and even though they've fallen apart in my luggage since then, I really hope I can put them back together when I get to Istanbul because they are really pretty. After about 18 hours in the train driving through a very sandy desert for the entire day, we arrived in Nukus.
We found a hotel and spent a bit wandering around the city looking for food. Nukus is definitely nothing special- the only thing Lonely Planet lists is an art museum, which is meant to be the best in Central Asia. Since Mike and I don't like art, that wasn't anything for us. We found a Georgian restaurant and had some pretty good lagman.
The next day, we caught a bus going up to Moynaq, a fishing village that used to be on the shores of the Aral Sea, once one of the world's largest bodies of water. However, because of the Soviet desire to turn Central Asia's deserts into successful cotton producers, the Aral Sea was irrigated much too much, and the lake shrunk, creating one of the world's worst environmental disasters. Now, the sea split into two parts, and the fishing town of Moynaq is now hundreds of kilometers from the water's edge. We were going to see the former shoreline and rusting hulks of fishing boats that are now resting in the middle of the desert. It was terrible to see and hear about what life is now like in Moynaq. Our taxi driver talked about how the economy used to be back when there was water, and the welcome sign at the entrance of the town still has a fish on it. Now it's just a little desert village. We walked up a hill where we could look over where the water used to be. There were 6 fishing boats lined up, and 2 more a bit further away. They used to be located all around the city, but sometime recently they were all brought to this one place, to serve as a memorial (and maybe make it easier for tourists to find them). There were big posterboards showing arial pictures of the sea in the 1960s and the sea now, and articles explaining how the fishing and muskrat industry was great back then and now Moynaq has lost everything. It was definitely a depressing day. We caught an afternoon bus back to Nukus, and the next morning spent some hours getting to Khiva by bus and shared taxi.
I'll write about our time in Khiva, Bukhara, and Tashkent soon. Early tomorrow morning Mike and I are flying to Istanbul! We'll be there a week looking for a job and an apartment, exploring the city, and hopefully swimming a lot, and then we're going to Austria to meet up with my parents for 2 weeks. Yay!
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