OshKosh B'Gosh!

When I was in second year university it sort of dawned on me that I had never really been to the US.  I mean, I had been to Danville and stuff to get cheap gas in 2003 but I stopped doing that when I realized that US gas is actually of really poor quality and my car burned through it considerably faster than real gas.  But apart from that, I never really had a reason to ever cross the border.  I could see the US from my house, so I knew what I was missing and I was very, very comfortable with it.  However, Bush's reelection in 2004 brought droves and droves of nubile young co-eds from various states to Vancouver who wanted to either snowboard, smoke weed, study at UBC, or enjoy a very non-explosive and actually very relaxed combination of all three.  It's because of this that I learned that in the United States they have a LOT of discounted retail outlets, and as a result I learned there is a store called "OshKosh B'Gaosh!"  To date, this blog post has been the only practical application I have for this entire experience.  

I landed in Osh in late afternoon with dusk approaching quickly.  This always worries me because I had Google-mapped the location of the airport in relation to the city and it was less than favourable.  In fact, for some reason I didn't zoom out far enough to understand where exactly I had to go.  I figured things would just work out.  I was in southern Kyrgyzstan--why would't they?   After I disembarked from the plane I was herded into a section outside where we were to wait for our luggage.  It was a long wait, but well worth it when a tractor and attached trailer backed into us, the ground crew opened the back hatch, and all our luggage tumbled out onto the ground.  Thankful that I didn't pack anything glass (and simultaneously coping with any feelings of loss if I had) I picked up my bag, dusted it off, and walked out of the controlled area to where I expected a plethora of buses and marshrutki to whisk me away to the centre of Osh.  Since there were none, and the ones that did exist were not interested in picking me up, I decided to walk.

I walked for a pretty considerable time too.  I mean, I was expecting loads of people to stop and feel sorry for me.  Why wouldn't they feel sorry for me?  I'm a Canadian citizen on vacation with enough money to fly to Kyrgyzstan and I refuse to pay for a taxi--take pity on me, people of the Fergana Valley.  I reached a junction in the road where I figured a marshrutka would come from.  I was at the confluence of two roads, surely something would pick me up.  A group of women approached from the other road and I assume they felt the same way.  The oldest spoke Russian, as old women are wont to do, and we both determined that no marshrutka was coming from either road.  She took it upon herself to stop the next available car and let the driver know that for a small fee he would be driving us to Osh.  Lucky guy.

We rolled into some peripheral part of Osh and the driver told us that this was the final stop.  The ladies were pleased because it was next to a market and apparently they loved late night shopping.  I decided that this was my chance to pay the full fare and act like some kind of hero but no one said anything and it either went unnoticed or unappreciated and I wasn't able to claim that later on when extracting privileges for myself in future scenarios. 

Uyghurs With Attitude

My trip to the Tajik embassy really opened my eyes to the Bishkek reality.  It really is just an overgrown village with little planning.  I got into a local marshrutka that was apparently going to a nearby village so by the time I realized I should have gotten out I was way outside of Bishkek and there was cattle grazing all over the roads.  It made for an interesting walk back and I found myself remarkably close to where the embassy was.  The embassy process was quick.  $60 for the embassy and for a $10 top up fee, I had access to the GBAO region as well.  No intense psychoanalysis like in NK, just a casual fee paying and that was it.  One handwritten visa and a special stamp later, and all that Tajikistan had to offer was proffered before me.  I asked, "Oh, is the border along the Surkhob river open?" thinking that it was the most natural point of entry to Taj.  He gestured that it was and that it was a stupid question to have asked.  Of course all of Tajikistan is open.

I left triumphant, and with my natural air of hubris I emerged out into the dusty and concrete wasteland of south Bishkek to make my way back into the centre.  An old man, looking rather polished, approached and demanded angrily where the nearest shoe repair was.  For some reason I actually tried to offer advice based on previous shoe repair kiosk sightings, at which point I realized he just needs to get it together and look around him.  They are absolutely everywhere in Bishkek.  The entire city is a playground for shoe repair kiosks, and sometimes there aren't even kiosks, just a small machine on the sidewalk that does aggressive stitching.  And on my way meandering back to the city centre I walked through a market where there was a table selling a variety of pickled vegetables manned by a 7 year old boy with chopsticks who continuously ate from each tub of pickles.  I reflected on how glad I was that the Kyrgyz weren't eligible for EU membership because they would shut this shit down.  

His mom ran out of a nearby cafe and hollered at me if I wanted anything and I thought, "Ummmm, no, I'm fine thank you. 

Then, on a walk through the main street Chuy, I was pulled aside by a police officer who wanted to have a little "chat."  This caused me to have a total panic attack, as I don't interact well with authority figures in the best of circumstances, much less in Kyrgyzstan because our moral compasses are often so misaligned.  When he asked for my passport, I savvily told him I didn't have one, which was a lie I quickly covered up with, "it's in the hotel."  And then he asked for some money, which was not forthcoming.  He then invited me for a coffee - his treat - but my sharp instincts tipped me off that perhaps this wasn't going to be his treat at all.  In fact, somehow I would end up paying for it.  It was just a hunch, but I did everything I could to excuse myself from being in his presence, all the while trying not to reveal any knowledge of Russian.  

And then I encountered two drunks carrying about 4 litres of homemade vodka through a small city square, and they asked me how I was and if I would take pictures of them.  I have a photo essay below which documents this experience.  

This moment was so real.  

And then finally in the evening I met up with a Couch Surfer who was an American studying Central Asian politics at the local university.  He had also spent a year teaching English in Martin, Slovakia, a few years ago, so all of it was pretty interesting and I am glad to have met him.  When we arrived at this great bar, Devyashka, we encountered an American girl who was also studying at the local university and whose father was visiting so the four us grabbed a table and the two students ate horse meat or brain or something with noodles, and I lapped up some lagman, and I have no idea what the father ate but it's not really central to the story.  The father was awesome and was an urban planner from one of the cities in the US.  Washington, or Boston, or somewhere in between.  He told me that the original city plan for Philadelphia was actually submitted as one of the plans to rebuild the City of London after the great fire of the 1660s.  It turns out it came in second so they shipped it off to the colonies like all the other riffraff.  Isn't that interesting?  The girl, on the other hand, was insufferable, and had taken on that smarmy and unimpressed air of a 13 year old girl who has decided that sarcasm is going to be her thing and can't have a fluid conversation because she always has to say something rude and dismissive.  Look, you terrible human being, no one wants to talk to you, none of us want to be here, but I'm just trying to follow social convention and power through this because we're all in this together.  Why do you have to be so awful?  Anyway, the pros and the cons of this evening basically evened out, and once again I am no better off than I was before I had woken up.  

I also ate some fresh bread.  That was pretty good.  

*Yeah, I guess none of the people I dealt with in the first week were actually Uyghurs, but I'd be very, very remiss if I were to pass up an opportunity like this title.  

Up In This Bish

After getting into the GUM at 10am, I realized that you can buy pretty much anything when you're on the border with China.  There was a build-your-own-iPhone kiosk, and several other gadget stands that made me realize anything was possible if you knew how to use an iPhone, or what smartphone technology actually is and how it can help your life, or how to get a phone plan (all of which I do not know how to do and refuse to learn because I think it, like the internet, is just a fad).  Anyway I bought some batteries, rechargeables, and then took off for a Sunday-Funday of exploring Bishkek's downtown. Unfortunately I could never quite find Bishkek's downtown.  It's so spread out and provincial.  I really had no idea where I was at all times and had the hardest time locating the centre and no one was particularly interested in helping me in this.

As it started to cloud over and rain loomed on the horizon, I headed for an expensive cafe to spend more money than I normally spend at home on coffee.  This is something I live for.  At this cafe, which included wifi, I decided to plan out my activities and what I needed to accomplish.  First up, visa to Tajikistan.  I located the Tajik embassy in south Bishkek that I would visit the following day.  The next thing was to figure out what in Bishkek I should actually be concerned with visiting.  Is it so wrong of me to have assumed that Bishkek would be an ancient silk road city with winding streets and mud brick palaces and intrigue around every corner?  There was so little intrigue.  There were just surly locals.  

So as you can imagine I spent a great deal of time figuring out how to get out of Bishkek and start my tour de force of the two least-heard-of Stans.  My first stop would be Osh, and I went to the bus depot to talk with a few of the marshrutka drivers about the possibility of catching a ride to Osh.  Unfortunately there were no buses or marshrutkas, instead I would need to arrange a group taxi and it would cost upwards of $15.  Or 15,000 som, I can't remember.  In any case it sounded absolutely miserable and I just wanted to get to Tajikistan as soon as possible, so that I could make the long and painful journey back to Bishkek.

For some awful reason I decided not to take a group taxi from Bishkek to Osh.  This means missed out on a tonne of things.  The cost was something like 1500 som, or $30, or something.  Group taxis left from the old bus depot.  I felt like this would probably be less than desirable, so for some reason I decided to fly because I was in a rush.  I bought a ticket for $45 on the 3pm flight, which arrived by 3:30 or something.  The problem with this is that I had to then wait around Bishkek for a whole day and then make my way out to the airport, eat overpriced lagman in a cafe outside of Manas International Airport, and then piling onto the old Soviet bomber of an airplane that lethargically took off and on which I was given a free glass of sugary orange drink, then deal with getting from the Osh airport into Osh.  It was at this point I realized how pointless aircraft can be and how I would have much rather just gone by car because it wouldn't have been the first or last uncomfortable car ride I have taken in my life, and it would have provided me with more reference points later in life when someone comments on how awful something was.  Well it was no shared taxi ride to Osh, I can tell you that.  

It was then up to me to decide how I was going to maximize my time in Bishkek before I was going to hit the ol' dusty trail to Osh and take in all the Ferghana Valley had to offer.   I attended the National History Museum which told the take of how the Kyrgyz people, who apparently had their ethnogenesis at the very dawn of time (NOT in the 1920s as a result of an essay by Stalin.  Wrong again, Wikipedia), and which chronicled their triumph through history to the current success story they are today.  I also spent a lot of time looking for the marshrutka that would take me to the airport for 150 som, and it took so long and was such an arduous task that I was resolved to write about where to find it in detail on my blog so that future generations would be able to stand on the shoulders of giants and not waste their time like I did.  Well, I forgot to, and I have since forgotten how to even find this location, so I think we're all just going to have to live with that.  Besides, I'm sure things have changed remarkably since then anyway.  

Bish, Please!

Arriving in Bishkek at 5:10am was awful.  Just awful.  After paying for my 2x-entry visa I was greeted by a wall of greasy, vulturous taxi drivers vying to feast on the fresh meat shipment from Moscow.  One driver in the crowd had a sign that said the name of the hostel I was staying at and I figured it was for me.  So we went to his car in the parking lot and I repeatedly asked him questions trying to trip him up and reveal his game.  I always retained the option of hurling myself out of the door of the Lada if things went south during the ride and screaming, "you have no recourse!" of course.  I always retain that option.  In any case he did drop me off at my guesthouse, a surly 8 year old girl opened the door and led me to a cold bunk that I was to sleep on and provided no sheets or blankets, and I gave the driver a $10 USD because I was feeling generous.  

I was so pleased to be in Kyrgyzstan in late October.  Wouldn't you be?  The weather was delightful, the Tian Shan looked fearful in the distance, and I had 3 weeks off of work due to a technicality and I couldn't be happier.  When I finally woke up from my slumber at around 9am I set off for the town.  At first I had to arrange with the local caretaker, in this case a 10 year old girl, how many nights I would stay and pay up.  I didn't have a great deal of Kyrgyz money (I had none) so I promised to pay later and as collateral offered to help with her English homework.  Her workbook used a lot of contractions, however, which I did not approve of, and she kept insisting that I do the work for her instead.  I said, "Look, I don't know what kind of operation you're running here, but you are never going to learn if I do this English work for you" which was my way of covering up any possible mistake I could make because English is hard and I am glad I never had to learn it.  Just look at the typos in this blog I refuse to retroactively correct.  It's a living testament to how needlessly complex our global lingua anglia is (see what I did there?).

The first thing I did in Bishkek was find batteries.  My camera was from 2006 and still used double A batteries (lolz, I know, right?).  I went to the local GUM store and realized that it didn't open until 10 on a Sunday.   I used this time to look for some coffee and breakfast, which I found in the kiosk right next to the GUM.  I could overhear American English being spoken and after I finished my absolutely atrocious instant coffee I interrupted them to ask if they knew where the Osh Bazaar was. They looked at me in a "Umm, wtf do you think you're doing?" sort of way and said, "We don't know."  I said, "Okay" and assuming it ended there, was about to walk off.  Then one person said, "We're not from here."  Well, yeah.  I mean…yeah.  Of course you're not from here.  Anyway, I wasn't interested but decided to ask, "Oh, where are you from?"  Then they said, "About 30 minutes that way," gesturing in some vague direction.  "Okay" once again I uttered, at this point still not really interested.  "Yeah…we can't tell you where we're from."  Okay NOW I'm interested, but I feigned disinterest and walked away.   I once read a book called The Charm School that someone had left in a campsite fire pit when I was park ranger and it was all about a secret spy training school in the Soviet Union where the instructors where all POW American soldiers who had to teach young spies how to speak and act like Americans.  I assumed there was a Charm School 30 minutes outside Bishkek and these multicultural youths with Californian mall-rat inflections in their tones were recent graduates.  I mean, it's really the only logical explanation.  

Sharing a Moment in Sheremetyevo, or: how my plan to study maps of Central Asia and brush up on the Russian language was foiled by Strawberry pulp vodka

Yep, that's right: I'm in Moscow.  As in Russia.  I am finally making my dreams happen and I am going to Bishkek, which is what all young men should be doing on their journeys to "find themselves."  Thank god I spent so much time reading War and Peace because it has really prepared me for the raw Russian spirit and the harsh realities of the Russian landscape.  Or at least it would have if I were allowed to leave the airport without getting shot.  You have no idea how tense it was flying into this place and not being sure if my flight was in fact leaving from the same terminal.  And the worst part is that I did not even get a Russian stamp on my passport.  It's like I wasn't even here.  

Anyway, during my 7 hour layover at Sheremetyevo a lady dropped her keys in front of my and when I handed them back to her she saw my map of central Asia and sat down next to me with her friend and immediately began asking me questions about my trip to “Tashkent.”  No sooner had I responded with “Bishkek” than she pulled out a 1 litre bottle of strawberry pulp vodka, cracked the lid, and passed it around.  She was from Yaroslavl, was flying to Belgrade to meet her husband who works in oil, and had a fear of flying that only strawberry pulp vodka could cure.  She absolutely loved me too.  I would say, “Thank goodness I’m an attractive, Caucasian male” but I don’t think I’m that good-looking as I always have that weary traveler look.  Although I do seem to appeal to the over-35 crowd.  Anyway, I think she was more drawn to the fact that I spoke Russian.   In any case they kept saying “Tashkent” and I kept telling them “Bishkek” but I think we need to stop for a second and remember that in the Russian geopolitical imagination, it’s all “Turkestan.”

Other features of Sheremetyevo include insanely overpriced beer, stale sandwiches, and these fantastic vacuums that smokers all hover around and puff away.  They are very powerful.  Apart from that, there wasn't a lot to do except finish the strawberry pulp vodka and wait for my 11pm flight to the heartland.  Just watch me permeate the World Island, MacKinder.  

Moscow Moment. 

Juicy Kotor

Did you know I have never been to the Bay of Kotor before?  I have a really weird relationship with Montenegro.  I spent a considerable amount of time in Podgorica before realizing that I didn't want to sleep the night there. (all it took was a 3 hour walk that confirmed no good pizza to be had and I'm sorry but what exactly do you expect to offer me if your pizza game is so weak?)  But aside from that, and aside from the arduous katabasis I had taken from the Kosovo border a year and a half prior, I didn't have a lot of experience with Montenegro. 

Oh, wait, that's not true at all.  I also drove through Montenegro in May of 2010 with GDN, and the border guards made us pay 10 euro for a "Green Tax" or something for our car and we were also hassled in Podgorica by a cop who stopped us and claimed we went through a red light when several other cars followed us (sans Albanian plates) and were not stopped.  We felt the cold sting of racial profiling in that moment but we countered with the sting of Western privilege which ultimately won the day.*

Anyway, the Bay of Kotor was really pretty but it really made you realize why the Montengrins and the Balkan littoral was never really taken seriously as a place for port development.  The mountains are so sharp and there are no major waterways flowing into the Adriatic that things just sort of ended there.  We had a nice house right on the water and could see several cruise ships passing through into bay which were hideously ugly but there was little I could do about it.  I was actually really sick by this point and spent most of my time in agony hoping I would get over the flu or whatever I picked up in Latvia.  

Tell me about it!  My entire time in Montenegro was a constant reminder of what a constant struggle life is.

We made routine pilgrimages to Kotor the city and other areas around the bay, which were really beautiful.  We also went to Cetinje and did the embassy tour of the city, which was pretty fun but I can only imagine being a young diplomat in the late 1800s and being totally pissed off that I was sent to a tiny principality.  Still, they probably had pretty bumpin' parties. 

After this, I took the bus to Podgorica where I decided to walk to the airport because I had nothing but time, and on my way there I saw a family drag an enormous squealing pig out of a barn and then slaughter it.  That was pretty real.  

*I'm no stranger to getting stopped by cops in Montenegro at other times, as well.  When we drove to Podgorica to drop my brother off for his flight back to wherever (probably Istanbul or whatever hub services Baku at the most reasonable rate) my dad was apparently taking the speed limit as a suggestion.  This is something I think is a totally reasonable assumption to make, considering my experiences with motoring in the Balkans, but that's neither here nor there in this story.  We were stopped by some policeman and told that we had to pay 300 euros, at the local police station the next business day.  My brother, who is no stranger to corruption, suggested asking the driver "if there was another way to resolve this" because we were tourists and passing through the country.  For some reason the cop just let us go because he probably didn't want to do the paperwork.  

Bouncing Through Beograd

Belgrade, you saucy minx, we tango again.  Belgrade was just a quick stopover as I de-planed and made my way to the centre of the city by bus and spent the afternoon totally enjoying every aspect my life basking in the Balkan sun, after shivering feverishly in the icy, salty Baltic gales.  So I did what I have done every time I have visited Belgrade since 2007: I went to Ruski Tsar for an absolutely delicious calzone and went to a park with a beer to sit and just soak it up, you know?  I also used this time to do some reading (on the Wikipedia app on my iTouch) about…Russian literature or something.  Yes, Soviet dissident lit.  My fav.  It was a review some American girl had written about Children of the Arbat.  I agreed with her general synopsis, even if I only read the book in 2006 and can only remember a couple of really intense details that made me pretty happy I was born in the West.   

I also bought my ticket to Korcula, which was an insane 50 euro, and then I went and sat on the fortress walls on the cliffs over the Danube to watch the sun go down.  If you have never done this, then there is actually nothing you can tell me that will impress me.  This is probably the most beautiful view in the world and a pretty straight-line vision to the Austrians approaching from the north via the Great Hungarian Plain, as well as offensive graffiti below and hot Serbian babes posing for pouty pictures taken by their hulking bouncer boyfriends in tracksuits.  It's really the most perfect place on earth. 

The bus ride was pretty horrific though.  I actually have no idea where it even went.  I recall at one point getting out to get stamped into Croatia, and I am assuming I went through Bosnia, but try ascertaining that from looking at my passport.  Anyway I woke up totally disoriented somewhere outside of Neum and I was all "lolz, been here" and then we finally arrived at the ferry to begin the less-than-arduous journey to Korcula, which I could see from the terminal.  It was all pretty simple, actually.  Then at the bus terminal in Korcula my parents were there to casually greet me and were all, "Oh hey"--you know, the way you do when you're in Marco Polo's hometown and it's NDB.