Tickets booked!

I went back to the travel agents yesterday afternoon: to book a flight and to use their courier service to get the visa. Unfortunately the British Airways flight I had intended to take was now full - good-bye to my cheap ticket. Every BA flight to Bishkek, from now until 17th September, is full. There aren't many other options unless you're willing to spend at least 1500 EUR. Lufthansa don't fly to Bishkek, but they do fly to Alma-Ata (Almaty) in Kazakhstan, and from there it's a three-hour bus journey to Bishkek, but the flights alone are about 1900 EUR now. Ryanair and Easyjet haven't yet ventured into Central Asia. What about trying the local carrier? Well, Kyrgyz Air was founded in 2002. It had one plane. Two planes were apparently ordered, but only one was delivered and used.
Kyrgyz Air ceased operations in 2003.

Deciding that hitch-hiking to Bishkek was not the best idea, there was only one other option: fly with Aeroflot via Moscow for 950 EUR.

I can't say I'm too happy about this. Aeroflot are not renowned for the safety of the aeroplanes. "Service with a scowl" is their unofficial motto. This story was in the news shortly before I went to Ukraine in 2004. You can read the original article here, or below. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3910965.stm

Two flight attendants have attacked a passenger in an unprecedented case of reverse air-rage, according to Russia's leading airline Aeroflot. A medical examination after the flight showed the cabin attendants were heavily intoxicated.
Another passenger told that the stewards distributed in-flight meals only when the plane started its descent, and managed to spill large quantities of food on the floor.
"At this point I noticed something was wrong," the passenger said. "Only about half the meals ended up on the tables or in the laps of passengers, the rest ended up on the floor.
We left the plane with lunch-boxes crunching beneath our feet."

Well, if I worked for a company which advertised with pictures like this one to the left, perhaps I wouldn’t be such a ray of sunshine myself. To be honest, I don’t understand the caption, maybe it’s a really catchy slogan in Russian. On the other hand, it could be an advert to recruit stewardesses for all I know.

I can't find the other article relating to this drunk-steward story, but if I remember rightly it turned out that the stewards had been enjoying the in-flight drinks cabinet and were too drunk to serve the passengers. Not prepared to go thirsty, one passenger decided to get a drink for his wife. The stewards were rather unhappy to find him mixing a cocktail and beat him up.
When the plane landed in Nizhnevartovsk (Siberia) it turned out this passenger was the local big-shot businessman, and he promptly had the stewards arrested.

My passport is now en route to the Kyrgyz Consulate which will hopefully grant me a "normal" visa. This should be back with me in time for my Aeroflot flight from Berlin on Friday morning (1st September).

Now I just need to get vaccinated against Diptheria, Typhoid, Tetanus, Hepatitis B...

Above:
Ivanovska, Katerina.
Doesn't know the dialling code for Ivanovska, Kyrgyzstan.