I'm so happy...

And here's one for Joris.
This woman is actually American, not Kyrgyz. When I found this photo it had the caption "I'm so happy, I could shave." The bearded lady in question works in circus in America and presumably if she does shave she would be out of a job, so hopefully logic will overcome her good mood and she will keep the beard. If you're worried, Joris, we may be able to begin an internet petition asking her to keep her beard especially for you. It looks like she doesn't have a fan club yet so perhaps you could start one?

I've been in Kyrgyzstan for four weeks now and I still haven't seen a bearded lady here. I've also found out why there are so many theatres: it's because people here seem to call any kind of indoor public entertainment building a 'theatre' - so a cinema is called a 'movie theatre', and the opera house is also classed as a theatre. I've been inside one movie theatre so far and there were no bearded ladies there. The only bearded lady I can find is in the picture above.

A friend of one of my students is a big Bollywood fan and she fell in love with a Bollywood actor. She was so desperate to meet him that she began stealing from shops to fund her flight to Mumbai. However, she was caught and sent to prison. She sent a letter from her cell to the actor explaining her situation and he has agreed to meet her when she is released from jail. So there's hope for Joris yet.

Day 6 – rush-hour in marshrutka

Difficult or not, today I had to wake up in the morning. Lena was taking me to a friend of hers who had studied in London and was keen to meet me. She also told me to bring my certificate of graduation from University.

This friend was Korean and lived in Sector 12 of Bishkek, so it was a good 35 minutes by marshrutka. I’d heard that these little buses were packed in the mornings, but I wasn’t ready for this. I thought the bus was full and we wouldn’t be getting on, but Lena squeezed in and I ended up perched on the dashboard facing the back of the bus, neck bent because of the roof, and with the driver grumbling that my English bottom, with which his bus was greeting the oncoming traffic, was blocking his view of the wing mirror.

As the marshrutka progressed through the city, a couple of people would get off at each stop only to be replaced by three or four more people. How many people were on board? I tried to count, but couldn’t see far enough to count all the people standing, let alone those sitting. There must have been at least 20, maybe 30 people on board. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if we crashed. I’d be picking shards of glass out of my arse for weeks. Of course, marshrutkas offer a perfect opportunity for pick-pockets, of which there are many in Bishkek, and as an Englishman I was an obvious and easy target. So I tried to protect my pockets, maintain my balance, and keep my backside out of the driver’s way, all at the same time.
I had no idea where Lena was. Had she got off without me noticing? Was I alone on a marshrutka with no idea where I was going, or how to get back? For the time being, there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t even look for her: at the last stop, my T-shirt had got caught in the door, and now I was trapped until the next stop.

Public transport was different in Pakistan. For one thing, they would squeeze four people onto two seats, and had few people standing. Conversely, they would increase the capacity with people hanging onto the sides of the bus, and then double the capacity by putting people on the roof. Another big difference was the segregation. Women would sit at the front of the bus with the driver, or sometime in the back, with four women squeezed onto a bench of two seats, but never with men unless it was a husband or father or something. Bishkek, with its own form of sexual equality, crams as many people onto a bus as possible, regardless of race, gender, size or shape. Equality is a good thing, but maybe a little discrimination against people who haven’t washed for weeks would be better. I’m not calling for anything severe: maybe just a small law stating that they are not allowed onto marshrutkas, and certainly not allowed to stand with arms raised and their fully-loaded armpits pointing directly at my nose. Buses here are just plain buses, without any artwork. In Pakistan they were bigger and covered in gaudy decoration (see picture. I can't find any good photo of a marshrutka.)

As we got further from the centre of Bishkek, more people began to get off, until I could give the driver a free view of his wing mirror, escape the armpits, and push my way down the bus in search of Lena. There she was, sitting serenely on a seat at the back. The front of the bus was still packed with people, the back had no free seats but plenty of free standing room, and with a roof above head height.
Lesson no. 1: get to the back of the marshrutka, unless you really want to greet oncoming traffic with your bottom and bury your nose in someone’s unwashed armpits.

Lena was quite amused by my experiences. She seems to take delight in the fact that I don’t really have a clue what I’m doing here. An old lady prodded me in the leg and said something unintelligible before pushing me out of the way. “She said she needed to get up. You can have her seat,” explained Lena. Why do Russian people sound so aggressive when they’re being nice?

By the time we reached Sector 12, the marshrutka was empty: just me, Lena, and the lingering smell of those armpits. The Korean gentleman worked in an office as a private lawyer based in a modern-looking shopping centre surrounded by crumbling Soviet-era apartment blocks. He was a nice chap, though I found it hard to believe he had lived in London for three years. He still had a very strong Korean accent and it was difficult to understand him. Not having much to say for himself, he showed me photos of his recent wedding, and I realised that the beautiful Kyrgyz girl in the office was actually his wife. She looked about 14 to me, but you can’t get married before you’re 18 in Kyrgyzstan. She was actually 19 years old. I’m not sure if all Kyrgyz lie about their ages or if they just age slowly here, especially when they’re young. In Pakistan, guessing people’s ages was a hit-and-miss affair, because often they didn’t know themselves. Here it seems you guess the age, add five years, and you’re in the right area.

The hidden purpose behind the visit became clear: as a lawyer, Sergei (how many Koreans do you know called Sergei?) could vouch for the translation of my certificate of graduation, which his wife and Lena began translating. As a graduate of Cardiff University, my certificate is bi-lingual, in Welsh and English. Conversely, although I’ve graduated from Cardiff University, I’m not bilingual. The English the girls translated without too much trouble; the Welsh caused some arguments before they gave up.

Now that the rush-hour had passed, the marshrutka ride back into town was less chaotic. I started lessons at 1pm and worked until 8.30. Talking Club with the Intermediate classes was interesting; grammar was often difficult. To make it worse, Ulan asked me to cover some Talking Club classes with Elementary students. That was really tough. How do you have conversations with people who know just a few dozen words in English – and how do you spin it out for a 70-minute lesson? By the end of the day I was again exhausted, and not too happy when Ulan asked me to start at 7.45 the next day: one of the teachers was ill and another was due in court (she’s in the final stages of adopting a Kyrgyz boy as her son) and so he needed me in all day to cover for them.
Home, bed and, eventually, sleep.

Day 5 – teaching begins

My feeling yesterday that the school was a little chaotic was wrong: ‘little’ is an understatement. Ulan wasn’t sure where he wanted me, which classes needed teaching, and which teachers were available. To be fair to him, this does seem to be out of his control. New students arrive every day, other students drop out without warning as they realise that this year they have to focus on their university lectures (in universities in Kyrgyzstan, students must attend their lectures or they are not allowed to sit the exams), and one teacher had come back to work not fully healthy. In a small school like this, each teacher makes up 15% of the staff, so one absentee makes quite a difference.
Having said that, when I ask Ulan which class I’m teaching, his first response is always “What day is it?” and then “What time is it?”
When Ulan isn’t teaching, he’s interviewing prospective pupils, fielding questions from current pupils, and trying to keep his staff happy. The school is his business, its success determines whether or not he earns a living, and he is there from 7.30am until some time after 10.30pm every day, as well as Saturday and often Sunday work too. And he repairs the toilet, which breaks every couple of days.

Without a proper timetable prepared for me, each lesson began with Ulan saying something like: “Take this class. They’re Intermediate. Talking Club. Talk to them, involve them, get to know them, I’ll be with you in 5 minutes.’ These, of course, were five Kyrgyz minutes, which often lasted longer than the lesson itself.
Mostly I was greeted with curiosity from the students. Who was I, where was I from, what was I doing there. And, usually after they'd found out my name, whether I was married. Invariably my reply of 'No' was met with the question "Why not?"

Below: Chenghiz, sitting in the school office. You see? There are people here called Chenghiz.

Naturally, the students enjoy Talking Club more than grammar, and when I tried to teach grammar to one of the “less-able” Intermediate Classes I soon ran into trouble. If a student doesn’t understand the grammar, you can try to explain it. If a student doesn’t speak English well enough to understand the explanation, somebody else in the class can explain it to them. If none of the students speaks English well enough, what do you do?
One class asked me outright: “If you don’t speak Russian, how are you going to teach grammar to us?” [Actually: "You no speak Russian... teach grammar???"] That was a good question. I didn’t have a good answer. They did: “How about we have Talking Club today?” Since it was my second day, I decided this was a very good idea.
I mentioned this problem to Ulan, and he wisely decided not to send me to teach grammar to any more Elementary classes.

At the end of the day I was knackered, but still, sleep took a few hours to come. Jetlag when flying from west to east is meant to be harder to shake off, but I’d been hoping to adjust more quickly than this. If I could fall asleep before midnight, I could get up at a reasonable time and adjusting would be easy. But lying awake until after 3am makes it difficult to wake up in the morning.

Day 4 – A new week, a new school.

Ulan had asked me to come and sit in on some lessons in the afternoon, to get a feel for how the school worked. After another night of sleeping badly, I slept most of the morning; not the best way to recover from jet-lag.

The school is a small one, with just four classrooms. Lessons last one hour and twrnty minutes, beginning at 7.40 in the morning and running until 8.30 at night. Students attend one lesson per day: they go to ‘normal’ school or university or work during the day, and pay to come to this school for additional English lessons. In theory this means the students all come because they want to learn. It also means that teachers have to keep the students happy or else they’ll take their money somewhere else. This makes it very different from the school I taught at in Pakistan, where pupils attended the school all day, wore uniforms, stood up when a teacher entered the room and called the male teachers “sir”. At this school in Bishkek, students are on first-name terms with the teachers.

Writing about the school is a bit difficult. My contract obliges me not to divulge information about the school to outsiders. On the other hand, I still haven’t signed a contract (three weeks after arriving, this sentence is still true.) Talking of other things I haven’t done, nobody has said anything about an HIV/AIDS test, so the test I had done in Germany really does seem to have been a waste of time and money.
There are two kinds of lessons: Grammar, and Talking Club. Their names are pretty self-explanatory. The students are divided into three basic categories: Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced, though there are variations within these.
Picture: The entrance to the school. Note the colour of the carpet.

I’d spent Sunday evening looking over the grammar books. These are American, so the vocabulary includes words like “gotten”, “drop-by”, and “apartment”, the spelling has lots of ‘z’s all over the place in words like “organize’ but a depressing shortage of the letter ‘u’ in words like “color”; of course, there is a strong tendency to boldly split infinitives as much as possible.
[Note for anybody confused: correct spellings/words are: got, flat, organise, colour; and infinitives should not be split.]

The first day of lessons was interesting. Teaching the Elementary classes looked difficult, but Talking Club with the more advanced students looked like it had the potential to be enjoyable. I had the feeling that the school was a little chaotic, but like in other former Soviet countries the school year begins on 1st September, so it was the second day of a new term for everybody. In any case, Kyrgyz people are not the best organised in the world. In fact, they’re probably the least organised people I’ve met. And when it comes to being disorganised, I know what I’m talking about.

On a different subject...

Waiting for the post to upload, I was skimming the news and came across this article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/5371500.stm
[copy and paste the link if clicking on it doesn't work.]

"Women don't come here so often, and they shouldn't eat testicles," says Nancy solemnly."

Day 3 - more mutton.

Ulan was keen to introduce me to more Kyrgyz food, and the next day we arranged to meet again for dinner. I remembered something he'd said the day before:
"In Kyrgyzstan, breakfast is at about 9am. Dinner is at 2 or 3pm and then supper is at 8.00 or 9pm."
When he told me he'd pick me up at 12.30 to go for a meal, I had my suspicions. After another sleepless night due to jet-lag I was ready by 12.30 and made sure I had enough to do to occupy myself for the next two hours. True to form, Ulan arrived some time after 2pm, with no explanation or apology.

Ulan was accompanied by his wife. Meeting her was a little odd because in Pakistan the only wives I met were over 50 years old. Ulan's wife was young, petite, and heavily pregnant. She didn't say much; I wasn't sure if this was in her nature or in her role as submissive housewife. In Kyrgyz culture there is a very distinct line between the man and the woman, and traditionally the man is involved in manly things like hunting and fighting while the woman does womanly things like raising the family and cooking.
Below: a Russian car. Not much to do with the post, but there are cars like this on the streets here. I can't get the photos off my camera yet and this is all I could find.

In the car, I tactfully raised the topic of punctuality in Germany compared with other countries like, I don't know, Spain, or even Kyrgyzstan, perhaps. Ulan confirmed that yes, people in Kyrgyzstan are not the most punctual in the world.
The reason seems to be that guests can call in at any time so if a relative makes a spontaneous visit to you, you are busy entertaining them and your own plans are put on hold. If this means somebody somewhere else has to wait for you, that's none of your concern. Anyway, the chances are that the person you're meeting is going to be late anyway, so no harm is done. I wondered if this lack of punctuality is connected to the fact that nomadic people probably didn't bother telling the time that accurately. Summer, winter, morning, evening, that's as much as you require. Do you really need to know when it's exactly 3.28pm if you're herding sheep from one pasture to the next?

We drove to the same restaurant as the day before. Partly because Ulan likes it, partly because yesterday they'd run out of the food he'd wanted me to try. Again, the bread and kajmak came; this time Ulan instructed me to break it. Again, omin was performed. Today, the tea arrived promptly, and Ulan's wife took care of the pouring. After yesterday's lesson on seating plans, I noticed that she sat closer to the 'door', giving Ulan the seat further from the waiter's aisle. At this table there was no seat facing the 'door' so I could sit opposite him. Although it didn't give me a seat as an honoured guest, it did make conversation a lot easier.

The food came and I beheld a bowl of manty. This is a very popular dish in Kyrgyzstan: think of ravioli, but much bigger. The filling is a mixture of minced lamb and onion, possibly with a little potato and carrot added too. It tastes similar to Shepherd's Pie without the mashed potato. The casing isn't pasta as we know it in Europe, but I don't know how else to describe it: Kyrgyz pasta, perhaps. It's quite sloppy as it sits in a bowl of meaty juices, and the manty tend to break when you pick them up - of course, traditionally the food here is eaten by hand. One dish is actually called "five fingers" because you dig your hand into a communal plate of rice and scoop a handful into your mouth. Hygiene? What's that? Chopsticks didn't spread this far west from China, and knives and forks didn't spread so far east from Europe. Picking up and trying to eat sloppy manty the size of a tennis ball requires a lot of slurping. After slurping our way through a few hot manty, Ulan ordered some spoons. The manty still tasted good when eaten with spoons, and less slurping was required.
Above: a photo of Uzbek manty. I couldn't find any photos of Kyrgyz manty. Kyrgyz manty are much paler, less wrinkly but much juicier (sloppier) and are not served with salad or slices of melon.

Throughout all this, Ulan's wife plied us with tea, served in small round bowls which you hold by the rim and the thicker porcelain at the bottom to protect your fingers from the heat. I found it a little odd that somebody so pregnant should be taking care of two healthy young men (Ulan is a year older than me); on the other hand, when we'd finished eating, she took advantage of her status as a pregnant woman. She said something to Ulan and he ordered more food for her; "the baby is hungry and wants meat" he explained to me. Then the baby apparently wanted some kebabs, and Ulan ordered kebabs. Then this baby with very specific demands wanted some green tea. His wife wasn't just 'eating for two', she was eating enough for three or four people and I was impressed at how much food she could tuck away.And it was true: the hot tea did wash away most of the mutton fat from the roof of my mouth.

Ulan's wife is not Kyrgyz, but Kazakh. I asked him what language they communicated in. He said it was a mixture. She could understand some English but never spoke any. He said he wasn't so happy speaking in Russian - I wasn't sure if he meant this because he is Kyrgyz and not Russian, or if he isn't so good at Russian after spending most of his life in the US - but they often speak in a mixture of Kazakh and Kyrgyz. And, for a change, they use a little Japanese from time to time; not that they speak much Japanese, but they both seemed to have studied it at some point. So five languages are used in their house.

Her family live in or somewhere near Almaty, a city in the south east of Kazakhstan, about three hours from Bishkek. In Central Asian tradition, the woman follows the man, so if he wants to live in another city, she lives there too. A certain somebody reading this should give serious consideration to adopting some of the wonderful cultural traditions when she comes to visit. ;-) On the other hand, unlike in Pakistan where the bride's parents pay a dowry for the husband to take the girl off their hands, in Kyrgyzstan the husband has to buy the bride from her parents.
There are some interesting marital traditions in Kyrgyzstan, not least the practice of kidnapping the woman you want to marry. I'll talk about them in another post.

A Kyrgyz Meal

The food was cooked at the entrance to the restaurant, with a large grill to one side and some kind of open oven to the other in which bread is cooked. Salads and side-dishes appeared to be prepared indoors. We sat at a table.

This was nothing like in a European restaurant. The table itself was just 18 inches high and surrounded on the floor by thin mattresses which were backed by cushions. The clientele reclined on these mattresses, and the table was at the right height to allow eating at this position. The entire "floor"(mattresses, cushions and table) was raised a couple of feet off the ground. So although people were sitting on the 'floor' they were well above ground level. Noting that everybody else was shoe-less, I took mine off before sitting. Ulan sat opposite and told me I was sitting in the wrong "seat". Making me move further round the table so that I was sitting at 90 degrees to him, he explained the importance of the correct seating plan in Kyrgyz tradition

A nomadic people, for centuries the Kyrgyz and their Kazakh cousins had travelled across the steppe and the mountains, camping each night in yourts ("yoorts"). These are large circular tents made from felt, animal skins and wood, which are cool in the summer and warm in the winter. A circular opening in the peak of the roof allows smoke from the fire in the centre of the yourt to escape and lets fresh air in. Entry is by the single doorway. The warmest seat is therefore the seat furthest from the door and it is in this seat the head of the family, or the guest, sits. This tradition continues today, and so Ulan, as my host, made me sit in what would be the guest's seat, i.e. with the table between me and the aisle along which the waiter walked.

Ulan ordered food: relieved to hear that I was not vegetarian, he ordered some meat dishes, salad, break, soft drinks and tea. The bread soon arrived with a pot of white stuff which looked a little like clotted cream. The bread was circular and leavened, fresh from the oven by the doorway, with a soft crust around the circumference perhaps an inch thick, and then thin and flat in the middle. The "loaf" was about 9 inches in diameter. Ulan tore the bread into peaces, explaining that in Kyrgyz culture although the women take care of the food, tearing the bread is the man's job. The meal then began with omin, an Islamic action in which you pass your hands slowly down across your face as if cleaning it, then rub your hands together as if washing them. This indicates that the meal has begun, the idea being that you have announced to Allah that you are eating, and until you repeat this gesture at the end of the meal to signify that you have finished, your life is effectively paused and you will (hopefully) be free from interruption.
The torn bread was dipped into the white stuff. It was indeed a kind of cream, kajmak ("kaimuk"), which I was familiar with from my time in Serbia. This is a traditional start to the meal in Kyrgyzstan. The bread was good, soft and fresh, and was complemented by the kajmak. Simple food for simple people.

After three quarters of an hour, even Ulan was getting impatient, and asked the waiter when the food would be arriving. “Three minutes” came the reply. These were – naturally – three Kyrgyz minutes, and the food did not arrive for another 20 minutes or so. The tea never made an appearance, but the shashlik kebabs were good. Very good. At the end of the meal, we repeated the omin gesture.

The problem with eating fatty meat like lamb is the after-taste in your mouth. According to my guide, the authors’ number one ‘pet-hate’ of Central Asia is “the taste of congealed mutton fat on the roof of your mouth.” Ulan explained that hot tea helps digest the fat, and presumably it helps get it out of your mouth and into your stomach, but if the waiter never brings the tea you’re left with a layer of fat on the roof of your mouth for the rest of the day.

Day 2 - in Bishkek

My boss here, Ulan, had invited me out for lunch and arranged to pick me up at 12pm. I spent the morning settling in to my flat, and walked around the block to get a feel for the area. Wide, tree-lined streets with what I initially thought were open drains running along the sides, but are actually irrigation channels for the trees. Often the street names are written in Russian and Kyrgyz, both languages in Cyrillic.

12.00 came and went. I was getting hungry. 1.00 came and I decided to make some sandwiches. 2.00 was approaching when Ulan finally arrived. Two hours late, no explanation, no apology, no nothing. Life here is different from life in Germany.

Ulan drove me in his car, and gave me a little tour of Bishkek. "This is Toktugul Street," he explained as we drove along the wide street outside the block of flats I would be calling 'home' for the next two months. "It's a one-way street." I pointed at the white car heading towards us: "What's he doing then?" Ulan looked at me, puzzled, and explained that people don't pay much attention to rules in Kyrgyzstan, especially traffic rules. Another difference from Germany, then.
"If he meets a policeman, he will be stopped. And he will have to pay a bribe."My guided tour continued. Ulan had a description for every third building it seemed. "This is a bank, the Asian Bank. That's a good one. This is a theatre, that's a museum, that's another theatre, and there's a bank..." Bishkek seemed to be full of banks and theatres. "Here's where everybody came for revolution.... that's the statue of Manas..." We passed a pub, more theatres, the Kyrgyz "White House", and dodged in and out of the traffic. Minibuses and minivans, known as marshrutkas, zip around the city, filled to bursting with passengers. A minivan with eight seats will carry eight sitting passengers, plus as many more as the drive can squeeze in, perhaps another 15-20 people, and this is outside of peak travelling hours. Mornings are even worse. Travelling in one is an "interesting" experience. Similar, but different, from Pakistan.

The streets were full of people of different shapes and sizes: Mongolian-looking, Chinese-looking, Korean-looking, Turkish-looking and European-or Russian-looking. I think I'd only seen such a variety of people in London, though here there were no Afro-Caribbeans. Dress codes varied from Uzbek women clad in long traditional dresses and old men wearing pointed white hats, to tracksuit-clad Russian men and Oriental-looking women in short shirts. Knowing that Kyrgyzstan was a Muslim country, I was very surprised by this.
Note for Joris: none of them appeared to be bearded.

The vehicles on the streets ranged from smart German cars to the battered mashrutkas and some old Communist-looking boxes with wheels made from fibreglass and wood. Drivers did observe traffic lights and zebra-crossings most of the time, but were quite happy to nip across if there was a gap between other cars or pedestrians. A brief beep on the horn seemed to indicate "Look out, I'm driving."
Eventually Ulan tired of driving and decided we should go to a restaurant. I was keen on trying some traditional Kyrgyz food, so he took me to a restaurant that served food from the south of the country.

Moscow to Bishkek

For this flight I would be sitting by the window, which meant I wouldn’t be disturbed by incontinent Russians. I blew the dead wasp off my seat and I sat down: row 10, facing a panel separating the passengers from the stewards’ galley. The leg room on the flight from Berlin had been plenty. Here it was suitable for pygmies. Aeroflot at its best. It was going to be a long flight.

To my right sat a man with pronounced Mongolian features. He had no tattoo on his hand and his shirt was buttoned up to the collar, so I decided to call him Chenghiz. Before I get accused of racism, how many Mongolian names do you know? He didn’t look like a Timurlane, so I settled on Chenghiz.
Chenghiz, sensing my indiscriminate xenophobia, successfully managed to avoid all eye contact during the entire flight. Under his seat he had an animal basket. I wondered what was inside. It was going to be a long flight.
Above: Timurlane, not sitting next to me on the flight.

To the front was the panel, once a creamy white colour with flecks of brown. Now the panel was a creamy brown colour with flecks of brown. Dominating the scene was a dead fly somebody had swatted on the panel. With nothing else to look at directly in front of me, my eyes were continually drawn to the dead fly. A live fly buzzed its way onto Chenghiz’s head. I wondered if the flight would be more exciting if there were two dead flies on the panel, and how I could get the fly off his head and onto the panel. It was going to be a long flight.
To my left was the window. Outside, Moscow Airport was cold, wet and grey. The plane took off.
Now an experienced Aeroflot passenger, I knew not to try to sleep until pieces of meat and half-slices of bread had been served, lights had been flashed on and off, duty-free goods offered, and some more light-flashing had happened.
I’d read that Aeroflot has a reasonable safety record on international flights, but on domestic flights its safety checking is not up to standard. I wondered if Aeroflot considered a flight from the Russian capital to another city in the former Soviet Union an international flight or a domestic one. I hadn’t needed any kind of transit visa for Moscow Airport, after all. Nobody had even asked me if I was carrying a nuclear device. And this plane was definitely less colourful inside than the Berlin-Moscow flight. No blues and oranges here, but a forgettable mix of greys and faded creamy browns. The staff smiled even less radiantly than before. Their cheeks would tense slightly and teeth would show, but it wasn’t a smile, more of a grimace. The male steward serving row 10 and beyond didn’t even bother trying, but walked up and down the aisle, a bald onion-coloured (i.e. brown) head with a sad Slavic face. I named him Igor and knew it was going to be a long flight.

My in-flight meal was pancakes. These were like two little envelopes, stuffed with what looked like meat and vegetables with a splash of cheese sauce on top. Russian pancakes are good, I’ve eaten them before. And yes, there was the half-slice of individually wrapped Russian bread. No cherry tomato this time, though.
Biting into the vegetable pancake I was taken by surprise by a sweet apple filling. Beside me, Chenghiz was slurping away at his food quite happily. (I’ve since learned that Kyrgyz people like slurping.) Still no sign of what was in the animal basket. I’d been hoping the smell of food would provoke some noise from it, but I was wrong.
Biting into the meat pancake I was taken by surprise by a chocolate filling. You just can’t trust these Russians, even their food surprises you. The cheese sauce turned out to be some kind of Communist custard. I don’t know how to describe Communist custard. It’s vaguely yellow, but somehow manages to taste brown. Apart from the individually wrapped half-slice of (brown) Russian bread, it was a thoroughly disappointing meal. And I felt cheated out of my cherry tomato. Maybe cherry tomatoes are too colourful for flights in deepest darkest Russia.
It was going to be a long flight, looking at a squashed fly and thinking about my cherry tomato.

Tea or coffee was served by Igor. Anita had told me that many Russian words were similar to Croatian ones. If I could speak Croatian, that would be fine. But I don’t speak Croatian.
The woman to the right of Gengiz said “chai” and then muttered something in reply to Igor’s question, and got a slice of lemon with her tea. Chenghiz then said “chai” and his reply to the question was “moloko”, and he got some milk. Aha! Mljieko in Croatian, Mleko in Serbian, Moloko in Ukrainian, and in Russian too by the sound of it. I felt quite proud of myself. Well, it was a long flight.
Igor proffered his little tray for my cup. I put it on there, said “chai”, and eagerly awaited his question. The question didn’t come but the tray did. Confused, I tried to take it. Igor didn’t let go. Even more confused, I looked up at him. I can’t read Russian faces, and his face was particularly inscrutable. He could have stood there until the plane landed in Bishkek without moving a single facial muscle.
I looked down at my chai, and enlightenment dawned as realised I had tried to take the whole tray instead of just my cup. I didn’t feel so proud of myself any more. I looked up at Igor as I took my chai. He looked back with a very Putinesque stare. I wasn’t sure what his stare meant. It might have been saying “Stupid foreign person trying to take my tray” or it could equally have been saying “Try that again and I’ll cut off your gas supplies this winter.” Travelling can be difficult sometimes.
After that, Igor didn’t serve row 10 any more.

Flying high over the Russian countryside gives no idea of perspective. Everything looks flat when you’re so far above the land. Occasional rivers cutting a channel through the land remind you that the earth is three-dimensional, but otherwise there’s no way of knowing. Heading south east from Moscow, we flew over thousands of miles of countryside, and saw very little in the way of habitation. The fields were mostly four-sided, lined by hedges or maybe trees, interspersed by irregularly shaped forests. The aliens who create crop-circles clearly weren’t interested in Russia this summer. Strange how they seem to like Wiltshire and Somerset so much.

Above: crop circles, a Westcountry speciality.

Twice we flew over a strange pattern on the ground below: three long rectangular fields lying parallel to each other and of equal width, each bordered by hedges, and this pattern zig-zagged into the distance. I saw the start of one of these and there was no sign of human life, no indication as to why the zig-zag should start or end there. We were flying at cruising altitude and I could see a long way across land, so these strange zig-zags must have been huge. I’ve no idea what they were. The land inside the zig-zags was a different colour from the rest of the countryside. If anybody has any idea what they were, I’d like to know. It was a long flight, after all.

Gradually the green fields of Russia were replaced by the Kazakh steppe, and this was in turn replaced by brown (formerly Communist) desert. This gradually turned into brown mountains, some topped with white snow.

I began to think about my arrival in Bishkek. Martin’s advice to me had been:
3. To get from the airport to Bishkek you need to take a taxi – might be quite expensive. They will rip you off, but I guess there is nothing you can do about it, except that the organization will come for you.

I’d also emailed the Aiesec girls in Kyrgyzstan to ask how I should get from the airport to Bishkek and I was quite pleased that one of them had promised to come and meet me.
The day I left Germany, I got an email from her:
I just want to be sure, are you coming on the 2nd of September at 4.35am?
No! I’m coming tomorrow, on the 1st of September at 4.00pm! Of course I emailed her with the correct time, but I’d received no reply. Was she coming to meet me on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning? It occurred to me that they hadn’t given me any address in Bishkek. Once I arrived at the airport, I had no idea where I should go. This had the potential to become a problem: landing in a strange country, not speaking the language, and not knowing where to go.

The plane finally landed at Manas Airport, the international airport of Bishkek, 45 minutes late. As we taxied along the runway, I was surprised to see half a dozen big fat US Air Force planes. I shouldn’t have been surprised: the Kyrgyz government allowed the US to use its airport as a base for the invasion of Afghanistan. This was the first US military presence in the former Soviet Union. Local politics being local politics, the Russian Air Force soon had its own base at a runway just down the road. The Americans were politely asked to leave Manas, and were allowed to remain only after agreeing to pay much more rent than previously negotiated.

Manas Airport is not a big airport but unlike Moscow Airport they had several desks open to check the passports and visas, and the passengers were quickly processed. After a cursory check, my passport was stamped with a magic rubber stamp which left no mark on the pages. If you don’t believe in magic, the logical explanation would be that there was simply no ink left on the stamp. I was surprised that entering Kyrgyzstan was far less painful than entering Ukraine.

Luggage reclamation. I found my sleeping bag hidden behind a pillar, and so far all was well, apart from not knowing if I was going to be met and what I should do if I wasn’t. Wait at the airport until 4.35 am the next day? Make my own way to Bishkek and hope to find an internet café? Chingiz had left his animal basket unattended. In the interests of public security, I peeked inside:
a dog.

Three angry airport staff were explaining to confused passengers that they all had to prove ownership of their luggage by correlating it with the little stickers on their passports. I’ve never seen that before. Once past them, luggage had to be scanned again to make sure it contained no dangerous items. I’ve never seen that before either. Scanning the luggage after the flight? Where’s the sense in that? Maybe they hope that some Russian passengers might try to smuggle nuclear devices out of the country.

Finally, I was through to the arrivals lounge. The Aiesec girl, Lena, waved to me. That was a relief.

A friend of hers drove us to Bishkek. Lena had read my email two hours before the plane landed, and had only just made it in time. She wasn’t too impressed that the plane was then 45 minutes late.

We drove into Bishkek, to the school where I would be teaching. Ulan, the boss, came out to say hello, and took me to my flat. Just three minutes’ walk away, I had the place to myself. Large living room, bedroom with balcony, kitchen and bathroom. The walls were a creamy brown colour, and the carpets were all a very definite Communist brown. Even the fridge was a faded brown.

Ulan had to return to the school, and dispatched Lena to bring me enough food to last me for a couple of days.
Shower. Bed. Sleep.

I had arrived in Bishkek, and things were looking good. Brown, but good.

Bishkek on my mind

Naturally, I'd done a little research about Kyrgyzstan and Bishkek before leaving Germany. I'd even contacted a Czech friend of mine who had studied there for a semester or two. I asked him for any advice or information he could offer to somebody who didn't speak any Russian and would be going there for the first time. He wrote back:
I have several advices for you.
1. Know RUSSIAN ;-)

Thanks Martin.
What else did I know? That Bishkek has a population of approximately 1 million and is a relatively modern city. The ancient glories of the Silk Road and the various civilisations which flourished in Central Asia, or Turkestan as it was sometimes known, did not have much of an impact on this valley. For a taste of the past, Samarkand and Bukhara are next door in Uzbekistan.
Above: Bukhara, not in Kyrgyzstan.

A small clay fort was built in 1825 along one of the caravan routes of the Silk Road through the Tian Shan mountains. There may have been an original settlement here, possibly founded by the Sogdians. The Russians, arriving in 1862, captured and destroyed the fort as part of their annexation of the region. In 1878 the town they founded was named Pishpek, and the population increased as Russian peasants came to farm the fertile soil.
Following the Communist Revolution, the city was renamed Frunze after Mikhail Frunze, who had been born to Romanian peasants in Pishpek and later became one of the leaders of the Revolution, being given control of the Eastern Front by Trotsky and defeating the White Army in Russian Turkestan. Ultimately, Frunze was a victim of Stalin's paranoia: after surviving several suspicious car accidents, he finally died in 1925 during an officially ordered stomach operation.
Above: Mikhail Frunze, born in Kyrgyzstan.

Pishpek retained the name Frunze (the code for the international airport is still FRU), becoming Bishkek in 1991. Designed and built by military planners, the city is laid out on a grid system with a large Russian population which still outnumbers the Kyrgyz.
There are several legends behind the origin of the name. One is that the old Sogdian name of Peshagakh meant "place below the mountains", which is an apt name given the 4800 metre-high mountains around the city. Another is that the the wooden plunger used to make kumys is named a pishpek in Kazakh, which in Kyrgyz is bishkek. Why a city would be named after this I do not know.
Above: Bishkek and mountains, in Kyrgyzstan.

And what is kumys? It's the national drink, made from fermented mare's milk. Given that Kyrgyzstan is a Muslim country, I was surprised to read that the national drink would be an alcoholic one.
Right: kumys, the national drink in Kyrgyzstan.

With all this knowledge, I still didn't know what to expect. A Central Asian capital city with none of the history. A Muslim country with a liking for alcoholic beverages. A Kyrgyz city of which only one third of the population are Kyrgyz. A city in which I was going to live and work for nine weeks, without knowing a word of the language. I didn't even know how to get from the airport to the city.

Moscow Airport

I read a summary of a scientific paper recently, about getting passengers on and off planes quickly. Despite the benefits of doing this, the airlines have invested very little into researching the subject. However, some mathematicians have stepped in and performed their own investigations. They found that “common-sense” ideas like starting with passengers sitting at the back, or staggering passengers in groups, didn’t make much difference to the time taken to get settled into the plane, but did require plenty of organisational effort from the airline. The mathematics is quite complex, involving multi-dimensional calculations if I understood correctly, but basically when you’re stuck behind somebody busy sticking their bags in the overhead compartment and can’t get to your seat, that person is standing in your “future space”, and obstructing your passage through the space-time continuum.
It is possible that I have misunderstood and forgotten much of what I read.

Surprisingly, though, calculations seemed to show that the best way of getting people into their seats is to make the process completely random. Humans have a knack of bringing some semblance of order to the chaos they encounter, and if left to their own devices they will get on to the plane within a reasonable timeframe. The same applies to getting off the plane.

I was thinking about this as the plane touched down, and I was curious to see the theory in practice. As soon as the plane slowed, chaos broke loose, with almost every passenger trying to get to their bags or to their friends. People were climbing over seats, nudging people out of the way, even little old ladies with grey hair were clambering around, retrieving their bags. Within minutes, everybody who wanted their bag had it in their hands, and calm returned. I was amazed that such chaos could turn to order so quickly, of its own accord, and with everybody satisfied with the result.

Off the plane, and follow the rest of the flock up the aisle and along the corridors. I had no idea where I was going, but it seemed a good idea to follow the crowd. “Baaa, baaaa,” I said to myself. Eventually I found myself in the queue for people connecting with other flights. There were five transit desks. One was manned.

Russians have a strange way of queuing. They stand in their place, then get bored, and wander off. Sometimes they walk to the front of the queue to see what’s happening, other times they just wander off. As an Englishman, I find this disregard of the sanctity of queuing quite disconcerting. But at least they were making some effort to queue, although the woman at the one open transit desk seemed to be having some difficulty.

I looked around me. Outside it was dark, as to be expected at 4am, and it was raining. Inside it was dark, and brown. The floor was black, but the over all impression was of brownness. The ceiling was covered in rings of what looked like copper, even the walls seemed brown. There’s something about the former Soviet Empire. Everything is brown. My flat in Germany has the original East German hallway and stairwell. The walls were painted green once upon a time, but the predominant colour is brown. In many other former Communist homes I’ve visited in various parts of Europe, the floors tend to be wood painted brown or covered with brown carpets. Often in Communist buildings, especially public ones, the walls are painted with a white-ish colour which goes brownish over time, but even when fresh it had flecks of brown in it. If you see pictures of furnished rooms in 1950’s England, the over all impression is brown, and that’s what the Soviet Union was like. However, the bright colours of the 60’s never reached the Soviets to replace all that brown. Brown is what they knew, brown is what they trusted, so brown is what you got and still get. Even saucepans were often brown.

There are many theories as to why the Soviet Union collapsed. Some say it was due to the corruption of the ruling elite, others that the cost of the arms race with Nato was just too much. Some people cite the opening of the Hungarian border, others the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Personally, I think it was just that everybody got fed up with being brown. There’s a limit to how much brown you can take. One day something just snaps, and people say: “Let’s try a colour change. And while we’re at it, why not a parliamentary democracy too?”
Forget glasnost and perestroika, Gorbachev could have ensured the survival of the Soviet Empire with little more than a few tins of marigold coloured paint.

Moscow Airport had never seen marigold coloured paint. It was probably still banned as an illegal substance of hallucinogenic nature. But the good thing about Moscow Airport, just like Kiev Airport, is the women. Aaah, Russian women. Only Russian (and Ukrainian) female airport staff totter around in skirts that short and that tight. To them, uniform doesn’t mean something frumpy. Half the staff there look like they are waiting to audition for a porn film.

The one lady manning the transit desk wasn’t auditioning for a porn film. She wasn’t in contention for the most efficient employee of the year award either. Or the happiest. The queue hadn’t moved in the whole time I’d been thinking about the brownness of the Soviet Union. Actually, the queue had moved: Russians had ambled up and down the line, just curious to know what was happening, and wandering off to see if other corridors were just as brown. I’m sure I saw one lady slip through an empty transit desk, but nobody else followed. Maybe she was smuggling marigold-coloured paint into the country.

Then came an announcement in Russian. The queue collapsed, and there was a surge to the transit lady. A couple standing in front of me looked equally confused. They were German, so I asked them what was happening. Computer problems. Nobody was going anywhere, it seemed. Then came a call for passengers to Bishkek, so with my new German friends I squeezed through the mob and was soon past the transit desk.

Walking around Moscow Airport (I've since learned that there are several Moscow Airports. This one was Sheremetyevo), I found the general brownness overwhelming. There appeared to be no waiting room except for first class passengers. A few people had come prepared, bedded down with full-size mattresses and pillows. I wondered how they’d got them on as hand-luggage.
We made a full circuit of the airport. Lots of duty-free shops, all selling the same things, but no waiting room for the great unwashed. I wasn’t feeling great, but I did feel unwashed.
Miraculously, we found some empty seats. The seats at Moscow Airport are designed with three things in mind: to be durable, to be uncomfortable, and to be sat on.
These seats were empty because they failed to meet all three criteria of Soviet Airport chairs: they were made of metal (durable), cold (uncomfortable), and broken (well, 2 out of 3 isn’t bad.)
We stretched out and tried to get some sleep. The seats sloped at an angle which added to the discomfort. Trying to sleep in an uncomfortable “bed”, cold, with people walking past quite close to me, and lying at a funny angle, I had flashbacks to my caravan in Dartford. These flashbacks were replaced with dreams of people hammering on the seats to repair them.

I gradually realised the hammering wasn’t a dream, and it wasn’t repair work either. I managed to open my eyes enough to see a Mediterranean-looking boy of 5 or so happily climbing over the seats and banging on them with his fists. Too asleep to play the diplomat, I growled at him. The banging stopped and sleep almost returned. I’d heard it was cold in Moscow, but I thought the airport would be heated. I was wrong, and lay there shivering.

Eventually it was time to catch our plane. I followed my German friends to the queue. They followed instructions, and began to take off their shoes. I followed suit.
A trouser-clad woman who used to throw the javelin in the Soviet Olympic team of 1988 bellowed "Stop!” at me. I stopped, and she angrily ushered me back into the line. A second later: “Ok”, and I was allowed to take my shoes off. I don’t understand official people. Maybe that’s why I struggle to cope with Carrot&Bush.

Shoes off, blue plastic bags on, through the security gate, blue plastic bags off, shoes back on.
Only in the US have I been required to take off my shoes for a flight. I’ve heard the Russian government still considers itself a superpower equal to the US, and so if passengers in the US have to remove their shoes, passengers in Russia must too. Shareholders in companies producing blue plastic bags are quite happy about the whole set-up, but die-hard Communists lament the fact that the bags aren’t brown.

Waiting in the queue to board the plane, I realised that all the obstacles of the previous two weeks were behind me. Once I got on that plane, I would be on the last leg of my journey to Bishkek, with no real idea of what awaited me.

Day 1: Berlin to Moscow

Check-in went smoothly. The woman who served me at the counter was from the traditional Communist school of thinking, where they don't believe "the customer is always right." They prefer the philosophy of "the customer is a traitor to our Communist ideals and should be shot." I've experienced this attitude in all former-Communist countries I've visited, even East Germany and Croatia (it was more common in Ukraine and Serbia), and there are two ways to respond: either with equal depression and misery, or with the biggest, cheesiest grin and fake friendliness you can manage. This is known as the "McD Approach". It's not clear if the approach is named after a 2nd rate fast-food outlet, or vice-versa.
Despite my best efforts, I couldn't even elicit a wish for a pleasant journey from the woman. I was most disappointed. All that effort for nothing. I was tired, and wanted my bed.

Into the waiting room, where there was room for waiting. I looked around at my fellow passengers. Nobody looked English. Very few people looked German. Almost everybody looked Russian.

Boarding time came and went. Then we started boarding. My friendly check-in lady was now checking tickets and checking them fast. When she saw my ticket, she looked up at me and her stony face cracked into the briefest of smiles. Aaaaah, the reward for all the effort. My trip was off to a good start.

It was my first flight with Aeroflot. See the post below ("Tickets booked!") for my thoughts on that. The Russian gentleman sitting next to me was in need of a good wash, and probably wasn't fluent in six languages. He had a tattoo on his hand. It looked like it said "Tom." I wondered if he'd tattooed his own name onto his hand in case he forgot it. Some people write their names in the label of their shirt, but if you forget it you need to undo the top couple of buttons and twist your neck round to read it. Some people write their names in the label of their trousers. I don't know what they do when they forget their names. But now Tom knew his name like the back of his hand.

The seats were quite comfortable, mixing a navy blue colour with an Easyjet orange. Nice. One stewardess was round and had bleached blonde hair. The other was tall, slim and dark. Pretty, and with typical Slavic ears. In their own way, both looked very Russian. Both of them had clearly been told they should smile at the customers; both of them clearly hadn't quite got the hang of smiling.

We took off, the lights dimmed, and I tried to get some sleep, turning my nose away from Tom. Sitting near the back of the plane is not good for sleeping, especially if your nose juts into the aisle, and you're travelling with a crowd of Russian passengers with bladder problems. The lights came on. Now what? Ah, food.

I like East European food. It's simple. Solid. Fills the hole. What culinary delights were in store for us? Pieces of meat and half a slice of bread. No fancy sauces like on BA, this was as simple as food could get, AND with a cherry tomato. The slice of bread (actually, it was half a slice) was individually wrapped. Aeroflot may have the Easyjet orange as part of their colour scheme, but they're still a classy outfit.

Food finished, the lights dimmed, and I tried to get some sleep. The lights came back on again. Now what? No, no duty free for me, thanks, I'd like to sleep.
The lights dimmed again. Then back on again. Now what? The captain wants to tell us what speed we're flying at, but I want to get some sleep.
Lights off. Nice and dark. The non-stop toilet trips continue, but I start to drift off...
Lights on, and bright. Now what? Nothing. Lights go off again. Somebody somewhere thinks they're being really funny.
Lights on. Now what? We're coming in to Moscow. Great, no sleep for me. Tom, sitting beside me, is getting restless. The tattoo on his hand doesn't say Tom. If I can read the Cyrillic letters correctly, it says "Tanya." That makes more sense. Putting his girlfriend's name in his shirt would just be silly, but like this he'll still be ok even if he forgets her name.

And so, to Moscow.

Last Days...

The last few days in Germany seem so far away (roughly 4500 km and 4 time zones), so long ago (three days), it's hard to remember what actually happened. Some things do stick in the mind though.
Carrot&Bush excelled themselves with their organisational skills. I tried to reclaim some travel expenses, but couldn't log into the system. Wondering if I'd already been delisted as an employee (is delisted a word?), I phoned the HR department. When I say I phoned them, I mean I exchanged e-mails and telephone calls with a number of help desks in Germany, Poland, India and the US, over a number of days, before somebody finally said: "You're leaving? We have nothing in our records saying that. Have you informed Carrot&Bush of your decision to quit?"
Gnnnnnnnh.
Cretins. And I never did manage to reclaim my travel expenses.

I also received a slip of paper confirming I'm HIV-negative. I was fairly certain, but it's nice to have it officially certified. But apparently I'll need to be retested in Kyrgyzstan as they don't trust German doctors. Maybe they've been spying on my blog. I'd better be careful what I write.

The day before I was due to leave, I collected my visa. Phew! Then I had to pay for it. Owch. 240 EUR including all fees. And it's only a single-entry, so I can't even pop over the border to China or Kazakhstan and back. It would have been much cheaper if I'd not needed the visa so urgently, but from receiving confirmation that I'd been accepted on the placement in Kyrgyzstan to actually landing in Bishkek was 14 days, so everything had to move quite quickly. As soon as I work out how to get photos off my Carrot&Bush digital camera and onto a computer here, I'll add a photo to this blog of the little sticker in my passport that says "normal visa" and cost the equivalent of a month's salary in this Kyrgyzstan.

And then it was time to leave. Up to Berlin for my 1am flight. More about that in the next post.