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.