I'm in Germany. I'm back in western Europe. It's cold and damp and grey and multicultural and drunk and sarcastic and cynical. I love it.
I left Istanbul after only scratching the surface and promised myself to return one day and dig deeper. I was on an overnight bus to Sofia in Bulgaria and we spent an hour on the border as our bus got x-rayed and all our bags were searched by Turkish customs official. I don't know why they were searching everything when we were leaving the country. I think they were just bored on the night shift and wanted to use some new gadgets. The bus was almost empty and i copied what some other people were doing and slept by stretching my body across four seats. My head at one side of the bus, my feet at the other with my legs suspended, crossing the aisle.
I arrived in Sofia at 5.30 in the morning and got on a tram to take me to a hostel. There was nowhere to buy a ticket and nobody checked if i had one. Free transport. I only stayed in Sofia for one night but had a decent time seeing the old neglected buildings next to the new European money and the cobbled, compact, dinky sized city centre still seemed to be partly trapped in a communist time warp, dragging itself towards the rest of the West.
The bus from Sofia to Budapest took all day. The drive out of the city centre revealed damp dank apartment blocks and gypsy squatter camps covered in mud and dirt. Rural Bulgaria didn't look much better as grey dark fields and dead grass greeted the road to the border with Serbia. I now have a Serbia stamp in my passport but i only got out of the bus and actually walked on the country twice and that was to have a piss and buy a Bounty. Serbia looked happy and Mediterranean compared to hardened Bulgaria with white and cream farmhouses and green fields and mountains. We crossed the Serbia-Hungary border at nightfall and arrived in the capital late at night.
I did my usual "walk, get lost, get drunk" routine which i seem to have done with alarming regularity on this trip and Budapest is a great place for those things as the city is packed full of streets that go nowhere, streets that go somewhere, old gothic buildings and plenty of bars. Like Sofia, it also has a great old communist era clanking grumbling tram system where nobody ever checks that you have a ticket and half the ticket machines are broken anyway. I love old knackered trams. I think every city would benefit from a clunking Russian built tram grinding around town full of fare dodgers and drunks. And drunk people love Budapest. I thought it may have been compulsory for people to have drink in their hand as every other person seemed to be drinking, buying or carrying some kind of alcohol. Other signs that i was firmly back in Europe were the large amount of homeless people, buskers playing violins and graffiti.
I saw lots of Budapest including some great markets and the modern art gallery but the cold damp weather meant that i spent my last day there in a bar with and couple from New Zealand watching football and rugby. Then i got the 14 hour overnight bus that passed through Slovakia and pulled into Prague in the early morning. We ploughed through thick fog and crossed the Czech-German border at sunrise which revealed a landscape of green rolling hills, farms and massive wind turbines. After brief stops in Dresden and Leipzig the journey eventually ended in the capital yesterday lunchtime.
I've only been here for one day but i already love Berlin. I have never experienced a city that has so much personality and immediacy. Graffiti is on every building. That's not an exaggeration. Every building has a signature of some kind. Half the population seem to ride bicycles. It oozes attitude. This is where the country's leader is a woman and the Mayor is a gay man. This a place that has the highest per capita cocaine and ecstasy users in Europe. This is where the past collides with the future. This is where you would not be surprised if a revolution was around the corner. This is where anything can start and nothing seems to stop. This is more a social experiment than a city. This is Berlin.
But nothing lasts forever so i'll be leaving on Friday for Denmark but i don't know what i'll be doing between now and then. But this is Berlin. You're not really supposed to know what you're doing between now and then.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Istanbul
It's official. I'm in Europe. Somehow and for some reason i've made it across Turkey in a week and ready to move further west and north.
I was in Diyarbakir which was a Kurdish city in Turkey where people would happily try and teach you some Kurdish words and has been home to many demonstrations and problems in the past between Kurdish movements and Turkish law enforcement. There were armed police in the streets and at the bus station making their presence felt but everybody seemed happy enough. The back streets of Diyarbakir old town were a knot of alleyways with kids playing on cold stone cobbles amongst the litter and women barking down to the children below from balconies as the sun crept between buildings and the call to prayer rang out from the mosques. Nobody paid me any attention at all as i sauntered around taking pictures.
I stayed in what i thought was a cheap hotel and i guess it was but it was also a kind of brothel. Three fat ugly women would loll around on a sofa in the cramped corridor waiting, smoking cigarettes and sipping tea all day until an old man would come in and they'd disappear to a room for while. Thankfully they never bothered me but the whole place had no windows and was painted bright green and pink in a way that gave you a headache if you stayed inside too long.
There were always two sides to Diyarbakir. The main streets were modern and clean full of shops and restaurants, the back streets were cramped messy and noisy. The old city was encased in walls and buildings that were centuries old as the new city sprawled outwards in dull apartment blocks. But then i've realised that most of Turkey seems this way - always pulling in different directions. Black Sea versus Mediterranean. Street side kebabs versus upmarket restaurants. Mosques cry out with the call to prayer five times a day versus bars and nightclubs pumping out beer and beats all weekend. Western cities versus Middle Eastern villages. Five star hotels versus green and pink brothels. Europe versus Asia. Summer beaches versus winter skiing. Sand deserts versus green farms. Ancient history versus an uncertain future. Every country has it's contrasts but Turkey seems to take it to another level. And then there's Istanbul.
Guess what? There are two sides to Istanbul. On one side sits Asian Istanbul and the other side of the river sits European Istanbul. The bus from Diyarbakir (a 22 hour over-night bum numbing journey) crossed from the blue skies of Asia over a large suspension bridge. A few hundred metres into European Istanbul and the skies darkened, the clouds thickened and it started hammering down with rain. "Europe in November," i thought, "It's been a while. I remember this."
Istanbul is one of those cities that draws you in with its physical size, depth of history and breadth of potential and quickly breaks down every preconception you had about the place and then rebuilds that image just as fast and spits you out the other side knowing that you won't look at things in quite the same way again. It is head spinning. Istanbul, along with the rest of Turkey, is way more European than i thought it would be, both the people, the buildings and the culture. The history of the place shouts at you through the massive mosques and the Grand Bazzar but the future burns bright as well with women matching Adidas with head scarves and the trams, boats and metro buzzing people through the chaotic traffic. I could stay here for a long time and it would still feel fresh and new. If you get bored in Istanbul you're probably dead.
I really wanted to experience two main things from Turkey; a football game (ticked that one in Trabzon) and a bath. I went to a Turkish bath with Zaka, a German guy who, by coincidence, lives not far from where i grew up in my home city in Leeds, and Ali, the owner of the guesthouse i'm staying in. The Turkish bath was a round marble room with a large slab in the middle, sinks and taps on the walls and steam drifting everywhere. The full Turkish bath experience, so Ali told me, consisted of sitting in a sauna and sweating for as long as you can and then a large hairy man about the sıze of a telephone box scrubs you with a rough cloth. I was embarrassed by the amount of dead skin that came off me. I can only guess at how much crap came of my back after carrying my life on it for a few months. Then i laid down on the huge marbel slab in the middle of the place and was "massaged" by the same guy. He kneaded my aching muscles in a way that made me yelp in a similar way to that of a small girl finding a spider. At one point i was laying on my back and the telephone box man was squeezing my arm as if he were trying to strangle a snake. "Me...Muhammed," he said and then he gestured at me.
"Erm...Dave."
"Italia?" He took both my arms crossed them over my chest and put all his weight on my elbows, slowly pushing my arms in opposite directions.
"No, Englaahhhhhnd!"
"Football?"
"Leeds United. You?" He took my left arm, tried to pull the hand off my wrist and then proceeded to try and pull each finger from my hand. His eyes grew wider for a second and he drew his head a little closer to mine and with a big grin said,
"GA-LA-TA-SA-RY."
"Hmmm."
Once the massage/kneading was finished Muhammed was kind enough to wash my body and head, rinse me and send me back to the sauna after which he wrapped me in three towels and then served me tea on some sofas. My body felt elastic and the cleanest and squeakiest it has ever been.
Unfortunately i won't be going back because i'm leaving on a bus tomorrow night to Bulgaria and then onto Hungary. I'm city-hopping and friend-meeting almost all my way back to England. It's almost finished. Only one more month.
I was in Diyarbakir which was a Kurdish city in Turkey where people would happily try and teach you some Kurdish words and has been home to many demonstrations and problems in the past between Kurdish movements and Turkish law enforcement. There were armed police in the streets and at the bus station making their presence felt but everybody seemed happy enough. The back streets of Diyarbakir old town were a knot of alleyways with kids playing on cold stone cobbles amongst the litter and women barking down to the children below from balconies as the sun crept between buildings and the call to prayer rang out from the mosques. Nobody paid me any attention at all as i sauntered around taking pictures.
I stayed in what i thought was a cheap hotel and i guess it was but it was also a kind of brothel. Three fat ugly women would loll around on a sofa in the cramped corridor waiting, smoking cigarettes and sipping tea all day until an old man would come in and they'd disappear to a room for while. Thankfully they never bothered me but the whole place had no windows and was painted bright green and pink in a way that gave you a headache if you stayed inside too long.
There were always two sides to Diyarbakir. The main streets were modern and clean full of shops and restaurants, the back streets were cramped messy and noisy. The old city was encased in walls and buildings that were centuries old as the new city sprawled outwards in dull apartment blocks. But then i've realised that most of Turkey seems this way - always pulling in different directions. Black Sea versus Mediterranean. Street side kebabs versus upmarket restaurants. Mosques cry out with the call to prayer five times a day versus bars and nightclubs pumping out beer and beats all weekend. Western cities versus Middle Eastern villages. Five star hotels versus green and pink brothels. Europe versus Asia. Summer beaches versus winter skiing. Sand deserts versus green farms. Ancient history versus an uncertain future. Every country has it's contrasts but Turkey seems to take it to another level. And then there's Istanbul.
Guess what? There are two sides to Istanbul. On one side sits Asian Istanbul and the other side of the river sits European Istanbul. The bus from Diyarbakir (a 22 hour over-night bum numbing journey) crossed from the blue skies of Asia over a large suspension bridge. A few hundred metres into European Istanbul and the skies darkened, the clouds thickened and it started hammering down with rain. "Europe in November," i thought, "It's been a while. I remember this."
Istanbul is one of those cities that draws you in with its physical size, depth of history and breadth of potential and quickly breaks down every preconception you had about the place and then rebuilds that image just as fast and spits you out the other side knowing that you won't look at things in quite the same way again. It is head spinning. Istanbul, along with the rest of Turkey, is way more European than i thought it would be, both the people, the buildings and the culture. The history of the place shouts at you through the massive mosques and the Grand Bazzar but the future burns bright as well with women matching Adidas with head scarves and the trams, boats and metro buzzing people through the chaotic traffic. I could stay here for a long time and it would still feel fresh and new. If you get bored in Istanbul you're probably dead.
I really wanted to experience two main things from Turkey; a football game (ticked that one in Trabzon) and a bath. I went to a Turkish bath with Zaka, a German guy who, by coincidence, lives not far from where i grew up in my home city in Leeds, and Ali, the owner of the guesthouse i'm staying in. The Turkish bath was a round marble room with a large slab in the middle, sinks and taps on the walls and steam drifting everywhere. The full Turkish bath experience, so Ali told me, consisted of sitting in a sauna and sweating for as long as you can and then a large hairy man about the sıze of a telephone box scrubs you with a rough cloth. I was embarrassed by the amount of dead skin that came off me. I can only guess at how much crap came of my back after carrying my life on it for a few months. Then i laid down on the huge marbel slab in the middle of the place and was "massaged" by the same guy. He kneaded my aching muscles in a way that made me yelp in a similar way to that of a small girl finding a spider. At one point i was laying on my back and the telephone box man was squeezing my arm as if he were trying to strangle a snake. "Me...Muhammed," he said and then he gestured at me.
"Erm...Dave."
"Italia?" He took both my arms crossed them over my chest and put all his weight on my elbows, slowly pushing my arms in opposite directions.
"No, Englaahhhhhnd!"
"Football?"
"Leeds United. You?" He took my left arm, tried to pull the hand off my wrist and then proceeded to try and pull each finger from my hand. His eyes grew wider for a second and he drew his head a little closer to mine and with a big grin said,
"GA-LA-TA-SA-RY."
"Hmmm."
Once the massage/kneading was finished Muhammed was kind enough to wash my body and head, rinse me and send me back to the sauna after which he wrapped me in three towels and then served me tea on some sofas. My body felt elastic and the cleanest and squeakiest it has ever been.
Unfortunately i won't be going back because i'm leaving on a bus tomorrow night to Bulgaria and then onto Hungary. I'm city-hopping and friend-meeting almost all my way back to England. It's almost finished. Only one more month.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Diyarbakir
I'm in Turkey, in a city that classes itself as Kurdish after sleeping in a bus station and eating kebabs and soup. Turkey is different.
I was in Tbilisi which was nowhere near as good the second time mainly due to the fact that it was raining the whole time i was there. The previously sunny dusty streets were full of grime, shit and beggars. It was unreal just how much the weather had changed the place. I stayed in a guesthouse with a Polish guy who insisted that he didn't use toilet paper, a Canadian guy who looked liked Iggy Pop and acted accordingly, a middle aged American guy who'd been living and working in Georgia for over a year and complained about it non-stop and there was an old Georgian man who was in the military and wore a naval suit to work every morning making him look a little bit like Captain Birdseye. I got drunk.
And then i went to Batumi. Batumi lies on the Black Sea coast, west of Tbilisi by a few hours. The journey there was a classic Georgian travel experience. The minivan was mainly packed with bottles of Coca-Cola and the windscreen had the obligatory cracks caused by peoples heads or luggage hitting the windscreen from the inside or stones from the road kicking up and hitting the outside. The rearview mirror was almost completely obstructed by a small picture of Mary with baby Jesus. The driver drove so recklessly that i occasionally feared for my life. Perhaps i should thank Jesus that i still have it. We sped through Georgian villages weighed down by apples and fruits and populated by old men drinking tea and various sorts of animals (cows, ducks, pigs, dogs) invaded the road lined with derelict buildings or large farmhouses.
Batumi was crap. Don't ever go. Most of its pavements and roads were in the process of being dug up leaving piles of sand or rubble everywhere and random holes here and there. The only places to eat were cafes where fat women with as much facial hair as me would serve soup and bread and then look annoyed that they'd had to. For some reason there were more slot machines than Las Vegas, there were lots of beggars, it rained the whole time and there was a large power cut one night. Apparently in summer the beach is nice. I hope i never find out.
Leaving Batumi was equally annoying. I bought a bus ticket to Trabzon in Turkey that said we'd leave at ten thirty, the driver said eleven and we rolled out of town at midday. Not long after, we passed through the sketchy border post to Turkey (it seemed totally designed for trucks and not humans) and bombed down the sunny Black Sea coast on roads that Georgia dreams of to Trabzon.
Trabzon had a busy bustle and a lot of new money and people were enjoying spending it. Fashion shops hugged the pedestrian streets, there were cheap decent restaurants everywhere and people seemed happy and friendly. For some reason i wasn't expecting any of that. I was expecting anger, mayhem, dirt and a hint of danger but i have no idea why. I liked Trabzon.
I spent a morning at Sumela Monastery which clings impossibly to a shear cliff outside the city. It was mainly populated by Turkish students who were amazed at seeing two Korean girls. They all wanted their pictures taken with the two Asian people in a way that reminded me of Chinese people in China wanting their picture taken with Europeans or North Americans.
That night i had a ticket to a game of football between hometown Tranzonspor and Besiktas. I got to my seat behind the goal not far from the corner flag in one of the cheap seats and watched the crowd enter the large stadium covered on only one side. All the fans were men in Trabzonspors colours of dark purple and light blue. Seats were not used for sitting on but for standing on to get a better view. Fists clenched. Fingers pointing. Chants shouting. Warm angry breath. Cold evening air. It was a great atmosphere where fans in different parts of the ground, especially in the cheap seats behind the goals, would trade chants with each other from opposite sides of the large stadium. Some fans seemed less bothered about the football and more bothered about shouting and coordinatıng chants. It was a shame that Trabzonspor weren't very good. They were great at passing it about but as soon as it came to actually attacking and scoring they had few ideas. 0-0 at half time quickly became 1-0 to Besiktas with a screamer. A goal that sailed into the top corner. The chants went quiet. The voives angrier and more desperate and so too was Trabzonspors play. Besiktas scored another near the end to seal it and the fans wanted the blood of their underperforming players. It was a good job that high security fences and nets were in place or blood would have been duly sought and gained. Still, it could be worse; they could be fans of Ankaraspor who so far this season have a played eleven, lost eleven, scored none and conceded thirty three. Though i had neither the language skills nor the balls to communicate this to the exiting fans.
I got a night bus to Diyarbakir after i was told that it would reach Diyarbakir between 4am and 5am. The bus pulled into the station this morning at 2.30am. The station sits 14km outside the centre of town. I looked around the nearly empty station. Some people were waiting for late night buses, a shop was open, men chatted quietly, a woman sat typing on her laptop. Was this really Turkey? It all seemed so safe and clean and efficient. I figured i may as well save some cash and huddled onto a bench and slept for a few hours before getting a taxi into town this morning and finding a small crap hotel that's painted green and purple and then ate soup and a kebab.
I'll be here for a few days and then head west in search of more kebabs, carpets and, hopefully, the mild Turkish mayhem that i had imagined existed before i came here.
I was in Tbilisi which was nowhere near as good the second time mainly due to the fact that it was raining the whole time i was there. The previously sunny dusty streets were full of grime, shit and beggars. It was unreal just how much the weather had changed the place. I stayed in a guesthouse with a Polish guy who insisted that he didn't use toilet paper, a Canadian guy who looked liked Iggy Pop and acted accordingly, a middle aged American guy who'd been living and working in Georgia for over a year and complained about it non-stop and there was an old Georgian man who was in the military and wore a naval suit to work every morning making him look a little bit like Captain Birdseye. I got drunk.
And then i went to Batumi. Batumi lies on the Black Sea coast, west of Tbilisi by a few hours. The journey there was a classic Georgian travel experience. The minivan was mainly packed with bottles of Coca-Cola and the windscreen had the obligatory cracks caused by peoples heads or luggage hitting the windscreen from the inside or stones from the road kicking up and hitting the outside. The rearview mirror was almost completely obstructed by a small picture of Mary with baby Jesus. The driver drove so recklessly that i occasionally feared for my life. Perhaps i should thank Jesus that i still have it. We sped through Georgian villages weighed down by apples and fruits and populated by old men drinking tea and various sorts of animals (cows, ducks, pigs, dogs) invaded the road lined with derelict buildings or large farmhouses.
Batumi was crap. Don't ever go. Most of its pavements and roads were in the process of being dug up leaving piles of sand or rubble everywhere and random holes here and there. The only places to eat were cafes where fat women with as much facial hair as me would serve soup and bread and then look annoyed that they'd had to. For some reason there were more slot machines than Las Vegas, there were lots of beggars, it rained the whole time and there was a large power cut one night. Apparently in summer the beach is nice. I hope i never find out.
Leaving Batumi was equally annoying. I bought a bus ticket to Trabzon in Turkey that said we'd leave at ten thirty, the driver said eleven and we rolled out of town at midday. Not long after, we passed through the sketchy border post to Turkey (it seemed totally designed for trucks and not humans) and bombed down the sunny Black Sea coast on roads that Georgia dreams of to Trabzon.
Trabzon had a busy bustle and a lot of new money and people were enjoying spending it. Fashion shops hugged the pedestrian streets, there were cheap decent restaurants everywhere and people seemed happy and friendly. For some reason i wasn't expecting any of that. I was expecting anger, mayhem, dirt and a hint of danger but i have no idea why. I liked Trabzon.
I spent a morning at Sumela Monastery which clings impossibly to a shear cliff outside the city. It was mainly populated by Turkish students who were amazed at seeing two Korean girls. They all wanted their pictures taken with the two Asian people in a way that reminded me of Chinese people in China wanting their picture taken with Europeans or North Americans.
That night i had a ticket to a game of football between hometown Tranzonspor and Besiktas. I got to my seat behind the goal not far from the corner flag in one of the cheap seats and watched the crowd enter the large stadium covered on only one side. All the fans were men in Trabzonspors colours of dark purple and light blue. Seats were not used for sitting on but for standing on to get a better view. Fists clenched. Fingers pointing. Chants shouting. Warm angry breath. Cold evening air. It was a great atmosphere where fans in different parts of the ground, especially in the cheap seats behind the goals, would trade chants with each other from opposite sides of the large stadium. Some fans seemed less bothered about the football and more bothered about shouting and coordinatıng chants. It was a shame that Trabzonspor weren't very good. They were great at passing it about but as soon as it came to actually attacking and scoring they had few ideas. 0-0 at half time quickly became 1-0 to Besiktas with a screamer. A goal that sailed into the top corner. The chants went quiet. The voives angrier and more desperate and so too was Trabzonspors play. Besiktas scored another near the end to seal it and the fans wanted the blood of their underperforming players. It was a good job that high security fences and nets were in place or blood would have been duly sought and gained. Still, it could be worse; they could be fans of Ankaraspor who so far this season have a played eleven, lost eleven, scored none and conceded thirty three. Though i had neither the language skills nor the balls to communicate this to the exiting fans.
I got a night bus to Diyarbakir after i was told that it would reach Diyarbakir between 4am and 5am. The bus pulled into the station this morning at 2.30am. The station sits 14km outside the centre of town. I looked around the nearly empty station. Some people were waiting for late night buses, a shop was open, men chatted quietly, a woman sat typing on her laptop. Was this really Turkey? It all seemed so safe and clean and efficient. I figured i may as well save some cash and huddled onto a bench and slept for a few hours before getting a taxi into town this morning and finding a small crap hotel that's painted green and purple and then ate soup and a kebab.
I'll be here for a few days and then head west in search of more kebabs, carpets and, hopefully, the mild Turkish mayhem that i had imagined existed before i came here.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Tbilisi again
One week in Armenia has provided plenty to talk about.
I left Tbilisi in a mini-van packed with fifteen people, countless bags and a satelite dish. We bounced along to the border and then snaked through rocky sandy villages and over scraggy hills in the sun. Small post-Soviet industrial towns sprang up here and there showing huge long forgotton factories that looked like they'd fallen from the sky forty years before and done nothing since. The rest of the landscape to Yereven was serene rolling hills and sunny, dusty villages.
I arrived in Yereven at a bus station to be confronted by a few taxi drivers who seemed intent to getting as much cash out if me as possible. An old woman who was on the same minibus as me tugged at my elbow as i haggled with the men. I followed her and her friend to the other side of the road. She spoke a little English, told me that all taxi drivers are cheats, phoned my guesthouse on her mobile, showed me to the minibus that runs to the centre of town, told me where to get off, insisted on paying and acted like doing all of those things was a regular everyday occurance. In Yereven it probably is.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that everyday in Yereven is a Sunday afternoon. Armenia's capital is continually hitting the snooze button, rolling over and having an extra hour. The place is filled with tight narrow streets where cars zoom along but the people loll about for as long as possible in coffee shops and cafes doing what ever they please. I planned on staying three days. I stayed for six.
On Sunday morning i went to church. I was staying in a guesthouse that wasn't really a guesthouse - it was a retired woman's apartment and she had a few empty rooms and made some cash from it. Also staying there was George from Georgia and his Belarussian wife. George had studied in Cardiff for a few years so his accent was somewhere between Welsh, Georgian and Russian. They were going to a place called Mayr Tachar which is Armenia's vatican. It was a small chruch with no seats and hundreds of people on a Sunday morning. The place was swarming with tourists, daytrippers and cameras which replaced any sense of religion quite quickly. I left for the flea market back in Yereven.
Yereven flea market sells everything. It was all just laid out on the floor of a park. Everything. The old men and women would come and lay out books, bathroom taps, chess sets, guitars, electrical wire, CDs, nails, swords, bird cages, arc welders, irons and more random crap in a small park every weekend. After the market i hunted for a bar that showed the Liverpool Manchester United game but all i found was a Irish bar that was shut and a British pub owned by a friendly man born in Jordan. I got chatting to the owner and as it was late afternoon i decided to stay for one beer. Just one. At eleven o'clock that evening i was playing fuseball with three girls, buying cocktails and partaking in behaviour that some people may describe as "debauchery".
The rest of my time in Yereven was spent visiting musuems and art galleries, getting drunk and nursing hangovers. For some reason Yereven has a lot more art galleries and museums than it should have so i saw an old library full of Bibles and Gospels from the 12th century (i can't really remember why i went there, it was as boring as it sounds), i went to the National Modern Art Gallery that was obviously saving on electric bills as an old woman had to switch all the lights on so i could see the paintings and then and old man followed me around turning the lights off in different sections that i'd finished looking at. There were other great little art galleries as well but none of them were the highlight of the week which was, of course, Armenia's Darts Championship.
In the British pub where i got a bit tipsy last Sunday, they told me they were hosting Armenia's Darts Championships. I went down on the Tuesday and sat at the end of the small bar watching people arrive, register and start playing. It was strange. The national darts championship of Armenia was taking place in a pub and it seemed anybody could signed up. I didn't but after seeing the first game i should have. The first player threw darts like a cowbody throws a lasso and his opponent was the Armenian Darts Federation President's daughter. She was wearing so much leopard print clothes that in certain countries she would have been protected under conservation laws. The President himself held a cigar in one hand and with the other threw darts like a builder throws bricks into a skip. They were playing a very easy version of the game (301 single check-out if you know about darts) and there was an Armenian TV news camerman recording a piece for the next days sports bulletin. I may have been on it as he filmed me as i sat snugly between two old chainsmoking men, all three of us looking a little confused. And drunk. Unfortunately i didn't hang around long enough in Yereven to attend the semi finals and final so i don't know who won. It could have been anybody.
Before i came to Armenia i never knew that it was the victim of a genocide and I spent an afternoon at the Genocide Museum learning about it. Armenia was the victim of a mass murder perpetrated by Turkey. For reasons best known to Turkey 1.5M Armenia's were killed between 1915 and 1922. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people were forced to march across the deserts to Syria. Few made it. Those that did were killed. Hundreds of thousands fled the country. The Turks also destroyed cultural relics and attempted to wipe Armenia and Armenians from the map. Turkey has always denied that it gave any orders to do so even in the face of photographs and first-hand accounts. It's meant that there are Armenians living all over the world. Second and third generation Armenians are returning to Armenia after being born and living all their lives in countries like Jordan or Iran, Australia, the US or Europe. It's meant that Yereven has a very cosmopolitan feel where people are still today angry that Turkey hasn't even acknowledged what it did, let alone apologise.
I left Yereven for a town to the north called Dillijan. I stayed in a friendly guesthouse that served me a mountain of food but the main house seemed to be built without any right angles as every wall and floor seemed to slope in different directions. Dillijan is billed as the "The Switzerland of Armenia" and if that's the case then Switzerland must be shit. I wanted to do some hiking but it wasn't really worth it as it had been raining for a few days so all the villages that looked bright and dusty in the sun look grey and muddy in the damp and Dillijan was just that.
Today i got a minivan from Dillijan back to the border in the drizzle and after i'd been stamped back into Georgia i managed to find a shared taxi to bring me through the drizzle and the autumn greens and browns to Tbilisi. We drove away from the border and after about 500m we promptly run out of petrol. Fortunately we were going downhill so the driver just slapped it in nuetral and we let gravity do the driving all the way to the next village where we filed up and eventually arrived back in grey, damp, Tbilisi. It almost looks like England.
And i'll be back there soon. I've got six weeks left of this trip and there are mountains, Turkey and Europe between me and home.
Thanks for reading. See you soon.
I left Tbilisi in a mini-van packed with fifteen people, countless bags and a satelite dish. We bounced along to the border and then snaked through rocky sandy villages and over scraggy hills in the sun. Small post-Soviet industrial towns sprang up here and there showing huge long forgotton factories that looked like they'd fallen from the sky forty years before and done nothing since. The rest of the landscape to Yereven was serene rolling hills and sunny, dusty villages.
I arrived in Yereven at a bus station to be confronted by a few taxi drivers who seemed intent to getting as much cash out if me as possible. An old woman who was on the same minibus as me tugged at my elbow as i haggled with the men. I followed her and her friend to the other side of the road. She spoke a little English, told me that all taxi drivers are cheats, phoned my guesthouse on her mobile, showed me to the minibus that runs to the centre of town, told me where to get off, insisted on paying and acted like doing all of those things was a regular everyday occurance. In Yereven it probably is.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that everyday in Yereven is a Sunday afternoon. Armenia's capital is continually hitting the snooze button, rolling over and having an extra hour. The place is filled with tight narrow streets where cars zoom along but the people loll about for as long as possible in coffee shops and cafes doing what ever they please. I planned on staying three days. I stayed for six.
On Sunday morning i went to church. I was staying in a guesthouse that wasn't really a guesthouse - it was a retired woman's apartment and she had a few empty rooms and made some cash from it. Also staying there was George from Georgia and his Belarussian wife. George had studied in Cardiff for a few years so his accent was somewhere between Welsh, Georgian and Russian. They were going to a place called Mayr Tachar which is Armenia's vatican. It was a small chruch with no seats and hundreds of people on a Sunday morning. The place was swarming with tourists, daytrippers and cameras which replaced any sense of religion quite quickly. I left for the flea market back in Yereven.
Yereven flea market sells everything. It was all just laid out on the floor of a park. Everything. The old men and women would come and lay out books, bathroom taps, chess sets, guitars, electrical wire, CDs, nails, swords, bird cages, arc welders, irons and more random crap in a small park every weekend. After the market i hunted for a bar that showed the Liverpool Manchester United game but all i found was a Irish bar that was shut and a British pub owned by a friendly man born in Jordan. I got chatting to the owner and as it was late afternoon i decided to stay for one beer. Just one. At eleven o'clock that evening i was playing fuseball with three girls, buying cocktails and partaking in behaviour that some people may describe as "debauchery".
The rest of my time in Yereven was spent visiting musuems and art galleries, getting drunk and nursing hangovers. For some reason Yereven has a lot more art galleries and museums than it should have so i saw an old library full of Bibles and Gospels from the 12th century (i can't really remember why i went there, it was as boring as it sounds), i went to the National Modern Art Gallery that was obviously saving on electric bills as an old woman had to switch all the lights on so i could see the paintings and then and old man followed me around turning the lights off in different sections that i'd finished looking at. There were other great little art galleries as well but none of them were the highlight of the week which was, of course, Armenia's Darts Championship.
In the British pub where i got a bit tipsy last Sunday, they told me they were hosting Armenia's Darts Championships. I went down on the Tuesday and sat at the end of the small bar watching people arrive, register and start playing. It was strange. The national darts championship of Armenia was taking place in a pub and it seemed anybody could signed up. I didn't but after seeing the first game i should have. The first player threw darts like a cowbody throws a lasso and his opponent was the Armenian Darts Federation President's daughter. She was wearing so much leopard print clothes that in certain countries she would have been protected under conservation laws. The President himself held a cigar in one hand and with the other threw darts like a builder throws bricks into a skip. They were playing a very easy version of the game (301 single check-out if you know about darts) and there was an Armenian TV news camerman recording a piece for the next days sports bulletin. I may have been on it as he filmed me as i sat snugly between two old chainsmoking men, all three of us looking a little confused. And drunk. Unfortunately i didn't hang around long enough in Yereven to attend the semi finals and final so i don't know who won. It could have been anybody.
Before i came to Armenia i never knew that it was the victim of a genocide and I spent an afternoon at the Genocide Museum learning about it. Armenia was the victim of a mass murder perpetrated by Turkey. For reasons best known to Turkey 1.5M Armenia's were killed between 1915 and 1922. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people were forced to march across the deserts to Syria. Few made it. Those that did were killed. Hundreds of thousands fled the country. The Turks also destroyed cultural relics and attempted to wipe Armenia and Armenians from the map. Turkey has always denied that it gave any orders to do so even in the face of photographs and first-hand accounts. It's meant that there are Armenians living all over the world. Second and third generation Armenians are returning to Armenia after being born and living all their lives in countries like Jordan or Iran, Australia, the US or Europe. It's meant that Yereven has a very cosmopolitan feel where people are still today angry that Turkey hasn't even acknowledged what it did, let alone apologise.
I left Yereven for a town to the north called Dillijan. I stayed in a friendly guesthouse that served me a mountain of food but the main house seemed to be built without any right angles as every wall and floor seemed to slope in different directions. Dillijan is billed as the "The Switzerland of Armenia" and if that's the case then Switzerland must be shit. I wanted to do some hiking but it wasn't really worth it as it had been raining for a few days so all the villages that looked bright and dusty in the sun look grey and muddy in the damp and Dillijan was just that.
Today i got a minivan from Dillijan back to the border in the drizzle and after i'd been stamped back into Georgia i managed to find a shared taxi to bring me through the drizzle and the autumn greens and browns to Tbilisi. We drove away from the border and after about 500m we promptly run out of petrol. Fortunately we were going downhill so the driver just slapped it in nuetral and we let gravity do the driving all the way to the next village where we filed up and eventually arrived back in grey, damp, Tbilisi. It almost looks like England.
And i'll be back there soon. I've got six weeks left of this trip and there are mountains, Turkey and Europe between me and home.
Thanks for reading. See you soon.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Tblisi
I'm in Georgia and it is one fine country. Very fine.
Sheki was nice but i left it and Azerbaijan behind and travelled with an Australian diplomat in a couple of minivans to a border town where we hopped into a taxi and drove to the border. The Azerbaijan immigration was sketchy at best as everybody had to hand their passports over to a man with a gun who quickly disappeared but everything sorted itself out and me and Axel, the Aussie, walked over the border to be greeted by Georgian immigration officer who said happily, "Welcome to Georgia!" before i even gave him my passport. Two taxis, one minivan and a few hours later i was in Sighnaghi.
Sighnaghi is a red tiled hillside town complete with pastel coloured houses, balconies and lazy cobbled streets. It's in a region of Georgia famous for grape growing and wine making which was a fame that my guesthouse seemed only too pleased to extend further. The large woman called Manana who owned the place kept asking me to sit down at their big dinner table and then say "David! Eat!". This was usually followed by her small husband, Gori, who seemed to appear from nowhere, his face dominated by large glasses and a bald head and would say "David! Drink!" and pour me some wine or cha cha. Cha cha is a Georgian fire water made by fermenting grape skins and grape seeds to an average alcohol level of at least 50%. Apparently. I don't really remember the finer details.
The next morning i was sat in the front seat of Gori's car with three Israelis on the back seat who were also staying at the guesthouse. Gori was giving us a tour of the area and we saw a winery, a old fort, a monastery and his sisters house where she and her husband brew their own wine and cha cha which, of, course, had to be sampled. It was ten o'clock in the morning. And that's how i found myself being piloted through the landscapes of Georgia dripping with autumn leaves with three Israelis while Gori threw an arm out of a window and said things like, "Church! You go?" and me with a few glasses of cha cha flowing quite freely through my head.
I stayed another day in Sighnaghi (or it may have been two, ask cha cha) and then got another minivan to Tblisi. The Georgian capital is a dishevelled city that oozes charm and bursts with old architecture, happy faces, churches and speeding cars all of which seem to inhabit every tree lined street. I stayed in a family run guesthouse on a Saturday night and met lots of Polish people who seemed to want to drink a large supply of Cognac and then dance (Pole dancers, if you will) which made for a memorable experience.
I left Tblisi in another minivan (it's the only public transport in the Caucasus) and three hours later i was in the mountains near the Russian border and the village of Kazbegi. I stepped off the minivan to be greeted by a nice smiling woman who simply said, "Hello. I am Nazi." Thankfully Nazi has a guesthouse and her name is pronounced Nah-see but for some reason best known to her parents it's spelt with a "z". Unlucky. Nazi and her husband were fantastic hosts always entertaining and cooking huge amounts of food for me and the other guests staying there.
Kazbegi is famous in Georgia for the church that sits on a small mountain above the town. It is perched at a place where no church (or any building) should be but it's there looking out below to the village and the valley, across to the mountains and up to Mt Kazbeg, a snow covered peak towering over everything. Like most things i've seen so far in Georgia, Kazbegi is utterly wonderful. I walked up the dirt tack to Tsmida Sameba, the famous church, and hiked higher up the lower slopes of the dizzying mountain behind it. The next day me and Anya, a German photographer also staying with Nazi, got a taxi to a tiny village called Juta and spent the day hiking in heart-stopping camera-battery-sapping scenery into the brown green Chaukhi valley and up to the base camp of the brilliant white topped Mt Chaukhi. We sat and ate food, looked around and decided that Georgia is less a country and more a work of art. This place is great.
I'm back in Tblisi where i'll be for a few days and then i'm heading south to a different country. Who knows when i'll next be in this part of the world so i thought, "Let's go to Armenia." And it's not everyday that you can have that particular thought. I should be there for a week and then head back north to Georgia as there's no border between Armenia and Turkey. And Georgia deserves more time anyway.
Thanks for reading. Have fun.
Sheki was nice but i left it and Azerbaijan behind and travelled with an Australian diplomat in a couple of minivans to a border town where we hopped into a taxi and drove to the border. The Azerbaijan immigration was sketchy at best as everybody had to hand their passports over to a man with a gun who quickly disappeared but everything sorted itself out and me and Axel, the Aussie, walked over the border to be greeted by Georgian immigration officer who said happily, "Welcome to Georgia!" before i even gave him my passport. Two taxis, one minivan and a few hours later i was in Sighnaghi.
Sighnaghi is a red tiled hillside town complete with pastel coloured houses, balconies and lazy cobbled streets. It's in a region of Georgia famous for grape growing and wine making which was a fame that my guesthouse seemed only too pleased to extend further. The large woman called Manana who owned the place kept asking me to sit down at their big dinner table and then say "David! Eat!". This was usually followed by her small husband, Gori, who seemed to appear from nowhere, his face dominated by large glasses and a bald head and would say "David! Drink!" and pour me some wine or cha cha. Cha cha is a Georgian fire water made by fermenting grape skins and grape seeds to an average alcohol level of at least 50%. Apparently. I don't really remember the finer details.
The next morning i was sat in the front seat of Gori's car with three Israelis on the back seat who were also staying at the guesthouse. Gori was giving us a tour of the area and we saw a winery, a old fort, a monastery and his sisters house where she and her husband brew their own wine and cha cha which, of, course, had to be sampled. It was ten o'clock in the morning. And that's how i found myself being piloted through the landscapes of Georgia dripping with autumn leaves with three Israelis while Gori threw an arm out of a window and said things like, "Church! You go?" and me with a few glasses of cha cha flowing quite freely through my head.
I stayed another day in Sighnaghi (or it may have been two, ask cha cha) and then got another minivan to Tblisi. The Georgian capital is a dishevelled city that oozes charm and bursts with old architecture, happy faces, churches and speeding cars all of which seem to inhabit every tree lined street. I stayed in a family run guesthouse on a Saturday night and met lots of Polish people who seemed to want to drink a large supply of Cognac and then dance (Pole dancers, if you will) which made for a memorable experience.
I left Tblisi in another minivan (it's the only public transport in the Caucasus) and three hours later i was in the mountains near the Russian border and the village of Kazbegi. I stepped off the minivan to be greeted by a nice smiling woman who simply said, "Hello. I am Nazi." Thankfully Nazi has a guesthouse and her name is pronounced Nah-see but for some reason best known to her parents it's spelt with a "z". Unlucky. Nazi and her husband were fantastic hosts always entertaining and cooking huge amounts of food for me and the other guests staying there.
Kazbegi is famous in Georgia for the church that sits on a small mountain above the town. It is perched at a place where no church (or any building) should be but it's there looking out below to the village and the valley, across to the mountains and up to Mt Kazbeg, a snow covered peak towering over everything. Like most things i've seen so far in Georgia, Kazbegi is utterly wonderful. I walked up the dirt tack to Tsmida Sameba, the famous church, and hiked higher up the lower slopes of the dizzying mountain behind it. The next day me and Anya, a German photographer also staying with Nazi, got a taxi to a tiny village called Juta and spent the day hiking in heart-stopping camera-battery-sapping scenery into the brown green Chaukhi valley and up to the base camp of the brilliant white topped Mt Chaukhi. We sat and ate food, looked around and decided that Georgia is less a country and more a work of art. This place is great.
I'm back in Tblisi where i'll be for a few days and then i'm heading south to a different country. Who knows when i'll next be in this part of the world so i thought, "Let's go to Armenia." And it's not everyday that you can have that particular thought. I should be there for a week and then head back north to Georgia as there's no border between Armenia and Turkey. And Georgia deserves more time anyway.
Thanks for reading. Have fun.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Sheki
I've failed. I wanted to get from Japan to England without getting on a plane but on Friday last week i did exactly that and flew from Tashkent to Baku. But now i'm in Azerbaijan which makes me sound exotic and adventurous even though Azerbaijan is neither.
I left Samarkand and the friendly guesthouse and grabbed a train that sped through the familiar mixture of desert and cotton fields back to Tashkent where i stayed in a guesthouse with the three most Bravian looking men i've ever seen and a French guy who seemed to have an affliction to wearing clothes whilst staying in the dorm we were sharing. He also wanted to walk to Mongolia. I met some interesting people in Uzbekistan. It was a fun country though. I wasn't expecting much from deserts and mosques but i was amazed and entertained almost everyday in a country where the average age is 15 and everybody seemed obsessed with either making money or escaping to another country.
I did leave for another country. I managed to get through immigration at Tashkent airport which was bursting full of (guess who?) loads of old French tourists and waited to board my flight to Baku.
Disclaimer: If you are my father then you should probably not read the next two paragraphs. As far as you're concerned nothing out of the ordinary happened on the flight and flying is ace. Just ace.
Thanks to an airport worker and a bus, i and a dozen very Russian looking men found ourselves on the tarmac queuing to get on a plane that looked suspiciously small for an international flight. I've slept in bigger hotel rooms. I noticed a red dotted line around two of the windows and in red letters it said simply "cut here in emergency". The plane was already full of Pakistani men who'd transferred from a flight from Lahore. It seemed that there wasn't enough time or space for all of their luggage to be stowed away properly so the guy next to me spent the whole flight with his suitcase wedged between his legs. Other nondescript boxes that had been shrink-wrapped jutted out into the aisle. Now, i'm an open minded liberal thinking guy but when you get on any aeroplane there are certain things you don't really expect to see and one of those is a lot of Muslim men holding onto boxes whilst on a flight to Europe. It brings out the Fox News in you and that's never a good thing.
But i finally realised on this flight that traveling by plane is crap. You have to be there three hours early, everybody gets treat like a terrorist, the food is shit, you watch movies you don't like or you've already seen and unless you've got a window seat or are lucky enough to suffer from mild narcolepsy you spend most of your time counting the pieces of dandruff on the persons hair in front of you or guessing how many layers of make-up the stewardesses put on their faces that day (Why do they always cake themselves in it? There are certain people who have to wear too much make up to work - clowns and figure skaters. That's it.). The announcements fascinate me as well. "In the event of an emergency...." What kind of an emergency? I'm in a chair in the fucking sky. If the name of this emergency is anything other than We've Run Out Biscuits then we're all mince. Or when you're late leaving and the captain says, "Sorry about the delay. Hopefully we'll be able to make up some time during the flight." How? What the hell are you going to do? Take a short cut? Fly faster? The sooner we invent trains that travel quicker or some kind of Star Trek teleportation device the better it will be for for everybody.
After spending the GDP of Malawi on a visa at Baku airport (robbing bastards) i got a taxi to the centre of the city. My taxi driver was a friendly man and through my miniscule handle of Russian and the taxi drivers broken English here are some things we managed to establish.
I'm rich because England is rich.
My name is similar to a famous motorbike and for the rest of the journey i will be refered to as "Davidson" but it will always be said in a Mr Miagi style "Danielson" kind of way.
I'm 27.
He's 33.
He has two kids.
I have no kids.
I'm weird because i'm not married and i have no kids.
I should hurry up and get married and have kids because my dick will go limp before i'm thirty three.
His dick went limp before he was thirty three.
My expectations for Baku were amazingly low. Everybody i'd met who's been there hated it and as a result i didn't think it was too bad. It's going through another oil boom (in 1905 it produced 50% of the world's oil - economic freedom has led to another) and as a result there's a huge amount of money pouring into the place and the classical European looking buildings are being refurbished or just rebuilt. There's construction and building everywhere, BMWs race Ladas and taxis, hot looking women are crawling all over the place and the old town is smack in the middle keeping all its history and alleyways intact.
I left Baku and came to Sheki by bus which took an age as the road was under construction. Azerbaijan is a nice enough place but it'll be much better when it's finished. Sheki is an old town in the cool hills in the north west of the country. There's not a great deal to see here but it's a really friendly little town and the old men sitting around in the central park playing checkers and sipping tea watched over by the old buildings is a nice contrast to the money and pace of Baku.
Tomorrow i'll cross the border to Georgia which everybody seems to to like as it's full of wine, food, mountains and hospitality. Let's hope everybody is right.
I left Samarkand and the friendly guesthouse and grabbed a train that sped through the familiar mixture of desert and cotton fields back to Tashkent where i stayed in a guesthouse with the three most Bravian looking men i've ever seen and a French guy who seemed to have an affliction to wearing clothes whilst staying in the dorm we were sharing. He also wanted to walk to Mongolia. I met some interesting people in Uzbekistan. It was a fun country though. I wasn't expecting much from deserts and mosques but i was amazed and entertained almost everyday in a country where the average age is 15 and everybody seemed obsessed with either making money or escaping to another country.
I did leave for another country. I managed to get through immigration at Tashkent airport which was bursting full of (guess who?) loads of old French tourists and waited to board my flight to Baku.
Disclaimer: If you are my father then you should probably not read the next two paragraphs. As far as you're concerned nothing out of the ordinary happened on the flight and flying is ace. Just ace.
Thanks to an airport worker and a bus, i and a dozen very Russian looking men found ourselves on the tarmac queuing to get on a plane that looked suspiciously small for an international flight. I've slept in bigger hotel rooms. I noticed a red dotted line around two of the windows and in red letters it said simply "cut here in emergency". The plane was already full of Pakistani men who'd transferred from a flight from Lahore. It seemed that there wasn't enough time or space for all of their luggage to be stowed away properly so the guy next to me spent the whole flight with his suitcase wedged between his legs. Other nondescript boxes that had been shrink-wrapped jutted out into the aisle. Now, i'm an open minded liberal thinking guy but when you get on any aeroplane there are certain things you don't really expect to see and one of those is a lot of Muslim men holding onto boxes whilst on a flight to Europe. It brings out the Fox News in you and that's never a good thing.
But i finally realised on this flight that traveling by plane is crap. You have to be there three hours early, everybody gets treat like a terrorist, the food is shit, you watch movies you don't like or you've already seen and unless you've got a window seat or are lucky enough to suffer from mild narcolepsy you spend most of your time counting the pieces of dandruff on the persons hair in front of you or guessing how many layers of make-up the stewardesses put on their faces that day (Why do they always cake themselves in it? There are certain people who have to wear too much make up to work - clowns and figure skaters. That's it.). The announcements fascinate me as well. "In the event of an emergency...." What kind of an emergency? I'm in a chair in the fucking sky. If the name of this emergency is anything other than We've Run Out Biscuits then we're all mince. Or when you're late leaving and the captain says, "Sorry about the delay. Hopefully we'll be able to make up some time during the flight." How? What the hell are you going to do? Take a short cut? Fly faster? The sooner we invent trains that travel quicker or some kind of Star Trek teleportation device the better it will be for for everybody.
After spending the GDP of Malawi on a visa at Baku airport (robbing bastards) i got a taxi to the centre of the city. My taxi driver was a friendly man and through my miniscule handle of Russian and the taxi drivers broken English here are some things we managed to establish.
I'm rich because England is rich.
My name is similar to a famous motorbike and for the rest of the journey i will be refered to as "Davidson" but it will always be said in a Mr Miagi style "Danielson" kind of way.
I'm 27.
He's 33.
He has two kids.
I have no kids.
I'm weird because i'm not married and i have no kids.
I should hurry up and get married and have kids because my dick will go limp before i'm thirty three.
His dick went limp before he was thirty three.
My expectations for Baku were amazingly low. Everybody i'd met who's been there hated it and as a result i didn't think it was too bad. It's going through another oil boom (in 1905 it produced 50% of the world's oil - economic freedom has led to another) and as a result there's a huge amount of money pouring into the place and the classical European looking buildings are being refurbished or just rebuilt. There's construction and building everywhere, BMWs race Ladas and taxis, hot looking women are crawling all over the place and the old town is smack in the middle keeping all its history and alleyways intact.
I left Baku and came to Sheki by bus which took an age as the road was under construction. Azerbaijan is a nice enough place but it'll be much better when it's finished. Sheki is an old town in the cool hills in the north west of the country. There's not a great deal to see here but it's a really friendly little town and the old men sitting around in the central park playing checkers and sipping tea watched over by the old buildings is a nice contrast to the money and pace of Baku.
Tomorrow i'll cross the border to Georgia which everybody seems to to like as it's full of wine, food, mountains and hospitality. Let's hope everybody is right.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Samarkand
I only have two more days in Uzbekistan and then i'll be on a plane. Here's where i've been, what i've seen and who i've met this week. Aren't you getting bored of all this yet?
Bukhara is an old city chock full of awesome medrasses, mosques and minarets. Most have been restored as they've been crushed and rebuilt plenty of times between the Mongols and Russians. One mosque, Maghoki-Attar Mosque, has been the subject of excavations and digs and summed up the history of the place nicely. First it was the site of a Buddhist temple, then Zoroastrianism (don't ask, i don't know) then a Mosque and finally Jews used it as a synagogue but it's now hawking carpets and hats to tourists. I'm not sure who made the decision to turn all the remarkable Islamic architecture into glorified tourist shops but i wish they hadn't. The best place i visited was Abdullah Khan Medrassa as it wasn't restored to its original form but had been left to decay. I paid an old guy to unlock the place and let me wander around taking pictures of rooms where students used to live and study that were now covered with thick layers of dust, debris or pigeon shit but to me it just added to the charm of the place.
I stayed in a guesthouse in Bukhara owned by fat man and a small child who promised me football on TV and beers in the fridge. I got neither but i did get a strange breakfast every morning. One day it was sausage and mash with grapes on the side.
I got ripped off by a friendly man in Bukhara. He approached me on the street and told me i could have lunch with him and his family and then before the food was served (which was crap) he tried to sell me some blankets and cushion covers embroidered with silk (i must look like the kind of guy interested in soft furnishings). He got so desperate to sell something other than lunch (which cost more than we'd agreed) that he asked me if i liked watches. I shrugged. He disappeared to the kitchen and produced a cheap Soviet wind-up watch that he said would make a good souvenir. I gave him a disdainful look that was only surpassed by his daughter. There are lots of tour buses passing through Bukhara and it seems to have made people there think that a foreign face is some kind of coin-shitting machine that likes to walk the streets buying crap they don't need for no reason at all.
I jumped on a speedy train to Samarkand in the early morning sunshine and we sped past miles of cotton fields sprinkled with people harvesting in the autumn heat who stopped to wave at the train as we then trundled on through dusty deserts and villages. Three hours later i was in Samarkand, one of the most famous cities on the ancient Silk Road and home to the amazing Registan which is a collection of enormous mosques and meddrasses and is a seriously beautiful building. Unfortunately most of Samarkand has ben turned into yet more tourist traps and manicured roads that the Uzbek authorities would love to call "boulevards" which split the dusty old town charm from the soulless buildings and keep the tour buses on the clean streets. It's a shame but it's a big business. Samarkand, Khiva and Bukhara is where the money is but i'll probably have my best memories from the other places in Uzbekistan.
And there are amazing numbers of French people on holiday in Uzbekistan. They're everywhere. Most of them on tour buses and most of them old and slightly bewildered but definitely everywhere. I was sat in an internet cafe in Bukhara and an Uzbek man came in to chat with the owner. He then walked over to me, tapped me on the shoulder and said, "France?"
"No," i replied, "England."
"London?" he offered.
"Erm, no, Leeds."
"Manchester?" he attempted, ignoring the answer i'd just given him.
"No...Leeds." He shrugged, looked almost insulted and walked out.
I stayed in a great guesthouse in Samarkand. There were a load of cyclists staying there all on huge trips across Asia and Europe that made me feel as if i should be trying harder to be traveling as well as Japanese people on a mission to take pictures and get drunk as quickly as possible. It was great to sit around and do nothing but swap stories drink beers and share emails before planning the next legs of our respective journeys.
I'll be in Tashkent for one night and then on Friday i'll be in Europe. Or Asia. I'm not sure. Which continent is Azerbaijan on? I'm looking forward to finding out.
Bukhara is an old city chock full of awesome medrasses, mosques and minarets. Most have been restored as they've been crushed and rebuilt plenty of times between the Mongols and Russians. One mosque, Maghoki-Attar Mosque, has been the subject of excavations and digs and summed up the history of the place nicely. First it was the site of a Buddhist temple, then Zoroastrianism (don't ask, i don't know) then a Mosque and finally Jews used it as a synagogue but it's now hawking carpets and hats to tourists. I'm not sure who made the decision to turn all the remarkable Islamic architecture into glorified tourist shops but i wish they hadn't. The best place i visited was Abdullah Khan Medrassa as it wasn't restored to its original form but had been left to decay. I paid an old guy to unlock the place and let me wander around taking pictures of rooms where students used to live and study that were now covered with thick layers of dust, debris or pigeon shit but to me it just added to the charm of the place.
I stayed in a guesthouse in Bukhara owned by fat man and a small child who promised me football on TV and beers in the fridge. I got neither but i did get a strange breakfast every morning. One day it was sausage and mash with grapes on the side.
I got ripped off by a friendly man in Bukhara. He approached me on the street and told me i could have lunch with him and his family and then before the food was served (which was crap) he tried to sell me some blankets and cushion covers embroidered with silk (i must look like the kind of guy interested in soft furnishings). He got so desperate to sell something other than lunch (which cost more than we'd agreed) that he asked me if i liked watches. I shrugged. He disappeared to the kitchen and produced a cheap Soviet wind-up watch that he said would make a good souvenir. I gave him a disdainful look that was only surpassed by his daughter. There are lots of tour buses passing through Bukhara and it seems to have made people there think that a foreign face is some kind of coin-shitting machine that likes to walk the streets buying crap they don't need for no reason at all.
I jumped on a speedy train to Samarkand in the early morning sunshine and we sped past miles of cotton fields sprinkled with people harvesting in the autumn heat who stopped to wave at the train as we then trundled on through dusty deserts and villages. Three hours later i was in Samarkand, one of the most famous cities on the ancient Silk Road and home to the amazing Registan which is a collection of enormous mosques and meddrasses and is a seriously beautiful building. Unfortunately most of Samarkand has ben turned into yet more tourist traps and manicured roads that the Uzbek authorities would love to call "boulevards" which split the dusty old town charm from the soulless buildings and keep the tour buses on the clean streets. It's a shame but it's a big business. Samarkand, Khiva and Bukhara is where the money is but i'll probably have my best memories from the other places in Uzbekistan.
And there are amazing numbers of French people on holiday in Uzbekistan. They're everywhere. Most of them on tour buses and most of them old and slightly bewildered but definitely everywhere. I was sat in an internet cafe in Bukhara and an Uzbek man came in to chat with the owner. He then walked over to me, tapped me on the shoulder and said, "France?"
"No," i replied, "England."
"London?" he offered.
"Erm, no, Leeds."
"Manchester?" he attempted, ignoring the answer i'd just given him.
"No...Leeds." He shrugged, looked almost insulted and walked out.
I stayed in a great guesthouse in Samarkand. There were a load of cyclists staying there all on huge trips across Asia and Europe that made me feel as if i should be trying harder to be traveling as well as Japanese people on a mission to take pictures and get drunk as quickly as possible. It was great to sit around and do nothing but swap stories drink beers and share emails before planning the next legs of our respective journeys.
I'll be in Tashkent for one night and then on Friday i'll be in Europe. Or Asia. I'm not sure. Which continent is Azerbaijan on? I'm looking forward to finding out.
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