Assalomu Alaykum! Salamatsyzby! здравствуйте!


Assalomu Alaykum! Salamatsyzby! здравствуйте! Hello!


My name is Kristina and I am a 26-year-old Austrian with a slight obsession with Central Asia and travelling to the more remote parts of the world. Learning a lot (of and about) languages, foreign cultures and trying to gain a better understanding of traditions while teaching German has been my mission in the past years.
Initially, this blog started out as a mere means to inform my friends and family about my life and adventures when I first moved to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. It became a lot more than that to me after realizing that writing helped me to make sense of the strange world surrounding me, to deal with culture shock as well as to help me organize the chaos in my head. My Central Asian adventures haven't ended yet and I am looking forward to entertaining you with some more (crazy) stories from Kyrgyzstan in the very soon future!

I am also a couchsurf host - if you're planning a trip to Naryn, let me know on here and we can take it from there :)

I am always happy to hear from my readers, so please don't hesitate to contact me if you have comments or questions, about travel tips in Central Asia or about life in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan :)

Much love,
Kristina


Donnerstag, 27. Juni 2013

Men, women and mahallas

or: Traumata, gossip and multiple wives

"I think Western men are selfish because they let the women pay when going to a restaurant." (Female student, 20)

"You're saying that women didn't win as many nobel prices in the past because they didn't have the option to get an education. Why didn't they claim it? I will tell you why: because they are weak!" (Male student, 21)

"I understand why you're saying that you want to be equal to men and I would want that too in my marriage. But I still think that men should have the last word." (Male student, 23)

"Why do Western women always look so masculine? Short hair, trousers? At least Uzbeks still know how important it is for a woman to be pretty" (Female student, 20)

Notions about the role of the sexes, upbringing of children, marriage and sex are deeply entrenched in a person's way of thinking, their surrounding culture and their socialisation. Related questions in a completely different context: Why is it that English people are so scared of nudity, while Germans embrace the idea of going into the sauna naked? Why do we find that so difficult to explain? Or why do I find the quotations above so repellent? And why is it so damn difficult to get people to think about their own ideas a little bit more critically?

Welcome to another blogpost on a complex topic that you encounter and/or discuss on an almost weekly basis when living in Uzbekistan - a topic that many of us (Western women) would take for granted, at least most of the time. All assumptions made in this post are based on conversations with my students, colleagues and other expats, as well as on observations I have made here in general.. a lot of them may be generalising in one way or the other, but I believe that they do describe general trends.

I get into a cab. 
Otkuda?, asks the taxi driver. (where are you from?)
Ja iz avstrii. (I am from Austria)
Ah. Rabota? (Work?)
Da da, rabota. (Yes, yes, work.)
Mush jest? (Do you have a husband?)
Da, kanjeschna, mush jest. (Yes, of course, I have a husband)

Boom. Third question is whether I am married, and the conversation goes on along the lines what my husband works and if I have any children. Course I do, cause that's all I think about at my age. Really?

People here get married comparatively young, usually between the age of 18 and 25. If, as a woman, you're older than 25, you're often considered too old, or that there must be something wrong with you. Marriages are somewhat arranged, but at least women can state their opinion if they like their future husbands or not, and if they don't, then usually the family gives in and keeps on looking. As you grow up, there are many tasks to learn for a future bride - pretty much every single girl I have met here knows how to cook plov, make somsa, how to organise a household. Surely, in one way or the other, these are useful things to know, but it also means that these are believed to be essential for a woman when getting married. 

It's possible to get a divorce, but only when you are from Tashkent, which isn't AS traditional as the rest of the country. If you're from one of the regions and your marriage isn't working out, most men just get a second wife..these mostly don't live together but have their separate homes so that the two wives don't cross each others' ways. I have met a woman who was madly in love with an already married man in the regions but who didn't want to be the second wife... she shared her entire story and dilemma with me, how she tried to accept that being the second wife is the only possibility to be with him, how her family doesn't want her to be the second wife, and how she finally had to accept that she couldn't be with the man she loves. Absolutely heartbreaking story, believe you me.

The problem, really, is this: Men and women do not share a common space. There are men, and there are women. At weddings - there are tables for men, and tables for women. There are traditions for men - and traditions for women. While they may share their university, classroom, talk in their lunchbreaks, it is often shameful for female students to spend too much time with male students, for example. What if they also meet after university? And what if she invites him into her home? And the gossip starts. And goes on until all families know: That girl - she spends more time with a guy than she should (even though they are only friends). Which future husband would still want her? As an (traditional) Uzbek woman you can't invite a male friend to your home. One of my students told me this - I naively asked, and what if you just want to watch a movie? Or do homework together? It's not possible, because the mahalla (i.e. the neighbours) would know. And the gossip would go on, until it reaches the family and, in the worst case scenario, the father. 
So in order to remain respectful, women cannot really communicate with men. Get to know them, realise what men in general are like, what it means to be sexy. How often have I witnessed how Uzbek women sometimes dance, wiggling their bums and trying to be as sexy as possible, with or without realising that surrounding men were staring at them. And all I could think to myself was, do you even know what it means to be sexy? 
And then they have to choose someone (or someone is chosen for them) who they will spend, most likely, the rest of their lives with, they marry. They look forward to it, thinking, now I can do what I want without being watched by the mahalla and without being controlled by my family, because I am married. Now I am free! Hm, I am not so sure?

And then comes the wedding night. I attended an initiative called Join-in Circuits..it's basically an initiative in schools where school classes attend a few stations which inform them about contraception, family planning, HIV (ways of transmission, ART therapy) and other issues related to sexual and reproductive health and rights. I was a bit taken aback by it and asked myself, shouldn't the students (who were about 16) know about these things already? Sex education for example? I corrected myself slightly and thought, well, I suppose if you can only have sex within marriage, you don't really have to learn about it earlier. Still, I asked my colleague about it and what they would learn in sex education at school. We don't have it. Do you talk to your family about it? No. So how do people know anything about it? From their friends. Half-truths, I suppose? Such as, that HIV is transmitted by sharing the same bathroom facilities. Obviously there is still the internet, but even access to that is limited for many families, particularly in rural areas. What a tabooed topic sex really is can also be inferred from the following situation: My former housemate was teaching a lesson on a topic completely unrelated to sex, but for some reason, the text that they were reading (aloud) contained the word "sexual". As the student reading the text got to that passage, she refused to say the word.


So, the wedding night. To get intimate for the first time with a man you hardly know, not really knowing what you're doing because nobody talked to you about it. And there is so much pressure because outside of the bedroom, the families are waiting for the newly wed husband to come out and present to them the bedsheets with a stain of blood on it. Sounds like the middle ages, eh? One of my student's mother is a doctor, so I asked her if she was aware that losing your virginity does not necessarily mean to bleed. She said she knew, and that that really scared her cause if she didn't bleed, her family would think she was a shameful woman. I responded, but your mother is a doctor? She knows about that, surely? She does, but it doesn't matter. Tradition matters, so that everyone's waiting for the blood stain no matter what. I find that genuinely shocking..isn't that highly traumatic for the girl?

Women then often get pregnant shortly after their wedding, which - most of the time - is while they are still in University. If they time their wedding perfectly, then they get married in their last year, so that by the end of the college year they give birth. So they've just finished Uni and have to be mothers straightaway. What happens next depends on if you've married the only or the youngest son of your family-in-law, cause if you did, you have to move in to the husband's family home to take care of them. Then, you're not only under the whip of your husband, but also constantly controlled by your mother-in-law. "Now I am free!"

I find a lot of these things that I've just described genuinely difficult to accept and I have found myself numerous times discussing these issues with my students without getting anywhere. One of my students and I, with whom I still meet up every now and then, discussed this repeatedly, until she eventually said, "Kristina, I don't want to talk about this anymore. I don't want to talk about it too much until we actually start fighting about it. Please just accept that I am from a different culture." I genuinely don't think that I tried to impose my opinion on her, but I did feel somewhat bad, thinking, maybe I did? Where do you draw the line between imposing your culture-tainted idea of the role of the sexes and simply trying to explain to them that women have rights, too? I was very careful, and I think all I did was ask her questions to help her question her own traditions. Why do you think you have to get married so early? Why are you so scared of not bleeding in your wedding night although you KNOW that you know better? What does marriage change for you?

What have I learnt? It makes a massive difference if you read about these things in books, articles or maybe even guidebooks or if you actually talk to the people, get a chance to discuss, get their opinions and how they feel about their own traditions. A lot of the time, these ideas aren't as static as they seem to be and they are defined through the people who live them and not the other way round. Also, sometimes you just have to stop yourself from thinking, "they" are doing it the "wrong" way and I am doing it the "right" way.

Dienstag, 18. Juni 2013

Nukus and surroundings



When I read back my post on how I didn't make it to Nukus, who would have thought I would get another chance to go! I finally made it to the west of Uzbekistan because my colleague Dilnora convinced our boss that I should accompany her to a monitoring conference as part of my internship. I wasn't quite sure what my role and function would be, but I was content enough that I was finally able to explore Uzbekistan a little bit more. I am usually not too scared of flying but flying with a centuries old Soviet propellor plane named Ilyushin really set my nerves on edge - probably the most turbulent, hottest, and bumpiest flight of my life. 



Nukus is the capital of the Republic of Karakalpakstan, an autonomous republic which covers the western end of Uzbekistan and makes up 36% of the country. Despite its large dimensions, the ecological catastrophe of the Aral Sea and its disastrous consequences such as wind-borne salt and pesticides from the dried sea bed destroying and polluting fields and crops, has left it as one of the poorest regions in Uzbekistan. Nukus is only about an 4hour drive away from the sea bed, but the increased salinity is omnipresent due to visible salt on the roads and in the air, so that your skin feels irritated as if you've just bathed in the sea after one day of being outside. For those of you who don't know about the Aral Sea, I can highly recommend this arte documentary, where a guy travels around Karakalpakstan on a motorbike and interviews former Aral Sea fishers (fishery used to be the main source of income in the area and part of the people's culture and identity) who now find themselves unemployed and often suffering from one of the many diseases the ecological catastrophe has brought with it (e.g. respiratory illnesses such as tuberculosis, anaemia, malnutrition).


The Aral Sea in 1989 and 2008 (Picture taken from Wikipedia)
Despite the sad circumstances of the region, Karakalpakstan is a fascinating and breathtaking place on earth due to its geographical location. It mainly consists of desert, namely the Karakum desert (black desert in Karakalpak) in the south and the Kyzylkum (red desert) in the east, but it also features a nature reservation and black mountains (Karatau, and they are actually black because of the colour of its rocks) as well as white mountains. Many places are remote and seem extremely far away from civilisation. This place's isolation was also the reason for Igor Savitsky in the 1960s to install a museum showing the second biggest collection of the Russian avant garde in the world.

The Karakalpak State Museum of Art is one of Nukus's main attractions (and possibly, its only attraction) and one of the reasons why I wanted to go in the first place. Its isolated location enabled Savitsky - a Russian fascinated by the area's folk art, ancient history and Central Asian fine arts who also attended archeological and ethnographic expeditions in the area - to install a museum showing a large collection of Russian avant garde by artists which were forbidden by the Soviet regime. Remote Nukus was a safe haven for these banned pieces of art. Over the years, Savitsky acquired over 90,000 paintings and sculptures - many of them obviously can't even be exhibited. The museum is huge - almost too big - to see it all in one visit, but it records and represents a fascinating period in history... in Nukus of all places! I absolutely loved it and wish I had had more time to explore it in more detail.

As I got to Nukus, it turned out that my co-workers had forgotten to inform the conference's organiser that I would attend, so that I wasn't registered and, therefore, couldn't join all the events (Uzbekistan is very strict when you are foreigner and you need an authorization for all sorts of things). It was somewhat frustrating in the first days but then the hotel's owner announced that she would make a daytrip to the qalas because she wanted to take pictures for her new website, so she hired a professional photographer. I decided to join her to share costs and couldn't have made a better decision.

We left the hotel at 5am, not only because it got pretty hot during the day but also to get the best possible lighting conditions for the pictures. I don't want to make you feel as if you are reading a guide book on Karakalpakstan, so I will refrain from going into detail about the qalas' history, but if you are interested, this is a very good website. Just to give you a few ideas: Qalas are ancient ruins, some of which were first surveyed and partly excavated in the 1930s by archeologist Sergey Tolstov. Their purposes are manifold, including fortified refuges and garrisons, fortresses and temples built sometime between 600 BC and 200 AD. They are located in the middle of the endlessness of the barren desert and even though there isn't too much left of some of them, I found them way more impressive and authentic than any of the numerous mausoleums or medressas in Samarkand and Bukhara.  And even though you could say that about all old buildings in Europe, I found the idea striking that someone had put a particular stone or brick on a particular spot - in an area so remote and far away from everything else -  and almost 2000 years later, I am touching it in the exact same place. These places got me thinking that even though transience is omnipresent in life, life and the memory of past generations are inherent in these old murals and the landscape surrounding them. Even animals still make use of these places and make them alive, and I found myself looking into the wall's holes to watch baby birds waiting for their mothers to return to them with food. 

Please find below a selection of some of my pictures, as well as pictures taken by very talented photographer Azamat Matkarimov to give you an impression of my day of visiting the qalas, walking in the desert, snake hunting, plov eating, animal watching, getting a sunburn, being stunned by the desert's endlessness and having one of the best days of my life.


Jampik qala in the early morning hours

The Bukhara deer in the nature reservation

A yurt camp near Ayaz Qala. Yurts were portable houses/tents traditionally used by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia.


Inside the yurt: playing the dutar, a musical instrument typical for Central Asia with only two strings

A poisonous snake got into our yurt. The yurt owner caught it and put it into a bottle...with the intention to cook and eat it later.

The crew during our lunch break :)


"Just think how someone put this little stone here at this particular spot, and almost 2000 years later, I am finding it in the exact same position"




Montag, 10. Juni 2013

"Am I a racist?": The joys of expat life II

I was in the office with my boss and we were both concentrating on our work, as one of our colleagues (who I hadn't met before) entered the room, briefly looked at me and nodded in my direction. He started chatting to my boss in German.

"How was your business dinner last night?"
"It was alright.. many Uzbeks, and we had to pay for all of them."
"With sexy belly dancers?"
(I briefly raised my eyebrows there and looked at him perviously.)
"No..just food."
"Sometimes you do surprise me.. I don't think I would ever go to an Uzbek restaurant voluntarily."
"Yeah..it was terrible and I really didn't want to."

I stopped typing at this point and couldn't believe my ears that they would actually talk like that while somebody was listening. I looked at both of them, again, until they moved to a different conversation topic. And I sighed heavily. It was only later that I realised the funny element of the situation when our colleague came back to our room because he was looking for his keys. My boss had left at this point, so this guy asked me in English if I had seen his keys. I responded in German that I hadn't seen them. He froze, stared at me and just said "I didn't know you spoke German". Awkward much? 

The sad thing is that this is a standard senior expat conversation of which I have overheard way too many in the past weeks. This blog post is inspired by observations I have previously made at my workplace as well as by a conversation I had a few weeks ago with Heinar and Charlotte. Since then I've been thinking a lot about this, trying to form an opinion about something that I've been asking myself in a number of ways, but never as specifically as I have in the past weeks. I am obviously aware that I will only touch on a very complex topic and that it will be far from being all-inclusive, but this is a personal blog after all, so my personal expressions are the basis.

In my first blog post on the joys of expat life, I briefly mentioned the conversation I listened to by two senior expats: 

"I was drinking Glühwein with a group of 45-60 year-olds and overheard their conversations about a 19 year old Russian blondie, “tall, hot and with big tits”, who one of them would meet in a pub later on, obviously with the intention to take her home afterwards. They went on about how beautiful eastern girls were and that it was so difficult to resist. So Ulli and I joined the conversation and asked if they didn’t think that they were using these girls (who, in some cases, don’t really have any other choice, as it’s their only way to have access to money) and if they weren’t making use of their status as Westerners. One of them then started explaining to us that these women at least still knew what it meant to be a woman, namely to make men happy and do for him whatever he wants. After arguing with him for a little while, I had to leave the conversation because I was so disgusted." 

Now, I understand that these men were maybe just arseholes and sexist racists, just because it is part of their character. I have found it striking, however, how common these ideas are among some of the people I am working with right now. Don't get me wrong here - I have met the most wonderful, intelligent, respectful and interesting people here in Tashkent, simply because seeing the world and opening up to foreign cultures until it becomes a part of you changes your perspective so much. But.. I work in development at the moment. Wouldn't you think that people who are trying to improve the non-existing state of democracy in Uz, to save the remnants of the Aral Sea, to improve sexual and reproductive health and rights, are genuinely interested in making this world a better place? That they are interested in the culture that surrounds them? Obviously this is an idealistic notion of international cooperation and development, but honestly and really, WHY on earth would you go to Uzbekistan to help Uzbeks if you hate the country, Uzbek people and everything related to their culture? Don't you make life incredibly hard for yourself if you live in an environment that you despise and that you CONSTANTLY moan about, if you could have it SO SO GOOD (really?) at home? I suppose a good answer would be, because you get a shitload of money. Because you are someone. But is this really it? Can it be really only a decision you take for your career, rather than for what you are actually doing?

I started to ask myself the question, am I being racist too? Do I make generalising statements that could be perceived as racist? I met Charlotte and Heinar a while ago, and suddenly we started discussing this issue. His example of a racist behaviour on our side was the expectations we have when we go for dinner. I always call Uzbekistan the Dienstleistungsparadies (service paradise) because a lot of the time when you order at restaurants, people get your order wrong, forget about you, have you wait for 30min for a pot of chai, bring the wrong amounts of food, bring a sandwich with mayonnaise even though you told them explicitely that you want it without mayonnaise, bring 4 glasses although there are 6 people sitting at the table, etc. The list is long. So, as you go to the restaurant, you have all these expectations what they could get wrong this time and take precautions and order in a specific way to make sure that there is no way the waitress/waiter was not mentally absent, momentarily retarded or wasn't listening. I know this sounds extremely harsh, but if this happens to you on such a regular basis, of course you tend to think that all Uzbek waiters are  horrible. Even if it is only 30% and you don't register the 70% when it does actually go right. So when you go home, you tell everyone how Uzbeks have no feeling for good service. Racist much? Yes I think so, although I still think that that is a normal and human reaction. We categorise because it makes our lives easier. But don't we often unfairly pidgeonhole people without being open to their proving us wrong?

Charlotte then told us about this document on racism in travel blogs (http://www.glokal.org/publikationen/mit-kolonialen-gruessen, and she has a very interesting blog on this as well). Admittedly, I haven't read the whole thing and I found a few things a bit too extreme, but it raises a few questions on who "we" (as "Westerners") are, who "the others" are, how bloggers often reach conclusions that can only be based on a very superficial way of looking at their destination and its people, and how "we" often feel treated unfairly when people at the bazar charge us triple the price of what it would actually cost even though we are in the more privileged situation (because we can afford to travel). I think what it all comes down to is expectations - obviously everyone has certain concepts and ideas of what the world should look like, what people should behave like, depending on where they are from. As hard as we might try to avoid interpreting foreign places from the perspective of our own culture, I think that deep down we still do to a certain extent. Maybe not consciously, but a certain part of me will always feel annoyance, frustration or anger when the waiter gets something wrong - again, even if I do remind myself that I shouldn't generalise now. What matters is what we do with these emotions - that we reflect them - question them - accept that they are natural and completely normal but that they are hardly ever related to the actual situation but to the degree of expectations we had beforehand. I understand that this is not a great revelation and that this is pretty obvious, but for me, this is the only possible explanation as to why people like my co-workers behave the way they do: The big difference between living in a foreign culture for a longer period of time compared to being a tourist (even if its for a month) - when living there, you have to accept the things that are strikingly different, that annoy you, that you maybe hate, as something of your daily life, as something normal. And, believe you me, this was a bit of a difficult task in my first few months. When being a tourist, you can leave this place and complain about it, and that's it.

So my 'wonderful' co-workers have not only not understood that their behaviour makes them intolerant assholes, but also that their life would be a lot easier if they just started to accept their surroundings, even if they don't like everything about it.

Montag, 3. Juni 2013

Living in Tashkent


The beautiful entry to our house :)

Please excuse my absence!
Even though this may be somewhat boring, I thought I'd give you a little impression of what daily life in Tashkent is like for me and how I spend most of my time here. Excuse if it may be somewhat incoherent as I try to fit as much information in here as possible.

Monday to Friday, I usually get up at 7.30am. First thing in the morning is to make myself a cup of coffee with my much-beloved mokka/ballerina/coffee maker (however you want to call it) which I got as a present in November from a very dear friend of mine. Uzbekistan doesn't really do coffee, and if, it usually has a Nes- in front of it. If bought in a restaurant, it also contains a ridiculous amount of sugar, so having a good cup of coffee here is something pretty special. Also, coffee is only really drunk in winter for some reason. Saskia always brings in the newest edition of German Spiegel magazine from the office, which we often read/discuss during breakfast.. sometimes this involves quite philosophical or depressing conversations about the deteriorating state of the world. And once this ritual even invoked  shrieks from our side related to an incredibly disgusting article on sodomy/zoophilia which disturbed me for the rest of the day.

Work starts at 9am and finishes at 6pm. I work in two different projects which are located in two different buildings..one of them is a 15min walk away from where I live (office 1), and the other one is a little further so I usually take a taxi (office 2). The fact that I am one week in office 1 and the other week in office 2 is indeed a little annoying as it makes communication with the other project a bit difficult, but I don't really mind. The first weeks in the offices weren't easy in both cases, as I found it difficult to find my own place and role within the teams who hadnt really worked with an intern before. Luckily the ice was broken after two months and now I love going for lunch with my colleagues who appreciate my interest in travelling, Uzbekistan and in their lives. In one way or the other, I am part of both teams now and I will be sad to leave them in September.
What do I do at work? I write meeting reports, co-design and co-write factsheets (in general or specific ones for conferences), translate and correct already written texts, create presentations and posters on monitoring and evaluation of our projects and a few other bits and bobs. It's a step-by-step work really in my process of trying to understand how my company and development works in general. It's complex but fascinating at the same time.

I love my way to office 1 as  I pass by a little bazar and flower market where one of the ladies already knows me. Every morning and evening, she greets me with a massive smile on her face and always asks me how I am. She truly is absolutely adorable. As I get home, it depends on the day of the week what I do. I usually stay away from the internet, which is pretty slow and frustrating anyway, and pass my time with household duties (woop woop), baking a ridiculous amount of cakes and Sachertorten for colleagues who have their birthdays, hanging out with Eric with whom I've watched way too much of the Ricky Gervais Show, knitting, watching a movie with Saskia, making music (with my amazing old Russian guitar which I got for my birthday), playing with our tortoise Undine or meeting up with some of the other expats. I also used to go to a belly dancing class twice a week where everyone kind of knew me as the "German girl" and all those who had learned German in school would try to talk to me in German. I also absolutely loved that Dinara, the dancing teacher, would always mind her little 4-year-old daughter during the lessons, so sometimes the girl would join her mum (and us) and try out some of the movements. Never seen such a cute thing! Oh, and in case you were wondering about language barriers - she doesn't really talk much but simply dances so all I had to do was do exactly what she did.  I no longer go because I think it is too easy for me now as my dancing skills are somewhat improving, so I am looking for a new teacher at the moment. Another thing I love doing is to take care of Ernest's (my boss, neighbour and very good friend) birds when he is away. He has three canaries and two lovebirds and they are the cutest thing ever when they sing or take a bath. 

In Tashkent itself there isn't that much to do.. you can't really go to the cinema as movies are mostly dubbed into Russian (with one male voice for all characters) and it's similar with the theatre. One of my students took me to the theater once to see a play by Pushkin, but I only got laughed at when I told my student that all I understood was "dog" and function words such as "why" "because" "when" etc. However, even though Tashkent isn't the most cultural of places, I kind of feel that there is always something going on, mostly because most expats are always interested in trying out new things and because local friends try to show you as much of the city as possible. 

For example, I took part in the Performing Arts Festival of the British School.. Helen and I were judges and had to listen to various perfomances by children and decide on the winner (surprisingly we didn't cause too many tears).


Cheesing away with Helen with our rewards for judging children's performances all day


Then the other week, there was a European film festival which even showed an Austrian movie (named "Atmen"):



I obviously went and probably was the only one who understood the Austrian dialect...with an exception of the Austrian ambassador (who is usually located in Vienna) who came exclusively for the festival and who held a little speech before the film started. Knowing him from my brief visit back in Vienna, we briefly chatted after the movie and then went to Chester Pub to chat about a few Austria related issues and its non-presence in Uzbekistan. Interesting meeting indeed, although I found it somewhat disconcerting that I had the feeling that I knew more about Uzbekistan than the ambassador..

Then, one of Tashkent's expat couples, namely Lola (Uzbek) and Martin (Danish), got married. In Uzbek traditions, before or on the day of the wedding, men are invited to join in the wonderful tradition of morning plov. This means you have to get up at 6am so you can have a massive portion of a greasy, oily rice dish with chunks of mutton (fat). Not sure who invented this tradition but it must have either been a plov addict (which, in fairness, applies to almost all Uzbeks), someone with a very strong stomach or someone with a bit of a sadistic tendency to torture fellow men with a dish like that that early in the morning.  However, since the couple wasn't fully Uzbek, they decided to gender the morning plov and invite both men and women - which only earned strange and confused looks by the guy who prepared the dish. Despite my feeling sick for the rest of the day, it was lovely to gather that early in the morning with some lovely people to enjoy some tea and bread and, oh, I almost forgot about the plov in the early morning hours.

Lovely morning plov on tapchans

All you need is plov(e).


The hats we are wearing are called doppi and are traditionally worn by men to festivities or traditional occasions, e.g. weddings, parties or funerals

We also try to keep ourselves entertained by exploring the area a little bit, so the other day we went for a trip in the mountains. Tashkent is surrounded by the Greater Chimgan (part of Tian Shan), a beautiful mountainous range where I have also enjoyed skiing in winter. Initially our plan was to go to a lake to go swimming because we couldn't stand the blazing heat anymore, but then we thought we'd combine a brief hike with a jump in the lake which was close by. Long story short, our trip ended a bit disastrous due to our stupid driver who stood us up and had us wait in rain, 5 degrees and with no food for almost 2 hours. It was still worth it and I'll definitely try to go again, but next time with another driver...




Rare tulips in the mountains that are only in bloom for a few weeks in spring :) So pretty!

Kristina. And snow.

I suppose I can consider myself quite lucky! 

I'll end this blog with a picture of Undine:

Munching away..isn't she adorable?? :)