Ausrutschen in a Winter Wonderland

Sorry to all my English-speaking friends, but this post is going to be in German.

Frau Holle hat sich also nach Usbekistan getraut und ihre Kissen über Taschkent geschüttelt. Wie von Puderzucker bestreut beglückt Taschkent seine Bevölkerung mit einem Winterwunderland und klirrender Kälte, die sich zwischen -3 und -12 Grad Celsius auf- und abbewegt. Einige Kinder lassen sich in abendlicher Friedlichkeit von ihren Eltern auf Schlitten durch die Straßen ziehen, um sich später in hoffentlich mehr oder weniger geheizten Wohnungen und mit einer Tasse Schwarztee aufzuwärmen (oder, wie ich, mit einem warmen Stück Brot, als ich meine Handschuhe vergessen hatte). So friedlich und beinahe weihnachtlich sich dies auch anhören mag, die Wirklichkeit sieht in Usbekistan ein bisschen anders aus. Schneeschaufeln und Streuen sind hier Fremdwörter, so dass hier einerseits die Stadt sehr schön winterlich aussieht, aber gleichzeitig jeder Fußweg zur Rutschpartie wird. Als ich mich also Samstagnacht am Heimweg von einem vodkaschweren Abend in einem Club leicht bedüdelt über den Schnee freute, wurde ich in der nächsten Sekunde eines Besseren belehrt, als ich mich nicht auf meine eleganteste Art in den Schnee begab. Also saß ich da so im Schnee mit einem nicht enden wollenden Lachkrampf, der mir das Wiederaufstehen nicht unbedingt erleichterte. Zum Glück war Ulli da, die mir ihre Hand reichte und mich wieder hochzog. In diesem Beispiel ist glücklicherweise alles gut gegangen, aber der Auslastung der Krankenhäuser zufolge tut es das leider nicht immer. Zu der Tatsache, dass eben nicht gestreut oder schneegeräumt wird, kommt weiters noch hinzu, dass Intelligenzbestien in der Stadtplanung viele Teile des Gehsteigs mit einem marmorähnlichen Material ausgestattet haben, die es beinahe unmöglich machen nicht zu rutschen. Über die Unfallsrate im Straßenverkehr möchte ich lieber auch gar nicht nachdenken. Die Stadt blendet komplett aus, dass es vielleicht einmal kalt werden oder schneien könnte.. das zeigt sich auch in der Tatsache, dass Ulli und ich ein paar von unseren Freunden in unserem warmen Heim ab und zu Asyl gewähren, da deren Wohnungen eiskalt sind und es in manchen Extremfällen auch kein warmes Wasser gibt. 

View from the TV Tower on white Tashkent

Ansonsten wird es auch hier in Taschkent trotz der Tatsache, dass dieses Jahr Weihnachten als illegal erklärt wurde, ein wenig weihnachtlicher. Fragt mich nicht, was das genau zu bedeutet hat, was die Konsequenzen sind und ob es mit der Entrussifizierung Usbekistans zutun hat.. oder ob das überhaupt stimmt, denn sowas wie offizielle Meldungen gibt es hier selten, so dass man sich zumeist mit Gerüchten zufrieden geben muss. Unsere persönliche Theorie war, dass der Weihnachtsmann wahrscheinlich kein Visum bekommen hat, weil die Customs Declaration der vielen Geschenke zu lange gedauert hat.. (und lange dauern tut sie auch als Nicht-Weihnachtsmann schon lang genug). Jedenfalls werden nun bei zahlreichen Geschäften die Fenster mit Mickey Mäusen mit Weihnachtsmützen und Geschenken im Arm verziert, so dass man Weihnachten zumindest nicht vollständig vergisst. Auch stehen plötzlich an verschiedensten Orten Weihnachtsbäume…wobei das natürlich keine Weihnachtsbäume, sondern Neujahrsbäume sind…

Weihnachten nicht ganz zu vergessen war mir auch wichtig, so dass ich vor allem im Unterricht viel über Weihnachten gesprochen habe und für diese Woche ein kleines Adventssingen an der Universität organisiert habe. Also habe ich eine Gitarre mitgebracht, Liedertexte ausgedruckt, Plätzchen gebacken (und das in Usbekistan zu machen ist wirklich nicht so leicht..), Punsch gekocht und Kerzen gekauft. Es kamen sehr viele meiner Studenten, und unsere Runde sang also in aller Besinnlichkeit Lieder wie „Stille Nacht“, „Leise rieselt der Schnee“ und „Alle Jahre wieder“. Sogar der Dekan kam kurzzeitig vorbei und sagte, wie schön es sei einmal gemütlich beisammen zu sitzen, wenn viele Dinge im Alltag so unnötig stressig sind. Meine Studentinnen waren so unglaublich dankbar, und ich war so glücklich in dem Moment. Faszinierend wie nah Musik einen zusammenbringen kann, egal woher man kommt.

One of my classes after our last lesson before the Christmas holidays :)

 Nächste Woche ist schon Weihnachten, und es fühlt sich komisch an, nicht nach Hause fahren zu können. Dennoch bin ich sehr positiv – wir haben eine kleine Gruppe organisiert, mit der Schlittschuhlaufen, gemeinsames Kochen und die Mitternachtsmette am Plan stehen.

Uzbek pecularities

In my previous posts I have reflected a lot on how I react to the way Uzbeks are, how Westerns behave in foreign territory and how I try to position myself between these two fronts. As you might have realized, sometimes it’s not that easy.

This post, however, is going to focus a little more on daily life in Tashkent, and the things that I encounter day by day.. things that fellow Austrians/Germans would consider strange, curious or simply different. I may have mentioned some of these things in my previous posts already, so let this be a summary:

1) Mahallas and the Uzbek trash system: People here live in so-called mahallas, something like a neighbourhood and an urban subdivison. You may have heard about it in the context of Arabic countries, though I suppose that Uzbek mahallas are slightly different (there is even a Wikipedia article on this!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahalla_%28Uzbekistan%29) I am not really sure where my mahalla starts and ends, but I was told it is one of the better areas. This is also felt.. I feel mostly safe, except for one dark alley which is a short cut to our house. There are a few nicer houses in our area, but most buildings in Tashkent are standard Plattenbauten, and so is the building our apartment is in. The reason why there are hardly any historic buildings in Tashkent is due to the earthquake that destroyed most of the city in 1966, which resulted in Tashkent’s soviet appearance today.

People living in the mahallas also share a common trash system. This took us a little while to figure out, as waste separation is completely unheard of, so all you do is throw your trash on one of the trash collection places like this one:

Funny story: Ulrike arrived in Tashkent one month before I came, so she hadn’t really worked out how the trash system works and was a little unsure what to do with the plastic bottles. Well, we now have a beautiful collection of about 30 plastic bottles in our wardrobe press because “she simply didn’t know where to put them”. As these things are, neither of us has thrown them away yet ;-)

2) Taking taxis: The public transport system in Tashkent isn’t too bad, but it isn’t great either. There are buses, but no clear indications where they stop or where they go. If you have figured out which one your bus is, you may be put off using it because buses are always full. And when I say full, I mean full to a degree where you can hardly breathe and don’t know where to put your arms because they are in the way no matter where you put them. So, while the metro and busses are the cheapest option, many people take taxis. A “taxi” in Uzbekistan means: stop a stranger’s car, tell the driver where you want to go, bargain the price and get in the car. Then they usually ask if you are either American, English or Canadian, and when you tell them that you’re Austrian, they always pretend to have understood, only to ask you later on how hot it is in Australia. And, if they ask if you’re married, you say: of course!

4) Chaihanas: Chaihanas are tea-houses where most people go to have lunch. There are numerous of them, and the food you get is local, (mostly) delicious and cheap (2-3€ for a meal). Local food includes plov, lagman, shashlik and other Russian-inspired meals such as pelmeni, manti, borschtsch or kotleta. I go there for most of my lunch breaks, may it be after teaching at university or after Ulli’s and my Russian lessons. And, Uzbeks eat most of their meals with tea and bread. So even when you already have your daily amount of carbs by eating plov, you order bread too. Apparently, even cake comes with bread...

A few other curious facts: Coffee is only drunk in winter, and when you want to order green tea, you get confused looks because apparently, green tea is not to be drunk in winter.. only black tea.

5) Imported products: Uzbekistan is mostly cheap for European standards.. how else would it be possible for them to survive on an average income of 300$ per month. You get a feeling quite quickly for what is expensive and what isn’t, so the prices I am going to mention may not seem THAT crazy to you. However, imported products are extortionate for most Uzbeks – Shampoo and shower gel that would be one of the cheaper ones back home (e.g. Fa)  can cost up to 6€ for a bottle, and washing powder up to 5€ for the smallest package. To buy something Western becomes like a treat, as you obviously try to avoid to buy products that are way too expensive for what they are in the end. Particularly when you are poor interns like Ulli and me...

6) Heating system: While you can regulate the temperature in some houses, most apartments are part of a central heating system for which the government decides when it is cold enough when to turn it on. There is no fixed date, but the rule of thumb is in mid-November and when it has about 8 degrees Celsius during the daytime. In some cases, it does not make a difference if the heating system is turned on because the houses are hardly isolated. Luckily our apartment is nice and warm and we didn’t have to wait too long until they turned the heating on. Unfortunately, this is not the case at university, so that I have to teach most of my lessons wearing a coat and scarf..

7) Electricity: I won’t go into too much detail here about Uzbek politics, but Uzbekistan has a bit of problem when it comes to getting access to water.. do the research yourself, I won’t risk anything here due to censorship issues, but it may help if you research the catastrophe of the Aral sea. In any case, due to these water problems, electricity is affected. Consequently, electrical power outages are common. It’s  happened a couple of times when I was at home, and also in a restaurant so that the waiters had to walk around with candles. I don’t mind it that much, as long as it doesn’t happen in my lessons when I want to do listening comprehensions with them. Well, guess what, it’s happened three times that I couldn’t use the CD player because the power outage lasted over three hours. Hello improvisation...

The joys of expat life

When you look up the word “expat” on Wikipedia or other comparable sources on the internet, the following definitions come up:

“An expatriate (in abbreviated form, expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing. The word comes from the Latin terms ex ("out of") and patria ("country, fatherland").”

“A person who has citizenship in at least one country, but who is living in another country. Most expatriates only stay in the foreign country for a certain period of time, and plan to return to their home country eventually, although there are some who never return to their country of citizenship.”

Seems easy, right? And still, so many more associations are relevant when attempting to describe what it means to be an expat in a non-Western country. Let me illustrate this by telling you about my experiences from yesterday: Yesterday was the Christmas market organized by the German embassy.. they had planned an entire market with little stands selling traditional Uzbek and German handicraft and, most importantly, food stands which had proper Glühwein (mulled wine), Bratwurstsemmeln (bread rolls with German sausages), waffles and gingerbread. It was wonderful, and my friends and I had looked forward to it for a really long time. Christmas isn’t really present here, except for some Coke advertisements featuring the classic Coca Cola Santa Claus and Christmas music played in some of the hotels. While I miss Austrian/German traditions related to the weeks before Christmas, it’s probably better that I am not constantly reminded of not being able to spend it with my family this year. However, it felt great to chat away with other like-minded Germans who miss certain things about home and who enjoyed this tradition being brought to a country so different. The expats you meet here work for all sorts of international organizations, such as the UN or various embassies and it always gives me new insights to follow and to participate in their conversations about, for example, Uzbekistan’s health system, crime issues and (prevention) projects associated with these issues. Most of the expats are (a lot) older than me, some of them between 30 and 40, some even about 60. Still, we are part of the same (or at least a similar) culture, we share the experience of being a foreigner and stranger in Uzbekistan, so we talk and hang out sometimes, go to clubs together where age or hierarchies suddenly don’t matter anymore. These people are extremely smart, have seen many different faces of the world and have made a great difference in helping to make this world a better place. While I admire them for their knowledge and (work) experience, watching them yesterday was, at times, genuinely hard to endure. Why? While I would believe them that they want to make a difference, especially some of the men come here with an attitude that makes me want to puke. As a friend here has nicely said, “Nirgendwo ist es so einfach wie im Ausland” – obviously this isn’t true for everybody, but often locals like you because of where you are from, they like you because you have money, and even only spending time with you means status. Ugly Western men with the worst character who are emotionally absolute losers and who everyone would hate in their home countries are suddenly loved and admired… so why would they want to leave? Living abroad suddenly becomes an addiction because they love the attention and the feeling of “being someone”, while they would be nobodys at home.

So, yesterday 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 the man 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. In the end, we all went to the pub where he could meet his big-titted blondie, whom he had texted beforehand that he loved her. She sat beside him. She felt awkward and cast Ulli a look of desperation. And then they went home.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that all expats are like that. But being an expat means to transgress the boundaries of your own culture and related values. Why? Because nobody cares, you can do whatever you want. Suddenly, age, looks and character don’t matter anymore because your ethnicity or heritage is your status. What do I do with it? Obviously there are things I do here I wouldn’t do at home (nothing immoral, don’t you worry!), but I try to be respectful, I observe, I listen. However, I do not deny that it is very easy to make use of your status.

This blog post was a little serious, alright, so I want to end this blog on positive terms :) Namely,  with some entertainment. Once again, Nodi is the protagonist (I hope you’re happy I’m mentioning you again!). He was telling us about a conversation he had with Mario and then said “Und dann hab ich Mario so richtig flachgelegt.” … he meant: platt gemacht.