A funny coffee menu and various other restaurant shenanigans

Coffee has a special feature; it can enter into enchanting relations with the soul. It disposes a person to struggling and directs people to the Spirit purification way. It intensifies and improves the opportunities of an organism. It illuminates an inward world, into precious and passionate words. (Jose Martin)

I mentioned early on at the start of this blog how I’d been able to track down one place that served halfway decent (albeit a tad overpriced) coffee. I don’t frequent it all that often, but not long ago I found another branch of the same coffeehouse (imaginatively named ‘Coffee’) nearer the centre of town. This is not very exciting news. In a nation of avid tea drinkers, it has occurred to me to just forego the coffee and stick with the tea.

But what has always been exciting, or rather, highly amusing, to me, are humorous restaurant situations in foreign countries. The kinds we just don’t get in English-speaking countries. These situations include any of the following:

* bizarrely and hilariously badly translated menus (for example, ‘flesh with blood’ in Riga), replete with some of the most egregiously awful English grammar.
* some of the most insolent and indolent customer service known to mankind.
* that typically subservient attitude where waiters are unable to make any minor decisions without higher authorization.
* miscommunication between waiters and customers. This is standard everywhere.

Customer service in Bishkek is actually not half-bad. I’ve not yet had any dramatically sensational stories to share, other than the amusing descriptions of coffee which follow on these pages.

Americano
It is a traditional American coffee. It is also called a Regular. It is prepared from the big quantity of water and little quantity of coffee. It is a perfect coffee for people to whom the strong taste of coffee is contra-indicated.

I could probably write an entire book devoted to restaurant culture in Nigeria. That was where I first encountered the ‘aspirational’ menu. Despite some 20-odd items listed on a single laminated menu card, only 2-3 things would be available at any given time. It was pointless to order anything without first asking what was available. But amazingly, the waiters never seemed to know what the hell was on offer on various days, even with a limited array of options. The following exchange has to go down as one of my all-time favourites. I was having dinner at a somewhat nice hotel with 3 Nigerian colleagues:

Me: ‘Ah, have you got the steak and mushrooms tonight?’
Waiter: ‘I don’t know sah, let me check.’ (note: remember, even if they do know the answer – though they probably don’t - they must not, under any circumstances, fail to enquire with the chef or boss as to any customer request; furthermore, they must never make a decision without first consulting with the boss or head chef)
Waiter comes back. ‘No sah, we don’t have steak and mushrooms tonight.’
Me: ‘Oh dear. Well, which don’t you have, the steak or the mushrooms?’
Waiter: ‘I don’t know sah. Let me go check.’
Waiter comes back. ‘We don’t have the steak tonight sah’.
Me: ‘Oh, what a pity. Okay, well how about the steak with black pepper?’
[one colleague giving me dirty looks, one kicking me under the table, the other laughing]
Waiter: ‘I don’t know sah. Let me go check.’
Waiter comes back. ‘No sah, we don’t have the steak with black pepper.’
Me: ‘Well, damn it again. I knew the steak was too good to be true. Well tell me, which is it you don’t have, the steak or the black pepper?’
Waiter: ‘I don’t know sah, let me go check.’
Nigerian colleague interjects: ‘No, it’s okay, it’s okay, just bring my friend some chicken and rice.’
Waiter: ‘Okay, sah, let me see if we have it…’

The aspirational menu also exists, though to a much smaller extent, in Bishkek.

Cacao
It is an interesting fact that even though a cacao is a high calorie, it doesn’t lead to adiposity. Even a small quantity of cacao drink gives the feeling of satiation, because of it a person doesn’t overeat. Cacao and chocolate are very good for people with high physical and mental activity. Cacao drink is often called a Perfect antidepressant.

What gets me is that ‘Coffee’ is frequented almost entirely by native speakers of English. Don’t they ever think to ask someone to run their eyes over their menus before they unveil them to the public? One restaurant in Riga featured the ‘Language Salad’, which upon further investigation turned out to be a ‘Tongue Salad’ (tongue and language can be used interchangeably in Russian). But surely they get people to proofread these things, no?

Coffee and Alcohol Drinks
Coffee with alcohol drinks not only warms the soul and body, but also assists in recovery for people who experienced insult.

I inadvertently insulted a waitress in Nigeria when I questioned the authenticity of the chicken I had been served. The thing was as hard as a rock and I couldn’t get my teeth into it; I really thought it was one of those plastic display chickens they use as models in department stores.

Me: ‘This chicken is as hard as a rock. I can’t possibly eat this.’
Insolent waitress: ‘No sah, it fine chicken. Eat.’
Me: ‘Are you kidding me? I can’t even get my [very-sharp] knife into it.’
IW: ‘It is good chicken, it is odalaya chicken.’
Me: ‘Odalaya chicken? I don’t care what kind of chicken it is, that’s not edible.’
IW: ‘No sah, you don’t understand. It odalaya chicken. It good chicken.’
Me: ‘Like [expletive] it’s good. It’s impossible to eat.’

A minor scene thus ensued, when eventually the chef came out to take the brunt of my criticism and insults. We then proceeded to insult each other over our lack of culinary sophistication, and I apparently just couldn’t get it into my thick head that this ‘odalaya’ chicken was supposed to be a decent piece of meat. Only after a few minutes of what I though was their chicanery did I finally get the message. ‘Odalaya’ became ‘older layer’. In other words, an old hen who had reached the end of her egg-laying days. No wonder the old bitch was so tough.

Tea
Tea-drinking not only slakes thirst, but also strengthens health. It was used as therapeutic agent since early times. In any kind of tea there are a lot of nutrients, because of it not drinking tea is a big mistake. It can replace many medicines and vitamin complexes.

Okay, I get it: I’ll stick with the tea.

'Uhh, what are those mosquitoes doing in my soup?'

'Looks like the backstroke, sah.'

A bit of rigmarole and palaver

I recently visited the doctor. This wouldn’t normally provide the most scintillating of conversation topics; but then again, visiting a doctor in a place like Bishkek is far from a standard, run-of-the-mill hospital visit.

One doesn’t truly learn to appreciate living in lesser developed countries (am I starting to sound like an Orientalist yet?) until it comes time to deal with the typical and ever-present bureaucratic rigmarole of everyday living. In other words, the things most of us take for granted, such as healthcare. I’ve found that some of the starkest differences are to be found in three areas: hospitals, post offices and internet cafes. For me anyway, these have been the scenes of some of the most frustrating, enervating moments, though in retrospect I do laugh from to time. I suppose I can laugh as long as I survive.

Advances? What medical advances?

Hospital visits have been a constant feature of my excursions abroad over the past few years. Having blood drawn in Nigeria has to be considered an early highlight. Honestly, what was there to worry about, I’m sure the needles were perfectly clean. In retrospect, and this is really a non-story, but I can hardly recall why I was having blood drawn in the first place. I never got ill there, and my more memorable experience was the clichéd one straight out of every other Colin Thubron book: visiting a dentist who didn’t use anesthesia. Luckily for me, I was merely an observer whilst my poor friend had to go through the torture of having a cracked tooth repaired. At least it only cost her $2.

In most ways, Riga is a thoroughly modern, well-developed city, and its private clinics are extremely clean, efficient and well-run. But though the doctors all spoke passable English, their credentials and expertise were of a more dubious nature. Since my days in Spain, I’ve been suffering from a mysterious foot ailment, and the Latvian doctors sounded like quacks when it came time to recommending treatment. My favourite diagnosis came from a doctor who suspected my birthmark – measuring 1 x 3 inches on my lower leg – was causing nerve damage and thus the pain in the base of my big toe. Other remedies were equally as hopeless but I did get immense joy from visiting the underground bunker-like x-ray clinic on numerous occasions, which undoubtedly exposed me to the former Soviet Union’s highest quality radiation, not to mention rendering me infertile.

[Though saying all this, it was Spanish doctors who misdiagnosed the broken bone in my foot in the first place, so perhaps ‘Western’ standards of healthcare aren’t so good after all.]

I’m not finished yet: after my cracked rib experience, I decided to spend a lovely spring Saturday afternoon at a Latvian state hospital on the fringes of Riga. My friend Michael came along with me, ostensibly for his moral support and sang froid, since he didn’t speak enough Russian and/or Latvian to serve as an adequate translator for the barking, un-customer-service oriented Natashas who run these places. At times it felt like we were in a Stanley Kubrick film: the long, deserted, seemingly never-ending ghostly corridors with flickering red lights could have been straight out of The Shining. A pity about the lack of music. I was again exposed to yet more high-grade enriched uranium and plutonium, but at least this time I had more than just my hands to protect my important bits.

There’s surely a reason that hospitals have separate bins for waste. One would assume that some materials are more hazardous than others. But not here: one whopping container for everything – Coke cans, asshole gloves, syringes, containers of bile, blood-stained sheets, dismembered carcasses, human fingers, etc. Slightly disturbing to say the least.

Whilst I was waiting for my x-ray results in a small room, there was an old woman laying on a gurney a few feet away from me. I had assumed she was sleeping, but she didn’t appear to be breathing. She sat there for about an hour before the doctors came in and confirmed my fast-growing suspicions, pulling the sheet up and over her head, and wheeling her out. Michael, who had been ordered to wait for me in the waiting room, later told me that upon seeing her being wheeled out, a man who might have been her husband or a relative, broke down in tears. He tried to get closer to the woman, only for the morally insouciant doctors to forcibly restrain him, push him away and excoriate him for being so obtuse. Their message: it’s death old man, get over it! We don’t do compassion in Eastern Europe!

Yet again I digress. Back to the present day

As I was saying, I visited the doctor the other day. I’ve long had a propensity for ear infections, though otherwise the state of my immune system is okay. I suspected I had another one, for I was having some pain my left ear. Visiting the doctor is hardly ever fun, so immediately I thought of what a headache it might prove to be. (a proverbial headache for a real earache: a decent trade off?)

Kole, (of the snowball in Kristen’s back fame), visited the doctor a few weeks ago, accompanied by Nargiza from the school, who served as translator. He had a mysterious eye socket complaint. The doctors told him that the problem was caused by the wind getting into his eye. And the solution? To put a boiled egg on his eye for 15 minutes every night.

My hopes were not high

I must first state that the hospital was in pretty decent condition, albeit with poor lighting. Nargiza had clearly done this many times before, deftly navigating our way through the hospital as if she ran the place. I was treated like a VIP: people dived out of our way as we marauded up stairs, scurried down corridors, Nargiza all the while shouting ‘foreigner!’ at anyone who dared to block our path.

The doctor was a pleasant enough chap. He took one quick look in my ear, asked my permission to dig the chunk of wax out of it and with a deft touch swooped in and plucked it out (if only I’d had my camera with me, it was a beaut). Now he could properly examine my ear. After a 2 second examination, he declared that my ear was fine and the pain – which had since spread to my jaw area and had got very bad – was caused by arthritis or a structural problem in my jaw.

And the solution? To put a boiled egg on my ear/jaw for 15 minutes every night. This has to be the default remedy for any ailment that can’t be determined within 2-3 seconds. I wonder if they have a day at medical school devoted solely to conning gullible foreigners into thinking that a boiled egg is the cure for all of life’s ills. I bet they even have a lecture entitled the ‘Boiled Egg as a Treatment for Anything’.

When I questioned his judgment to Nargiza afterwards, she told me that he is a good doctor (he was elderly). She told me that ‘the old doctors, they are good, smart, traditional, the new ones are too young, not experienced, they don’t know what they are doing’. Medicine is a very rigid discipline in Kyrgyzstan.

Some brief words on internet malarkey

As for the internet, always an unpleasant experience: power outages, frozen/crashing computers, awful Russian pop blaring, gangs of teenagers playing World of Warcraft or Doom or Grand Theft Auto IX: Kill all Hookers (or whatever it is the kids are playing these days), sticky keyboards, men looking at porn, prying eyes or, as is ever so common in Bishkek, heat pumping out of the ducts and sweltering you to death. I had a very surreal moment the other day, one that may actually paint me in a slightly negative light, but what do I care? Most places - shops, cafes, internet – have security guards permanently on duty. But whether these guards actually deter crime or would be of any use in preventing an attack is debatable.

Just a couple nights ago, at around 1am, I’m sat at a terminal with a friend on one side and a security guard on the other. Despite having some 25-odd terminals, I believe we are the only 3 people in there. I’m busily ‘shopping’ on Ameritrade, buying and selling various distressed banking stocks, all the while the guard is playing Solitaire. Every so often, he disappears for a few minutes, only to come back reeking of booze and cigarettes. This gets progressively worse and worse as the night drags on. It’s a particularly important day for me in the market, and so I’m waiting for the closing bell, which is at 2am local time. But the stench has gone from unpleasant to unbearable and I’m starting to gag: moving to another computer is out of the question, though I don’t know why. As I attempt to put up with the malodorous aromas wafting in my direction, a bizarre thought pops into my head: here I am buying and selling shares at $10 a pop, and this guy is sneaking off to down a shot of vodka or swig a bottle of beer, spending what little money he earns for quick and instant gratification. And is he even making $10 a day, I ask myself? As I’m frittering away $10 here and $10 there with nary a thought of how much that is to some people, he’s bleary-eyed, rapidly clicking away on his mouse, hardly knowing whether he’s coming or going. There is a certain absurdity in this, and it makes me feel a bit guilty. Yet I don’t know what the message is or what I am trying to say: fill in your own judgment/analysis here.

To make matters even worse, I sneak a peak at his computer and the poor guy hasn’t the faintest idea how to play Solitaire. It’s tragic. If he weren’t so drunk and smelly, maybe, just maybe I’d attempt to explain.

An irony to mull over: the Russian word for brave or courageous is СМЕЛЫЙ. That’s pronounced ‘smyelly’. I couldn’t make this up.

Kochkor Part II: Shock and Awe

Behind a ruin’d mountain does appear
Swelling into two parts, which turgent are
As when we bend our bodies to the ground,
The buttocks amply sticking out are found.
Thomas Hobbes

But first, I contradict myself

I love cities. I’ve always been a city man, and I love nothing more than soaking up the atmosphere and culture (especially of the café variety) of a vibrant, pulsating city centre. In years past, countryside sojourns were merely a change of pace from urban life, as I never really felt the need to ‘escape’ like I’ve done here. Because I don’t necessarily love the countryside. Sure, it’s pleasant, it’s nice (notice the uninspiring adjectives?), but on the whole, a bit humdrum. Not always, but generally I find weekend getaways, in any country for that matter, to be more beneficial and therapeutic because of what they are ‘not’. So it’s not as if I’m raving wildly about the exquisite Kyrgyz countryside or anything, it’s just that it makes such a refreshing change from the old routine that I’m thankful for some clean, country air and the absence of grimy, Soviet-esque architecture.

But thanks to Jeff, I’ve come to realise that there is so much more to how we view nature, the countryside, open spaces and, most especially, mountains. For on the Sunday of my recent excursion to Kochkor, we hiked in the meandering valleys of nearby hills, which offered stunning views of the mountains. But, deep down, were they really that stunning? And, even deeper down, are mountains stunning at all? Is nature stunning at all? Why do we love nature so much?

The transcendent beauty of literature

Shortly before I departed for Kyrgyzstan, Jeff gave me a book entitled The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa by Michael Kimmelman. It’s not the kind of book that would immediately catch my eye, but it has been an absolute gem. It’s made me think of some of the more prosaic things in life in such a different light.

For instance, where does this reverence people hold for nature come from? When people gush and rave about picturesque sights and epic vistas, is it because we have merely been programmed to accept all this at face value? In years past, many people had an intense disdain for mountains. The Romans found mountains to be forlorn, miserable objects. John Donne referred to them as ‘warts on the planet’. Martin Luther considered them ‘part of God’s retribution for man’s fall’, since the world at one point had been perfectly round.

In fact, our modern attitude toward mountains – to what we consider their natural beauty – is a matter of conditioned learning, inherited through literature and theology, which has evolved during the last few centuries to encompass a notion of the sublime in nature: we have been trained what to see and how to feel. The evolution of the whole modern worldview, including the notion of beauty…is exemplified by the evolution of our feelings towards mountains.

And yet we dare not question these notions of the utterly sublime beauty of mountains. There are so many nature lovers out there, that when someone like me comes along and presents his ho-hum attitude towards nature’s many splendours, we are considered strange and abnormal specimens of the human race. Whenever I deign to mention that cities are the true, beating heart of a country, indicative and representative of what that country signifies to the world, I am met with perplexed stares and berating comments. I enjoy pleasurable doses of cultural enlightenment, and the city has always been where I’ve found that. And let’s face the facts: the world is rapidly becoming more urbanised. (for rapid, unbridled urbanisation see sub-Saharan Africa for starters)

Let me be clear: I’m not rubbishing nature and its wonderous splendours. I have a healthy appreciation for nature and some of my fondest memories from childhood are my scouting excursions in gorgeous locations in Washington, Europe and the UK. I can vividly recall exquisite Sicilian sunsets, the visually arresting Cliffs of Moher, the desolate and lonely swathes of the ‘bush’ in Africa and the archealogical marvels of Petra (which is borderline nature/urban anyway).

But the real images that remain indelibly stamped in my mind are the grotesque Soviet-style monstrosities in their varying guises; the seemingly unending sprawl of squalor-mired shantytowns peopled with vendors selling Bibles, tupperware and toothpaste amidst standstill traffic stretching for miles on either side of Lagos; the narrow, cobbled, winding, decrepit and crumbling yet utterly charming streets of Lviv; the sordid and seedy underbelly of many a central/eastern European city in the wee hours...these, more than anything else, are the images that will undoubtedly remain with me far longer than anything I see in the countryside.

I mean, honestly: how can it possibly get any better than this?

Climbing for armchair enthusiasts

I find modest climbing to be, on the whole, a mundane undertaking. I’m not lazy, but sometimes, depending on my mood, even the mildest form of exertion is too strenuous. If I’m promised a sweeping view, I mull the prospect over, and nine times out of ten, I’m in. Yet I hardly know why.

The 19th century American landscapists saw beauty as intrinsic to mountains, which is to say natural, because they thought God spoke directly through nature. But if beauty is actually in the eye of the beholder, then it is not a matter of nature or science or something that can even easily be named. People have the ability to see that something, like a mountain, is beautiful or they do not, in the same way that you may describe in great detail a piece of music to a deaf person, and that person, despite having rationally absorbed what you have said, will still never quite know what the music sounds like…

Because we’ve been programmed not to question the beauty of certain things, we are inevitable disappointed when, after having built the expectations up to a frenzied level, we see the eagerly anticipated object in question and are suddenly faced with that dreaded anti-climactic feeling. Everyone’s been there before: think of films and books, paintings (the Mona Lisa, for example) and sculptures, churches and monasteries, the Super Bowl and the World Cup final, even cities and countries…at some point we’ve all been conned into expecting something marvelous and grandiose, only to be let down by the final product. If you’re human, that is.

Revisiting history for a second, since awe hasn’t always been the natural response to mountain vistas, why and how has our attitude changed so dramatically? Is it that ever menacing urbanisation I earlier spoke of? As cities have grown, has the attraction of the countryside been magnified as a response to this creeping urban sprawl? Years ago, people held fear and terror in their hearts when thinking about mountains, but somehow this fear gradually turned to aesthetic pleasure. Immanuel Kant, a great purveyor of the marvels of natural beauty, described mountain climbing as ‘the terrifying sublime…accompanied by a certain dread or melancholy’. But if we examine the Old Testament (not that I do), we of course see that ‘every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low’.

The transition in our attitudes from fear and inaccessibility to how we view mountains today is very well encapsulated in Marjorie Hope Nicolson’s Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory:

Awe, compounded of mingled terror and exultation, once reserved for God, passed over in the 17th century first to an expanded cosmos, then from the macrocosm to the greatest objects in the geocosm – mountains, oceans, desert.

Glorified Stairmasters for the upwardly mobile?

All of this begets an urgent question. In the 21st century, with all the distractions and delights that rule our lives, with the ease and improving convenience of travel, with the world’s boundaries shrinking, with so much information so easily accessible and at our fingertips, with so few remaining known or unknown unknowns left to be discovered, have we found anything yet to replace the mountain as a new exemplar of sublimity?

It almost seems odd to talk about the sublime today. We are programmed now to expect awe in certain circumstances, and are therefore doomed to be disappointed…when we don’t feel it…this is because when nothing is truly strange or foreign any longer, everything having been predigested, we then demand to be shocked, shock being an experience that still seems genuine to us. Thus we mistake shock for awe.

Cut to the chase old boy, was a good time had or not?

Above and beyond all my philosophical musings, I rather enjoyed myself, but that was primarily due to the company and the accompanying conversation. Still, all in all, it was a good, relaxing weekend away from the city, and I didn’t really ask for much more. Because, you see, I long ago deprogrammed myself from expecting too much. And now I expect nothing and still expect to be disappointed. One of these days, I’m sure I will well and truly be blown away.

As for the panoramas? They were pleasant, as they tend to be in most cases. But nothing more, and nothing less. They were merely pleasant. That, for now, will have to suffice.

Trudging along, with my companions along the ridge

But honestly, can you get a better view than this?