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?

Escaping the snow. And heat. And mental stagnation

Without sounding like a broken record (or, stop me if you’ve heard this one before), I’m not exactly a man of the great outdoors. But I’ve now reached the two month mark of my stay here and Bishkek has started to strangle the life out of me. One of these days – yes, really – I’ll sit down and take the time to discuss in greater depth what Bishkek is like, but for now suffice to say that I find it uninspiring and drab. I think, therefore, that I shall make it a point to escape to the countryside as much as possible.

Spring is here and the temperamental weather has been up and down: one day hot and clammy, the next chilly with snow flurries. But late last week, on a day featuring a nasty snowstorm and icy cold temperatures, four of us made arrangements to flee from Bishkek for a weekend getaway. And so last Saturday we travelled three hours away into the mountains, to a small village of 16,000 called Kochkor. Part of the allure was that its name means ‘go away snow’ in Kyrgyz. So we were promised no snow, at least at sea level anyway. And a quiet interlude from the hustle and bustle of the thriving megalopolis that is Bishkek. We were sold.

But first, what’s so wrong with Bishkek?

I’ve been savouring Laurens Van Der Post’s ‘Journey Into Russia’ during my time here, and I’ve found many an inspirational passage that has resonated deeply within me. I’d dare not call it a ‘travel book’, though it’s easily one of the finest pieces of prose ever written on travelling in Russia. And even though it was first published in 1964, so much of what the author observed would still hold true today. But in particular, this continues to strike me:

‘Capitals, I believe, should be the end and not the beginning of a visitor’s schedule. They should be reserved to gather together and sum up all the ravelled ends of one’s experience as they do the life of their nations, otherwise they tend to turn all that follows into a kind of protracted anti-climax’.

Now I obviously live in Bishkek, but as I’ve struggled to get a grip on what I do and don’t like about the place, I keep coming back to that statement. In order to really put into words how I feel about the city, I feel like I need to see more of life outside the capital first. And then I’ll attempt to capture my thoughts into perceptive little chunks for everyone, myself included, to digest. Consider all that a long-winded euphemism for ‘procrastination’.

How I almost got myself a girlfriend. Almost…

Joining me on this trip (not like I arranged the whole damn thing or anything) were Brian and Kristen of Burana Tower/snowball in the back/‘good job being an asshole’ fame and Elizabeth, who you may remember as the one who Shanghaied me into downing that odious ‘small vodka’ shot. I can truthfully say that we’ve matured remarkably since that little episode.

It was a holiday weekend – Nooruz, the Persian New Year, which is celebrated across much of Central Asia. There wasn’t much of anything special planned, but the quiet solitude of a Kyrgyz village was in and of itself soothing enough. We shopped a bit for shyrdaks (traditional Kyrgyz rugs), had yet more lousy, fattening, sheep lard-doused local food at the only two cafes in town, took photos at the gaudy silver chrome Lenin statue (one of the only monuments in town), and meandered about through a decrepit park with rusty, tetanus-rich, Soviet-era playground equipment replete with chirpy, bright-eyed children incessantly approaching us and greeting us with ‘hello! hello! what’s your name? what’s your name?’ Those were the only English phrases we heard all weekend. The local English teachers must have it really easy if those are the only phrases they teach. But in fairness, these kids (and I’m generally no big fan of the whippersnappers) were quite cute, friendly and even borderline adorable.

One young girl named Zafie, who I think might have been Uzbek, immediately took a shine to us. Well, me, anyway. Barely had we exchanged names and various other introductory pleasantries – the usual where are you from, what do you do, how long have you been in Kyrgyzstan, are you married? - when she asked me for my phone number. Quite audacious for a 12 year old, I’d say. I mumbled some excuse but then she asked again. And looked quite disappointed when I wouldn’t fork it over. If only I knew how to say in Russian, ‘look sweetheart, you’re a bit too young for me, and besides, you speak no English, I speak little Russian, I’m only here one day, I’m not taking you back to Bishkek with me, I can barely hold a conversation on the phone with someone my own age in English, let alone bad Russian…’ Okay, you get the idea. Though come to think of it…I think I can actually say most of that in Russian. I’m making some progress after all.

I think she invited me, and only me, somewhere or other. But I politely declined and rejoined my companions, who were busy frolicking in the park and taking pictures with all the other children. I sadly never got a picture of Zafie, though she has a few of me. And I was slightly hurt when she gave Elizabeth a green hair clip as a present, though as I’ve recently cut my hair I wouldn’t have much use for it. She did, however, buy us all little lollipops, bless her kind heart.

Living [it up] with the locals

Kyrgyzstan has a good network of homestays, which are easy to arrange from various Community-Based Tourism offices. In fact, it’s said that Kyrgyzstan is perhaps the most well-organised and easy-to-get-around places in all of Central Asia, especially when it comes to low-impact, grassroots tourism (with that in mind, I can hardly wait to visit the other –stans). The best choice of accommodation is usually in the home of a local family, who can also feed you more sheep and horse fat if you plead and pay them enough for the privilege. We had a slightly awkward moment when we were invited into the family dining room for a bit of bread as we were on our way out to dinner. We’d already respectfully declined the offer of dinner at the home, though in retrospect it may have been a bad idea. With the Nooruz holiday, the family had put on one hell of a spread. So we were sat on the floor, around a low table with the extended family in attendance, drinking a pancake like batter that tasted of stale, weak beer, and eating fried bread (palatable, at least) and a beet/ham/mayonnaise/cheese/sheep lard salad. But because we’d not committed to eating at the home, the four of sat there like lemons not knowing how to act or what to do next. In the end, I took one for the team and begged leave of their company, probably committing an egregious sin against their kind hospitality in the process.

I end things there for now. In part II, I’ll talk about Sunday’s trip hiking in the mountains. From a literary perspective. You can start salivating in anticipation now.

Hmmm...Should I?

What the hell - my father would be proud

The finest engineering known to mankind

Would you let your children play on this contraption?

Hey kids! It's vodka time in the park

At the end of my last post, I promised a photo diary of my recent vodka kiosk experience. Alas, the wait is over and here you are.

I want to keep my commentary to a strict minimum (ha! that'll be the day). I'll merely offer a slight preface.

Elizabeth had read in the Lonely Planet about the ubiquitous alcohol and tobacco kiosks which sell convenient little 'nips' of vodka. It's at times like this that I much prefer the Ukrainian word - ГОРИЛКА ('horilka')- which bares a striking resemblance to 'horror liquor' - than the Russian ВОДКА. Now, I have a healthy appreciation for liquors of all kind and I have been partial to vodka in the past. But since one epic night back in May when I got my ribs cracked by a Russian bouncer in Riga, I've had this Pavlovian gag reflex - think the Ludovic technique vis-a-vis a bit of the old ultraviolence in 'A Clockwork Orange' - to the thought of drinking it again. I think I got over that in Tel Aviv when out on the town during my good pal Yonni's stag/bachelor party, as we progressed from convenience store to convenience store downing shots of vodka in plastic cups. But that was good stuff. I like, even love, the good stuff. The stuff sold in kiosks here is far from good stuff. It's downright horrid stuff.

But Elizabeth was steadfast in her determination to hunt one of these kiosks down, and it wasn't too difficult in the end. Despite Kyrgyzstan not being the alcohol-fuelled society that is so prevalent in large swathes of Eastern Europe, one is still never too far from the ghastly stuff. It's everywhere. So she goaded me into asking for it, and so I did, asking for 'a little vodka'. And there it was, presented to us in a neat little 100ml plastic container (much like the containers of orange juice we get on planes) for the low, low price of 14 som. That's around 30 cents. The Coke we bought as a chaser was around 50 cents. Welcome to Central Asia kids.

So like naughty school children we slunk away and found a nice secluded bench away from any prying eyes and the busy street. I really struggled (my fraternity days are a looooong ways behind me), though Elizabeth came off as the consummate pro. She was mighty impressive. The pictures tell the whole story. I'll start with the way it ought to be done before the dismal pictures of yours truly's attempts to get it down in a dignified manner. I was put to shame, though I learned my lesson.

The professional approach. Or, watch and learn kids

And now, for how it shouldn't be done

And that's only the smell

Still life in Bishkek

But wait, there's more

I have yet another special treat. And yet another disclaimer. You see, all those years in a fraternity, all my Eastern European vodka drinking experience and many other life lessons besides, I was never taught the proper technique for drinking such vile vodka. It sounds so simple and basic, yet it wasn't until Elizabeth told me the proper way to do it that I was able to get it down in a more civilised manner. Conveniently enough, she didn't mention this until after my initial attempt. The results of my 2nd attempt, when I polished off the remaining contents, will be uploaded very shortly in video format on Facebook.

General housekeeping

Though a lot has happened over the past fortnight, I thought I’d take the opportunity to do a bit of housework and describe some of Bishkek’s wonderful little eccentricities. Starting with…

But they’re only here for your protection

I’ve been warned incessantly that the police will stop at nothing to extract money from luckless foreigners caught in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Local law dictates that we are to carry our passports on us at all times, but I usually just carry a copy along with the amateurish homemade photo ID that the school has provided. I couldn’t imagine it being of much use, and thankfully so far I’ve survived without great incident. I have twice now been accosted by the police on a corner not far from the school. Their audacity astounds me – they blatantly want my money, they don’t even have the decency to beat around the bush. It’s flagrant and offensive, but what can I do about it, other than pretend not to understand them? Thus far, I’ve got away with paying nothing, but not sure how long my luck will last.

What is this, global warming?

Maybe it’s just me, but when I think landlocked, poor, small, mountainous, in the neighbourhood of Siberia Central Asian country, I think brutally and unforgivingly cold. Yet the weather has been unseasonably mild since I arrived and there have been very few icy cold days. I even have a couple of sweaters that I have yet to don and I can’t imagine at this point ever wearing them. On top of this, as tends to happen in the former Soviet bloc, all heating is centrally-controlled. It gets turned on sometime in November and pumps out at full blast until whenever the government decides we’ve had enough heat. Thus, many places are unbearably hot and there’s nothing you can do about it, other than suck it up and sweat it out. I’ve had little desire to go to a sauna, normally a regular occurrence for me in the winter, as it is already too steamy everywhere you go. Considering that half the country is without power most of the day, this seems to be an excessively profligate policy, but then I’m not a resource specialist so for all I know it’s logical in its own way. I’m told that power outages were quite common - electricity was going out on a daily basis at 6pm until mid-autumn and classes at the school were conducted by candlelight – but they have been sparingly sparse since.

It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt

Though at times it has been awfully icy, especially in the underpasses. Naturally, I have slipped quite a few times and made an arse of myself – if you’re a faithful reader of this blog you are by now starting to detect a pattern here. For further details, contact my sister, who I’m sure will be more than happy to provide you with a meticulous account of my slippages on ice. There have been many and even when I have been seriously hurt, she has laughed. That isn’t nice.

Reminiscing on the good old student days

A whopping disappointment: it’s like being a student all over again, which isn’t a good thing for a curmudgeonly old fool like me who likes his space and a nice kitchen. The flats are conveniently located, being attached to the school, but I live in what is essentially a dorm room with a flatmate and shared bathroom. And it’s blisteringly hot – it seems utterly absurd to open my window and use a fan to keep cool in the middle of winter but I have no other choice. Though I hate to complain too much about this, I haven’t had such lousy accommodation for a good many years. It’s times like this that I wax nostalgic about the museum of a flat I occupied in Lviv, where I had no heating, [only cold] water for only 6 hours a day and a cupboard full of pickled vegetables dating back to 1978.

My classes and the London School.

What are my classes like? In a word, fine. I have very lovely students who are extremely well-behaved, on the whole motivated, and a great pleasure to teach. The school does certain things in a rather idiosyncratic and frustrating way that creates a lot of unnecessary hassle, and they’re terribly guilty of massive copyright infringements, but otherwise it’s a decently-run outfit. At risk of boring people to tears, I will share merely one story. Every language school I’d previously worked at separated students into age groups, which makes logical sense. Not so here. So in one class, for example, I have all 14-16 year olds plus one 12 year old and a 27 year old. It’s a bit odd but you get used to it. The funniest situation occurred in my evening class, where 8 of the 9 students are over 18 and most are in their mid-20s. On the first day, a small boy of 11 dressed in a sharp suit and carrying a small briefcase knocked on the door and asked if he could come in. I’m not entirely sure why, but inexplicably all of the students and I burst into a raucous laughter. I asked him a few times whether he had the right classroom, and he indeed did. To date, he’s been one of the best students in the class, but it really was a comical sight to behold. Sometimes teachers are amused by the silliest things, but this was a new one for me.

The bizarre bazaar. Or, the joys of bartering with rosy-cheeked Kyrgyz women

I’ve rediscovered the fun behind shopping for food and personal effects at the local bazaar, Ortasay, an experience I relished in Ukraine but I didn’t take enough advantage of in Latvia. The haggling is terrific language practice, even if I hardly understand what I’m saying. The local, Turkish-owned supermarket is a bit overpriced, so it makes sense anyway to visit the market. I admit, at first they can be a daunting experience: the frenetic hustle and bustle and general anxieties that come with trying to barter in a language you can barely speak, and the pressure to perform on the big stage where umm-ing and ahh-ing are severely discouraged. If you so much as stop to peruse some fruit or veg, the elderly, plump Kyrgyz costermongers are on top of you to buy their half-rotten apples, ridiculously expensive tomatoes and shriveled, dried-up aubergines. It’s no place for the indecisive, i.e., me. (‘Once I make up my mind I’m filled with indecision’ Oscar Levant)

False promises and dashed hopes with the Russky

This has to constitute another disappointment. Let me be slightly pretentious and say that my primary raison d’etre for coming here was to learn/improve my Russian. I had seriously considered studying it intensively full-time, though I found that option to be financially irresponsible and thus opted to teach with the promise of 6-8 hours of study a week. But due to a shortage of local teachers and overwhelming demand from the foreigners and full-time students, I’m only getting 2 hours a week. As it is, I struggle in a 1 on 1 setting with my wandering attention and lackadaisical attitude to learning the grammar, so I can’t imagine having the necessary motivation and concentration for full-time study. I study individually when I can, and there has been some progress. I think.

Runway commentary and sartorial elegance

I offer you this profound statement: former Soviet bloc fashion awakens all the senses and confounds all expectations of normality. I usually find it to be an exotic blend of intriguing and bewildering, which is probably a euphemism for something else, but no matter, I’m not going to delve into the specifics. Two years of living in Eastern Europe hardly makes me an expert on post-Soviet haute couture but I long ago tired of describing and analysing various styles, colours and shapes of overly exuberant outfits. Suffice to say that here one also encounters thigh-high leather boots of black, red, white and purple, along with the ubiquitous and absurdly ‘luxurious’ fur. Despite Kyrgyzstan being a rather poor country, to walk in the centre of town on a weekend and observe the lissome young Kyrgyz and Russian venuses clad in their furs, you’d think you were in the fashion capital of Central Asia. It’s hard to refrain from passing judgment, but, well, it disgusts me. The fur that is. The other stuff is really…something else. I’ll leave it at that.

And now for the epicurean highs and lows

Even at the worst of times I’m an adventurous eater and will try anything once. After all, I had no qualms about eating bush meat in Nigeria, though I never did find out what it was. I also tried slugs on a stick, a popular roadside snack, which were predictably chewy, even more so than calamari, but also quite flavourful. For my first month here, I put my ethics on temporary hold and forsook my vegetarianish diet in order to try all the local specialties, all of which are meat-laden. Amongst the local delights are lagman, a spicy noodle dish common throughout the region; beshbarmak (‘five fingers’, so-called because that’s how it’s designed to be eaten) the Kyrgyz pride and joy, flat noodles topped with horse or mutton drenched in a tepid vegetable broth; manti, mince meat and onion filled dumplings; and gamburgers, which is self-explanatory (consider other words in Russian: Gollywood, Gomosexual and Garry Potter). There are many more offerings, but those appear to be the most common. Thank goodness various other cuisines proliferate, for the local dishes wear on you fast. Turkish and Chinese restaurants are common, and one can find Korean, Georgian, Syrian, Lebanese and Mexican if you look hard enough. But beware the aspirational menu: get your hopes up at your own peril, for chances are that anything that sounds too good to be true usually is. One recent minor fright: apparently dog is available in some places and some of the teachers have even tried it, one commenting that it was ‘very tasty’. I wouldn’t in a million years consider eating dog, though I was terrified that I recently had. On the menu was ‘Kitaisky’-style meat, which I mixed up with Kutaisi, a city in Georgia. I was excited for Georgian-style meat but then after ordering it was pointed out to me that Kitaisky is Russian for Chinese. So, Chinese-style ‘meat’ it was. And it was awfully delicious, though for the life of me I couldn’t tell what type of meat it was. Then I panicked. I could easily leave you in suspense here and say the mystery was never resolved, but that would be dishonest of me. Fret not, for it wasn’t dog but beef.
Phew.

Once a month had passed, I re-discovered my morals and have now given up the meat, for the most part. We’ll see how long that lasts, but a recent [vegetarian] arrival has been an extremely good influence on me, and I trust she will keep me in my place.

As for the new arrival, Elizabeth is tremendous fun. She arrived near the end of February and is my temporary flatmate until she moves into a local homestay in a few days. We spent her first weekend in town taking in all of Bishkek’s sights (which took less than an hour) and introducing her to the wonderful local cuisine, which I think she’s already fed up with. I’m very grateful for her presence as I now feel like I have a good friend here. Anyway, she’d read about there being a widespread phenomenon in Bishkek where kiosks sell shots of vodka and she was eager to try it. So yesterday, on our way to Ortasay Bazaar on a particularly chilly and windy day, we decided to stop en route and partake in the experience. At this point, I leave you in suspense and promise an upcoming treat: a photo diary of the whole experience. We even have me on video downing the vile pish, which I will attempt to post on Facebook. Stay tuned.

Minor tumbles in the Kyrgyz hills

My dear readers and friends, I’m afraid I’ve been overcome with a minor case of both writer’s bloc and inertia. And, I have to admit, on more than one occasion have I thought about throwing in the towel altogether with this [at times wretched] blog: technology has almost got the better of me, but for now I persist and The Layman’s Guide to International Relations lives to see another day. No further details necessary just now.

Revisiting nature and Kyrgyzstan’s outdoor splendours

Last weekend saw me escape to the countryside for a couple of days of good, clean, rollicking fun. Day one was Burana Tower, a school-sponsored trip (that was very kind of them) which even the Lonely Planet struggles to describe in flattering terms. Amongst the more imaginative adjectives used are ‘interesting’ and ‘ancient’. In more concrete terms, it’s a ‘1950s Soviet restoration’ of an ‘11th-century monument that looks like the stump of a huge minaret.’ If that kind of thing doesn’t excite the senses then absolutely nothing will.

The tower and its surroundings were fairly nondescript and bare little merit of further description. But it certainly falls into the kind of category that would warrant the ‘what a waste!’ remark that my father has employed on more than one occasion. So many places we’ve visited over the years have ended in a desultory ‘well, that was a waste!’ comment. Most of the time it’s been used to apply to a fairly turgid football match (though he has used it for the occasional 3-3 thriller) but every now and then it gets applied to some tourist attraction that most people deem worthy of their time and attention (such as St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin: and he’s Catholic!). Not so for my father’s more discerning tastes. It comes from the well-known ‘you mean, that’s it?’ school of ancient ruins appreciation.


You mean, that’s it?

But no matter: we found other sources of entertainment, such as bombarding the two new teachers, Brian and Kristen, a couple from Texas, with an avalanche of snowballs. From the tower itself there was little to amuse us, other than trying to launch snowballs into a rubbish bin on the ground below. When this proved unsuccessful, my fellow travellers - Kole and Will – and I thought it would be more fun to try and hit the newbies as they made their way down and out of the tower. Kristen wasn’t thrilled when Kole pelted her in the back as she made her way down the tower, down precarious, narrow, winding steps in almost total darkness. Brian wasn’t amused when Kole nailed his camera as he was attempting to photograph Kristen coming out of the tower. Neither were pleased with us as we rained a torrent of snowballs on them on the landing from up above. And then as they made their way across the field away from the tower and towards the small on-site museum, Kole launched his final assault: a line drive snowball from a good 50 metres away that plunked Kristen square in the back, eliciting no reaction whatsoever from either of them. They made their way quickly through the museum and then escaped to the relative safety of the waiting minivan. The three of us wondered if we’d really upset them and decided that the best way to address the situation, in lieu of apologising, was to simply let things fester and wait for a reaction from them. And boy, did we get one.

After spending the better part of an hour rummaging through the museum with our gold-toothed, fur-clad Kyrgyz guide, and a bit longer wandering the area examining the ancient Turkic balbals (totem-like stone markers honouring the dead), we made our way back to the minivan, where Brian and Kristen had been eagerly awaiting our arrival. Upon getting into the van, Brian asked, ‘what took you guy guys so long?’ whereas we muttered something about ‘how interesting’ the museum had been. And then came the classic, one of those ‘you had to have been there to fully appreciate it’ moments, where Brian uttered his epic lines: ‘So, whoever threw that snowball…it knocked the wind out of her and her back still hurts…good job being an asshole’. We were stunned. Will and I sheepishly slunk away in the back of the van while poor Kole took one for the team, turning around and offering a meek apology. We had decided on our way back to the van that we’d take collective responsibility for our actions (though in fairness, Kole had launched all the controversial shots), but once in the van I cowered in the bank and couldn’t suppress my snickering. The ‘good job being an asshole’ line quickly achieved legendary status and since then, all of the teachers have been quoting it ad nauseum. It has thus far failed to get old and is probably a good indication of how pathetic English teachers abroad really are when the crassest form of low-brow humour becomes our most entertaining form of amusement. Or maybe it’s just what living in Kyrgyzstan does to people.

As a disclaimer, I must emphatically state that in no way, shape or form does this little incident mar my feelings towards the new teachers. In fact, they are wonderful people whom I like very much, and I’m very glad for their arrival.

Sunday offered the chance of more excitement in the form of a skiing excursion to one of the Bishkek area’s ubiquitous slopes. Unfortunately, it was a tumultuous day which resulted in an unpleasant injury for your dear author. I’m no expert on skiing, and I fear my ignorance of the correct terminology, as well as my expectations of the standards expected in the third world versus those of the more modern world, will expose me as a bit of a fraud. But do I care? Of course not.

Cutting right to the chase: don’t ski in the third world. Or, consider alternative forms of entertainment

In previous skiing encounters, I was spoilt for choice: numerous slopes of varying degrees of difficulty to choose from, modern equipment, excellent facilities and an overall pleasant experience. Not so at Polytek, where there was really only big, steep slope: going up the hill one could alight at one of three stops on the way up. But essentially, it was one enormous slope down, not so good for amateurs like me, and even worse for my travelling companions, all beginners.

My downfall has always been getting up the slope on those ghastly T-rope bars (the right terminology?). Because my coordination and concentration are so lackadaisical, I’ve always had the most trouble getting up the hill intact. Fitted out with Soviet-style retro-70s skis that just weren’t very secure for my already-two sizes too small boots, I had little hope of getting more than 10 metres up the hill without collapsing into my own private little heap of mangled arms, legs and skis. It was only on my 4th attempt that I managed to make it up the hill to the first stop. Compounding the problem was the archaic T-bar/rope system employed: every skier had to carry his own little waist bag containing rope and a block of wood, attaching the metal clip onto the wire, propping the block of wood against your backside, and then trying to maintain an upright stance as it jerked you upwards. If you were lucky enough to make it to the top in one piece, you had only a few seconds to take off the clip, reel in the rope and put it safely away before the next advancing skier was on top of you. I really struggle to describe this accurately and I only hope that my readers will fully accept and trust that it was indeed a logistically futile Sisyphean task trying to get up the hill. I felt better seeing that I was far from the only one having difficulty with this. Along with my companions, good deals of the locals were struggling mightily as well, though I must admit that the vast majority of the stragglers were children under the age of 10. Still, judging from the prone, crumpled bodies littering the slopes on the way up, one would think that a sniper was hiding in the hills taking potshots at all the little kids and foreigners attempting to get up the slope. Eventually I got the hang of it, though I was tempted to throw in the towel and spend the afternoon in the tiny café and its leaking ceiling drinking pots of tea and drowning my inadequacies in cognac. I’m a terribly impatient, easily flustered person and this was proving to be dangerously close to that ‘more trouble than it’s worth’ type of endeavour (much like making homemade croissants). I also lack any willpower whatsoever in controlling my language. The more I fell, the more I swore. And when I get frustrated, I swear in just about any language I can think of: English, Russian, Spanish, French and Italian. After one particularly nasty attempt to get off the starting blocks, I unleashed a torrent of foul language directed at all onlookers, with loudly audible gasps from the crowd doing nothing to deter me. It was after this, as I sheepishly made my way back to the start of the queue, where I once again spent 15 minutes trying to get my skis back on, that an elderly woman approached me and said in excellent English, ‘ah, so you are an English teacher?’ I’m glad the locals can appreciate the fine linguistic talents of those of us here to educate Kyrgyzstan’s youth. She remarked on the fine range of vocabulary I had employed, though I’m not sure if it was in disdain or in wry amusement.

At least the view was nice

At least the snow was soft

Have I mentioned how nice my companions were? (L-R: Janat, Karlien, Nicola, Will, author)

On the plus side, I did have some excellent runs down the slope. On the minus, there were way too many frustrating ones, such as the run where almost immediately after alighting, one ski fell off and travelled unaccompanied all the way down to the base, almost decapitating a little girl in the process. Throughout the day, I was pleasantly surprised about how helpful and concerned were the locals. Whenever I took a nasty spill, the nearest skier so kindly interrupted his run to enquire whether I was alright. I resisted the urge to swear at them and instead meekly smiled and nodded.

But alas, a nice souvenir for my troubles

And most unfortunately, your dear author failed to escape completely unscathed from the afternoon. On my final run, going out in a blaze of glory, I took a nasty head-first spill, resulting in what I believe to have been a minor concussion and a badly damaged thumb, which swelled up to double its size. Even now, over a week later, I’m battling through the pain, though I’m hopeful that it’s merely a bad ligament strain and nothing more serious.

By now it must be clearly evident that I am not built for the great outdoors, though considering I spent almost all of my childhood in the Boy Scouts, I hardly know how this is possible. My father would clearly be ashamed, though I’ve seen him attempt to ski and he was even more hopeless than I. Deep down, it was a fun day out, but to repeat something I learned during my fraternity pledging days, it was probably ‘the most fun I never want to have again’. At least it wasn’t a complete waste.