Valerie's Top 5 Amusements in Europe

From mid-June to mid-July, I was in Central/Eastern Europe with my parents and my sister. I thought I would share my top five amusements from that trip, in no particular order.

1) Dad dancing in Budapest



We went for a 'traditional' dinner one night in Budapest and the stage entertainment called my dad up for an audience interaction bit. Dad had to dance his weaving way through bottles on the stage, following a thigh-slapping, knee-jerking routine that he'd just been taught. Then he had to do it again - blindfolded. You can imagine the hilarity.

2) Mom sitting down next to a so-German guard



My sister Steph and I were cracked up by this image of our mom sitting next to this old school guard, totally oblivious to the incongruity of the image.

3) Taking pictures of beautiful things and places



There was no shortage of beautiful things and places to enjoy and to take pictures of. This one is inside a cathedral somewhere - after a few cathedrals, they all start to blend into one. My personal advice is that one cathedral suffices - if you've been to one, you kind of might as well have been to them all. The same goes for the old town bits of European cities - one old town is very much like another old town. Tourist-trappy but still lovely.

4) Germany's Wow Wow dustbins



Wow! I found a dustbin! Wow!

5) Being statues with Steph



Steph and I had a lot of fun being various statues. We amused not only ourselves but also all passersby. Lest you think it unfair that I got to be human while Steph was the dog, let me mention that on two separate occasions, I was a horse which Steph sat on.

Surprise holiday in China

So, I find myself unexpectedly sitting in Brett’s house (many of you will know him) in Tianjin. I thought I’d post a short update on the blog despite not being able to upload any pictures yet. How did I end up here instead of in Bishkek, you may wonder?

Well, just over two weeks ago, I left Bishkek for a few days in K.shg.r (Xin.ji.ang province of China) with two girls, one of whom I teach in Bishkek - I was their adult chaperone. Their family spent many years working in K.shg.r. We had a good time and the older girl was able to say goodbye to her home and her childhood friends, since she's going to college in the States soon.

Because of the recent unr.st, there were s.ld.rs on every street corner and we would often be passed by convoys of a.r.m.y trucks with s.ld.rs pointing g.ns with b.yonets on the ends at us as they passed (probably not intentionally - they were just staring because we were some of the few foreigners in the city at the time).

We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the s.l.drs and one time when I tried to get a picture of a famous m.sque, next to which happened to be an encampment of s.l.drs, a policeman immediately forbade it and ‘escorted’ us down to another part of the old city, making sure that we were well and truly not turning back before leaving us alone.

I do, however, have some pictures of the city which happen to have the tail end of some trucks in them. Will post these when I return to Bishkek.

On our way back to Bishkek, I was told that I couldn't enter Kyrgyzstan because my one month visa was single-entry only, and that had been used up when I got it at the airport. So I got to experience the joys of trying to get into the neighbouring country of Kyrgyzstan from China.

Unlike when you fly to Bishkek from, say, Australia, China does not allow you to board a plane without a visa, and in order to get a non-tourist visa, you have to jump through a number of bureaucratic hoops. It was near-impossible to jump through such hoops while in Xin.ji.ang province, because they currently have no internet and no ability to call anyone outside of China, so I flew to Beijing.

After a lot of effort from numerous people, two 9 hour round trips north to Beijing, and at least 10 mosquito bites from waiting in the Kyrgyz Embassy, I think I have managed to convince the Beijing Embassy of the Kyrgyz Republic to give me a one month business visa. As such, I should be able to fly back to Bishkek two and a half weeks after I originally planned to be back.

I think you could say I’ve been having an adventurous summer. Will post photos when I’m back in Bishkek.

Door codes

Most apartment blocks here have security devices on their doors that require door codes to get through. My mobile comes in handy for storing friends' door codes. This is the door code device on the blue door leading to my apartment block. While it looks better than many such devices, it doesn't actually work.

Street Babushkas

A common sight along the streets here is old ladies selling their meagre worldly possessions, to try to get by. The pension provided by the government is not sufficient for babushkas who don't have families to provide for them, so they make a living by selling assorted goods, or by selling milk or eggs.

Cultural Experiences in Karakol: The Cars

I had two notable car experiences in Karakol. First, there was the shell of a car that I couldn't believe someone was actually fixing. I just couldn't imagine this car ever running, but I was also glad that in this country they don't write cars off because it's easier (or cheaper) to do that than to fix them. It is certainly not a wasteful culture.





I also saw an old Soviet car with the funkiest pink curtains at the back of it. It looked like something out of a movie, not a bona fide car which someone actually drove to the bazaar.

Cultural Experiences in Karakol: The Bazaar

I tried a lot of local foods on my trip to Karakol. I ate a gamburger (kind of like a shish kebab but in a white burger - I probably had a very boring one as I asked for it without any of the sauces, which would either have had vinegar or tomato).



At the big bazaar, I also tried a traditional Dungan dish and a traditional Russian dish, at the same little stall. Ashliangfoo is a traditional Dungan dish which consists of cold handmade noodles in a soup-like mixture (which unfortunately contains enough vinegar to make it not as pleasurable for me as the noodles with something else would have been). Karakol has the best ashliangfoo in Kyrgyzstan, or so my local friends informed me, so I was glad to get the chance to try it there. Piroshki is a Russian dish consisting of deep-fried bread with mashed potato and onion inside. I enjoyed it, though it was a bit too oily (like most foods here). The lovely Dungan cook also allowed me to take a picture of her at work in her kitchen!


The bazaar was a cultural experience in more senses than the culinary one. We passed by a stall with what looked like plain white rocks to me, but my friend told me that the rocks are crushed into salt which is fed to cows.


I also saw samsi (samosa-like things) being made – they are made on the sides of a big round stone oven. Apparently the walls of this 'oven' are so hot that the samsi stick to the side when they are pressed there. I thought it was very cool, which probably shows you what an under-exposed city girl I am.

Cultural Experiences in Karakol: The Marshrutka Ride to Karakol

My trip to Karakol started off with a marshrutka ride. A friend of a local friend met me at the Western (new) bus terminal to help me to find, haggle with the driver of, and get safely on a marshrutka to Karakol. He found one for 150 som (about A$6) but after waiting for 20min without a sign that this marshrutka driver would get 7 other passengers before Christmas, he found me another one for 200som. I got to sit in the front, which was a bigger blessing than I'd thought, because there must have been about 15 people crammed in the back. Yes, everyone had a seat, but the seats were close together and cramped. This in combination with the darkened windows in the back of the marshrutka would have made my 6 hour trip a lot more arduous. I bet someone would have had bad b.o. too, and I would have had to put up with it for 6 hours and then get off smelling bad. This sounds so ridiculously minor, but in such close and stale quarters for a 6 hour trip along bumpy roads, it would have been awful.



Instead, I got to sit up the front and look out the front and the window. There were some nice sights but I couldn't help thinking that it would be a beautiful road later in spring or in summer or in autumn, when there was green grass and leaves on trees. The road was often lined with forlorn, leafless, haggard skeletons of trees, which would, I imagined, be delightful in any other season, perhaps even earlier in winter when they were snow-laden.





At one point, we stopped, the marshrutka driver got out, and the young boy who had been loaded into the front seat between me and the driver was entrusted with the task of keeping his foot on the brake pedal to prevent the marshrutka from rolling forward. He can't have been more than about 8 or 9 years old, but he carried out the task with equanimity.

The marshrutka driver, greedy for money, made sure that the marshrutka was absolutely full at all times by stopping frequently to pick up extra passengers, having dropped some off along the way to Karakol. This was frustrating and I discovered that one can understand grumbling in any language – the babushkas behind me were mumbling in a complaining tone, and though all I caught was the word 'express' (which is the same in Russian as in English), it couldn't have been clearer that they were voicing my internal discontent at the false advertising on the part of the driver and placard of this so-called express Bishkek-Karakol marshrutka.