Pleaaaaaaaaaaaaase give me some coffee....

Mal wieder einer dieser Tage, wo einfach nichts so zu funktionieren scheint, wie es sollte. Draußen sind es um die 18°C, aber es liegt noch Schnee. Im Büro ist es durch den Sonnenschein zu warm, um vernünftig zu arbeiten, oder zumindest zu warm für diese Jahreszeit. Und überhaupt gibt es gerade irgendwie zu wenig zu tun so dass ich nun gegen das schlechte Gewissen ankämpfend zumindest etwas halbproduktives mache: Blog schreiben. Vorausgesetzt natürlich irgendjemand liest die Halbproduktivität. Außerdem möchte man sich bei dem Wetter einfach irgendwohin raussetzen, in ein Café vielleicht. Was würde ich jetzt für einen frisch gebrühten Kaffee geben...

In Kirgisistan ist guter Kaffee ein Problem. Nicht dass man ihn überhaupt nicht bekommen würde. Es gibt den Italiener, der soweit ich weiß nicht mehr nach Italien zurück darf. Der macht echt guten Cappuccino. Da trifft man auch mal den deutschen Botschafter, aber das Weiß der Wände lässt zuweilen etwas zu wünschen übrig. Dann gibt es noch das Boulevard. Sehr gemütlich. Man fühlt sich fast wie zu Hause. Auch der Kaffee ist gebrüht und recht frisch. Aber irgendwie fehlt etwas. Es ist so ein bisschen wie in China, cha bu duo. Ich will einen echten Kaffee. Vielleicht will ich aber auch nur ein echtes Café.

Winter in a Russian village

What a shame, it's been already a month since my last entry! I promise, I'll try to do it better!

Before I'll go on with writing about my experiences in Central Asia here's something about my new year's trip to the west, or at least one of the most eastern parts of the west: Moscow. Or, more exactly, about the trip to my cousin's friends datscha, about 100 km away from Moscow.


It used to be a real village, now there's only one 25 year old man living there permanently. All the other houses are used as summer houses now by people who live in Moscow. There's no running water so you have to go outside to take water from the well.

If was cold, but really beautyfull. Just the right setting for an evening in front of the fire (and a way to get warm :-) )

My first earthquake

This night I woke up at 2 o’clock in the night because my bed and my closet were shaking. As my mind became clearer I realized that the whole house was shaking and I remembered my colleague telling me about a very strong earthquake in 1992, when many houses has been destroyed.

I went to the living room to look outside whether the people started leaving the houses but everything seemed to be calm. So I put warm closes and my passport next to the bed, just in case and went to sleep again.

As I just red on the news, the epicenter of the earthquake was in Tarkesei-Alatoo, on the border of Naryn and Issyk-kul oblast, about 140km south-east of Bishkek. In the epicenter the earthquake reached a magnitude of 7 on the Richter scale, in Bishkek itself it was about 4-4,5 points.

The earthquake brought up a big discussion on the Kyrgyz web on whether or not to link it with the current political situation in the country. With the government having resigned last week, the big opposition against the HIPC-initiative, and the overall dissatisfactions with the president’s policy there’s no wonder the now God too expresses his disapproval on what’s going on in the country – via an earthquake; this at least is the opinion of one part of the Kyrgyz web community.
On the opposite side, the more rational fractions asks himself, how then to judge the frequent earthquakes in Japan or California, where there’s no HIPC and the population’s dissatisfaction with the government does by far not reach the level of Kyrgyzstan? Even more, they see the earthquake positively as an instrument to reduce the tensions within the society, before something serious happens. So, what do you think?

Betriebsausflug

Like in every good German agency or company, once in a year there's something what each employee in GTZ looks forward to: BETRIEBSAUSFLUG - the annual works outing! That means, funny teambuilding games, dancing, fun, some vodka and the possibility to get to know people you're working with in a funny and relaxed atmosphere - in our case in a small guest house Kashka-Suu high up in the mountains about two and half hours drive away from Bishkek.

The only way to get there except with an old good Russian Niva is to take a Kamaz, like the one you see in behind, because the roads are not asphaltic.

For that you really get a very beatiful view in the mornung and the feeling of beeing far away from the world and everything.

But to the core: Teambuilding-games!

First with chairs, then without -

Every whole can be used only once -

or how to get to the other side if you can only walk on the dishes, the dishes cannot move back and you loose once you step off the dish?

And as you can see at the exemple of my colleagues, the teambuilding works also when you don't have to play it as a game!

X-mas Time in Bishkek

Es weihnachtet!

While it's looking more and more like Weihnachten/X-Mas outside


the "Bishkek International Community" enjoys the X-Mas parties

and a Sunday brunch at Bishkek's only 5-star-hotel (Hyatt Regency).

Sometimes you just need this stuff when you're so far away from Lebkuchen und Gluehwein (*schnief*)

On the road to Uzbekistan

From Dushanbe our trip went to the capital of Uzbekistan - Tashkent.

As mentioned before, Uzbekistan pursues a highly protectionist policy towards Tajikistan. One of its outcomes, along with a personal fight the presidents of the two countries had, is that there are no flights between them. The official reason is "the lack of economic interests".

And, as if this were not absurd enough, the governments of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan just recently signed an agreement that will allow citizens of the opposite part arriving by PLANE to stay for 45 days without a visa.

But, back to our trip:
Because we could not fly from Dushanbe directly to Tashkent, we needed to take a flight to Khujand, go from there by taxi to the border, pass the border and go by an Uzbek taxi from there to Tashkent.

Flying on the history of aviation continued. This time, it was a Yak-40.

The entrance is under the tail fin. A just married couple went on their honeymoon, so there was Champaign for everybody on board.

Having arrived in Khujand,

we took a car (suitable version of a small Toyota jeep), my Tajik colleague Khushnid, who accompanied us together with his wife and daughter organized in advance, to the border crossing. Khushnid and his wife are Uzbek and they used our business trip as an opportunity to visit their relatives in Tashkent. Having arrived at the border crossing I changed the Tajik SOMON I had left into Uzbek SYM. Now it's clear to me, why ATM-mashines don't work in Uzbekistan.

The border crossing looked more like market, than like an n official border crossing point. The taxi drivers, who were standing around waiting for clients told us, that this crossing point was under a bilateral agreement, only for Tajiks and Uzbeks, which meant, that me and our project manager couldn’t cross the border. While he and Khushnid went to the border post to reconfirm this information, Khushnid's daughter was having her fun with my glasses.

Indeed, not even for "additional money" could we pass the border. That meant that we had to take another taxi to the official border crossing point in Ozbek. The new taxi was not a Jeep but an old Lada, for 5 adults (driver included) and a 2,5 year old girl.

The traffic on the road was sometimes relatively heavy...

and considering that this was the "main highway" from Tajikistan to Uzbekistan somehow exotic.

If was a three hours journey and of course we stopped at a "rest aria", to get some food :-)


After having to argue for the price, the taxi driver suddenly decided to raise, when we arrived at the border post we finally left the territory of Tajikistan. From the Tajik border post you have to walk for about 50 meter to the Uzbek border post's gate. (The gate to paradise?)

The people had to wait at the gate (sometimes for hours) to be allowed to "get in". Some of them, who have good connections to the border post, of course don't. The international organization's status allowed us to "get in" after one hour. But while we were not allowed to pass the border on the first border post, Khushnid's 2,5 year old daughter was not allowed to pass the border here because her name was not included in Khushnids visa.

We had to pass the border alone, while Khushnid and his family had to return to the first border post, where their daughter could pass the border without a visa, because he knew somebody working there.

After having passed the gate, the entry procedure was surprisingly easy, not at least due to our European passports. In Uzbekistan we took a taxi to Tashkent. Khushnid and his family arrived on the next day.

Some spots from Dushanbe

(I am safely back to Bishkek for over one week now, but only now I found some time to finish my entries)

Dushanbe - the capital of the Republic of Tajikistan.
After having suffered from a civil war 1992-1997 the country came to stability. In Dushanbe itself you'll hardly find anything "on the surface", which would remind you of the fact that a larger part of the infrastructure has been destroyed in the war. To realize that you are in a post war country you either need to enter a normal home - over half of the city has brown water running out of the tap. Or, you go to the countryside, where there's electricity supply for only 8 hours a day.

Development outlook
Lacking own energy resources Tajikistan is dependant on energy supply from neighboring countries. Geographically locked from all sites the only country, from where energy would be accessible, is Uzbekistan. But having a large Tajik minority itself and being in an initial stage of what the soviet-stile government understands as "nation-building", Uzbekistan pursues a highly protectionist policy, that includes rising gas prices for Tajikistan to almost western standards - one of the reasons why there's only electricity for limited hours in a larger part of the country.

But, nonetheless, the people make their living and Dushanbe looks like a typical ex-soviet capital.

The presidential palace.

A cafe where we used to breakfast.

And...
the modernized version of a public phone.

Flying the History of Aviation

Flight Bishkek – Dushanbe

Flying Tajikistan Airlines gives you the feeling that the gangway was a kind of a time machine, because – once you enter the plane you find yourself somewhere in a time of thirty years ago.

Tajikistan belongs to the poorest countries of the world and a lot of the infrastructure has been destroyed in the recent civil war. The planes that are in the possession of the national airline are leftovers from the old Soviet fleet, namely TU-154, TU-134, Iak-40 and AN-24.

The first TU-134 went on flight in 1963. The planes that are used by Tajikistan Airlines are the newer version - TU-134A. They don't look that aged from outside, but ...

...once you're inside it us really like thirty years ago. But nontheless their age, the planes seem to be pretty good in shape and the view from the illuminator while flying over Tajikistan is amazing.