Also, a pop hit called "I Love it When You Call Me Senorita" comes out of every car window and office building. I've heard it several times a day. Inescapable.
The ride to Bishkek was typical of the form, with the addition of a border crossing. Racing along in a hot mini-van, the driver's choice of music pumping him up, his buddy in the passenger seat keeping up a stream of, presumably, ribald tales and football updates.
The curtains were closed, because of the heat and also because you don't want to see how close you are coming to the trucks full of coal ash. I read "The World of Yesterday," a memoir by Stefan Zwieg about Europe before and during the "Great Wars." He wrote it in the early 40s, so he had no idea how WWII would play out.
It's an interesting combination of sentimental and profound with a little name-dropping thrown in. "So there I was in Rodin's studio...." Like everything I'm reading on this trip, it doesn't match the surroundings. But neither did the music the driver played. So there!
At customs, a sign read: "The line for the checking of the passport."
(cool little screening room in Bishkek. That lobby!)
Bishkek was pleasant, and the taxi was fair (the app worked). My host was a wiry little dude who rushed through the instructions so he could get back to his day job. The place was small but seemed like a palace after that nutty scratch palace in Almaty. I took a big nap.
The initial impression was that Bishkek fell on the "Asian" side of the Eurasian line. I may revise that later, but the energy was much higher than in other post-Soviet states I've seen. It had the leafy look and menacing monuments of, say, Chisinau, but the lights and hustle of Siem Reap. I was taken in by it.
Woke up in time to get a cucumber and tomato salad and go back to sleep. A lot of the simple meals here have me fired up to recreate them at home. Sara is going to have to endure a great many culinary experiments; she may wake up to a month of Bishkek breakfasts.
In the morning, it was coffee and a long walk to Ala-Too Square, which had me thinking of the way Darth Vader says, "All too easy" until I was rescued by an air-conditioning store blasting "I Love it When You Call Me Senorita."
The city roads and parks are gorgeous, but they haven't gotten to the sidewalks yet. They're all messed up, and you have to be pretty careful. Rocky and root-rippled with a few open sewer grates full of Pepsi bottles and tourist's shin bones.
Tree-lined avenues and tiny shops. Lots of shwarma and shishlik. I was getting a little thrill translating Cyrillic phonetically, little shots of dopamine. Some movie posters for the new Terminator and Maleficent movies were especially pleasing. The former, терминатор, made me think it was about a triceratops from the future.
As in Almaty, there were sudden, dazzling views of snowy mountains down every corridor. But they seemed somehow closer here. I was allowing the charm of the place to overtake me. I am always quick to rapture, but I succumbed to Bishkek even sooner than usual.
I wanted to try a Korean chicken place I'd read about. It wasn't 'stan food, but I reasoned I would have that for dinner, and Korean culture is a big part of this part of the world. They're a high-population ethnic group 'round these parts, slave labor in the bad-old days. In the centuries after Genghis and the gang stopped Khaning, and the British lost the "Great Game," these regions were big dumping grounds for Russians and Japanese to force folks to do things folks wouldn't have done on their own.
It was too early for this place to be open, so I got teary looking at skinny dogs in the ivy and inspired by simple statues in the square. Ala-Too Square is fairly unimposing, kind of a quiet flowery place and a large open plaza divided by the city's main road.
I read on a bench in the park, enjoying a teasing breeze and the peace of the place. A man and his girlfriend kept looking my way and laughing. Eventually the man came over with a handful of walnuts. The interaction went about as perfectly as this can go:
Walnut: *extended palm with four walnuts* "Welcome Kyrgyzstan. Here is gift."
Me: *palm flat on heart* Thank you. Thank you. I cannot take.
Walnut: "Please take, please. Is gift. Gift."
Me: *taking two walnuts* Thank you. Thank you.
Walnut: *retreating* Enjoy, please.
He went back to his girlfriend, and they giggled some more but not as robustly. It felt just right to me. He showed hospitality, I refused demurely but accepted a portion of it. The ideal sort of mutual honoring between strangers.
After a chapter more, I got up to leave. I tried to catch his eye to thank him again, but his face was buried in his friend's neck. I had been led not to expect open displays of affection here, but... here one was. It was nice. On the way to the destination chicken place a panhandler asked me for money. I gave him the first bill I felt in my pocket. It was 100 som, about a dollar and a half. Enough, I knew by now, for a doner or a coffee.
He thanked me in his language and I wished him good luck in mine. When he heard me speak, he shouted "America! America!" after me. I turned and smiled.
Based on my coloring, baristas have guessed I am Italian or Spanish. They do not think I am Italian or Spanish for even a moment in Italy or Spain, but I appear pan-European enough for the Eurasians. This held at the chicken place, where the very sweet Korean host greeted me with a happy, "Ciao!"
A nice restaurant and gathering space. It had Western prices, which made me feel like they were catering to expats. I mean, I'd read about it on a forum for travelers, so... It felt like there were about five or six years ahead of the gentrification curve. They'd do a bang-up trade in Balat, where the scene is primed! The food was great, and a huge spinach salad is probably the healthiest thing I've had since Turkey.
Wait.. is healthy... hip? Is it cool to.. live?
Nice big place with coffee-sack pillows and a stage for bands. Afterward, I wandered around the neighborhood. Large parks with monuments to long-dead Russian accountants. Families playing in piles of leaves. Groups of children in colorful clothing. Tired-seeming, happy-seeming moms attendant on benches or leaning on trees.
Around a corner was The Obama Cafe. A big laugh from me. Walked over to make sure it wasn't a Kyrg word that meant something else, but it had an American flag on the sign. An unexpected tribute to the former president. I wonder if he knows about it. The menu was hamburgers (and not Kenyan food).
After so long on the road, my hair and beard were medusal, so I went to a salon with a Spartan theme. Every service they provide has a fixed price of 300 Kyrgyzstani Soms. So, their logo was a shouting Spartan over a big, red 300. Like the movie!
I got my hair and beard trimmed. The menu of services had something called "camouflage beard," and I am dying to know what that is. It felt good to relax in the chair and be tended to. I was sure there was sticky Korean chicken sauce somewhere in my beard, but it wasn't mentioned and it didn't gum up the clipper.
When the barberista finished, I started to sit up, but she lay her hand gently on my chest indicating I should stay in the chair. She pulled out her phone and typed for a while. I wondered what was up. Checked myself out in the mirror. I looked cute, which is to say, clean. After a few moments, she put her phone in front of my face. It was google translate. In the English box it read, "I really want to wax your ears."
Hysterical. I let her, of course. I have never experienced that that I can recall. It was.... incredibly painful. I was very happy with how I looked and felt afterward, though. Beauty is pain.
Long walk back with a(nother) nap at the end of it. It's a pretty place with a lot of sweet public spaces and food trucks and comfortable-seeming people. If they do something about the sidewalks, they'll be in some kind of position! It had only been a day, but I really liked the rhythm of the place.
Woke up in the early evening. Went back out for coffee, and since I'd done so well at the salon, I figured I'd hit for the cycle and get a manicure. I... was not successful in this endeavor. Walked into a place where I was laughed at then frozen out. They acted like I was a triceratops from the future.
Stuck it out in chair for a while, but it was clear they didn't want me there after their initial amusement.
I felt like a Dutchman with a goose under his arm trying to get a room at the Waldorf. Spent my nail money on manti instead. That's the dumpling of the 'stans. Like the khinkali of the Caucasus, it has a tiny handle (though less prominent than on khinkali). They were good and probably packed with pony meat. I didn't ask. I just pointed to the letters that looked like "manti" to me.
Quiet walk home in the cool air. Made plans to see Burana Tower in the morning and hit the, how-you-say hay.
*****
God help me, I looked up a song I enjoyed in the cafe while writing this, and it was by Harry Styles. The music on this trip! I need to get back home to my records. Just... three weeks to go.
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