A Typical Day in Dushanbe

So here we are at the end of a fabulous long weekend in Dushanbe. You've already read about the second Hash on Saturday. Sunday was a fantastic hike up into the mountains that won't be worth reading about without pictures, so it'll have to wait until I can get them together. Today (Monday) we enjoyed the day off for Labor Day by trying to buy a car and being thoroughly discouraged. Fortunately we have a mechanic from the embassy who's willing to help us make sure we don't end up with a lemon, but it looks like we're in for a long and frustrating process. It now looks like it might have been better to ship a car from the U.S. despite advice we recieved to the contrary. The rest of the day was spent putting our house together a bit more and trying to relax.

The point of this post, however, is to start giving you all a glimpse of the sights in Dushanbe. On Saturday, we took a little detour on our way to the Barakat bazaar to walk through Rudaki park. (Rudaki is a historical figure who is credited for being the father of Persian literature, and the main street in Dushanbe is also named after him.) On the way, I passed this ad for hot dogs in Russian and had to snap a picture - it literally reads 'hot dog'.

Rudaki park is a fairly large park right in the downtown area. The building you see through the gateway is one of the Presidential Palaces (he has two of them, and 18 summer homes), and yes that's Steph standing under it. Walking a little further down, there is an enormous statue of Ismail Somoni - another historic figure who ruled at the hight of the Samanid Dynasty (the local currency, the highest mountain in the country, and the road that the embassy is on are all named after him.Across from the statue of Somoni, is the Tajik Parliament building.

Tajikistan's 18th independence day is coming up on September 9th, so there are a lot of decorations going up around town.

Walking back through the park, there are a lot of flowers and fountains. While they are nice to look at and often provide a cooling breeze, there are a ridiculous number of fountains for a water-poor country.
Heading towards the bazaar, we went past a statue of Rudaki as we exited the park.

I also took a couple of snapshots of the bazaar. There is an indoor part and an outdoor part. The indoor part seems to be a bit more expensive but has more variety.
Of course, when I say expensive, this is a highly relative term. I'm talking about 20 cents for a loaf of bread, or about 60 cents for a pound of strawberries. Outside, it's about 22 cents for a pound of potatos, or tomatoes, or eggplants. And the food is very fresh and delicious. On the way home, we passed the other Presidential Palace - which is about a 5 minute walk from the other one.

This is just a small bit of our world here in Dushanbe. I'll try to show other parts from time to time to share our experience.

Nick