Shaken, not stirred

I know I just posted my road rant last night, but I feel this also deserves to be recorded... Last night we were awoken by our first measurable earthquake. We woke up to a little bit of shaking, but mostly because the dressers were rattling. Nothing major, kind of exciting. I checked it out this morning and apparently our experience was the result of a 6.2 earthquake located in the Hindu Kush region of northern Afghanistan, well over 150 km from Dushanbe.

Road Rage

Just putting in for a quick rant about the roads. The condition of the road we live on had been more or less on a trajectory of improvement for a few weeks, but suddenly took a turn for the worse. Now so much of the road has been closed off that my legal route takes me several kilometers out of my way before I can even get off the street and start heading to work. The first morning that they re-closed the road, I ended up having to drive away from work to get there. Then, that night, I was driving down the street we normally use to get home. Without any warning whatsoever, all of the cars headed in my direction encountered a blockade where that street intersects mine. Suddenly there were about 20 cars all trying to do three-point-turns in the same spot. Interesting. Once I got turned around, I ended up driving through this little warren of streets barely wide enough for my car to get through before I finally found an alley that led to my street.

Not wanting to repeat that particular experience, I thought I had found a slick alternate way around but I noticed after I drove past a particular residence there were always these police officers who came running out trying to wave me down. As is usual procedure, I ignored them because usually they just want to take your money. However, I mentioned this to some of my colleagues and they told me that apparently those particular policemen have permission to shoot at cars who drive by because that street is 'The President's Street'. I don't fully understand what that means, or why the president has a random street that completely cuts off a neighborhood from the rest of the city, but then again, we're not in Kansas anymore, are we? And it's not as if the street is closed or anything, you're just driving along and suddenly, you're not supposed to be there. It seems my diplomatic plates don't matter there either. Knowing that rationality is certainly not going to get me very far here, I suppose I'm better off just avoid that street and not chance getting shot at.

The madness on my street isn't confined to the road, but routinely spills over into my driveway. Sometimes when I come home, there is a large pile of gravel in the middle, or a large cement block that I have to move before I get my car in. It's just friggin amazing. My staff thinks it's hilarious because they live here and it's just the way it is. Haha. Very funny.

Better yet, if winter arrives before the road is fixed, it will likely stay this way until spring. Wish me luck.

The Good Life

As mentioned previously, I am duty officer for the week, which doesn’t mean too much other than that I need to be reachable by cell phone at all times. Therefore, no hash or hike this weekend. Of course, Stephanie and I made the most of our down time and had a great weekend.

I should start by mentioning that our new cleaning lady started on Thursday. She’ll come once a week and I think that will help tremendously. It’s a big house and with both of us working full time, cleaning is the last thing we want to do with time off.

On Saturday, we made our first foray to the Morning Star Café – which has a pretty good brunch menu. While enjoying my bacon and biscuits with gravy, we ran into the Ambassador as well as some of my friends from other embassies. From there we did some shopping around town. We looked all over for some potted plants for the house, but they are really hard to find. We had a tip that they could be found at the Green Bazaar, but that didn’t pan out. When we finally found some they were ridiculously expensive – around $30 for a small one – so we decided to wait. On the way home, I stopped by the local fast food joint – Southern Fried Chicken. Before you cringe, I would like to say that walking into that place was the closest I’ve felt to being ‘home’ since we left. Kind of sad, I know, but there’s something about the smell of hot greasy food that just takes me back to the good ole U.S. of A. The chicken was pretty good too, so it’s nice to know where to go when I need a fix.

Later that night we had an adventure trying to find a European classical music concert. We thought it was on the other end of town, so we drove down and then looked all over trying to find the Cultural Center, which is in the middle of a group of tiny side streets. When we found it, we parked nearby and had a quick dinner of sambusas (meat pastries) and cherry compote before heading back over only to find out the concert was at the opera house, back uptown. Fortunately, with the car we were able to make it just in time.

The opera house is beautiful inside. I didn’t know we were going there or I would have taken the camera. The concert was quite good – as the speaker put it in Russian – a journey of classical music through time and across Europe. It started with Handel, Bach, and Mozart and continued up through more modern composers who I wasn’t familiar with. No major incidents except at one point, what sounded like an extremely loud alarm went off and I thought the end of the world was nigh. And of course, the family in front of us managed to seat their hyperactive 6 year old son in the squeakiest chair in the entire auditorium, which he used to good effect. Despite these minor annoyances, we had a great time. I did think it was funny though, when at the end of the concert we got stuck trying to get out of our aisle because these three young men refused to step out into the crowd of exiting people. Considering the propensity of the people here to boldly and unflinchingly walk out into speeding, heavy traffic, it was almost comic that they didn’t seem to want to step in front of slowly moving old people.

Sunday was a nice lazy day for a chance. Washed the car, relaxed, etc. Brunch, fried chicken, classical music, and lazy Sundays… what can I say? Life is pretty good.

Gotta Love Long Weekends

It's been a rather crazy week, so I'm a little behind on this one. Just a quick rundown of last weekend - nothing too terribly eventful. This coming weekend should be pretty low-key since I'm duty officer and need to be available should anything come up.

The hash went off without a hitch - and I managed to dodge all of the open manhole covers that we passed. For part of it we ran along an abandoned railroad track, which was kind of cool and as always, it was good exercise. After the hash, we had a real treat, as one of the hashers threw a fancy garden party that night. Stephanie came with me for this one and we really enjoyed ourselves. It was fun to dress up and enjoy good wine and tasty food. A lot of our friends were there, so it was a lot of fun.

On Sunday I went for the hike. We didn't go too far out of the city, but it felt like we did. We hiked up into the mountains to a little waterfall. It was a fairly strenuous hike and pretty treacherous in some places. There was a very rickety bridge, and at one point, a cow charged up the narrow trail we were on and we had to dive out of the way. Then, coming down, I lost my footing and barely caught myself. We also had a guest on this hike - a local dog who came out to see what we were doing and wound up following us the whole way. As usual the scenery was great and you can see more by following this link.

Hike 101109 JPGS

The thing I like best about the hikes is when we reach a summit and it feels like you're standing on top of the world. It's hard to capture in pictures, but it's a great feeling.

On Monday, I had a little more work done on the car. Nothing major, it just needs a new belt and to replace a ball bearing in the one of the rear tires. I have to say, having 4 wheel drive comes in handy with the state of our driveway. I have to use it pretty much everyday when I leave the house. On Monday, when we were leaving, there was a ridiculous traffic jam epicentered right at the end of our driveway. The construction crews were working right in front of the house and rather than take turns for each direction of traffic, people doubled up in both lanes and refused to let anyone through. Then, people started trying to drive around on the sidewalk and through our driveway, but that didn't work too well either. Then, people started getting out of their cars and walking up to the jam as if that would help. I don't know how it happened, but someone finally moved and we got out. It didn't help that the people working on the road have destroyed all but two entrances to our street, so traffic is pretty much always a mess.

After the adventures in car ownership, we tried to go to this wholesale store down by the train station we had heard about. It took some asking but we found it. The plan was to load up on beer and juice so that we can be better hosts. When we were walking around, we noticed these shady guys looking at us and then talking to each other and then following us. It got pretty creepy and we were about to call the mobile patrol. But it turned out that they just wanted some cash to help us carry our purchases - and not too much either. Trying to explain to them that the way they were acting was creepy, in Russian, was no easy task. In the end, we bought so much that our car was riding low enough to scrape if we stopped too fast.

Later, at the supermarket, I found one of my favorite discoveries... 'Barf' laundry detergent. Barf means snow in Tajik, which is fine, but I don't know why they right it in English. Anyway, it makes me laugh every time I see it. It's also fun to talk about all the barf on the mountains, or how difficult it is to drive when the roads are covered in barf, or the idea of a barf-ball fight. You get the idea.

Monday afternoon, I played some tennis with a friend from work - I can even say that I'm improving - before we went out for a very good Indian meal to welcome some new arrivals before finishing the night taking turns on Guitar Hero and playing with his dogs.

The last thing to report is that, unfortunately, GSO team was not victorious in Tuesday's soccer championship. But second place ain't so bad either.

That's all for now.

Soccer, Vodka, and Ice Cream, oh my!

With plans to do the Hash this afternoon, possible a hike on Sunday, and a day off on Monday, I figure I'd better post some recent events or I'll end up with a record length post by the end of the long weekend.

The weekend is off to a great start. On Friday after work, the GSO team won the semi-final match in the embassy soccer tournament. Of course, I don't play, they probably wouldn't have won if I did, but as it's my section, it was very exciting. The game was the most exciting of the whole tournament so far, remaining tied through overtime and coming down to the best of 5 penalty kicks, which we won by one point. I should mention that it didn't need to be such a close call. The Facilities team was ahead 2-0 at the end of the first half and by the end of the second half GSO had tied it up. But in OT, one of my guys scored on our own goal and we were fortunate to then score another, correct, goal to tie the score before the end of OT. Nonetheless, it was a great time and we can look forward to the championship game on Tuesday.

After the game, Stephanie and I went out for dinner with my staff at a local restaurant. Only in Dushanbe could you go to a Korean restaurant to eat Russian food, drink Tajik vodka, and watch a belly-dancer in between bouts of Russian karaoke - some of which was quite good I might add. The food was very good, including a variety of cold cuts and vegetable dishes, pickled herring (which was way tastier than I would have expected), bread and shashlik. And there was so much food! Dinner consisted of conversation, broken up every few minutes by a vodka toast, which we all took turns giving. Being local, I was surprised that the vodka was fairly drinkable. And fortunatley, I was told that they don't usually do the whole shot every time or I would have been in trouble by the end of the eveining. All in all we had a great time.

To make it three out of three, we finally found the mysterious ice cream factory today on the way home from the bazaar. I asked around for directions and we still almost missed it except that a man showed us exactly where it was. We got about 4.5 lbs of chocolate flavored, 4.5 lbs of pineapple flavored, and about 2.25 lbs of plum flavored. I think it should last us awhile!

Our only misadventure so far was that when we got home, there was someone parked in our driveway. The nerve! We called the mobile patrol to be safe, and then I started asking around to find out who's car it was. There is a makeshift auto shop next door to us and they called the owner. When he came to move it, he didn't apologize but asked if he could park on our lawn instead! Of course, the answer was no, and he did move it. Just after that, the mobile patrol came and said they'd make sure that the man understood that he couldn't park in our driveway and block our gate. I have to admit I was sort of pleased that I was able to resolve the problem myself in Russian. It's not exactly a subject we spent a lot of time on in class!

A Few Short Stories

For starters, here's some pictures of the car. It might be hard to tell how small it is from this picture, but trust me, it's smaller than you think. But, as I said, it's nice because it can maneuver through the construction blockade on our street. Car ownership is certainly changing the way we live in Dushanbe and has opened up a variety of opportunities. Of course, car ownership is not without responsibilities and as I took the car in for a tune-up on Saturday, I was reminded that it isn't all fun and games. Luckily, we have a mechanic at the embassy who is willing to come in outside of hours to work on personal vehicles (I pay him, of course), so at least I have someone I can trust. But let's get back to the fun part of having a car. I have a few quick stories to share from this weekend that probably wouldn't have happened if it weren't for our trusty Pajero, (so far, so good, 5 days and counting). I'll even break it down into small sub-chapters just for the heck of it...

The Very Bluest Margarita

Saturday night we went out to dinner with a couple we met from the British Embassy and a couple of their friends. The venue was Salsa Restaurant - an Ecuadorian Restaurant right here in Dushanbe. The menu isn't entirely Ecuadorian, there's some Mexican, Italian, and Tajik mixed in, but the food was actually really good. We had some homemade tortilla chips with delicious bean dip and fresh salsa for an appetizer and I had some very passable llapingachos (potato patties stuffed with cheese) for a main course. It was a nice break from the norm. The real star of the show, however, was the margarita. I've been told it is a must-try ever since arriving. It's certainly not like any margarita I've ever seen. The color was a very deep 'windshield-washer-fluid' blue. My friend from the British Embassy told me that it gets better with every sip. It's a good thing he said that because I probably would have stopped at one otherwise. It tasted a lot like windshield washer fluid too! But he was right, by the end it was quite drinkable. Other-worldly margarita aside, Salsa is a place to which we're looking forward to returning.

Carnivorous Bee

Today, (Sunday), we took advantage of having the car and drove a little way out of the city, in the direction where we have gone for the hikes, to a restaurant Stephanie saw a couple of weeks ago near the river. When we arrived a wedding party showed up and there was a guy with a drum and another guy with a clarinet-like instrument. The group was very nice and allowed me to take a couple pictures and I got to wish the bride and groom success before we went to take our seats. The tables are traditional Tajik style and we sat at a low table on a raised platform with some cushions. Our table was right beside the river and the weather was beautiful.

While we were waiting to order, the wedding party left and a couple more showed up. I'll have to ask about the tradition and find out more. We had a delicious lunch of cold cuts, quail, and lamb shashlik. Unfortunately, we had an unexpected guest... This gi-normous red and yellow bee discovered us - I think it was the same kind that stung me on my first hash. Given that experience, we gave the bee a wild berth. It was a rather brazen bee, and landed right on Stephanie's plate ( I guess if I had a stinger I'd be pretty brazen too). Then the bee did something I've never seen a bee do, it started dragging a piece of meat across Stephanie's plate and then cut off a chunk, no kidding, a chunk, of meat and flew off with it. We were a little scared and pretty flabbergasted. That's a serious bee. It returned a couple of times before we left, but I quickly shoved the meat in my mouth to deprive it of another steal.

Of course, we also got to see the usual great scenery. We drove across this little bridge, but there was something of a traffic jam on the other side so we turned around. Something to explore later.

Stephanie also drove for the first time today- you can see she how much she liked it :-)

Mysterious Ice Cream Factory

On the way home, we tried to stop at this mystery Ice Cream Factory, which people have told us is excellent, but which we can't seem to find. It's apparently next to Salsa. No one could tell us where it is, but they told us it is closed on Sunday. We'll keep trying and I'll let you know how it is when we do.

That's pretty much it for now. The only other thing is that I bought a tennis racket so that I could play with Stephanie on the embassy court. We played for a little over an hour, (I use the term 'play' loosely since neither of us really knows what we're doing), until the end of the handle broke off my racket. Go figure. I'll try to go back to the store and see if they'll do anything, otherwise maybe some crazy glue...

Anniversary Excitement

Last weekend wasn't so eventful, but what a week so far! Since our anniversary was on a work day (Tuesday) we decided to spend the weekend more or less relaxing together, sleeping in, etc. We did freeze some more produce, and visited some friends who just arrived, but other than that we just had a relaxing weekend.


Work has been mad all week, with the end of the fiscal year being the main culprit (my office being the one that handles purchases, we had to process all the last minute requests before the cutoff), but I am still enjoying myself. Even though I am often worn out by the end of the day, I'm always able to cross a bunch of things off my to-do list and it just feels good to be DOING something.


As mentioned, it has been an exciting week. Of course Tuesday was the big day - 2 great years of marriage! And while our anniversary was by far the most important news that day, it wasn't the only news. Tuesday was also the 70th anniversary of the release of The Wizard of Oz. (true, but not what I was going for). Then, thanks to the help of some of the local staff at the embassy, the workers filled in our trench so we could have access to our driver (although today, they dug a trench through the only road that has reliable access to ours - more on that later). I also got notice of my administrative promotion - which was scheduled to happen automatically as long as I didn't screw anything up. But hey, I didn't screw anything up! And then as though the stars aligned, we got our car registered! On the same day they fixed our driveway! Amazing. After I talk about the rest of our anniversary celebration, I'll have to talk about actually driving in Dushanbe.


But first, our anniversary. I get up pretty early for work, so I cut some roses from the bush outside our house and left them for when Stephanie got up. Then I could hardly wait for work to be over so we could go to dinner. After work I went home to get Stephanie (in our car) and we drove to the Hyatt for a romantic and delicious dinner. Unfortunately, in my excitement at our anniversary and about our car, I forgot the camera at home. Dinner was delicious - we had salmon and veal cheeks and assorted savory pies (pirozhky) and creme brulee and warm chocolate ganache with pistachio gelato, and wine, of course. I'm really sorry we didn't get a picture. Stephanie was beautiful, as usual, and the ambiance at the Hyatt is very nice. It was easy to forget we are in Central Asia and we could almost imagine we were back in New York. Overall it was a great anniversary.


So now a bit about driving in Dushanbe. I can sum it up in one word. Terrifying! Actually, it was only terrifying driving home for the first time. It's gotten better each time since and now is only scary. I'm sure before long it will be fine. For all you New York readers who are scoffing, New York got nuthin on Dushanbe for bad drivers. I've already mentioned some of the craziness that takes place on Dushanbe streets. But it's one thing to see it, and another to drive in it. People all over the road, not paying attention to lights, pedestrians who appear out of nowhere, cars parked in the middle of the road... I am not exaggerating. And when you're driving, the roads are really wide and the traffic lights are dim and tend to be hidden behind trees, signs are barely visible. You basically have to just be hyper-aware of what's going on around you all the time and just kind of go with the flow. I pulled one of my staff members aside this morning to make him explain why there is a 'left-on-red' rule in front of the old presidential palace. Apparently, the red light is only for people who want to go straight and doesn't apply to people going left. There's no sign or lighted arrow to indicate this, it's just 'known'. Then there's the fact that the roads are like the surface of the moon - dusty and heavily cratered. It makes for quite an adrenaline rush in the morning.

The other thing is that our car is the smallest SUV I've ever seen - we didn't realize how small until we saw how it was dwarfed by a RAV4 when we parked next to it. I'll try to put up a picture this weekend. Of course, even with such a small car, I still had to arrive in style on Wednesday morning on my first commute to work, so I pumped 'Gangsta's Paradise' when I rolled into the embassy lot. Don't ask me why, it just felt right. The black and red pleather seat covers defintely help the image. Everyday gets a little less scary and I'm sure I'll continue to pick up on it and it will get easier as I go, but I'll never think that driving in New York City is challenging after this.


Till next time...