the good companions

One of the nicest things about being in Petersburg is singing with my choir again. Coming back on Monday for the first time since the spring it was like I’d never been away. As a lot of my Petersburg stories are choir stories, here’s a little who’s who of the characters I spend two or three nights a week with:

NR, our conductor. She is quite a character in the way that only singing teachers are, and anyone who has had one before will know what I mean. She doesn’t do anything in halves; whether she’s hugging and kissing me and telling me how good and clever I am, or berating everyone for causing her so much pain (!) by talking amongst ourselves too much or not listening to one another’s parts (or any other misdemeanour, etc etc), she always expresses herself very intensely, which is more funny and endearing than anything else. It’s nice that these singing-teacher qualities are apparently universal and transcend cultures.bShe always calls me moia devochka (“my girl”) and is always looking out for me.

N, who I know best, and who gets only her first initial because she is the definitive N. She is an alto and I’m a soprano but despite this the universe has brought us together and we’ve remained very close, always write and have two-hour voice calls together and she in the times I’ve been back to Petersburg it’s her I’ve stayed with. I remember the first time I met her I thought she had a rather earnest face and bearing, but she is never, ever stern or severe and her eyes widen and light up when she laughs; and I very quickly got to know this side of her. She is also very devout; talking about the beauty of a specific prayer or song also, like joy, makes her eyes widen and her voice rise and fall.

LS, a second soprano, is still my senior by more than ten years but is still the closest to me in age, so our relationship feels more sisterly than eg NR’s grandmotherly fussing over me and she is, apart from N, the only one I call by the informal pronoun ty. She is one of our best singers.

TR and VK, the other first sopranos. I know TR a little better as we take the same bus to the metro after rehearsal, which gives us time to talk. Like NR, one of her closest friends and with whom she worked before NR’s retirement, she is very in touch with her emotions. Sometimes this is cute and sometimes it’s just awkward for everyone involved. She once burst into tears on the bus after a christening because she found it so moving and I was mortified and had no idea how I was meant to comfort her. Was I meant to comfort her? Was she expecting me to join in too? Perhaps the best way I can sum her up is by the way she, also like NR, spoils me rotten. I cannot open my mouth to sing a single note without her calling me an umnichka and a molodets. Whenever we’re in the trapeznaia after a service and there’s food involved, she follows me around plying me with black bread, grapes, chocolate wafers, and slices of banana.

EB, who has joined the choir since I was last here, is incredibly sweet. She has asked me to meet up with her and her daughter this afternoon because she studies IR and she wants to introduce us, and it’s nice that she has been so warm and friendly.

MG and SG used to come to choir but since I was last here they’ve got married and apparently don’t have time for us any more, which is a shame because they are the cutest couple I think I’ve ever met. MG is a soprano with a beautiful voice and though SG was one of the only men in the choir, he was completely tone-deaf and just came along to sit with SG and knew it was better for all involved if he didn’t join in. She tried to help him along, but it was a lost cause. They now have a joint Instagram where they share their cute adventures, and though they don’t sing with us any more I think they still come to the church and they always compere church concerts and events, so I hope I see them while I’m here.

AK and AB, our only men these days, do their best to hold the fort at the lower end of the scale. They also do all the manly jobs. I know that as a feminist I am meant to reject this kind of stereotyping and distribution of roles, but sometimes it really is helpful. We were once singing at a baptism and half an hour beforehand the paddling pool we were using punctured and started to leak quite aggressively until water was pooling across the chapel floor. While I also wanted to solve this crisis (!), I have no idea how to solve this kind of practical problem and nor do I really care to pretend I do, but they patched it up very quickly and did not expect us “sisters” to lift a finger.

VT seems pleasant but she told me this week that I’m supposed to be thinking about getting married (!!!) and I do not like her VKontakte reposts from pages with names like “HOLY RUS”, which just seem like thinly veiled nationalism. Both of these things make me cast doubt on her character. Moving on.

NY, another soprano, is very short, very cute, and always cheerful. To distinguish her from N, with whom she shares a name, people call NY “little N”.

OKh and LKh, two more altos. NR told me to sit next to LKh on the first day I turned up at the choir and she took very good care of me. Something about her reminds me of Ethel from I Love Lucy: partly the sound and intonation of her voice but partly also this odd aura of innocence and naïveté she gives off despite her fifty or so years, which endears her to me and makes me want to protect her.

YV has such a low voice that she often sings with the men. I don’t know her very well because we don’t sit by each other in rehearsals and don’t have much of a chance to talk outside of them, but I’m eternally haunted by the way she answered a survey I gave them all for my year abroad essay and wrote in the margins that the family is like a church and women are meant to support their husband, who is the priest. Scream (especially because it was completely unrelated to the topic of my survey). I find it quite unsettling that my female friends in the choir always talk about love and marriage in such a positive and, I think, quite idealistic way when just about all of them are divorced or spinsters. What is the logic? Do they not notice the contradiction between what they wish for me and their own lives, or do they somehow think things will be better for me?

Father V, one of the priests at the church who does most of the liaising with our choir and leading the services we sing at. He often drops in on our rehearsals to see how things are going and say hello. I first met him not long after I started going along: we were rehearsing when I heard the door open behind me and everyone else stood up. I did the same and when I turned around I saw the most Russian-looking priest you could possibly imagine, in red robes with a massive gold cross around his neck. I don’t know how to describe him except to invite the reader to picture a stereotypical Russian priest, and I can assure you that whatever you are thinking of, that is Father V exactly. He is very kind and warm and always pleased to see me, but as he once took me aside and asked me if I “related to the theme of same-sex love” to remind me that “we in the Orthodox Church absolutely do not support this”, I know that that warmth towards others has a limit, and part of me lies beyond it. I’m not really interested in doing any more hand-wringing about this, so whatever.

I think that’s about everyone. I wish I had a slightly more upbeat ending to this post (!), but never mind. Our next rehearsal is tomorrow night and we are very busy getting ready for our New Year service and a series of little services in the days immediately after Christmas. I’m moving in with N today, which will be nice because she and I like to practice together. Except I need to pack all my things! – so I will end here and get on with it.

It never occurred to me what our conductor, NR, might get up to before our choir rehearsals – she’s always the first one there – but I got to the church early yesterday and found her alone in the крестильный храм singing from the Psalter. It was such a lovely moment of stillness and intimacy that once I’d realised what she was doing I felt bad for coming in. Over her shoulder she said hello and that she would just finish – she read on, got to the end, bowed and crossed herself – then set the book aside and came to greet me.

first petersburg christmas

Christmas Eve. I’ve been in Petersburg since Sunday night, and am staying with AK for a week.

After lunch I go to Podpisnye Izdaniya on Liteyniy Prospekt to work on masters applications for a couple of hours, which is made less miserable by the feeling of studying in Petersburg with a pot of tea at my side. AK joins me after her German assessment and sits with me, patiently reading children’s picture books. We go home, make pelmeni, drink tea (so much tea!), and I read her The Night Before Christmas, which is usually my job at home. We go to bed early, as I can’t get used to the late-night lifestyle that she and AG lead and it is beginning to catch up with me. My family sends me a recording of them all singing in church; they all sound awful. Clearly they are floundering without me.

Christmas Day. I wake up at six o’clock, presumably out of habit (and the subconscious expectation my little brother is about to barge into my room to tell me Santa’s been). AK and I have breakfast – kasha, discounted pastry from Vol’chek – and I open the presents that Father Christmas gave to me to put in my suitcase before I came to Russia. Kamala Das, lovely hand cream, a Lingodeer subscription for a year so that I can crack on with Chinese. He knows me so well.

At quarter to ten, when it’s still dark outside (!), I go to the Peterkirche on Nevsky more out of habit than anything else. Christmas Eve is the only time the rest of my family go to church and it always feels like the point at which Christmas actually begins, so even though I am ‘properly’ doing Christmas on the sixth, I miss the routine of it and the opportunity to sing Christmas carols. The service is long because the pastor says everything three times (in Russian, then German, then English, because they invited the Anglicans), but I get what I want; there’s lots of singing, including Silent Night and O Come, All Ye Faithful. 

I have lunch and then visit Kazan Cathedral, where everything is the same and the familiarity is very comforting (with added bonus that there are no tourists at this time of year). I love the darkness of it.

I go to Bushe over the road from the cathedral and sit there with my Kamala Das and a вензель с малиной, my favourite and a nice way to spend Christmas. In general I am very happy with my own company, and though I was unsure how I would fare with my first Christmas away from home, I like the opportunity to sit quietly and do what I like while my family are probably all fighting over Uni or Monopoly.

Then home; a quiet afternoon reading and practicing the music I was given at our choir rehearsal on Monday. N, who I’m going to be staying with from the end of this week, told me that she was planning for the two of us to go to a midnight service on New Year’s Eve, and what I hadn’t realised was that we are not just going along, but singing, so I have a lot to do.

K comes home and AG comes over with a friend and together we make a little Christmas dinner of our own. I somehow make Yorkshire puddings, of which I have told much to AK and AG, while AK oversees borshch and chicken and AG brings homemade biscuits. Then more tea; then I make them all watch The Snowman, which I watch every year. Their main take-away is disbelief that the boy goes outside without a coat on, and that his mother somehow manages to find a hat and scarf for the snowman but not one for him. Though I tell them to take this beautiful and touching piece of television seriously, their perspective is certainly an insightful one.

After that AG and her friend go home; AK and I continue the fun by watching Father Christmas, from which she learns the word bloomin‘. After that we’re worn out by all the excitement; and so to bed. That’s technically it “for the year”, but Old Calendar Christmas is just around the corner and I have that to look forward to in no time at all. One Christmas down, one to go, of which more later.

five days in moscow

It’s too much to explain but I’m in Russia until the end of February, so we’ll just jump into things.

I arrived in Moscow on Tuesday and left for Petersburg, where I am spending Christmas and New Year with friends, on the Sunday, so here are some small things about those first few days – little observations, comings and goings, all the rest.

One. The flat I’m sharing with two others is on the fifteenth floor, which is going to take some getting used to, especially as I don’t like lifts. My view is very – Russian. Lots of blocks of flats, towers with steam rising out of them day and night, a very new church and a Burger King side by side. I feel like there is something deep to be said about the ‘new Russia’ or whatever in the sight of the two of them next to each other, but I don’t care to and it’s probably trying too hard, whatever, you can work something out for yourself.

Two. I stopped in at Nikolsky monastery on Wednesday evening when I was walking past and heard their bells chiming. I stayed for a while and wished I could have spent more time there because it is so beautiful there – the chapel feels as though it’s practically underground, everything very small and close and intimate. And the choir is gorgeous! While I was there the men and women, of which there were only a handful of each, stood on opposite walls facing one another as they sang and taking turns. The darkness and intimacy reminded me of Perov’s Первые христиане в Киеве. I would love to go back soon just to listen.

Three. Teremok, I have missed you so! I am so glad to be finally reunited with their chicken and potato blini.

Four. On the subject of food, on Friday I went to a chaikhana by my metro stop and it was simply dreamy. I cannot get Central Asian food at home, and though I am still far from Bishkek here, I am a little closer to it than I am from the village. Manty, warm lepyoshka, tea по-ташкентски – truly the dream. I went home extremely content and unable to remember the last time I’d enjoyed a meal quite so much.

Five. Back to churches and a big change in scale. On Wednesday night, which is the eve of St Nicholas’ Day here, I visited Sretensky monastery for the all-night vigil. I visited it when I went to Moscow for a few days last year, but going on a winter night felt completely different to going on a hot summer afternoon. I don’t know how to explain it but I just like the energy of Sretensky, that’s all. I love our little church in Bristol but at the same time it’s very exciting to be surrounded by so many people – hundreds – and to be sharing in the same thing with them, making the same motions and saying the same words and passing akathists to and from one another. It was very different to the stillness of Nikolsky but beautiful in its own way.

Six. Russian metros have such a specific smell and it’s something I’d forgotten all about. Not a bad smell – just a metro smell that the London underground doesn’t have. Going down into the metro for the first time in a long time, something strange and familiar all at once.

Seven. Why is Moscow so big? Who is making me suffer this way? When I moved in there was no duvet in my room, so I trekked to Ikea to get myself one and even though it’s still in the same sort of part of the city (different district, same little eighth-slice of the compass), it took me three buses and two hours to get home. Moscow is just so enormous that when you’re in it, it’s hard to imagine that there is anywhere else in the world, and this forgetting about life beyond Moscow is a kind of losing of oneself.

Eight. My big mission for my time here is to get my hands on volumes three and four of 60 лет советской поэзии, which I discovered in the library in the spring and have since been tragically parted from because it’s impossible to get one at home. Where else can I enjoy Avar and Karakalpak poetry except for in these books? Will I be reunited with translations of my Kyrgyz faves until the time comes I can read them in the original? Please stay tuned for the conclusion of this quest.

And Tuesday was the first day there seemed to be some warmth in the sun.

spring

Wednesday was the first morning since my arrival in Petersburg that I’d heard the birds singing.

a kyrgyz playlist

(22/2: I started this in December while ill in bed, and didn’t finish it off until now.)

Every now and again I tell myself, I must listen to more Russian music. I never do, it would do my accent so much good. And then I look some pop music up on Youtube and find myself thinking – oh, that’s why I never do. 

I’m pleased to report that Kyrgyz music is much better.

I actually discovered Salamat Sadykova online while I was looking up some other Kyrgyz music, but I’m so glad I came across her.  Her voice is so expressive, and the komuz that often accompanies her is so gentle.  It’s good music to listen to at night or of an evening; alone, in the dark. This one, Kyzyl gül (‘Red Flower’), is my favourite.  I should love to sing some of her songs for myself – the style is so unlike, say, the lieder I spent my teenage years singing, and I like the idea of doing something different with my voice –  but I can’t find the lyrics anywhere, so am going to have to end up writing what I hear, which I don’t quite trust myself to do.

My other favourites are Ayil kechi (‘Evening in the village’), which I can’t find online, but which is on Spotify, and Ay nuru (‘Moonlight’, above).  All her folk singing is worth listening to: Parizat (‘Angel)’ and Kyrgyz jeri (‘Kyrgyz land’) are also on Youtube.

However, it would be misleading to talk just about folk music when it’s not really what’s I’m around most of the time.  What do I hear, on the bus and on the radio and television and in shops? – For my own reference, I’ve saved some of them here, whether I like them myself or they’re simply ones I hear a lot that will remind me (whether I like them or not!) of my time here. So –

This song (‘My Kyrgyzstan’) is absolutely everywhere; whenever there are performances at the academy, such as for Teachers’ Day and the first day of term, some of the students dance to it.

 Something you will learn very quickly is that most Kyrgyz music videos involve the same settings, and they will quite often be places you yourself have visited.  Locations here include: a Boorsok supermarket, one of the parks on Chui where I often sit and read (by the Revolution statue), and Victory Park.

No comment as I have no strong feelings about this song but it’s also on buses and the radio all the time and it’s another one I’ve seen students at the academy dance to, so it deserves a mention.

Are there mountains?  Are there dramatic shots of Issyk-Kul, and is someone singing on its shore? Is someone in traditional attire?  Are there eagles or a horse? Is someone riding the horse?  Chances are you’re in a Kyrgyz music video.  Of course, there must also be illusions to Manas, so as this song is called Mighty Manas it certainly ticks all the boxes.

I sound unconvinced but whenever I hear this song I can’t stop humming it; it is honestly, as the youth say, a banger.

I saw Gulnur at the Independence Day concert in Ala-too Square and this song (‘The Stage’) was the first of hers I heard; she has since become something of a guilty pleasure.

This song has been haunting me since August when I heard it at the Independence Day concert, but I haven’t heard it in public anywhere since and hadn’t been able to find it again.  I even recorded myself humming the tune so that I’d remember it – it always gets stuck in my head – but it was to no avail until just now, when I happened upon it on Youtube.  What a relief to be reunited with it.

The dance, the Kara Zhorgo, is traditional, and the video has lots of things I’ve seen and places I’ve been: the Chui river, Ala-too Square, Burana tower, Rukh-Ordo at Issyk-Kul, etc.

Last but not least: this song (the third in this post called ‘My Kyrgyzstan’!) is everywhere and Mirbek Atabekov is everywhere; of all the Kyrgyz songs I have heard, I must have heard this one the most often, so I couldn’t not mention it. I could be an old woman who hadn’t set foot in Kyrgyzstan for fifty or sixty years and, if I thought on the sounds of my time there, Mirbek Atabekov on the radio in N’s kitchen while she made olivier or we drank tea together would still be one of the first to come to my mind.

churchgoing

(12/02/18: I started writing this post in November and finished it it while ill in bed at the start of December.)  

The church on Jibek Jolu, 17/12

Saturday night and once again, getting into bed, I realise I’ve forgotten to iron my dress for the morning.  My only ‘good’ dress, it was fine for going to church before, but now the weather’s turned and I’ve taken to wearing my coat; and this seems to cover most of the skirt, now, and so hidden it just looks vaguely immodest.  I couldn’t tell whether carrying on in a perhaps questionable dress (but a dress nonetheless) or switching to trousers would be more ungodly, so I’ll have to keep on as I am for now – though I suspect, unless I can find any wool tights, that the coming of the true cold will force my hand.

(7/02: I held out until the end of November, when L lent me a longer skirt and my virtue was preserved.)

And I wear a gold scarf over my hair that I found on a rack outside a little corner shop for 100 som.  I, who have never attended church regularly, have got quite into having something vaguely resembling a Sunday best, and in particular I like the distinction that covering my hair establishes between one part of life and another.  Setting aside certain clothes ‘for church’ marks a difference between my daily life and all my ordinary comings and goings (быт), and the two hours a week set aside for holiness, holy places.

I’ve stopped going to services at the church on Jibek Jolu, but this is only because I’ve swapped them for another one.  Several weeks ago I finally went to find the church down in Asanbai, the full name of which is khram sviatogo ravnoapostol’nogo Velikogo Kniazia Vladimira (‘the church of the holy equal-to-the-apostles Grand Prince Vladimir’).  I went for the first time late in the afternoon, and the church itself was closed then, but there’s a little chapel over the road where a service was just ending.  I stood at the back and watched; the only others there were a handful of babushki and the priest, who kept forgetting the words, and with so few there I felt quite conspicuous.  It’s a small room, dark and the ceilings low, made smaller by all the icons that cover every surface.

In the few weeks since, I’ve taken to going in the morning when the ‘real’ church itself is open.  I’m not sure why it took me so long to get round to going to find it – only perhaps that N had said it was quite far away, so that I had imagined it quite a journey to be making – but it turned out to be far easier to get to, once I’d sat down with Google Maps and my bus.kg app, than I’d expected.  All you have to do is get to Moskovskaia – a walk of three or four minutes from our flat – and stay on the 10 trolleybus until the very end.  Going a little later it can take some time, but at that time in the morning the roads are quiet (or as quiet as they ever get in Bishkek..!) so on a good day it must only take about twenty minutes.

To go so early is beautiful in itself; just the journey makes it worth it.  To get there for the start of the service, which begins somewhere around eight-thirty, I like to leave the house at seven forty-five, before the sun’s risen.  The bus goes along Sovietskaia, which becomes Baitik Baatyr – the mountains to the south becoming bigger and bigger all the while – and then turns down Aaly Tokombaev.  I had imagined that down at the end of town the city would trickle away, as it does to the west and the north, but the buildings are all still very tall – blocks of flats, hotels, supermarkets – and then, all of a sudden, the road comes to an end and the city stops.  The church lies at that end; and I don’t know what lies beyond, only the mountains behind it.   By the time all this is done and I’ve got there, the sun has risen over the mountains – for the sun seems to almost always shine in Bishkek – and the cupolas are bright with it.  I couldn’t think of a nicer way to start my morning.

The Vladimir church in Asanbai, 15/10

Why do I go?

I’ve found that I like the church itself there more than the one on Jibek Jolu; put simply, it’s a nice place to be. The building is apparently bigger – the ceilings are higher, the building wider, and the iconostasis enormous – but it feels smaller for some reason, a little more intimate.  There are fewer people, I think, which I like.  And though I don’t go to church, I like going to churches; in Bristol I find myself in the cathedral all the time, sitting in the chapter house or studying in the garden.  It’s nice to have an equivalent here; somewhere of my own, for my own thoughts, removed from the rest of my life.

I like seeing in real life things I had before only studied and read in books or seen in films.  I like looking at the icons; reading them, if that makes sense, and seeing who’s who.  Most of all, I like to just listen.  I like when, at a certain point towards the beginning of the service, the bells start to ring and mix with the choir and the voice of the priest, and when they sound again at its end.  I like hearing the Church Slavonic and trying to make sense of it (I know the Lord’s prayer from memory now).  I adore the singing, and being so close to it; if I have nowhere here to sing myself, I can at least hear others. I like how much of a role it plays in the service in comparison to home; I get chills whenever the priests disappear behind the iconostasis and the congregation is left to sing alone.  All these sounds are so distinct and lovely that I wish I had some way to keep them, but I wonder if the fact they’re so ephemeral is part of what makes them so special.  In my whole week, the bells only last a few minutes.

There is certainly an art to standing up for two hours, especially with other things; the strength of the incense, the weight of holding your bag on shoulder (no one here puts anything on the floor, ever; I still find this a little difficult to get used to, but would hate to break this unspoken rule) and, of course, all the bowing.  The first week I stayed for the whole thing and left with a headache.  I learnt my lesson; I sometimes arrive about halfway through, and no longer take a bag.
I don’t speak to anyone.  Still I have a horrible fear of discovery, as silly as I know that sounds.  I know that I will have been noticed; but I would not know what to say or how best to explain myself. An old woman gave me a leaflet the other week for a talk about the evils of smoking and alcohol, and I told her I neither smoke nor drink (“молодца“), but I wonder now if I ought to have gone anyway just to meet people.  I know that churches are meant to be welcoming places but I would hate for people to think I was intruding on something that there was their own; I wouldn’t want to be thought a tourist, and I don’t want to be in the way.  I expressed this to L recently and she said that a tourist wouldn’t have been going for the last seven weeks. I hadn’t looked at it this way – and yet…

I don’t know when there would be time, anyway.  At the end of the service people leave quickly, or stay to pray, or speak outside to those they actually know.  That’s all; the bells come to an end, and very quickly the church empties out.  I cross the road and go through the market and wait and watch everything at the bus stop (‘Возвожу очи мои к горам…’).  And then home for another week; and I a little calmer, my thoughts a little stiller, my spirits a little brighter.

bishkek: a culinary guide, part ii

(09/02: I’ve been home since just before Christmas. I wish of course that I’d been writing more often, but life got in the way as it so often does.  I was ill for practically the last month in Bishkek and had to devote all my time and energy to small and everyday things; to going to the Academy, teaching, running errands – and then writing my year abroad essay once I got home.     

In that last time in Bishkek, however, I did write a few entries but either forgot about them or never polished or finished them, so I’d like to clear out my drafts before I go to Petersburg (!) in a little over two weeks (!); there are still things I wanted to say.  I began this one 01/12 and worked on it on and off until we left).

I’ve had food on my mind a lot lately (or perhaps it would be more truthful to say to say more than usual..!).  Having a flat of our own means L and I are now cooking for ourselves, so perhaps this is partly why.  When I was living with N and her family and she was calling Тесни, иди кушай!  Пём чай! every half an hour I didn’t have to give things much planning; but now that I’m having to make such choices for myself it all requires more thought.  It’s also only two and a half weeks before we go home, and though in general I haven’t found myself homesick (I haven’t been allowing myself to think of it), the end is now in sight. I can let myself imagine what it will be to go home; L and I talk a lot about what food we miss most and are most looking forward to having again.  For me, baked beans are a big one.  Oh, my God, what I would do for some beans on toast.  Or a sausage sandwich.  All the sausages here, of course, are Frankfurters, which L and I agree are not ‘real’.  I mentioned bangers and mash and onion gravy in one such conversation the other day and I almost wanted to cry just thinking about it.  Likewise, I could buy a portion of fries and a сосиска в тесте from a fast-food stand but it just wouldn’t be the same as a battered sausage and chips with curry sauce from the fish and chip shop in the village.  I have a dairy allergy, so all the substitutes I normally have at home are out of my reach here; butter from sunflower oil, fake cheese, dairy-free ice cream.  I haven’t had cereal in almost four months, nor a sandwich.

There are small things, too, that I never would have expected to miss: raw carrots, fresh cucumber (though I have taken to eating gherkins!  Oh God!), and tinned peaches, which I can’t even explain because I never have them at home.  The fruit in supermarkets is quite unappetising; I’ve only been getting things that are peel-able because I don’t trust much else.  The situation always seems to vary from day to day; sometimes there are good bananas, other days everything is bruised and black and more than once have I encountered maggots.

I talked in a post a little while ago about the food itself but I wonder if it might be helpful to talk about where you might find it, and how.  What are your options in Bishkek?  Where will you shop, and for what?  Let’s discuss.

Corner shops.  I’m not satisfied that this is the right word to be using because there’s something really specifically Kyrgyz about it.  The word in Kyrgyz is dükönü, just ‘shop’, and that’s just the word I use when I think of them in my head.  They are small; sometimes in ‘real’ buildings but often converted sheds and garages and shipping crates or built out of corrugated iron.  Here are your essentials: bottled water (for unlike at N’s we don’t have a special drinking-water tap), bread, samsy, toothpaste, all the rest. Matches, too, as your hob and oven are probably gas.

The nicest thing about somewhere so small getting to know the owner.  The conversations are excellent practice, for one thing, though often people want to practice their English.  I got to know the woman by a shop at N’s, who always asked how my teaching was going, and was sad when I realised, upon moving out, that I hadn’t said goodbye to her.

(Note 25/01: I’m still in contact with S, the owner of my corner shop by our flat, who’s even invited me to stay with her if I’m in Kyrgyzstan again.) 

Proper supermarkets.  Eg: the Almas on Toktogul and in GUM, the Boorsoks on Toktogul and Lev Tolstoi, the Narodnyis scattered around (there’s one on Moskovskaia-Mir).  L has recently been down to the Frunze on the other side of Lev Tolstoi, and said it’s good; according to N it’s cheaper than Alma, too, so I really ought to investigate.

Though more expensive than other places here, supermarkets are still much cheaper than at home.  For example, the other day I went to the GUM Alma and for £11 I got baklava, frozen carrots, pelmeni, vareniki, kotleti, chocolate biscuits, several mandarins, ketchup (a big bottle of Heinz, which I’d never seen here and which made my day), about six bananas, a bag of boorsok, and a croissant.  How much the same would have cost me at the Clifton Down Sainsbury’s..!

The bazaars and markets.  I know that A used to get her vegetables sometimes from Osh bazaar but I find myself worrying about where things have come from and what it must mean for them to be sat in the sun all day.  I walk through the little market in Asanbai to get to the bus stop after church and at the sight of all the meat and fish just lying there on tables I can’t help but worry.

Of course, you don’t have to cook yourself.  There are other options:

Tez tatym (‘fast food’) stands.  Typically they do samsy, kurniki, pirozhki, shaurma.  I can recommend the one opposite Suleiman on Moskovskaia because they do manty, which is often a sit-down meal, and it’s nice to be able to take them home. Plus it’s only 120 som.  Bargain.

a café.  Perhaps confusingly, a Kyrgyz kafe is closer to what we would call a restaurant in England (a restoran is only somewhere really formal where dressing up is required).  I always have to correct myself when I speak Russian to think about which one I mean.

a stolovaia, or in Kyrgyz an ashkana.  It’s basically a canteen.    I like this concept a lot because you can take a book and sit there alone and not talk to anyone and there’s none of the awkwardness of, say, going to a restaurant alone, because plenty of others are by themselves too.  It’s nice if you’ve gone out to run errands to be able to stop somewhere and not worry about  what you’ll do for tea later.  And of course it’s so cheap! – I do wish stolovaia culture were a thing at home.

To be more specific, here are some places to look out for:

Navat – is a delight.  L’s parents came to stay a few weeks ago and invited me when they went, and it was a true feast.  There are several scattered around; we went to the one on Isanova.  The decorations inside are gorgeous and at a certain point in the evening the waiters and waitresses got on a little stage and sang and danced (to ‘Kyrgyzyzstanym’, a song which seems to be absolutely everywhere) and one played the komuz.

Lozhka – a canteen (‘little spoon’).  So far I have found two; one on Chui next to GUM and one on Toktogul, both of which are nice places to stop after running errands around Chui or Osh, respectively.

The manty place at Dzerzhinka, I wish I knew your name but I don’t, please forgive me.

Faiza – is the favourite also of N and her family, so I went once with them and now it’s one of mine, too.  It was the first time I’d gone out to eat with them and it was quite intense; A was fussing over me a lot and sending all the food everyone had ordered my way for me to try, which was touching but stressful as I couldn’t get it down fast enough.  I’d be working on one thing and already she’d be giving me another, and I couldn’t refuse anything because I didn’t want to be rude.  I’m a slow eater which I think made her worry I didn’t like it; and then at the end of the meal, after having fed me so much, she looked worried again and asked ты не переела? – I can’t win!

I’d like to go back, but it’s over on Jibek Jolu and that seems quite a trek to be making from our new flat.  However, for the fried manty it would be worth it, so I should go again for a last supper before we leave for home.

(09/02: I didn’t go back, which was a true tragedy.)

 

Kazanok – is a restaurant just over the road from the academy.  I can attest that you can get broccoli there if you order a kotlet with vegetables, which counts for something in this land devoid of fresh greens.

Saksaul – is a traditional restaurant in Asanbai, named for a type of Central Asian tree.  I went there once with N and her family; they took me on my last weekend with them.  We had an enormous platter of shashlyk together and boorsok that were so fresh as to be still warm, and everything was delicious but there was so much we had to take about half of it home.  I think portions here are much bigger than at home, generally speaking, but the culture of asking for a paket and taking stuff home is much more normalised, which is nice (and saves cooking later).

(A 09/02 addition:  Chicken Star, a Korean restaurant that I feel obliged to mention.  It’s very hip and wouldn’t look out of place in Bristol.  L introduced me to it, and I liked it a lot, but I fell really quite ill the weekend after going once and have since been unable to quite look at it in the same way.  I wasn’t so well anyway, so I don’t know if it was food poisoning or if I’d have been ill whatever I ate that day, but I can’t help but associate the two in my mind.  However, they do ‘real’ cookies, which is certainly worth a mention.  Here is all this information, do with it what you will.)

Kulikovsky – doesn’t really count because it’s a bakery but I feel like a) anyone who knows me will know how much I love baked goods, and b) anyone who reads my tweets will know that I can’t shut up about Kulikovsky, so it deserves a mention.  I have the app and everything.   So far I have found five branches: two on Toktogul (one next to the Alma near Molodaia Gvardia, one on the corner with Isanov), one in GUM, one on Mir, and one on Sovietskaia; I suspect there are more.  A quick Google has told me that there’s one in the 12th microdistrict, just up the road from where I go to church, and I wish I hadn’t found this out because now I know I’ll inevitably find myself there on a Sunday morning and I really don’t need any more pastries in my life.

Similarly, and last but not least, Boris, a bakery on Bokonbaev, very near ours.  Chocolate croissants are my big weakness and theirs are lovely, as are the raspberry pastries.  It’s quite European; I was in there the other day and they were playing English-language Christmas music.

journey to tashkent: a blow-by-blow account

I haven’t been writing half as often as I’d like but the last couple of weeks seem to have been so busy; we’re here only another three and a half weeks and there seems so much to fit into that time, including our year abroad essays!  Most exciting of all, however, is that L and I have been in Uzbekistan.

I realise I haven’t talked about this and that I really should have; so I’ll have to recount it quickly so that I can get through things as I’d like.  The other week L and I mentioned to N that the two of us, for our passports, are required to leave the country again before we fly home.  N’s secretary (? – we’re not quite sure just what her role is; lots of people at the academy seem to just sit at desks moving pieces of paper around), who confusingly is also called N, was in the room and mentioned that we could go to Uzbekistan instead.  She has links; she seemed to know about a trip going there already, and printed us off a schedule for us right away.  I could barely believe it.

We had some last minute visa chaos, which included running around Bishkek for two hours trying to find a printer the penultimate evening before our departure, and not receiving our visas until the day before.  What a mess! – but thankfully all was resolved, and we made our way there and back in one piece.

I had never spent so long travelling as we did that day, so here’s an account of it: 
2am: I wake up from a dream about taking my students to Uzbekistan and wake up extremely stressed upon realising that I am, in fact, going to Uzbekistan.

3am: L and I leave the house and walk all the way down to Dordoi Plaza.  It’s odd to see a city so empty, especially one as noisy as Bishkek.  We have a little trouble finding the point our coach is picking us up from, but thankfully some others have already arrived, and we make small talk with them.  There are snowflakes but it does not snow.

4am: our coach sets off.  There are about twenty of us: our guide, L and I, two Turkish men, a Mongolian woman, and all the rest Kyrgyz, including two babushki and a man who basically adopts us as his honorary daughters for the rest of the trip.

5am: I do my best to sleep.

6am: We arrive at the Kazakh border at Chaldybar, and though we’re the only group there it takes an hour to get through; at the end of the graveyard shift almost none of the guards and border control are there, and those who are there are themselves falling asleep in their chairs.   L and I stand against the one radiator, some consolation for all the waiting around in such cold, and I have breakfast.  We wait longer still (outside!) for our coach to catch up with us, but the moon is gorgeous, which makes up for things a little.  Note: on the return journey home we stopped for a break at 4am, and getting out of the coach I don’t think I’ve ever seen the night sky so clear as then.

7am: We leave the border.  I try to sleep again but it’s beginning to get lighter and Kazakhstan is so good to simply look at.  L and I haven’t travelled that much outside Bishkek, all things considered (my last time was our trip to Almaty at the start of October) so it’s always exciting to do so and take in what otherwise we miss.  So much of the scenery is the same, always – fields, more fields, occasional hills – but I’m always aware that these are different fields to the ones I would see at home, and I don’t think I could ever get tired of them – and, of course, there are the mountains.

Kazakhstan, a summary.

I find myself always in awe of how much room there is in Kazakhstan; of the fact we drive for so many hours, yet pass through so few towns and villages and meet so few other cars.  Rather provincially I find myself wondering if this is what America must be like.

8am: the sun rises, and as it does it makes its way down from the tops of the mountains until all of the hills are gold.

9am: L and I have chocolate biscuits and berate Donald Trump while everyone else is asleep.

10am:  Our road goes uphill, so that it becomes very cold and very foggy and there’s not much to see.  I sleep.

it’s all happening.

11am: I read The White Guard.

12pm: we stop at a café at the side of the road.  I speak to the Mongolian woman, who’s travelling alone, and later throughout the trip we often eat and talk together.  For lunch L and I have manty (of course) and a deeply suspicious orange juice.

1pm: I sleep.

2pm: we drive all the way around Shymkent.  I hadn’t known much about the city beforehand, but it was certainly strange, that’s the only word; its outskirts that we first saw were so empty and half-built, and seemed to go on for so long, but as we get closer to the centre of town the buildings are mostly still only one story, so that it feels more like a village than a city of almost a million.

3pm: we stop to fill out our forms we’ll have to give in at the Uzbek border.  More Bulgakov.

4pm: we arrive at the Uzbek border and the security and guards are surprisingly chilled about everything – more chilled than they’re meant to be, I suspect.  They’re not without their questions, however;  but I think these are more for their own benefit than the security of Uzbekistan.  On the return journey home one of them asks if I’m married and practically proposes to me.  Worst of all is that however they may try and flirt with you, you can’t do anything except smile and laugh politely; they’re in such a position of power over you and you need them to let you in with minimal fuss. 

5pm: more border faffing, and then on to Tashkent.  We stop at the Hotel Uzbekistan, which is quite something, to change our money, except my dollars are rejected by the very stern women behind the counter for being defective; one of the corners is ripped.  I take out another note from an ATM and this too is rejected, so that our guide changes them for me at a bazaar the next day, which I’m sure is extremely legal and legitimate.

6pm: we arrive at our hotel.  I mention to L that Akhmatova was evacuated to Tashkent and (jokingly???) that we could go on a pilgrimage to find the Akhmatova-related things.  For some reason this is not a popular idea.

7pm: L and I go out in search of tea.  We go to a café down the road and we have shashlik, tea, and bread for all of 90p between us, in a room of our own with a TV.  We watch Uzbek music videos while we eat; what a life.

8pm: We’re shattered; what hard work it is just sitting on a coach all day.  And so to bed.