The Problem with Public Baths in Budapest

Budapest has a centuries old tradition of public baths. These started as hot springs and roman bath houses and evolved to follow the model of Turkish hammams. In a hammam, they are either unisex or segregated by sex. Typically, the only clothing worn would be a towel wrapped around the body. This attire goes for most of the employees as well. Time, local traditions, and the preferences of a particular hall account for some deviations in this. The basic layout of a hammam includes sauna, steamroom, scrub/massage. In addition, some will have options of various spa treatments including manicure and pedicure, different types of massage and whatever else they can sell. Some even have a bar. The Budapest model has hot tubs of varying temperatures and swimming pools (usually indoor and outdoor). It should also be noted that the bathhouses in Budapest are treated as medical facilities and they do some physical therapy for older persons there. I am not sure how this works, but there was a water aerobics session going on in the pool at Gellert.

The major Budapest baths, with the exception of Rudas have all gone coed. Rudas, had gone coed on weekends and was women only on Tuesdays and men only every other day. On Friday and Saturday nights, they are open for coed bathing from something like 8p until 4a (may want to check that as I too old to even consider it). If you decide to go to Rudas, I would check that.

I went to Rudas and to Gellert. At Rudas, the cost for bathing was about $12 and a 60 minute massage was about $70. I went on a men only day. Completely nude bathing is no longer allowed, even on single sex days. Instead, they issue you a bathing apron. It is exactly as it sounds. It is a little white apron that ties around the waist and covers your front (some of the old Hungarian guys, whether out of protest or hygiene turned theirs around so it covered their butts.) The masseur was male and the apron remained on during the massage. The massage facility was among the nicest I have ever seen with beds that could be raised and lowered. The beds were padded and dry and in a quiet room away from the baths. Most hammans do their massage in a common room on a marble slab, so this was an upgrade.

The main bathing room had an octogonal pool under a rotunda at the center and four hot tubs ranging in temperature from 28 to 42 degrees C (82 to 108 degrees F). To the sides were saunas and the steam room. The steam room had a warning sign about using at one’s own risk, blah, blah, blah. The steam room had three chambers, each getting progressively hotter. The first was tolerable, the second was uncomfortable and the third I felt like I should be basted and put on a spit. I lasted less than a minute in the third room. In addition, they had normal showers and a resting room.

Overall, Rudas was a nice experience. There were few tourists with most of the clientele being older Hungarian men. The facilities were well maintained. The original facility dates back centuries. On the walls, were some pictures of what it looked like prior to being renovated. Prior to the renovation, the facility was split into two sides so that both sexes could bathe every day.

The Gellert Bath was a different experience. The bath house is attached to the Gellert Hotel which is an older hotel and looks quite posh as does the bath. This is one of the two most well known baths in Budapest, the other being Szechenyi. I chose not to go to Szechenyi because it was quite expensive (entrance ticket was about $70, but included free shampoo) and because it is actually quite far from the city center, whereas Rudas and Gellert are both near the Danube.

Gellert operates as a coed facility only, so you will either need to bring or rent a bathing suit. They also have the Friday and Saturday night parties like Rudas and Szechenyi and probably some others. Gellert, like Szechenyi (I have seen pictures) are beautiful facilities. Gellert has a large lap pool, baths at four different temperatures (though these are two each on opposite sides of the facility, so you could miss half of them if you don’t explore. It also had saunas and steam rooms. These seemed to be tuned to the tastes of tourists. The sauna for example, had three chambers. The first, was set to something like ‘An Evening in Phoenix’, you might want to bring a wrap. The other two were somewhat warmer, though none really got the job done. The steam room lacked the brutality of the Rudas steam room and might have even been enjoyable except that the steam generator appeared to be under the benches. When they kicked on, your butt and legs got uncomfortably warm. I did not spring for a massage at Gellert.

The coed aspect of Gellert limited my enjoyment. First, because I am a bit of a spa professional (not the kind that depends on spas for their livelihood), but in the sense that I like spas. I like to relax. I like a massage, a peel, a scrub, a hot tub, a sauna, a cold dunk (missing from Budapest, it may be a safety thing. They had cold tanks, but you had to walk down stairs to get in. I can’t do that, it’s all or nothing.), a steam room, a mani/pedi. There’s nothing to not like. The first thing making it coed does is bring in tourists — I am sure that financially, this is a winner. Bringing in tourists drives prices up and crowds the facility with people who don’t know what they are doing or where they are going (and of course, if you don’t know where you’re going, find a doorway and stand in it.) It also means that people are dressed in a presentable manner, so people bring cameras or smartphones and are snapping pictures of everything. When everyone is mostly naked, there are no cameras. Lack of cameras is kind of an essential part of being able to relax and be in the moment.

The dynamic of men versus women is also just different. In the men only facility, men go in, undress, put on their apron and go. In the coed facilities, everyone is carrying a tote bag. I’m not sure why, but it bothered me. It was one more thing to think about and keep me from relaxing. Which brings me to the final problems: couples or groups, particularly those on vacation. It is no longer acceptable just to take a picture of a thing, or even a person standing in front of a thing. Now, one must pose in front of a thing. If you don’t believe me, look up some travel blogs or travel instagrammers. These are predominantly young women. They all strike the same pose (usually in inappropriate attire for whatever the place, though here they’re just in swimsuits). That pose is about 5 o’clock to the camera — enough to show the shapeliness of the ass, but not the size. The back is arched and the face is in profile looking far off into the distance. The far off gaze is particularly annoying in a hot tub. These photos are usually staged in high traffic areas and the photo shoots can take a while.

So, for my money, I would avoid the coed facilities. This may not be popular if you are with your family, but it is the more relaxin spa experience. Who knows, if I were 30 years younger, I might enjoy one of the all night parties, but probably not.

What's Turkey without Istanbul?

My non-Istanbul run through Turkey started in Ankara (2 nights, 1 day), then to Goreme (3 nights, 2.5 days), Konya (1 night, 0.5 days), Denizli (1 night, 0.5 days), Selcuk (2 nights, 1.5 days) and then to Istanbul and flying out.

My first impression from Ankara was that many Turks seem to have the attitude of a country that lost a great empire. It probably doesn’t help that the language sounds a little angry and hand gestures different than what we’re used to in the west. And shaking hands with a Turk can be a little like shaking hands with Donald Trump without the sociopathy and ick, they do grip your hand firmly and pull you in though. By the time I made it to Selcuk (Seljuk), I was in the friendliest city in Turkey and almost felt like a celebrity. The staff at the hotel called me by my first name. They seemed amused that my name ‘Eric’ means ‘plum’ in Turkish. I was window shopping and ended up sitting with a Kurdish merchant and drinking tea. He had spent four months on a road trip visiting 35 US states a few years ago. In the end, it was not hard to find Turks that were friendly and wanted to talk and wanted to know what the impressions were of their county in the US. US tourism has been down for several years and they want us to come back. They were adamant that the country was safe and I found no counterpoint to that.

Of the countries I have visited on this trip (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey), Turkey is the one where I have had the greatest problem with language. The others were all former Soviet Republics and I studied Pimsleur Russian for months prior to leaving. The Russian helped some, although Russian is nothing more than a second language in any of these countries. Turkey doesn’t really seem to have a second language. In the more heavily touristed areas, it’s not hard to get by on English even though I encountered very few native English speaking tourists, English is treated much as I treated Russian. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan all speak a Turkic language, so maybe I would have been better off trying to learn Turkish. My impression from walking around and talking to people is that I can pick it up easier than Russian.

Driving in Turkey: After nine hours on a bus from Baku to Tbilisi sitting next to an angry, old man from Turkey, I decided that maybe the 27 hour bus ride from Tbilisi to Cappadocia may not be for me. I investigated the options and found a cheap flight from Tbilisi to Ankara that was only two hours and the cost was about the same as a bus ticket. Upon further investigation, bus is a fairly expensive way to get around in Turkey overall. I did some cost comparison and decided that I could fly to Ankara and rent a car for about the same cost as taking the bus to and around Turkey. I had enough time in my schedule to see several places and Turkey is not short on things to see.

I was apprehensive about renting a car, especially after spending time in Georgia and Azerbaijan were the driving is bad. So, I spent an evening reading various travel blogs and guides on driving in Turkey. In the end, I decided to give it a shot. I reserved a car with Payless to pick up in Ankara and drop in Istanbul. Several of the things I had read said that renting a car in Turkey was an experience — they would lose your reservation and insist on starting over, blah, blah, blah. I found this hard to believe, but it certainly true in my case. Payless did not have my reservation. I produced a copy and was told that what I had was not a “reservation” but a “confirmation”. The car that I had confirmed was not available and that I would have to pay for the more expensive car that was available. Further, if I wanted to drop it in Istanbul, I would have to pay a drop fee. This all amounted to a substantial increase in the cost. I insisted that he honor the agreement that Payless had made to me and that I had a document proving. He said no. I said I would walk away and rent from someone else. He made some gesture, that I interpreted as ‘fine’. I said ‘Fuck You’ and walked down to Hertz. While I was at the Hertz counter, the Payless guy came over and asked me if we had a problem. I told him we were done and that I was renting from Hertz. He said some things in Turkish that I didn’t understand and went away. So, I guess you can believe what you read on the internet sometimes. After that drama, I rented the car from Hertz and drove to Cappadocia.

So, when I finally hit the road in a small Hyundai hatchback with a stick shift, I found the driving to not be too onerous. The highways and newer parts of towns featured concrete or asphalt roads, similar to our highways and streets in the US. In general, they were well maintained. The older cities had cobblestone, narrow streets where a small car was a plus. Google Maps mostly worked well. The drivers don’t seem appreciably worse than drivers anywhere else. It gets a little dicier in town for an American not used to driving in older cities. The streets tend to be narrow, cobblestone, not straight, and street signs are difficult to read while listening to a GPS. My advice is that when you’re close, park the car (the nice thing is parking seems to be allowed just about anywhere the car will fit, so go small), get out and find the place on foot and then go back and move the car.

Driving is a good way to see the countryside in this diverse landscape. Overall, Turkey is mountainous and most of the country is arid. Near the Aegean coast, the desert turns to trees, but the mountains continue.

Ankara: Prior to going to Cappadocia, I spent one day and two nights in Ankara. Ankara is Turkey’s capital and second largest city, with about 4.5 million people. Although it is not a major tourist hub, I found enough to occupy my time for a day. There’s a castle, a few nice museums, a bazaar, and many hamams. I walked through the castle, climbed to the top of the walls and snapped a few pictures. I visited the archaeological museum and the museum of industry, both of which take about an hour. The two museums are located next to each other and across from the castle.

I also spent an hour or so at the Tarihi Karacabey Hamami. This appeared to me to be a pretty authentic hammam experience and was priced as such. Tip included, I had the full package that included the scrub and massage for about $12. This hamam did not appear to be a tourist attraction as many hammams are. For example, when you walk in the front door, there are men walking around in towels. Usually, there’s a buffer, a reception area, and then in the back is where th bathing takes place. Aside from that, it was a pretty typical and well-maintained hammam.

Cappadocia: The drive from Ankara to Cappadocia takes about four hours mostly on roads that are comparable to major highways in the US or Europe.

Cappadocia is special for several reasons. First, it is debatable whether it’s more remarkable for its geology or its archaeology. As I understand it, the geology came about from volcanic eruptions and erosion over millions of years. Lava deposited layer after layer of molten rock into the valley that later hardened and eroded. It is pretty easy to see lines in the rock that delineate different deposits. Once nature set the pallette, early man — pre-Christian and early Christian moved in and carved cave dwellings, churches, cathedrals, and underground cities into the soft rock.

In other spots around the world, other early humans have dug caves to live in, worship in, and conduct all the other aspects of everyday life. Petra in Jordan, the southwest United States are a couple of examples. So, what makes Cappadocia special? The geology for one. The landscape is otherworldly. Spires of rock called fairy chimneys push skyward, some of the larger ones have been carved into dwellings or mausoleums. Some of the churches and cathedrals in the caves have been painted with frescoes (now badly deteriorated). Also, the scale is huge. One estimate said that it encompassed about 5,000 square kilometers, roughly the size of Delaware.

Cappadocia has also been discovered by tourists. I was the only American that I encountered, but I met people from Russia, Peru, Majorca, the Canary Islands, Poland, China, India and Germany. Far and away, the largest group of tourists is coming from China. I feel for the Chinese tourists. In Cappadocia, there were no tours being run in Chinese that I am aware of (there were in Ephesus). On the balloon tours, they round everyone up and take them to what we’ll call a central sorting facility and give everyone a color sticker. They then call a coor and put you on a bus to your balloon. The problem is that all of this is done in English. A lot of the Chinese tourists do not appear to know their colors in English, so every time they called a color, a lot of the Chinese would get up and try to leave only to be told to sit back down.

On the block of my hotel, there were restaurants serving burgers, ramen, Indian and Turkish cuisines and not far away were at least two Chinese restaurants, pizza and fajitas could even be found on menus, though not an actual Mexican restaurant. Of course, you’re in Turkey. The Turkish food is the best you will find anywhere, so eat the turkish food. Here’s a few words you should know: Kofte is meatball, Sucuk is sausage, Tavuk is chicken, Ekmek is bread. Kofte Ekmek is a meatball sandwich — a really good meatball sandwich. Cay is tea. Pide and Lahmacum are both called Turkish pizza and I don’t know how they differ. I had the Pide a couple of times and it was good, though they make it without a red sauce.

Cappadocia has developed an impressive tourist infrastructure and that’s not all bad. They have more or less standardized the tours and cartelled the prices. Walking around comparison shopping is not going to yield a significant savings. You might find a slightly better deal on Trip Advisor or Viator, but I am a little leary of how that might be treated. One of the most popular things to do in Cappadocia is a balloon tour. These are highly regulated and they seem to take safety seriously. If the weather is bad (and bad does not always seem that bad), they don’t fly. If they don’t fly one day, the price goes up the next and continues to go up until they fly. The prices start around $220. When I got to Cappadocia, they hadn’t flown for two days and the price was $330. The next day, it was $285. The day after that, they didn’t fly again. I don’t know how this is handled when you buy a ticket online. In other areas, say, rental cars, the Turks don’t seem to feel any obligation to honor a price. My guess is that they refund your money and quote you the new, higher price and maybe cut a few bucks off if they feel bad. Having said that, if you can afford it, the balloon ride is worth it. It lasts about one hour and you will see beautiful sites that you can’t see any other way. Even with 20 or more people crammed into the gondola and the whooshing of the burners keeping the balloon aloft, it is peaceful and hangs over the terrain allowing you time to examine and contemplate in ways a plane or helicopter won’t. All of the tours also come with a pathetic breakfast, champaign after the flight, a certificate and offers to sell you a video and photographs — all of which I could have done without.

Cappadocia has also standardized ground tours. There’s a red, a blue and a green. I did the green and just to give you an idea of how large Cappadocia is, the Green tour involved about 200 km of driving. The three tours each go to three different areas. The reason I chose the green was that the red was more central to my hotel and thus, I thought I could see a lot of the places on the red tour on my own. The blue goes to more remote areas and focuses more on nature and hiking. The green was somewhere in between. The highlight of the green was the underground city which extends about eight stories below ground. If you want a good feel for Cappadocia, go to the underground city and the Goreme Open Air museum, which is on the red tour. Again, all of the tour companies offer these three packages. There are a few hybrids available, there are also, ATV and Jeep tours for which I am morally opposed. You can also go to a Turkish Nights show which includes dinner and sounded a little Dixie Stampedish to me.

Konya: On leaving Cappadocia, I headed west for a 3 hour drive to Konya. Konya is known for being where Rumi is from as well as the Whirling Dervishes. Konya is a city of about 2 million people. It’s downtown is lively and full of restaurants and cafes surrounding the plaza outside the Mevlana Mahallesi (Rumi) Museum. I missed the Whirling Dervishes. They do their rite(?) on Thursday evenings and I was there on a Wednesday. If you’re passing through, it is worth stopping. Unfortunately, Konya doesn’t have a many other things to do. I would say that the downtown is a nice place to wander and sit and people watch. I stopped in a small restaurant for lunch, where the owner proceeded to teach me the words for the various dishes (see above). His Kofte Ekmek was outstanding. The bread used for the sandwich had a crust that was crunchy to the point of brittle on the outside and soft and white on the inside. It reminded of the bread used on a Bahn Mi sandwich. I also met a man on the street who spoke good English and wanted to talk. He told me a little about Konya and an annual music festival that draws an international crowd. He asked if I had been to Istanbul and I told him that I was planning to. He told me that had been Constantinople, but they changed it. I held back the desire to ask, why? A decision I now regret.

Denizli: Denizli is a city of about 500,000 people and about five hours east of Konya. It, like Konya is an industrial city and has one major tourist attraction — Pamukkale. Pamukkale receives more Turkish visitors each year than any other tourist attraction in Turkey. The site consists of hot springs and calcium-rich water. Through natural processes, the calcium precipitates out of the water and is deposited on the hillside. A rather large hillside is completely white from calcium deposits. There are a number of pools holding back the spring water. When visiting, no shoes of any kind are allowed on the calcium. The calcium is not hard to walk on, it is neither slippery or rough. Be careful though, in the pools, the calcium dissolves and a rougher more jagged walking surface is exposed. Also, surfaces covered in algae can be slick. It is also crowded. The entry fee is about$11. I was fairly mehon the site, neither liking or disliking the site. Denizli as a town seemed prosperous, and an interesting place to kill an afternoon. So, like Konya, it’s a nice place to stop if it’s on your way, but probably not worth going out of your way for.

Selcuk: Selcuk (Seljuk) is on the Aegean coast and is near the ancient site of Ephesus. Ephesus is a major archaeological site dating back 6,000 years or more. The Ephesus archaeological site is about 2 km from downtown and also contains the Terrace Houses site (require separate ticket, but is inside the Ephesus site. Two related sites are in the town of Selcuk, the Basilica of St. John (co-located with the castle) and the archaeological museum. If you plan to visit all four, a combined ticket is about $23. I would recommend all four.

I spent about an hour in each of the two sites in town and about four at the archaeological sites. In that four hours I walked about six miles and 20 floors (I think most tour groups spend about an hour, maybe two at the archaeological site and see the theater, the library and maybe a few other things.) My advice would be to get there early because it gets hot here and a lot of tourists start showing up around 10:00. I got there at about 8:30 and it was pretty quite, by 10, tour buses started showing up and it got crowded. With tourists, comes the desire to take the perfect picture. I don’t mind the selfie takers. They are pretty self-contained. I do mind couples or groups trying to take a photo and creating some invisible cone that you shouldn’t penetrate. The most common of these involve a young woman in a dress (google travel blogs for a better idea of what I am talking about). She poses, usually with her back to the camera, she arches her back and glances back over her shoulder. I don’t know what it is about this pose, but it makes me think that many women would be happier if there head were on backward so that they could marvel at their asses all day. This pose of course isn’t used in water. At Pamukkale, one woman was wearing her dress in a pool and hold the hem up almost in a curtsy because everyone wears a dress in the pool.

I also went to the beach. It’s a little dirty, but you can drive on the beach, so it’s a trade. From Selcuk, the Aegean is about a 15 minute drive.

Selcuk itself is not large, under 50,000 people. It relies on tourism and the downtown is full of restaurants and cafes, though most of the people hanging out at these cafes appeared to be locals. There were a lot of old men playing dominoes or cards and a lot of young people out with friends. The tourists at the various tourist sites seemed to be mostly on tour buses and were probably staying near the coast where there are several large, modern hotels. Ephesus attracts tourists from around the world. I saw two guides leading tours in Chinese, there was also a large group of Indonesians (getting their picture taken holding a large banner), as well as the usual suspects from Europe.

On Saturdays, many of the streets downtown are closed for a market that sells everything. This creates some parking problems as that begin Friday evening and end Saturday evening. As there is very little off street parking, this can be a problem, but not an insurmountable one. I parked about 0.5 km from my hotel which was right in the middle of the market area.

A few more things: The internet is not great. A few sites, notably Wikipedia appear to be blocked. The block can be easily circumvented with a VPN, so bring one with you. Uber, Yandex, Bolt, Lyft by and large do not work here. None would work in Ankara, so I doubt that they would work in any of the smaller cities I visited. I tried Uber in Istanbul, and it brought up metered taxis. That’s another thing, the taxis use meters, so you don’t need to negotiate a fare.

Overall, I found Turkey to be modern and secular. I never felt unsafe in Turkey. Outside of the major cities, public transit was lacking which is why I rented a car.

Turkey has many more sites that I did not make it to and many more things to eat that I did not get to try. So, what’s Turkey have outside Istanbul? Quite a lot.

Baku and Tbilisi

Baku and Tbilisi are the two largest cities of the caucuses and have some similarities and difference. Baku is the larger and wealthier of the two. Baku has money — a lot of money. They pump it out of the ground there and have for more than 100 years. The first commercial oil well was drilled there, 11 years before the one drilled in Pennsylvania. They also had the first offshore oil platform and were a prize Hitler sought, but didn’t capture in World War II. Tbilisi does not have oil, but also seems to have some money as Georgia has been quicker to open its economy to the West.

The easy availability of cash in Baku has probably held back western influence, because the Azerbaijanis don’t need the outside capital as much. Azerbaijan still requires a visa to enter. Georgia does not. Though both cities have embraced tourism now, Baku has done so only recently, while Tbilisi has been welcoming tourism for years. Both cities have beautiful old cities and stunning modern architecture. In its on right, Tbilisi’s modern architecture is pleasant and scaled for the city. Baku, on the other hand has modern architecture to rival any in the world and more on the way. They plan to build the tallest building in the world on one of 41 artificial islands to be built in the Caspian (sound familiar?). Stunning modern architecture is never far from view in Baku.

The two cities, separated by only a $9, 9 hour bus ride with a cranky, old Turkish guy as a seatmate also have many differences. I originally thought the guy was Azerbaijani and when he would rant to or at me, I would say in Russian that I didn’t understand, thinking as Azerbaijani, he would understand Russian. It wasn’t until after a rest stop that a nice, young Azerbaijani man across the aisle told me that he was Turkish and likely didn’t understand my Russian (that most Russians probably don’t understand). Apparently, the Azerbaijan language is close enough to Turkish that the two can understand each other. The cranky, old guy mostly directed his anger at the guy in front of him who had put his seat back. I was afraid he was going to start a fight by banging on the man’s seat and shining a light in his eyes. At this point, I would have happily watched this man get pounded into a pulp, but the close quarters of the bus meant that I probably couldn’t escape unscathed.

The cranky, old guy eventually gave up and settled in for an uncomfortable ride. I spoke some to the Azerbaijani man across the aisle, who had a beautiful spirit and was full of hope as he had won a green card to come to the United States. He had friends in Boston who could help him find work in a restaurant and he was working on his English. He had a Masters in Economics from a university in Baku and eventually hoped to get his PhD in the US. I wished him luck.

Curiously, Azerbaijan is a Turkic country, not only is the language similar, the cuisine is similar and the people are considered ethnically similar (not exactly sure what this means as I am not a geneticist.) Even more curious, the Azerbaijanis make “non” in tandoors. When I told a tour guide that we normally associate tandoors and “naan” with India, he seemed surprised. This cross-culturalism has long been documented. Hindus used a Zoroastrian temple at Ateshgah to practice their religion dating to the Silk Road. Somehow, the Turkish influence skipped Georgia. The cuisine and the language both bear little or no similarities to Azerbaijan.

The Georgian cuisine has some wonderful vegetarian or vegetarian adjacent dishes. Georgians also eat pork. I was particularly fond of Ojaxuri. this dish has potatoes, onions, peppers and pork (other meats can be substituted) cooked together and caramelized. They also make a dumpling called khinkali which is very similar to a Chinese soup dumpling. The have a eggplant dish that is rolled with a walnut paste that is also tasty. I was not particularly fond of khachapuri, which is probably their best known dish. There are a few variations, but it’s essentially a flattish bread with a georgian cheese baked into it, sometimes with an egg on top. I didn’t like the cheese that much. I thought it could be improved by adding a red sauce, replacing the cheese with mozzarella and maybe putting some fresh basil on it.

The nice lady who checked me in and fixed my breakfast at the hotel in Tbilisi told me that the only language in the world similar to Georgian is Basque and no one know why. This was part of a larger lecture on why I shouldn’t speak Russian (it’s the language of the oppressor) delivered in the kindest way possible. I was also told by Gulchera in Uzbekistan that they prefer their own language. So, as Russian is useful, I would expect it to slowly die away from the region as English moves in as the favored second language.

Azerbaijan is Muslim (though officially secular 80 percent of its people are muslim). Georgia is Christian. I definitely feel religion more in Georgia than in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan prides itself in its accepting attitude (the largest entirely Jewish city outside of Israel is in Azerbaijan). I have probably seen more burkas in Georgia than in Azerbaijan. Both cities feel European, though geographically both are in Asia. In the novel ‘Ali and Nino’, sometimes called the ‘Romeo and Juliet’ of the caucuses considers Baku as part of Asia and Tbilisi as Europe.

Both countries have had human inhabitants for a very long time. Evidence of humans in the Baku region date back more than 20,000 years and Baku is considered to be one of the oldest inhabited cities in Europe (if you consider it in Europe). Georgia has been making wine for 8,000 years and is one of the oldest vitricultures in the world. Azerbaijan also makes wine — primarily out of pomegranate and rose and not for as long as Georgia. Although all of these wines are drinkable, I would give props to the sweet Georgian red. Both countries will do wine tours as will, shit, Kansas. We have to talk about drunk tourism sometime — it’s gotten out of hand.

Both cities have a tradition of bathing, I previously posted about the Taze Bey Hamam in Baku, so won’t rehash it here. Tbilisi was built over sulfur springs. According to a tour guide, the Georgian King discovered the springs while hunting pheasant when he (his servant) killed a bird and it fell in the spring. When he (his servant) retrieved the bird he discovered the hot water (and terrible smell) and decided to relocate his (yeah, this was really him) capital here. It good to know that over thousands of years, humans still choose absolute morons to lead them. Georgia also converted to Christianity because the King thought a solar eclipse was punishment from God. Out of desperation, he tried praying to St. Nino’s God as the eclipse ended (as eclipses do). Yeah science!

Anyway, EVERY travel guide, every blog post says, don’t miss the sulfur baths in Tbilisi. I would say, go ahead, miss them. I’m a guy who hasn’t many spa treatments he doesn’t like. The $13 I spent here, not worth it. And it was $13! Less than lunch at Applebee’s (also a waste). For $13 you get, an awful smell that stays with you, a shower from a pipe — no shower head, a sauna, a hot tub, tea, a 10 minute massage (I think it was actually closer to 5 minutes) and a very thorough scrub. The smell alone should drive you away (let me reemphasize, a Georgian King built his capital here because of these springs). Yeah, skip the sulfur baths and do Taze Bey twice.

Overall, I enjoyed both cities and countries. Both are worthwhile to visit both and see their differences and similarities. One other similarity is the traffic. Crossing a major street in either place is akin to attempting suicide. When I have discussed the traffic with Tanya, she wanted to know if it was worse than Ho Chi Minh City. Answer: Yes, in HCMC, they are all on 125cc motorcycles. I could jump to the side and clothesline the the offending driver. After that we could have serious discussion. That strategy would not work well with a BMW. I also think she would just give up and call a cab everytime she wanted to cross the street, then be horrified when he hit a U-turn across four lanes to her there. I should also note that there are a lot of hybrids in Tbilisi. Overall, Tbilisi seems serious about climate change — their tourism and wine depend on it. Baku, not so much. When you’re pumping oil out of the ground, you see know reason to think about anything else, so you buy a giant BMW.

So, once again, if I had to be exiled from the US for a while, where would I go? Almaty. Crossing the streets comes without fear and the Arasan baths give it a clear advantage.

Sometimes She May Have a Point

Tanya and I have traveled to quite a few places together and though we are generally pretty compatible, she has noted a few things that I do that annoy her. These include not getting sick and being in constant motion. Tanya on the other hand does succumb to the occasional bug and prefers a slower pace. I have always maintained that the former is luck of the draw. There may be some selection in there, for example, I drink more beer than she does and refuse to eat cantaloupe.

On the latter, part of the reason she sent me away was to get it out of my system. She says that it is not normal to walk 10 miles a day on vacation. I have always maintained that, as Americans, we get so little vacation we can’t waste it relaxing. So, I spent 18 days in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan moving from city to city seeing amazing sights. Though I am glad I did it, it is not an easy place to visit. It is a vast territory and requires moving from place to place — there is no taking a break from the culture (except Almaty). In short, I don’t know how to do it any different.

For the past eight days I have been in Baku. Baku is positively European. I have a nice apartment with a washer. I have adopted a slower pace. I have not seen everything, but I have gotten a flavor of the city. Tanya has maintained that her ideal trip would be going somewhere and renting an apartment and living there for a while — like a local. So, my Baku routine has been to get up around 7a (which is early for Baku) and spend the morning out, have lunch and come back to the apartment in mid-afternoon to rest. Tanya is usually getting up around 3p Baku time, so we talk. Then I go out around 6 or 7p, have been and people watch on fountain square. It’s not a bad way to live.

Three times in my week here, I have stopped and bought a pastry and tea from a guy who has a storefront near fountain square. The man speaks some English. I usually catch him shortly after he opens and he only has one thing made. He’s a small operation, cooking pastries on a single burner griddle. Both times I ordered something different and he told me what he had and I approved the substitution. Today, I was running a little late and didn’t get there until closer to 9a. He invited me into the shop (he normally operates out of a walkup window) and showed me the selection he had. I ended up buying two, one with cheese and the other with apple to go with my tea for about $1. It was nice to build a rapport with this baker after a few days. So, maybe Tanya was right, it is nice to develop a routine and get to know a few people, even if for only a short period. I will never match Tanya’s people skills, after three times I’m sure she would be learning his secrets and been invited over for dinner, but I know how much interaction I want and after three purchases I was happy with a brief conversation about pastries he had made that day.

Taze Bey Hamam: The Weirdest Place on Earth

If you have seen pictures of the outside of Taze Bey, multiply it by ten and you get an idea of the inside. If you’re a man (no women allowed), put this on the list of must-visit places in Baku. As hamams go, I’ve seen better. As experiences go, this won’t be replicated. The decoration reminded me of mid-range restaurants from the 80s decorated from garage sales. And maybe that’s where this stuff came from — when those places went out of business, the owners took to EBay. Maybe Taze Bey picked this stuff up on the dollar rack of EBay. Most of it was in English. Taze Bay is actually quite old, dating the late 1800s, it was renovated around 30 years ago and that’s when most of the decorating was done. Much of the decoration was some form of statue — some Roman or Greek, others more contemporary, but they were everywhere. License plates were also prominently featured along with pictures of scantily clad women, and just about any tasteless relic you can think of — I don’t think anyone can conclusively say it’s not there.

I spent about $80 for about two and a half hours. My sequence through the hamam was as follows: (1) toilet, (2) pedicure, (3) shower, (4) sauna, (5) cold plunge, (6) sauna, (7) wait in the bar, (8) peel, (9) wait in a different bar, (10) massage, (11) steam room and beatdown with branches, (12) even colder plunge, (11) scrub.

I mention the toilet only because it was so fucking bizarre. It should be noted that every somewhat even surface in this place that wasn’t used for walking had some sort of gaudy something or another on it and the bathroom was no exception. The decor of the stall (white toilet, black seat) was mostly pictures of scantily clad women. There were also old license plates and various other mementos. There was also a telephone with a sign in three languages, the English said “Local.” There was a bidet. Mounted approximately at toilet paper height was a little holster or pocket protector thing. In it were individual cigarettes. Smoking is a thing in Azerbaijan and a theme running through the decorating here was ashtrays with cigarette butts next to no smoking signs.

The Taze Bey Hamam is more regimented than other hamans. It is not an open affair where you wander from sauna to cold plunge to steam room at your own pace and avail yourself of the services you please. They tell you where to go and when to go there.

The shower was a shower and the last normal place I would be in a while. I don’t know why the shower wasn’t decorated, or maybe I was just too preoccupied searching for a towel to notice.

You enter the pedicure room by descending a steep, narrow staircase and go through saloon doors. This room is decorated by pictures of scantily clad women, a rather intricate inlaid wood piece of naked women in a sauna beating each other with branches, a sign with a silhouette of a naked woman with hands reaching for her. The sign had the red circle and bar and said, “You can look but don’t touch.”

I’m not sure why I needed to be naked, wearing only a towel for a pedicure, but I guess it’s not about me. I think she did a fine job with the pedicure while listening to the farm report on Russia 1. There was a foot soak and nail maintenance followed by sanding my feet. My feet have finely finished into something resembling 00 sandpaper with a few ridges built in by years of wearing Birkenstocks without socks. This woman used several different tools to smooth the skin and file down the ridges to where my feet are smooth to the touch. Where before the bottoms of my feet were perfect for scratching any itch they could reach, now I will have to wear my hiking boots for that service. I have to say, my nails do look better than they have in a long time.

The sauna was kind of a mask theme, though further back the masks changed to wooden buckets and ladles. The first thing you notice when entering the sauna is the smell. Menthol. They had somehow infused the dry heat with menthol, so it was kind of like being in the Vicks room, except it was a dry heat. The menthol permeating every cubic inch of the environment causes your skin to sting and tingle. As sweat wells up on your skin from the sauna, the intensity of the tingle is magnified. So, I made myself a nice little spot to lay out of a couple of towels to protect me from the hot wooden bench and lay down and closed my eyes. I opened my eyes a few minutes later to discover that the entire ceiling of the sauna was covered with masks — African, weird pirate-like guys, and caucasian. My eyes were drawn to one caucasian mask in particular. Its eyes were closed and his mouth was open. He bore a striking resemblance to Donald Trump — not what you want to see when you’re wearing only a plaid towel. My next trip through the sauna, I would opt for the comfort of the buckets.

The cold pool next to the sauna wasn’t bad. It’s kind of refreshing to plunge into cold water after a sauna. This was as normal as a bunch of naked men in a cold pool can be. The decorations in here was mostly gold statues, some were fountains spitting water into the pool, some were not. Most were naked or partially naked women. There was one cowboy, a gun and holster had been added for authenticity. Oh yes, and many plastic skeletons were hung from the ceiling.

The peel and scrub area consisted of multiple stations. Each station consisted of a marble sarcophagus for you to lay down on and water hoses. The man who would be peeling or scrubbing you was clad in a plaid towel. The rest of the room mostly was decorated in gold statues. Two, one a partially clothed Greek woman and the other a Victorian woman carrying flowers were used to stack spare towels on their heads. Peeling was done between the sauna and massage and scrubbing was done at the end. During the peel, the guy in the plaid towel made it a point of showing me how much of my skin he had removed. I think he was implying that it was a lot and that I needed to come in more often for a buff. The scrub involved using some substance with pumice in it to really clean the body.

The massage was a fairly normal massage though done in a basement room decorated with scantily clad women and carried out on a marble sarcophagus.

I don’t really recall how the steam room was decorated as it was steamy and dark. The steam room though is where they beat you branches, this being full service, there is actually a guy who does the beating for you. And beat he did. Back, front, sides, arms, legs. And when he’s done, he reaches behind him and picks up a pan of cold water and throws it in your face. Then he does it again. And again. Only the first one is a though.

Right next to the steam room is cold plunge room. This one is different than the other. It is in a subbasement and is really, really cold. The water level comes up the stairs, so you have to disrobe before entering (there’s a nude descending stairs joke here but I’m too lazy to make it.) This tub takes up the entire room and is also a whirlpool. I lasted well less than a minute here as my ankles began to ache from the cold.

So, the Taze Bey was not my favorite hamam from a usage experience, but the visual shouldn’t be missed.

Aktau Baby

Why go to Aktau? To catch a plane. Aktau is on the far west of Kazakhstan. It is only about 40 years old and was founded to house Uranium miners, so maybe it’s contaminated. It has a decent sized airport. I toured Uzbekistan from east to west, it seems that most people west to east. Either way, you start in Tashkent, which is east. To come and go from Tashkent (which most people do) requires a long train ride from either Nukus or Urgench to or from Tashkent. Instead, I opted for going back into Kazakhstan and flying from Aktau. To sum it up, I saved some money but wasted some time (Uzbekistan is expensive to fly to/from).

So, what is there to do in Aktau? Really, not much. I read a blog post by some people who spent three days in Aktau whining about how awful it was. I won’t link to it here, as it was poorly written and meanly critical. The most interesting part of Aktau was getting to Aktau. There are herds of wild camels and horses grazing along the highway. Once in Aktau, there is a World War II memorial that I thought was nice, a MIG fighter jet statue and what appears to be a beginning of a tourism industry on the Caspian coast. This means there are some hotels, restaurants that serve world cuisine and bars where I picture young Kazakhs dressed from Saturday Night Fever hanging out listening to techno music.

I took a 30 minute tour boat for about $3. There was no tour guide to tell us what we were seeing (which was nothing), walked along the shore (which is rocky not sandy) and killed two days. I’s not a terrible place, just boring fortwo days. I would minimize the time spent there.

The Omnibus Uzbekistan Post

This is the second time that I am writing this post. The first one was lost in the ether of the ‘stans. Internet connections tend to be slow and unstable here (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan). I would recommend downloading WhatsApp before leave. You will likely end up buying a sim card, possibly two and having WhatsApp makes calling home easier. I bought a Beeline card in Astana, Kazakhstan for abou $8, then added roaming for Uzbekistan which cost about another $8.

First, most of what I had read about Uzbekistan in preparing for this trip was wrong to one degree to another. About two years ago, Uzbekistan began liberalizing their tourism policies, dropping the Visa fee from $160 to $20 ($60 for multi-entry), put in place an e-Visa and made other reforms. When I entered the country, I was not asked to provide a list of medications and all customs workers were very nice and welcomed me to their country.

I found the Uzbek people to be unfailingly friendly. Several Uzbeks have pictures of me as souvenirs. Many know some English, even if it’s just ‘Hello’. The only time you will find Uzbeks to be anything other than friendly is when standing in line. Uzbeks don’t stand in line, they don’t allow for personal space, the form a crowd around the person at the front and lay siege to become the next one served. By the time I bought my fourth train ticket, I learned to play the game Uzbek-style. First, allow no space between you and the person is front of you — even (especially, Uzbeks don’t bother with cutting in line a few places back) if that person is the one at the counter transacting business. Stay on them. You need to be close enough to dry hump their leg. Second, guard your flanks. Uzbeks will come at you from either side. A favorite trick is to use the ledge at the counter to get their money and documents ready and then slide in. And finally, be ready as whenever the person at the window is done, you have to move. Get right in as close as you can and start talking. Act like you belong there — any display of weakness and you can take a step back.

The official language is Uzbek but Russian is also prevalent. Signage is often in Uzbek, Russian and/or English. Sometimes figuring out the language that something is written in is half the battle. The further you get from Tashkent, the less Russian is spoken. It seems like more and more English is entering the lexicon. Before I left, I spent six months and more than 200 hours with the Pimsleur Russian courses. I was far from fluent and it definitely helped, but I think it is possible to travel in Uzbekistan speaking only English. Of course, the more you know of a local language, the more enriching your experience will be.In all, I visited five Uzbek cities (Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva and Nukus), and took four trains and two cars plus some taxis and subways. I stayed in family-run guesthouses in Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. In Tashkent, I stayed in an AirBnB which was essentially a family-run hostel. In Nukus, I stayed in a hotel. All of these places provided breakfast served at about 8a. The costs were typically about $20/night.

Transportation

Uzbekistan has invested in mass transit. They have spent less on roads. Thus, the roads are bumpy, full of holes and generally not a great way of getting around. Take the train where possible.

High speed rail is available on some routes. The Afrosiyob runs from Tashkent to Samarkand and Bukhara and continue to Urgench. I took it as far as Bukhara and the top speed was about 230 km/h. It is everything it was supposed to be — fast, clean, spacious. A step down from that was the train I took from Bukhara to Khiva. The cars were similar to the Afrosiyob, but the travel was slower. Overall, faster than driving and not a bad way to go.

I took Kazakh rail from Nukus to Beyneu, Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan has not invested in rail — and it shows. I had read about this train and dreaded it. It was a 14 hour journey across a mostly desert landscape. The car was not well maintained. It was dirty, noisy, chaotic and overcrowded. The cars were old Soviet sleeper cars with top and bottom bunks. The bunks are not in private compartments, but kind of arranged into pods where six bunks are in one pod and the aisle goes through. The cars are typically oversold, so only the top bunks can be used for sleeping. The bottom bunks become seating. We had eight or nine people in our pod.

When I got on the train, and I was one of the first ones on the train, I noticed that a significant number of melons had already been loaded on the train and stored under seats and in luggage storage compartments. Melon is popular here and I guess they grow it in Uzbekistan and have a deal to transport melons to Kazakhstan by passenger rail. I also noticed that all of the concessions on the train were handled by normal people, unlike Uzbek rail where only uniformed people were selling things on the train. This little bit of capitalism greatly increased the offerings. The train was a bit of a rolling bazaar with smoked fish, soup, manti (dumplings), bread, samsa, chai in old vodka bottles, some yogurt drink in old water bottles, water, soda pop, children’s clothing, womens clothing, socks, sim cards, money exchange (you need to do this BEFORE you cross the border, the money changers don’t cross and your Uzbek money is nearly impossible to exchange outside of Uzbekistan.)

As far as I could tell, I was the only non-Uzbek/Kazakh person on the train. Therefore, I was a novelty. All of the people in my pod, had made this trip many times in the past, their passports were full of stamps. When the Soviets divided these nomadic lands into countries,the lines often had little regard for the people living their. As a result, family members were cut off from one another and this trip was necessitated. Nowhere else have I seen border guard as meticulous at placing a stamp. The stamps are arranged eight to page to maximize space. My passport got passed around among the other passengers who had never seen an American Passport. My iPhone was also passed around. It seems like Samsung and older Nokias have a lock on the market — iPhones were not even sold in the Beeline store.

As the sun came up after our 4a departure, things got a bit more lively. I had packed bread , candy and water for the trip and figured that would get me by. After a while one of the men in my pod offered me some chai from the vodka bottle and poured me a Donald Duck coffee mug full. He also gave me two samsas and two extremely hard boiled eggs. By mid-morning people were setting around talking like old friends. The conversation was entirely in Uzbek and I didn’t understand a word. I was offered Gat (multiple spellings, a legal substance chewed by men throughout the region. From what I’ve read it has effects similar to caffeine and marijuana). I turned this down as I had no idea how it would effect my and didn’t want to find out halfway through a 14 hour train ride.

After a while a cup of the ubiquitous yogurt drink was placed before me. I didn’t want it, but would much rather be polite and drink something I don’t like than risk offending the wonderful hospitality I have been afforded. I drank it and it wasn’t as bad as I expected. I wondered what it was called and didn’t know how to ask, so I got out my phone and used Google Translate. I had previously had problems with GT when trying to translate a dinner menu. The place I was eating had various types of kebabs. I was fine with any except the liver. Using GT, it translated from Uzbek the first two to be ‘Molotov’ and ‘Bomb’. I was pretty sure both it was wrong in both cases.

Anyway, I typed my question and handed my phone to Gulchera, a 40 year old, Uzbek, divorced mother of 2, who was quite competent in all things. She filled out the customs forms for everyone in our pod. So, Gulchera responded back, it was called ‘Coska’ (phonetic spelling in English alphabet). It further translated it to mean ‘nipple’. At this point, I considered my options was (a) Gulchera messing with me, (b) was GT really bad at Uzbek, or, (c) is this supposed to mean something like mother’s milk. I saw no way forward, so I let it drop. She used GT to ask me a few questions that I don’t remember and showed me pictures of her children and her work and some selfies. She takes a lot of selfies and she was sitting right beside me. Soon she took my phone and typed her name and number into. The old man sitting across from us started pantoming that I could put a ring on her finger and take her to America. As flattering as it is to be an overweight 52 year old and be hit on by the 40 year old Gulchera, I had about 4 hours left and no place to go.

I went to the bathroom — on this train that is not some place you want to spend much time. If it were clean it would have been disgusting. It was not clean. From the shoe treads on the seat, it appears that people squat on the seat to do their business — on a moving train, I just can’t even imagine. Maybe with regular yoga classes I could get there, but damn, where’s the nearest hospital? So, while I am standing in the thankfully long line, another woman gets in line behind. An Uzbek with died blond hair in a tight Paris T shirt. She strikes up a conversation in what little common tongue we have. She tells me her name and asked mine. I honestly don’t remember her name (though later that night I ended up on a five hour minibus ride to Aktau with her.

Border crossings took over an hour on both the Uzbek and Kazakh sides and we eventually rolled into Beyneu.

I took a private car from Khiva to Nukus. I arranged this through the hotel in Khiva and paid $40 (I actually don’t think it would be that hard to travel throughout Uzbekistan using only USD, certainly the further you get from Tashkent, the more people prefer dollars to som.). The roads are rough, two lane and not particularly well maintained. The Hotel Alibek in Khiva is run by the son in the family who is probably in his mid 30s? His parents and wife and children also live and work on the property. The son arranged for my car. On the day I was supposed to leave, the son was gone. I was supposed to leave at noon, but at 10a was packed and ready and sitting outside reading. His mother asked if I was ready to go, I said I was. She summoned her husband to drive me to Nukus in the family car. I don’t think this is what the son had intended, but I doubt he will cross her.

The Cities

Tashkent: The only reason to visit Tashkent is that you must visit Tashkent. If you fly in to Uzbekistan, you will fly into Tashkent. If you take rail, you will most likely pass through Tashkent. It is big (2.5 million people), dirty and and chaotic. While you’re there you might as well visit the Chorsu bazaar and ride the subway. I stayed in an AirBnB that was essentially a hostel. From the outside, the building was an old Soviet-era brutalist apartment building with all the appeal of hammered dogshit. It frankly looked like The Wire may have been filmed there. Inside, it was lovely and modern.

Samarkand: The crown jewel of Uzbekistan and its second largest city. The must-see sights are the Registan, The Shah-i-Zinda mausoleum complex and the Ulug Beg Observatory. There are a number of other interesting and beautiful sites to see, but these were the ones that I found particularly interesting. In my opinion, all were walkable, though the observatory was about three miles away. Shah-i-Zinda and the Afrosiyob archaeological site are on the way, so you can break the walk up. I stayed at the Furkat Guesthouse, a funky family-run place that had been around since the beginning of time. They serve a wonderful breakfast on their rooftop terrace. It is about two blocks from the Registan.

Samarkand is changing. There are commercial strips on two sides of the Registan and as you move away from the old town, new construction is going up at a rapid pace. I didn’t really make it out to the new part of town, but you pass through it on the way to the train station.

Bukhara: There appears to be something akin to a historic preservation commission in Bukhara. Many of the buildings had gold plaques identifying them as having protected status. As such, Bukhara was the best preserved of the three historic cities I visited. Among the must-see sights are the Ark, the mosque behind the Ark, the Judicial museum, Lyab Hauz and Chor Minor. There are many other things to see in Bukhara and nearly all are close together, so if you stay near the historic part of town, you could knock out a bunch. For example, the Ark, the mosque, and the judicial museum (home of the bug pit) are essentially next to each other. The Lyab Hauz is a 16th Century oasis and is the center of activity in the town. In the evenings, there’s music and dancing and several restaurant line the area. Chor Minor requires that you find it. It is small and tucked down an alleyway. And that is probably the best thing to do in Bukhara — wander the alleyways. People will approach you and start a conversation and you should take the time to exhaust your common vocabulary. It is also worth the time to walk out past the bazaar to what remains of the city walls.

Like Samarkand, quite a bit of development is going on outside the old city. I am not sure where any of that will lead, but I think it is indicative that Uzbekistan is beginning to realize the treasures and the potential revenue stream of exploiting them.

Khiva: Khiva is the smallest of the three and also well preserved. Most of its walls are intact and some can be walked on by buying the VIP pass (150,000 som/$16). The pass also allows you to climb the minaret, which is worthwhile if you are in shape. There are a number of museums in Khiva and the pass allows you access to all of them. I will say that most of the museums provide little context and are mostly just a collection of items. That said it is remarkable to see. I stayed at the Hotel Alibek which is across the street from the entrance.

Nukus: It has an art museum that is impressive. After that, the second and third attractions that pop up on Lonely Planet, TripAdvisor and others are the bazaar and walking along the river. The bazaar is large and worth seeing if you are there. It you’ve seen the bazaars elsewhere, it’s not worth a special trip. Walking along the river is like…walking along the river. There’s nothing wrong with Nukus, but it is a one trick pony.

The Food

So, my impressions of Uzbek cuisine are that they may eat less plov than they get credit for. When I was reading about Uzbekistan prior to my trip, that was all I heard about Uzbek culinary traditions was the national dish was plov. I have had plov twice. Granted, a rice dish seems like a strange choice for a country located almost entirely in a desert. It also seems like an odd choice for what was mostly a nomadic culture. So what did I see most of? Round bread call Naan or Non. It’s thick on the outside and thin toward the center. And meat on a stick (kebabs) of all shapes and sizes. They also eat a lot of fruit. There are a few other prepared dishes such as lagman, a noodle dish. I had a couple of variations on this, The first was kind of a beef and noodle stew, the second as almost like spaghetti and meat sauce. When ordering off the menu, lagman was always lagman followed by a second word. Ithink this means that lagman describes the thick,long, doughy noodles and the second word tells you how its prepared. And that’s where knowing the Uzbek language comes in. Good luck.

Ashlyamfu, which the internet gives credit to Kyrgyzstan for has its roots in China can also be found.

I subsisted primarily on bread and kebabs. I resisted for a while as everything I had read had not mentioned these and I assumed that they were just brought in for tourist, which is possible. After a while, it was apparent that kebabs were everywhere and being enjoyed by Uzbeks and tourists alike. It seems like a natural fit for the region. The people and language are afterall Turkic. So, I think plov is probably something like roast beef in the US. It’s comfort food. We’ve all eaten it, we all like it, but we don’t eat it everyday.

The tourism industry seems to be modernizing rapidly. Bukhara has double-decker, hop-on, hop-off buses. Hot dogs and soft serve ice cream are available everywhere. Something that I have only seen in Uzbekistan are little stands selling “Gas Voda” (phonetic from the cyrillic). These stands will have an upside down glass cylinder or vial with a tap at the bottom. When you order, they fill a glass with carbonated water and add a squirt of syrup from the cylinder. When I first saw this, I didn’t know what to think. One of the stands had a diagram of a pregnant woman drinking one with various text and arrows which appeared to be health claims. So, I thought, “oh great, this is essentially Uzbek Kombucha, no thanks.” I assumed it would taste bad and emit bad smells from my pores. I eventually broke down and tried one. It is quite good. It is kind of carmelly, kind of gingery, kind of a cross between cream soda and ginger ale. A small costs about 5 cents and well worth it.

I spent a total of about 10 days in Uzbekistan. It has some things that you are simply not going to see anywhere else. If you’re into history, get your geek on. If you’re a foodie, it’s probably not a good fit.

Searching for Meaning

This trip was never about a search for meaning in my life. Long ago I determined to my satisfaction that there is not much meaning in life — it’s just a series of events, some connected and others random. Try and keep them going for as long as possible, for when they stop, you’re done. No matter how good or how bad you are, the chances that anyone will give you more than a moment’s thought a generation after you’re gone aren’t much. Sure, I still think of my grandparents from time to time, my great grandmother even less, but they are distant memories that don’t guide or shape my life.

I do feel the need to give meaning to taking a year off work, ejecting myself from the most American of ideals — to work hard 50 weeks out of the year and feel guilty for two. To take a full year off at the point of my highest earning potential should be more than folly. Yes, there are implications. I have said many times that I am likely trading one year in my fifties for two in my 60s. But why?

As I was walking around Khiva this afternoon, I was thinking about my mother. I haven’t been able to call her since I entered Uzbekistan. The internet is touch and go. The cell service is better, but is expensive to place a voice call. I didn’t think to set up WhatsApp on her cell phone before I left. Tanya will do that next weekend. I feel bad that I haven’t called, but it’s beyond my control.

Mom is 83 and still living somewhat independently in Carrollton, about 100 miles from where I live. Mom did not grow up there. Her parents moved there shortly after she graduated from high school. She moved there after college and started teaching, eventually met and married my father and started a family. She never liked it, but she never left. She often referred to it as Podunk Center USA. She preferred to do her shopping in Kansas City. On more than a few occasions she told us that she was leaving as soon as her kids were out of school. I never worried too much about that and when I left for college, she stayed. She continued to teach until she retired. After she retired, she and Dad took some inheritance from their parents and built a new new house near the edge of town.

Mom had a health scare about the time Dad died about four years ago. At that time, I tried to convince her to move closer to me. She refused. She didn’t to leave Carrollton. I was surprised this seemed to be her lifelong dream and I was offering it to her. But her life was in Carrollton — her church, the minister she has a crush on, the thrift store she volunteers at twice a week, the house she built, the doctor who flatters her — it’s all there. The window for her moving had closed.

As we get older, more windows close, our world gets smaller. This year is about keeping my world as big as possible for as long as possible. That, I guess is both metaphor and reality. Different people have different things they care about. Travel has long interested me and that’s why I am here. Tanya has also broadened herself by giving up travel and taking on an administration role. She has long wanted to help people and sees this role as a way or helping people both directly and by starting new programs and initiatives. She is ambitious and trying to change her department and University for the better. We have taken different paths but both have a similar goal — to breathe new life into lives that were getting a little too normal — to keep our worlds as big as possible for as long as possible. And if it doesn’t work out, we have proven that we are flexible and can change.

Arasan Baths Part III -- A Courtesy to my fellow travelers

My last day in Almaty I walked about 10 miles prior to catching an evening flight. The weather was warm, I was sweaty, had checked out of the hostel, and still had a few hours to kill. Fortunately, I know a good place to kill a few hours for not a lot of money. I reasoned that this would be a courtesy to the other passengers on the plane — not to have to smell me.

So I went to Arasan. After a couple of times through the baths and contrast showers, I went for a massage and wash. I thought, I should at least try a Russian massage. I had been getting Chinese massages — I likeChinese massage, I am comfortable with Chinese massage, but let’s see a society bringing hundreds of years of suffering and oppresion to the massage game.

It turns out that they bring pain and oppression. I had never have a 175 pound (sorry, 80 kilo) guy put all of his weight on my back before. Turns out this was a move best done by a small Chinese (or Thai) woman. Turns out I have some existential angst about not knowing whether I will ever be able to walk again. I also learned that, when suffering from existential angst, my butt tenses up. The 80 kilo guy in a four point on my back, from what I could tell knew one word of English. When my butt tensed, he would slap my ass a couple of times and order, “Relax.” He’d then jump down and bounce a couple of times. like a boxer after he moved into his opponent delivered a few blows and backs out to catch his breath. Of course, the difference was that his opponent was my ass which had more in common with second base than a sparring partner.

It reminded me of when we were kids and the first “Rocky” movie came out. At that time, Dad had a ham hanging in the basement to cure. He had done this before and we had never paid any attention to except for the occasional sniff of porky goodness. But after “Rocky” came out this ham provided the perfect opportunity to reenact the meat locker scene. Jump in punch-punch-punch, jump back and dance and breath. Just like my ass, the ham didn’t stand a chance.

Crossing Over -- Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan

As you move south through Kazakhstan in to Uzbekistan, things change dramatically. The terrain, the climate, the language, the chaos. The people also seem to be friendlier (not that those in Astana and Almaty were not — they may be a little more used to foreigners and don’t appreciate the novelty). I arrived in Shymkent late and went straight to City Hostel. It was new and beautiful. At night, Shymkent looked liked a modern city, similar to Almaty.

Aside from the friendly people constantly welcoming me to their country, I found Shymkent and (later) Uzbekistan to be hard. I caught a mild stomach bug while in Shymkent and felt on the verge of throwing up most of the way to Tashkent. Then, my taxi dropped me off down the street from where I needed to be, so I had to lug a heavy pack up the street and up six flights of stairs in 90 degree heat. I spent the first afternoon napping and ate very little for the next few days, which was heartbreaking at Chorsu Bazaar.

In Shymkent, I checked in and asked for advice on how to get to Tashkent. The woman at the desk gave me good instructions on how to get to the bus station to catch the bus that goes into Tashkent.

By day, Shymkent is nothing like Almaty. It is dusty, loud and chaotic. I tried to follow the instructions to get to the right bus station to buy a ticket to Tashkent. I got off either too soon or too late and decided to catch a Yandex cab. Finding the right bus station proved to be a problem. I chose the wrong one. The one I went to didn’t have a bus, but had marshrutkas (minibus operating when full). Rather than try to get to the other bus station, I took a marshrutka. The marshrutkas do not cross the border. You have to cross on foot and then catch a second ride on the Uzbek side into Tashkent. In all, it cost $2 to get to the border and $3 to get from the border into Tashkent and I got there sooner.

Surprisingly, at the border the Kazakh guards were mildly dickish, making me count my money and having the dog sniff my things. The Uzbek guards were nice and each one (you will talk to several) welcomed me to their country.

Once across the border, I was set upon by money changers and taxi drivers. I changed money at the rate of 9000 som/$, google had the rate at 8000, so I felt like I stole from him. Later, I found a place in Samarkand that had 9400, so I guess you can’t even trust google here.

I was then set upon by cab drivers offering to take me into town for between 30000 and 80000 som. I went with the guy at 30000. We walked to his cab and he opened his trunk so I could put my bag in. The trunk was full of stuff, including an old tube-type TV. I said I’d just put it in the backseat. He said no and insisted in putting it in his trunk and tying it shut. Then he insisted that I sit in the front. Where upon three more guys hop in the back (presumably one of them was the owner of the TV) and we headed into Tashkent. We talked in what little common language we had. He asked about Trump and I signaled thumbs down. He seemed surprised, but I guess negative opinions about the government aren’t expressed here. It’s a freedom we have for now.