Only-Mens-Land

I promised you a story about men in Central Asia; and I usually do keep my promises!

Why about men - and why exactly in Central Asia... well, apart from a few delightful exceptions, I literally only had conversations with men throughout my entire time - 8 weeks - in Central Asia. Central Asian societies are definitely men dominated.

I could of course mention the "you have a shooting star shining on your forehead" of a Kyrgyz man, or the endless compliments and love-statements of the guys we hitched with in Tajikistan, or the persisting squeezy hugs of our donkey-guide in Tajikistan more in detail - but I guess the country which deserves most to be the talked about in this story is Uzbekistan.


I am happy to announce the Winner of the Golden Raspberry for least charming men: Uzbekistan

I should have counted the amount of times we had been called красавицa (beauty) in Uzbekistan (man, I really can't hear that word anymore).

Uzbekistan itself is a land of beauties indeed, when it comes to the beautiful historical buildings in Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. But definitely it is not a country of beautiful and refine poetry...

And Uzbekistan is also a really paranoid country - a country with huge tons of books containing long lists of names and passportnumbers: Foreigners need to be registered within 3 days they stay in one city. However, we heard stories of people who had to pay huge fines when wanting to leave the country, because they were missing registrations for only one single night. As we'd been couchsurfing for three consecutive nights in Tashkent we ended up buying missing registration slips to cover the missing nights.

What this has to do with men?! Oh well - on our first ride in a shared taxi from the border to Tashkent we had to get registered at police checkpoints - twice.
But at least we got compensated for the trouble: wooooo, such a cutie! One of the police man was definitely more interested in flirting with us than writing our names correctly into his wise book...



Police men - what an interesting topic!
We arrived in Tashkent and of course: the first thing that happened was that one of the million policemen controlling each metro entry asked me to open my backpack. For future similar situations Lise and me planned to put our undies, tampons and / or condoms right on top to embarrass the police man. Too bad we never got checked again...

Nope, definitely not done with the policeman topic!
Samarkand - beautiful Samarkand! Samarkand is definitely really beautiful and not yet being saturated by all the blue tiles and mosaiks we took endless amounts of photos - you can enjoy them in my new gallery!

Before talking about the cutie whom we gave our telephone number on the bus I'll continue on the police man story...

One of the open secrets in Samarkand is that you can go up one of the minarets of the Registan, Samarkands core touristic sight. However, the thing with the minaret is that it is closed to the public. But if you go there before the opening time and bribe the guards you can get up. No wonder its closed to the public by the way: it was a really dangerous to climb up (it's the right minaret which penches a bit like the tower of Pisa)

So there we were - at 6am in front of the Registan arguing with the guarding policeman about a fair price to get up the minaret. I'm not sure the minaret itself was worth the USD5,- , but having the Registan just for ourselves and with all the touristy shops still closed hence leaving the place in total peace, was definitely worth it!

The guy immediately - after having received the brige - got really fond of us, offering us to get us into the Registan for much cheaper during opening hours and for free for an additional night-tour. Well, sure, why not!






So back we came - after a relaxing breakfast in the nice guesthouse - to see the great medressas in daylight with its souvenir shops and the magnificent interiours of the golden dome: it's simply stunning!

Night tour all by ourselves?! Sure we will - so again back in the late evening to walk through the only for us beautifully lit Registan. Taking a small break the policeman then walked us all the way to the nearby Bibi-Khanym mosque offering us ice-cream on the way.

Typical behaviour of policeman?! I guess not - typical behaviour of Uzbek men?! Oh yes, for sure...














The guy on the bus?!

Haha, that was another funny story: when arriving in Samarkand we found the guy collecting the money was kind of a cute so we gave him our number. In the evening we then met with him and his cousin, who became our personal off-the-mainsights guides - or mainly eateries guides.

It was fun hanging out with them: they brought us to the best shashlyk restaurant of Samarkand, where we had our best shashlyk not only of Samarkand but of our entire Cenral Asia experience (and we did have a lot of shashlyks!). They also taught us how to eat the most traditional Uzbek dish - plov!



I guess you should rather watch how the guy eats, because if you copy my clumpsy way of eating you'll end up making the same big mess on the table - and in your face...

These two definitely were nice guys, but well, I found it a tiny little bit exaggerated to talk about our future kids and big love when still not being able to pronounce my name properly...

I don't really know, where Uzbek guys learned to flirt from and even less, who made them think that they were IRRESISTIBLE. But it seems like a common pattern...

From Samarkand to Bukhara we were again in a shared taxis, the most commong means of transport in Central Asia. In Uzbekistan most of the cars run on gas. Yes gas!! They have huge kegs of gas in their trunks - I had never seen this before.
Anyhow, when they fill up the gas at the gas station (now this word has sense!) all passengers have to leave the car. While we were therefore waiting, the other guy from the shared taxi asked me for my Austrian phone number. He was angrily surpised that I didn't give it to him, as if it was his natural right to get my number. Not enough: he then asked me if he could write something down in English in my small notebook; and seriously wrote "Love"...

COME ON GUYS!! YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS, RIGHT?!

After that, we were applying our guidebooks suggestion: to answer the inevitable question, wheter we're married or not, with a convincing "yes". In the remaining historical cities we visited in Uzbekistan - Bukhara and Khiva - we had a really relaxed time, walking around by ourselves and enjoying the sunset over the laid back towns...