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Osh: Coffee, the Bazaar, and Solomon    

Image for Entry 1220386762Osh has a huge bazaar which sprawls from the old bus station up 2 sides of the street and 2 sides of the river, bulging out into a large covered area of vegetable sellers than narrowing into passages lined with clothing.



fruit seller

It is a chaotic patchwork of different types of shopping areas.


bread


garlic seller

Towards the top we found a blacksmith's shop next to the river with a little area of space around it as if it had been there forever and the bazaar just grew around it.


blacksmith

Above that was a block of curtain sellers and below were sellers of the colorful patterned velvets popular with Uzbek women. A warehouse space was filled with "modern" fashions popular with teenagers. Several large areas had giant carpets defining the space of the seller. We did not, however, find ceramics craftsmen's stalls, though we did find someone selling hand-made wooden cradles.


cradles


broom seller

The type that would look great in a yurt. Having our fill of the bazaar, we tried to find an Internet cafe that worked. For some reason many of them don't let you send e-mail! I guess people here just use the Internet to play games.
We walked across a bridge over the river and circled back north. We noticed a street which seemed a slight bit more modern than some of the other streets. Then Rowshan noticed a sign reading "California Cafe." Almost jokingly, he said "Let's see if they have coffee". So we walked up and saw they had a menu posted outside--which in itself was unusual. In the drinks section I saw "Natural boiled coffee." "That must mean regular coffee!" I said. "And they have Nescafe underneath!" (meaning that they acknowledge that Nescafe is different from regular coffee). A passerby pointed out the English menu on the other side of the column and sure enough they had "Freshly Brewed Coffee". We walked inside, confirmed that they had it and ordered. Looking over the menu I saw salads named after stars, various pizzas and pastas, as well as some dishes like fajitas. We decided to get lunch. It was nice to get a vegi filled meal, especially since we've been eating so much laghman lately (we've determined it is actually cheaper than self-catering) which is good but gets repetitive. The cafe was a nice small wooden floored room with light wood furniture and trim. The walls were adorned with old Californalia-- a map of route 66, photos of the Hollywood sign and Golden Gate Bridge. Each table even had a little "no smoking sign" above it (and the bathroom has a sign saying "No smoking in here either!"). They even had some weird CA pizzas like one with smoked chicken (called Napa Valley). So we got our coffee fix and vegi food fix. Then we found an Internet cafe where we successfully sent e-mails from. It was like we were transported back into the 21st century! It was now around 5 and we decided it was a good time to visit Osh's sight: Suleyman Too-- Solomon's Throne, a large hill in the middle of the town where Solomon was supposed to have rested.


solomon's throne


entrance to solomon's throne

People says it looks like a pregnant woman but the illusion is marred a bit by the cell phone tower which is perched on her belly. We climbed up the hill looking at the smoggy view of the city and hills beyond.


view of solomon's throne

The top of the hill has a small mosque as well as a stone slide.


mosque


kid sliding

We followed a path across the hillside and ascended to one of 2 large caves.


cave

Below was a graveyard where each tomb was a mound of dirt giving the area a weird bumpy texture from above.
On the way back from Suleyman Too, we passed some watermelon sellers tossing melons across from a mosque.


man throwing watermelons


mosque

Rowshan made friends with some of the Uzbek men outside the mosque and they discussed the problems of Kyrgyz youth today.


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Kyrgyz Independence Day in Osh    

Image for Entry 1220300362We purposely wanted to be in Osh on 8.31 for the Kyrgyz Independence Day celebration. This was when all the cities in Kyrgyzstan were supposed to have huge celebrations including games of Kok Boru, the Kyrgyz national sport where riders on horseback fight over a headless goat and attempt to throw it in a bin, thereby scoring a goal. We confirmed that this game and others would be played and set out for the hippodrome, 15 km away in a village South of Osh. We drove out of town in a minibus. I asked a fellow passenger if the hippodrome was visible from the road. She replied it was (so we'd be able to see when to get off.) Soon I saw it: a walled filed with bleachers-- entirely empty except for a few horses grazing in the center.

We asked the driver and he said the games were held at the stadium in town. So we took the minibus back. Going towards Osh it quickly filled up and though we both had seats, I had a kid leaning over me bracing himself against the window for the trip and Rowshan seemed to be near either someone who was carrying kurut balls or just smelled strongly of them. The minibus was so packed they could barely close the door. I think if the windows had been openable, they would have crammed people in until they were popping out of the windows grasping the roof. I still haven't learned what you say to get a minibus to stop. "Bus stop" doesn't work and neither does, "Next stop, please". Rowshan got the driver to stop with "Let me out!" in Azeri. By the time we got out, we were a block beyond the stadium. We walked up to the stadium and saw it was completely empty. Definitely no games of any sort were being played. Across from the stadium was some sort of government building which was cranking music for the celebration. Rowshan realized it was in Farsi and the lyrics were something like: Here is to the people of Iran! We will always be the children of Iran.

We followed where the crowd was coming from and came to a big square where the Kyrgyz Independence Day festivities were happening, presided over by a huge statue of Lenin.


Lenin

Does anyone else think this is really ironic? The language of the festivities was Russian and it looked like there had been a lot of red flag waving by school children. By the time we got there a lot of the people seemed to have left but there was still a crowd and entertainment in the form of various singers performing pop songs to canned music.


Military singer

We saw a few traditional costumes but all in all the festivities seemed pretty lame. We hypothesized that 1. Kyrgyz people weren't that thrilled about independence or 2. Osh has so many Uzbeks that the majority don't care about Kyrgyz independence.


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Osh: Coffee and Shoe Repair    

Image for Entry 1220170762We left Arslanbob after breakfast, sharing a taxi with Marufdhan's son and daughter-in-law. His mother was visiting that morning so we were able to see 4 generations together.







As we drove out of the village we noticed people had spread hay over the street and were waiting for cars to drive over it. I asked why and was told that the cars crushed the straw so the people could separate the grain. Further on we saw a man scooping up the pulverized straw. I guess it is a modern threshing technique.

In Jalalabad we boarded a mashrutka to Osh. Before leaving the station, the driver got in an argument with one of the passengers. They yelled at each other a bit and then the driver sat back down and drove the minibus out of town. This reconfirmed our belief that living in Jalalabad makes people pissed off.

After leaving our bags at the hotel and eating lunch at a crowded laghman place, we walked through the bazaar and I was delighted to find a shoe repair workshop. I showed a man working there, my hiking boots-- patched and with the inner heels torn and heels worn down on the outer edges until the inner sole was showing. I was expecting him to shake his head and gesture towards a trash bin (silly thought since there aren't any), but instead he looked at them, listened to what I requested and said they'd be ready in half an hour. While we were waiting, Rowshan found out there was a seamstress' shop so we brought them a pair of pants he'd ripped a big gash in. They also said to come back in half an hour.

We returned to the shoe repair shop and I delightedly watched as the shoe repair man, Delshad, ground down rubber into new heels, glued them in place, then trimmed them down. Then he took soft pieces of leather and made new back heel supports. He re-glued pieces of the soles and uppers which had become unstitched and even re-glued a spot on Rowshan's shoes where the rubber sole had become un-glued. My hiking boots have been revived when in the US they would have been thrown out. They were now comfortable and strong again. I decided I'm going to take worn out hiking boots to Tijuana and find a shoe repair guy there in the future. I think they kind of thought it funny that before even seeing the sights of Osh, we'd visited their shop. I explained that we didn't really have shoe repair places in the US because most people would just throw the old pair out and buy new ones, something I especially hate to do because it means I have to go shoe shopping and then break in a new pair-suffering through blisters instead of wearing comfy broken in shoes. The repairs cost less than $5. Hiking boots in Bishkek cost more than $100. I enjoyed seeing the other shoe repair men making new heels for women's shoes. There was a young apprentice hand stitching shoes as well. Rowshan's pants were also fixed to his satisfaction for less than $1.

The next order of business was to see if the Istanbul Pastanesi had Turkish coffee. I asked the girl working:
Me: Do you have Turkish coffee?
Her: Yes
Me: Real Turkish coffee, not Nescafe?
Her: yes
Me: Turkish coffee that you boil in a cezve (miming the shape of a cezve to be as clear as possible.
Her: yes
Me: Great! How much is it?
Her: Let me see (turns to the kitchen). We don't have any.

We didn't find too many exciting things to look at in Osh. However, across from the Pastanesi was the Philharmonia which had a statue of an accordionist (R. Abdikadirov) in the front.


accordion statue

We also found a Misha bear mural on the side of an apartment building.


olympics

 

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