Beijing, China: Big Buildings, Great Sights, Pushy People, & Crowdsby Randi / August 4, 2017
We’ve been together on this journey for a while, right? So it’s okay to get a little personal. Today we’re going to talk about what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. The Real World: China. No we are going to talk about health issues we faced in Beijing, and then be rewarded with a look at our hilarious attempt to fix the little baby laptop in a huuuge Chinese computer parts superstore center where no one spoke English. It’s like an interlude. La la la la…
Just to clear up any potential confusion, no, that lead picture has nothing to do with anything. We just saw it on the street.
So, first of all, you think Beijing, you probably think air pollution. Luckily, the air pollution levels when we were there never reached high enough levels for an Unhealthy warning alert – according to @BeijingAir on twitter, the best provider for hourly updates and pollution levels. It’s incredibly useful and apparently trustworthy (run by the embassy, not by Chinese government, which has doctored the reports before, apparently). But even in the just ‘Moderate’ and ‘Unsafe for Sensitive Groups’ ranges, we were still uneasy about breathing in so much dangerous particulate matter. I mean, we were outside the whole time, walking around the super busy streets. So we did some research and found a shop in one of the business districts that sells masks. Not surgical masks, which do absolutely nothing, but legitimate face masks that actually filter out many of the dangerous particles. Doctor’s masks and scarves do zilch, p.s. Doctor’s masks, the ones they wear in surgery or at the dentist, and the most prevalent type you will see on people in China and other polluted countries, are only for protecting others (i.e. a patient) from any germs in the doctor’s mucus. They don’t do anything in the other direction, when the wearer is inhaling. It’s just a waste. Scarves, I imagine, are just as useless if not more so.
So, first of all, you think Beijing, you probably think air pollution. Luckily, the air pollution levels when we were there never reached high enough levels for an Unhealthy warning alert – according to @BeijingAir on twitter, the best provider for hourly updates and pollution levels. It’s incredibly useful and apparently trustworthy (run by the embassy, not by Chinese government, which has doctored the reports before, apparently). But even in the just ‘Moderate’ and ‘Unsafe for Sensitive Groups’ ranges, we were still uneasy about breathing in so much dangerous particulate matter. I mean, we were outside the whole time, walking around the super busy streets. So we did some research and found a shop in one of the business districts that sells masks. Not surgical masks, which do absolutely nothing, but legitimate face masks that actually filter out many of the dangerous particles. Doctor’s masks and scarves do zilch, p.s. Doctor’s masks, the ones they wear in surgery or at the dentist, and the most prevalent type you will see on people in China and other polluted countries, are only for protecting others (i.e. a patient) from any germs in the doctor’s mucus. They don’t do anything in the other direction, when the wearer is inhaling. It’s just a waste. Scarves, I imagine, are just as useless if not more so.
this is what I look like outside in China hahahahahahahahah #bankrobber
We made our way on our first afternoon to Torana Clean Air, a smaller store than we expected with a small range of face masks and room air purifiers. They did have the masks we wanted in the sizes we needed, just not a big range of colors, so we were stuck with this weird octagon color pattern. Whatever, I don’t care what I look like if it’s keeping my lungs safer. The mask is called the Vogmask, and it helps protect from airborne particulate matter and “non-oil airborne particles” like dust, pollen, and, best of all, SECONDHAND SMOKE! I’m gonna wear this baby on the trains so hard! I know that obviously this sort of mask isn’t perfect, but it is good at filtering big and tiny particles, according to studies, and decent at the dangerous sort-of-small particles, so as long as it’s better than nothing and better than a doctor’s mask, I’m happy. I would like to get one of those total face covers with the mouth hole that you blow out of but like I’m already stared at enough here I don’t think I would be able to handle more.
They were a bit expensive at about $30 USD, but that’s super worth it for something that is helping you not get asthma and lung cancer and all kinds of shit. I do feel like I can’t catch my breath sometimes here, so I will have to see a doctor when we get back about whether China-induced asthma is a thing, but overall it’s okay. Hooray for us looking like fools but acting like smarties! I like being healthy!
So, about that…
After we left Mongolia (hip hip hoorayyy!), I had some abdominal discomfort, like, in and around the kidneys. I was peeing a helluva lot more than usual, which by now you know is a lot anyway, and it wasn’t because of drinking much more fluid, so I was concerned. We decided to go to an international health clinic we had on our emergency list (we have a list of all the hospitals and clinics where we are going where mostly expats go, so they speak English), called Parkway Health. They made a same-day appointment for me and were so nice and professional and I love them.
It was a hilarious experience, if you forget the part about me not feeling great. With my symptoms, they pretty much just needed to do a urine test. So one of the many nice nurses led me to the bathroom upstairs, but it was locked. She got another nurse, and they both tried lots of random keys to unlock it, but nothing worked. I was just standing around for like 20 minutes. Finally one of them said, “Can you just hold it?” I did my best to communicate, “Um, I don’t just need to pee, you need to test my urine, like that’s the whole point of why I’m here??” Finally they got it open and took my sample off to the lab. Meanwhile, I met the doctor. She was a lady doctor so in your face, riddles. Her English was slightly less wonderful than all the main nurses’, but still good and I felt comfortable with her. She asked if we had been traveling hard for a while, and I explained that yes, we don’t sleep we just take trains to random places for like months now. I said I had just gotten to China from Mongolia AND SHE SHUDDERED. She gets it. I said how we were pretty much in a car for 7 days there where I had to hold my pee all day and I was also dehydrated. She was like no no no this is all bad! Are you sleeping? No I’m not sleeping as much as I should be or usually need to. She was SO CONCERNED. She kept putting her hand on my shoulder like for moral support, that’s how upset she was with like, these very minor complaints. It was like if I became a doctor. I would SO be the doctor telling everyone to sleep more and drink more water and getting so upset if they weren’t doing enough of either. She was like, listen, you need to sleep more, you need to drink more water, you need to eat berries, especially red ones (amazing medicine). Then she hit a language snag and said, “You need…it’s in Chinese pingwan (or pingyan I don’t know)…just….lying down on the bed is good.” I THINK SHE WAS TRYING TO TELL ME TO TAKE NAPS. I love this doctor! The results came back and showed signs of infection, and given the symptoms was 99% a UTI. Which, given how many jokes I made about getting UTIs in my recent posts, shows that the universe looooves messing with me.
if anyone knows why I’m sharing this picture we should be best friends
We went over the things that can cause a UTI and kind of just laughed:
Dehydration – CHECK
Holding urine – CHECK
Long car rides/travel – CHECK
Squatting instead of sitting when urinating – CHECK CHECK (all that business about how it’s better anatomically to squat is just for #2; for #1 for women it leads to incomplete emptying which leads to infection in the urinary tract which issss UTI)
Poor hygiene – CHECK did you READ the Mongolian outback post?
THANK YOU PARKVIEW I WUV YOU |
They brought me a paper cup of water in a plastic holder lolol |
I mean, every single thing! Man alive! She put me on a cycle of antibiotics (and I’m all better, p.s., this blog is on a 2-week tape delay). I went to the waiting room and told Z the good news (not sarcasm; it’s a simple easily treatable thing, that’s good news). Then I said, “The doctor said I need to sleep more, drink more water, and eat berries.” Z responded, “Oh SURE she did. Did she also order you to pet more small dogs??” I almost passed out laughing so hard and had a very hard time convincing him that doing more of my favorite things was indeed doctor’s orders.
I’m relieved that we went to a real doctor who believes in medicine and fixed me up. And mostly, I’m super grateful for our UK health insurance, which covers us worldwide and immediately gave the clear when the receptionists contacted them so we didn’t even have to pay out of pocket first. We area so lucky to have such good insurance that covers us everywhere we go – well, except in the USA. It covers us in freaking China and will continue to cover us in Kazakhstan and everywhere else, but it can’t cover the USA because their healthcare system is too much of a mess. Every other country is fine though! Jesus America.
Okay that’s enough about my insides! Here’s the treat I promised you (plus one more hilarious treat at the bottom) about our adventures in Beijing’s super intense electronics scene. One whole section of the city seems to be electronic parts superstores, selling all types of gadgets but most of all doing repairs and crazy customization of gadgets. Little baby laptop’s fan stopped working, so we took it to this section of the city and just dove in headfirst. We entered one of the giant buildings, and were greeted with four floors of indistinguishable counters with Chinese guys gadgeting huge messes of gadgets. We went over to one counter that we chose randomly and showed the guy the computer and mimed a fan turning with our hands and then did a NO gesture. He got it. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the part. We tried the next counter, and a guy was just not into trying to figure anything we were miming out (not as many English speakers as you might expect in such a city!). Onward! The guy at the next counter was in, and he rebooted the computer a few times and determined that the fan wasn’t actually broken, but that something was stopping it, so he needed to just go in there and clean the parts instead of replacing them. How we communicated this is a feat of human interaction and behavior because it did not happen with actual language.
So we watched as he took apart the entire little netbook, because since it’s so small everything is under the keyboard, and he really had to take every last piece out. Like, we went down to the motherboard. Little baby was in 30 pieces! And to check if what he did worked, he had to put it all together again, all the tiny little barely visible screws that each have a very specific part they go with so you have to keep all these tiny screws straight and it’s a mess! Of course, the first go-round didn’t jive well with the computer, because it refused to work! So back apart it all went, a little more fixing, and then back together. Oh it was EXCRUCIATING to watch. How can people watch actual surgeries?! Finally he did a few more rounds of fiddling and it was back! It took over an hour of stress and just sitting in the super hot warehouse with people staring at us like whaaat are these tourists doing here. We also increased the computer’s RAM (I think that means it has horns now!) and we got a Chinese power cord so we don’t have to keep plugging it in with an adaptor, and it all came to I think 230 RMB, which is less than $35. Not bad! It was kind of fun to have the kind of electronics experience usually reserved to locals who have a clue what they are doing with electronics. It was definitely out of the ordinary and cool to see.
ahhh GUTS
Okay, one more random thing, I guess relating to health? At the checkout at most grocery stores we went to, they have tons and tons of condoms where in the USA there would be, like, gum and candy bars. It’s a little disconcerting but hey, China is serious about birth control which is good! But one brand jumped out at us and we were CRACKING up.
UH HUH, that’s a condom brand called JISSBON. So shocking and hilarious! But it gets better, if you can believe it. Our Chinese friend said that jissbon is ACTUALLY WHAT CHINESE PEOPLE CALL JAMES BOND. So this condom line is named after James Bond! And it JUST HAPPENS TO SOUND HYSTERICALLY PERFECT FOR A CONDOM. Omg I can’t even believe. The writing underneath says something like “you can’t even see it”, something very 007 spy-like. Ahh it’s so funny!
Okay that’s all the random thoughts I have for today. And don’t worry Mom I’m all better and it was like nothing!
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Bukhara, Uzbekistan: Ancient City Hasn’t Upgraded in Millennia
The ancient city of Bukhara, thought to be founded in the 6th century B.C., is like a small outdoor museum of its history. Important as a stop on the Silk Road and as a trading and cultural center before that biz ever started (so old), Bukhara’s city center is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site. The whole city center. I think you can guess by that fact that Bukhara is not exactly the most modern place to visit. So in the previous post, about Tashkent, I mentioned how our next stop of Bukhara was like stepping back in time like whoa, and I realized afterward that I was thinking about Khiva, one of our subsequent and much more impressive stops, when I said that. Still, Bukhara is hella ancient too, and I don’t think the center has changed in a long time, except for the tiny shops getting new kinds of soda and stuff. Full of mosques and madrassahs, dust and ashes, Bukhara seems to have preserved history. remarkably well. But with that comes, well, a bit of a hard time for tourists. Despite recognizing how important this place and its history were, we were kind of over it really fast.
But first we have to get there. Our train from Tashkent, our first Uzbek train, seemed promising – another overnight train where we had a cabin to ourselves, no strangers sleeping and snoring above us – except for its super early arrival time of about 6am. As long as we got some sleep we’d be fine, and without strangers in the cabin we’d surely get some sleep, right. Wrong, so so wrong. The couple in the cabin next to us were the loudest, rudest people of all time OF ALL TIME. The Uzbek trains were a little Miss Havisham looking in their old-fashioned decor, but they went all in on one piece of modernity – televisions in every cabin! Cool! We didn’t watch anything since we wanted to sleep, but the people next to us REALLY did. They put theirs on and found the most annoying Uzbek MTV sounding channel, and turned the volume up all the way, as high as it went. I knocked after a bit and asked if they could turn it down. They said okay. LIARRRRRRRS! They kept it as loud as possible, but they added to it their RAUCOUS loud insanely obnoxious laughter, which the thin walls did nothing to keep out. It was enough to (almost) put me off TV entirely, and you know how much I love TV. I mean there’s no way in hell that anything on Uzbek television was remotely as funny as they found it so like they were surely overacting to make us mad. They are helldaemons that I hope are back there. I tried to find a conductor or any kind of attendant to complain to but none were to be found. I knocked again at like 3am to ask if they could finally for the love of god just shut up but they didn’t open their door and instead just laughed harder and harder. It was incredibly rude. We started screaming through the walls out of pure despair, which they thought was hilarious. Those fuckers I hope karma gets them.
hard to see in the dark but this is where we spent 7 hours screaming at neighbors
When we finally landed, I put a pox on the houses of the neighbors and we went to find, egads, another taxi to take us to the guest house. By this point in our travels, we’d had maybe one good experience with a taxi. Not even good, but neutral. The rest were enough to provoke such rage that I probably could have picked up and thrown a taxi. This ride would be no different, and in fact with top the charts of forking shirtballs. The driver said he knew our guest house well, the Hotel Jeyran, and he kept saying “Jeyran Jeyran da Jeyran” so we were like okay at least he knows where he’s going. OF COURSE HE DIDN’T KNOW WHERE HE WAS GOING. We had to direct him like we did the others. FFS he didn’t even know when we would name huge landmarks to head towards. When we finally got to Jeyran, he had the nerve to ask for more money than we agreed to, despite his not being able to find the place on his own and lying about it. We told him to go fork himself.
Despite being called a hotel, the guest house we were staying in was more like someone’s house, with an extra room or two upstairs. It was fine, the couple running things/living there was nice, but alas, we arrived at 7am and check in wasn’t until noon. We sat in the front room for a while, while the guy watched his stories on his TV, as we just tried to decompress from the horrible night and horrible cab ride. Luckily, a tiny little baby cat lived there, and despite being allergic, I played with him because omg, tiny little baby cat. He was sooo cute and he just wanted to sleep on us.
After about an hour of just sitting, we decided to go explore and try to find a cafe with wifi. The man in charge pointed us in one direction, and when we found what he meant, it was an enormous restaurant, and it wasn’t opened yet. We continued walking around the newer town, where we were staying, and found nothing, literally nothing, not even a shop, so we went into the old town, the tourist area with all the mosques and dust and stuff. What we found was not cafes or wifi (what were we THINKING, expecting that here) but, naturally, more construction! And the kind of sweeping, all-encompassing works that put the construction we encountered previously in the ‘stans to shame. SHAAAME. We had to walk around rubble, delicately choosing our routes so as not to fall from like 10 feet into more rubble. It was not so good. All the places that looked even a tad like they might not be mosques or madrassahs were closed. Forget wifi, we’d given up on wifi; we just wanted somewhere to sit maybe that had something to drink or eat. We weren’t picky. Just something that wasn’t a pile of dust and rock. On one particularly construction-y section of the old town, we saw a tea house located up a set of stone stairs, and a little girl out on the path in front. We yelled up to her asking if they were open, and she ran inside. Cool, we thought. Luckily she had gone to get an adult (smart kid!) who came out and told us to come in come in please come in! We asked, are you open? And she said yes yes come in. They were not even a little bit open, we realized when we went in, but she was willing to make us tea (it was a tea house) and give us the little sweets that come with it, so it was really nice. Literally the nicest person we would meet in all of Uzbekistan. I had ginger tea to try to settle my stomach, which always hurts if I don’t sleep, and they brought us little dishes of nuts, halva-like treats, nutty other treats, and a pile of pure sugar rock candy. What a breakfast. It was really nice inside this place, and is probably wonderful after a day of sightseeing.
After our tea stint, we got a feel for the town as we meandered back towards the guesthouse. It was weird. Everywhere we turned, it kind of looked like Mars, or x other unknown, dusty dry sunny planet. As the place started to wake up, there were hordes of old ladies working like a prison chain gang all over town. It was really disturbing and I really hope they weren’t actually prisoners but it really looked like it. These old lady gangs were everywhere, hoeing little patches of garden and what not. I wanted to ask them if they were okay but a) I didn’t know how and b) they looked like they would happily cut a bitch.
The weirdest thing we’d noticed throughout the stans was continued in strong form in Bukhara – the constant ground watering. Every day for the past month, we’d see people watering the ground – not soil, just the street and cement and brick paths – with hoses or watering cans. Not something you see in England every day. I assume it’s to prevent too much dust buildup or it has to do with the heat, both good reasons, but it’s still quite odd to see someone watering asphalt when you were taught that shit only grows when you water soft ground. Anyway.
After we finally checked in and showered, I want to say we napped, but I don’t remember (probably because I was sleeping whaaat) and it doesn’t really matter what we did on which day (we were there for several, and too many) so let’s just get to the sights. We started (or not! who cares!) with the Ark of Bukhara, or the Bukhara Fortress, mostly because it’s the most important site to actually go into, but also because it was closest to the guest house by being situated kind of halfway to the old town center and not in it like everything else was. Side note, probably best to stay in the actual old town so you don’t have to walk the creepy streets at night. And so you’re near stuff. We were not near stuff.
ninj ninj who dat ninj, who dat who dat who dat ninj
The Ark dates back to the 5th century AD. How this city survived for so long without one I’ll never understand! It was a military structure at times, and a whole town with royal courts inside at others. According to a legend, the ark’s creator was the hero Siyavusha, who fell in love with a girl and the girl’s father was like, “I’ll let you marry her if you build a palace on this piece of land that is bounded by bullskin.” He meant that as a way to stymie the boy since it sounds impossible but the boy was like, how bout I just cut the bullskin (and we cut the bullshit HEYOOO) into thin strips and connect them instead of doing what I hope you’re not implying, which is to build a palace inside a regular-shaped skin of bull. I don’t know it all sounds ridonk. Needless to say, the Ark as it stands is hella big and I don’t doubt that every aspect of a functioning medieval town could fit inside the walls for a bit. Honestly I can see everything in modern day Bukhara fitting inside this fortress were it not full of museums right now.
improvement works going on even inside our places of interest
Inside the Ark, we ran into our first tourists in a long time – lots of French oldies 98s. French people were all over Uzbekistan, we’d find later. These guys were kind of annoying. I don’t remember why, but I’m looking at my phone notes, and I wrote “annoying French people”, so, let’s leave it at that. On site, there was a toilet, as you would hope to find in museums and the like, but this total random man charged 1000 som to use it! He didn’t seem to legitimately work there at all, and when I left the toilet, he was nowhere to be found, so like I think it was a scam. But that is I think like a few cents so it wasn’t a big deal it was the principle of the thing. Everywhere in Bukhara, we quickly learned, there would be random people outside the big sites asking for an entrance fee that wasn’t posted anywhere. It never seemed any more legit than it did at the Ark toilet. As soon as we approached a door of a mosque or something, someone would run up to us from nowhere and demand 6000 som or something and we’d be like, hey who are you.
Can you tell how blindingly sunny it was here? I was so burnt I hated it
rubble literally everywhere we turned even on the Ark
The square around the Ark is called the Registan. It’s where the public floggings would occur! The big story around Bukhara is that of two British officers named Stoddart and Connelly who were beheaded in the Registan in the 1850s. Colonel Stoddart was sent to Bukhara in 1939 to make nice with the legendarily cruel emir, Nasrullah. Instead of becoming friends with him, Nasrullah imprisoned the Englishman instead. Didn’t see that coming! No everyone did. Stoddart was in solitary confinement for three years, until another Englishman joined him! Fun! Not fun. Captain Connolly was sent to get Stoddart released. Great plan guys! Instead the emir tossed Connolly into the ‘bug pit’ with Stoddart and then publicly executed them to publicly shame England. What a guy and what a place.
After we saw everything in the Ark, we made our way fully into the old town, to see all the mosques and stuff because Mohammed knows we haven’t seen enough mosques lately. The most important, I want to say so I’m saying it, is the Kalan Mosque, from 1500s. It can hold 12,000 PEOPLE. That is a lot. Not even a drop in the bucket compared to the Penn State football stadium, but still, a lot for a mosque built so long ago. Unfortunately, we were not two of those 12,000 because when we went to enter, a rando sauntered up and said the entrance fee was 6 (SIX) times what it said in our guidebook and on the internet, clearly a scammy sammy, so we skipped it. Fortunately, this was one where the outside was impressive so we weren’t upset. We went in so many mosques lately and the rest of our time in Uzbekistan would be mainly seeing more mosques so no tears. The mosque sits across the main square from the Mir-i Arab Madrassah, so it makes for a really impressive, historically important square, though hard to remember which witch is which. At the risk of being even more disrespectful to the Uzbek people, I’m going to admit that I’m not hundo p about these pictures actually being what I’m saying they are, but I’ma do my best.
I want to say this is the madrassah
The whole mosque complex in the town center was like one enormous building, all seemingly connected and hard to distinguish. There are sooo many important buildings to see that after a while it’s like okay, didn’t I already see you, enormous sandy white building with some pretty blue tiles?
One I was excited about was the Kalyan Minaret, or the Grand Minaret, or the Tower of Death. No I didn’t know that last name when I was excited about visiting it; I just wanted to climb a tower. We like climbing things. The Tower of Death apparently got its name because criminals would be executed by being thrown from the top. So economical? Minarets’ usual function is for the muezzin to climb up in order to call err’one to prayer, so it had to big a bit taller than the mosque everyone’s going to. But the Kalyan Minaret passed the mosque and then was like you know what, I’m gonna keep on trucking, and it kept going up and up so now it’s the second tallest in all of Central Asia. We read quite a few things about how the architects of this or that monument were killed (never be an architect) because the rulers who commissioned the buildings didn’t want the architect to ever make anything more impressive. People cray. Anyway I have a vague memory of the minaret’s architect being thrown off because the wife of something important got him in trouble.
I want to say this is the mosque
The Kaylan is so impressive that it’s said that during all his conquering, Genghis Khan (my ole pal Chingis!) left it standing instead of destroying it!
Once it got to be an actually human hour of the day, the city center got a little crowded! Other people here, who would have thought. Oh we learned another story about the minaret! A young woman was to be executed after she married a local businessman. Unclear if the reason for her execution was related to the marriage. Anyway her last request was that she be allowed to wear the dress her husband bought her for her wedding day. So the official went to her house to get the dress but he a man he didn’t know what dress so he brought all forty dresses she owned. The woman put all forty dresses on instead of choosing the one, and they cushioned her fall and she lived! What an amazing place to get to keep living in. Because of that, now it’s a Bukharan tradition that all men give their brides 40 new dresses as a wedding present. And that’s why I have so many dresses!
We made our way to the base of the minaret to climb it but alas, the door was padlocked shut. On to the next!
other people! eureka!
Next we visited the Chor Minor, which is to the east of the city center so not one of the most visited sites. Built in 1807, the small lil guy was the entrance to a madrassah. A proverb says that if someone can climb up the stairs of the Chor and then back down without getting bitten by snakes, he is considered sinless. Really there aren’t snakes around (I mean I didn’t see any…) so I guess we’re all sinless? The Chor Minor has four blue turret domes that are pretty cool.
My favorite part of Bukhara by far is Labi Hauz, which is roughly pronounced ‘lobby house’ which is what we called it. And we called all the males around it lobby boys. Back in the day, Bukhara was covered with little pools and ponds used for laundry and washing horses and drinking water and all kinds of stuff so obviously they were full of disease like whoa and the Bolsheviks finally were like ‘shut this all down SHUT IT DOWN’ and drained the pools because hella disease except for the Lobby House, because so pretty, and it’s been maintained ever since, the only one still full of water and no disease.
GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY LOBBY BOY
You can see why it was my favorite. It was like an oasis in the middle of all the dust. I love water and this pool looked so gorgeous surrounded by the old buildings and camel statues. Of course there was construction happening at one end though. There was a cafe or two along one side that would have been perfect for sitting and relaxing if you needed it. I would have loved more like that around the pool instead of most of it being tout shops.
My second favorite place in Bukhara was the old synagogue! It’s a tiny little place, not only smaller than all the synagogues I’ve seen in my life but smaller than all my past studio apartments too. But apparently one of the Torahs it holds is 1000 years old! Mostly it’s nice just to know that there are still jews trying to maintain a presence here and because there are so few they are sooo happy to have guests. Naturally being old religious men, the guys there were more excited for my husband’s arrival than mine because men > women in 99% of the world, even though he’s not jewish, but alas, it was still very nice. It’s free to visit but they ask for donations and you should donate. The best part was the picture they had framed on the wall of their most important visitor before us – Hillary Clinton. Oh man I actually started to cry right there, thinking about a) how I was standing in spot where Hillary and like NOBODY else in the world had stood, this tiny little hole in the wall synagogue in a tiny old town in Uzbekistan I mean come on we’re basically bff Hillz, and b) I was just so sad that she wasn’t president.
After we simintoved and mazel toved it up, we explored the city center more. Just a few meters from the main mosque, where we were just hours before, a wifi cafe had sprung up out of absolutely nowhere. We spent sooo long looking for you all our first morning, damn cafe! And now you’re just advertising your wifiness all over town! It just appeared out of nowhere like Brigadoon! Also appearing out of nowhere in that main area was a Kapitalbank ATM that spits out US dollars!! Amazing!! And, next to the ATM was a gorgeous little courtyard with 1000 som toilets in the back that actually were worth it, not squats but big and clean! It was a lovely little surprise block of happiness.
to be fair, this makes it sound like there’s NO wifi. free from wifi.
my favorite sign!
We haven’t even scratched the surface of historical sights in Bukhara but I’m getting tired. Here are some more beautiful buildings that are important to go look at.
madrassah?
M. C. Escher mausoleum?
Doesn’t it look like Tatooine??!! It really did!
So many cool things right? Just for some reason it didn’t really add up so that the sum of the parts were greater than the whole, know what I’m saying? Lots of interesting buildings to look at, but like, that’s it. There was a lack of life to the place to it fun to be there and not just interesting to look at.
There was a lack of gas too! Like, the entire town, old and ‘new’ parts, had a gas outage while we were there so the restaurants could only grill food for us! And there was little hot water because of it. Such a weird sad thing to add on top of all the other weirdness. Luckily some of the places could make me salads, which I always liked. And Bukhara seemed to have beans on hand, which is nice. I can recommend finding salads at Minzifa – which was playing the X-FILES THEME SONG when we were there, and Saroy, both right along the Lobby House. Most of the other central restaurants will happily offer you grilled eggplant and red peppers, which you KNOW I LOVE. eye roll. I also got a heap of white rice with a happy face, see below.
vegables!
BEANS
So Bukhara had some great sights and I was super happy to have beans and salads but mostly it was kind of boring. The people we met in the restaurants and sites were kind of mean and put us off the place. The people are really what make places special when you travel so to be surrounded by mean people as the majority for the first time really ever was disconcerting enough to tarnish our Uzbek travels somewhat. Still, I’m glad we got to go to this historically important place and I’m glad I don’t have to go back.
St. Petersburg, Russia: So Much Better Than What “Anastasia” Taught Me
Greetings from Cankt Peterbourg! I wish I could access the Russian keyboard on this little netbook but I can’t/don’t feel like it. We’re having a great time in St. Petersburg, which in English adds the ‘s’ after Peter but in the Russian there’s no ‘s’! Fun! With! Languages! Before this trip, my only exposure to this quite charming city was the song from “Anastasia” that starts: “St. Petersburg is gloomy! St. Petersburg is bleak! My underwear got frozen standing here all week!” But it’s better than that. Well that is a very low bar but St. Petersburg is very nice. Though it has been raining hard a lot which is gloomy, and yes it is cold but like, for the summer, not for the earth, and definitely not cold enough to freeze undies. The city is a very interesting mix of old and new school while still seeming totally European. We are surely easing in slowly to the onslaught of Soviet towns we will be seeing later, because right now it still feels like we’re in Europe.
Well, except for the Cyrillic everywhere! It is so strange and so cool to finally see what we have been preparing for with our Russian classes. We’re doing great, if not at communicating with people (omg SLOW DOWN (oh and maybe could you write it down I’m better at reading kthx)) then at least at reading signs (and menus! Most are in English too! We’re great at that!). They say for all languages you really learn when you are immersed, and I can see how true that would be for Russian, now that we actually are surrounded by it and its alphabet. We’re definitely getting stronger with reading Cyrillic quickly and I have high hopes that that will lead to comprehension. Maybe by the time we get to Siberia we will actually be able to handle the fact that no one will speak English! I dream big.
When we got off the train on Saturday at Finylandskiy Vauxhall (named after the country we had just left? That’s confusing!), we walked around the station to find the giant Lenin statue, commemorating the big speech he gave when he arrived in St. Petey’s in 1917 during the Revolution. We start our sightseeing immediately, even when we have 90-pound backpacks on (and I’m frontpacking too ughhh I have too much stuff but I don’t know what I can get rid of! I really did just bring the bare minimum but we’re going to every season!). We walked the half hour or so to our hostel, The Travellers’ Palace, and it was hot so that was pretty rough because like I said, 90 pounds. I will either break or be super strong by the end of this. The receptionist at the hostel is very friendly and helpful, and even though we can hear every footstep people take at all hours of the night and they sound like gorillas stomping around and even though someone stole my bananas and apples from the fridge (they were labelled!) (and I KNOW bananas in the fridge is weird but I was keeping everything together in the labelled bag (so f-ing ironic!)), we like the hostel fine. The shower is legit the strongest I can remember taking in my entire life, like it was intended for an elephant and I wish I could take it with me. The rooms here are named after famous Russian literary characters, like Onegin and Catherine. It was quite the good omen when we were put in Karenina, considering Anna K is my favorite book (once you pretend that that final section about Levin finding Jesus by talking to peasants (“Life is often so unpleasant / You would know this, as a peasant!”) doesn’t exist)! There’s a little light-up train on my bedside table and everything, haha so morbid. And across the hall is the room called Bolkonsky, like the prince’s family in War & Peace! So it’s like the universe wants me to keep singing “The Great Comet” at every moment of this trip!
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Nevsky Prospekt
Horse Wash!
Once we dropped our stuff, it was already late afternoon, so the best use of our time was to stroll the Nevsky Prospekt, the main boulevard running through the city that everyone spells with a K even in English so I’m rolling with it. It houses all the big stores, lots of restaurants, a good number of statues and monuments, and lots and lots of people. Walking along it is a great first thing to do in St. Petey’s because you can get a sense of the city’s layout and feel, while seeing both important historical markers and fun Russian chain stores (like the Russian version of Sephora whose Russian name is pronounced like Rive Gauche lol that and Sushi Wok, where the ‘sushi’ is in Cyrillic but the ‘wok’ is in our/Latin characters, crack me up every time. There are also horse statues along the various canals which we liked because it reminds us of our flat in London (those who have been over and have seen what we call the Horse Wash will know why!).
Singersss
On the Nevksy Prospekt is the famous Singers sewing machine factory, or the building that used to be that and now is a giant bookstore in the most beautiful building along the boulevard. Inside, they had a snack section that had vegan bars (similar to Lara Bars)! Marked and everything! Come on obviously I love books and bookstores but we can’t buy books on this trip (or anything) but we need snacks. We also saw this monument to Catherine the Great (with her laavaaahs).
you can call me kitty kat
So many canals all over the place, so they call StP the Venice of the North and it’s hard to get a handle on streets
The other hugely famous building along the Nevsky Prospekt is the giant department store Gostiny Dvor. Although we are so determined not to add anything to our packs right at the beginning of the summer, we have a necessity exception – and we needed umbrellas so we bought umbrellas there yesterday (after we got drenched in a downpour, naturally). Upstairs at the Gostiny Dvor, the long, curving walkways are nearly empty and provide great views of the Prospekt. What most people don’t find, however, is the INSANE CELEBRITY FIGURE AND ANIMAL SCULPTURE GARDEN around a far bend that no one goes to. OH MY GOD, look, it’s Hagrid and the Harry Potter kids STANDING BEHIND PUTIN! No big deal! Don’t mind the peasants with sickles! OR THE DINOSAUR! Why this isn’t the #1 thing to do in St. Petersburg I will never understand. As it is, it’s pretty much hidden and NO ONE was there or even nearby so I think I discovered some kind of magical walkway.
you’re a wizard vladdy
Ruby Sparks was a very good movie
As for serious things, the Kazan Cathedral is along the Prospekt, a Russian Orthodox church dedicated not to Elia or even Zoe but to Our Lady of Kazan, which I know is very helpful. It’s not a very nice looking Cathedral, kind of the most Soviet and drab-looking thing we’ve seen yet, but it could just be that it is severely outshone by the gorgeous cathedral across the way from it, The Church of Spilled Blood. I know, I know, it doesn’t exactly sound like the most beautiful spot in all St. Petersburg, but it is! It’s real name is the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood which yes doesn’t really help my case. So it’s built around the spot where Alexander II was mortally wounded and inside there’s a little stone area and canopy marking the exact spot where he was hit by grenades and suffered the injuries that killed him a little later (he actually died in the Hermitage) you know what why don’t I just show you:
no use crying over spilled oooohhhh nm
come at me laser jesus
See it really is soo beautiful even though it’s so dire. But all churches are built around and commemorating dire circumstances. This church, which we went in yesterday, is one of the most incredible churches I’ve ever seen, definitely in my top five. I know I said in a recent Spain post that ugh churches, who can tell them apart after St Peter’s, but this was a great one. I was blown away by how beautiful it was inside and outside. Usually they’re whatever on the inside, full of paintings of oldies and crucifixen, but this one is decorated in 100% MOSAIC. Every painting and image you see is made up of tiny tiles (that is what mosaic means!). See that lady getting lasered from the heavens by a laser-happy Jesus? ALL TILES. How incredible is this?
what happens if the glue stops working rain of tiles |
This canopy covers the actual spot where Alexander II was hit by the grenade/s. They built the church around it. |
this is the most beautiful lavish door to jesus I’ve ever seen
THE HERMITAGE
erma gerd, the hermiterge
On Sunday, we woke up early (lol not) and went to The Hermitage, the endless museum inside the Winter Palace. We read about how crowded it is, especially in the summer, and how the lines for tickets can stretch to a kilometer long. Because of this, we were tempted to buy tickets online, but they cost $18 online and only 700 rubles in person so we decided to risk it. And it’s a good thing we did, because there was no line. We bought tickets at one of several kiosks in the courtyard and went right in. On a Sunday! In the summer! We were so pleased with ourselves and got a little too cocky about it because after about an hour and half the Chinese cruise ship groups arrived ahhhh! It was wall to wall and they really like to push so it got a little rough. But it was still great. The Hermitage has millions of pieces of art, so you really need a plan to make sure you see what you wanna see. The state rooms of the palace and the Russian art are the most important. The Italian and French art is great, of course, but we’ve seen that literally every weekend at museums in London. That sounds very ridiculous of me but when you live in a museumy city like London, it’s important to see stuff that’s different from what you see all the time and feel okay about skipping the same same stuff. So in the Hermitage, we focused on the palace parts, the preserved rooms and furniture and sculptures and stuff, over paintings that have nothing to do with Russian history. And the palace rooms, hoo boy are they amazing. We both love malachite and cobalt shiz and this palace was full of both. It was all so stunning. I especially loved this gazebo.
i wish luke and lorelai got married on this one
We were both obsessed with the library, which was so Belle. And I loved the Peacock Clock, which I didn’t know at first even was a clock. I mean the tiny mushroom thing at the bottom has a clock on it so it’s not like the whole amazing gold artwork is a clock, it’s literally just the smallest piece of it that is a clock, but still, pretty cool. I got in fights with Chinese men who were trying to push me aside when I was taking this picture.
The Hermitage is important to visit, I think, since it’s such a well-known tourist attraction, but it’s exhausting. It goes on forever, and the bathrooms are very poorly located. We had to backtrack through to the entrance to find one, when we were like in the middle of the top floor. So dumb. It shouldn’t be that hard! But I’m glad we went and saw the great pieces they had. It’s easy to spend hours and hours there, but don’t.
I expect grander thrones 
how beautiful is this fancy witch’s cauldron 
a clock that is also a giant piece of furntiure |
not sure what this was but i liked it it was like a big like thing 
this was called the boudoir but it was just a lot of velvety chairs so nice though |
Even though we were pretty beat after our day at the Hermiterge, we decided to walk to St. Isaac’s Cathedral next (in the pouring rain! no umbrellas yet!) and climb the 260 stairs to the top of the golden dome! For the view! So pretty! The golden dome you see in the picture is very striking in the skyline. The climb wasn’t that bad at all, and it was worth it for the stunning views. Note that the main Cathedral is one ticket and the entrance for the climb to the top of the dome is another separate ticket. It’s worth it though! Again I’m proved wrong because the insides of this church were beautiful too. Russia keeps proving me wrong about church insides! St. Isaac’s was full of malachite columns which were stunning.
the view from the top of Isaac’s
main altar at Isaac’s |
that’s Isaac! no i don’t know |
The cathedral tour of Russia is only just beginning! After we saw the Church of Spilled Blood, we went to the Peter and Paul Fortress, the original citadel of St. Petersburg built by Peter the Great in 1703. It’s a big complex full of various museums, but we skipped the many museums (so many museums!) and went straight to the Peter & Paul Cathedral, the gold spire in the city skyline. This Cathedral houses the tombs of Russian czars from Peter I to Alexander III, and there’s a little room off to the side with the Romanovs, including Anastasia, which I was excited to see and then realized how messed up that is. But speaking of, I still haven’t written about the new Broadway musical so maybe I will do that in honor of seeing her tomb! So morbid I’m sorry. It was a decent show, and a decent church. The fortress was best for its views of the Hermitage and other stately buildings from the other side of the river. Luckily today was the one sunny day in the middle of lots of rain so this view on our walk along the riverfront fortress was lovely.
the Romanovs tombs
After we saw all the things Monday, we took the subway (new subway!) down to the Grand Maket Rossiya, which is a private museum of a scale model of ALL OF RUSSIA. It is AWESOME. It shows everyday life in every part of Russia, from St. Petersburg (included the building we were in, weeeird) and all the monuments we’ve seen so far, to Moscow, to Siberia and the Urals and the Sochi Olympics and farmers everywhere and a movie studio with various funny backlots and people on the beach and lots of trains and lots of construction and just EVERYTHING you could imagine in life, they had it on the model. It was so cool, and so giant and detailed that it took an hour and a half just to walk around it once. One of the coolest parts was that the lights would go down every 13 minutes for 2 minutes, gradually to show the sun setting and then rising. Some of the ‘night’ sections there were thunderstorms which was kind of crazy. My favorite part, of course, was that Vinnie Poo (the Russian Winnie the Pooh who is NOTHING like the Winnie we know) was hidden in one of the forests. I also loved the “Bad Husband” section that showed a man in his underwear on the sidewalk as his wife threw all his clothes out the window. Like. What.
Is that Putin riding a bear?? 
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So yeah so far St Petersburg has been very nice! The weather is ploha, with super heavy rainstorms most days. Yay for anoraks! Drivers here are absolutely insane, like super speeding down the Nevksy and no cops ever stop it. Don’t rent a car here! Traffic is really bad too so we mostly walk everywhere. One thing I’ve noticed is how confusing but nice the pedestrian crossings are. Most have green walking man countdown clocks, and most give you a crossing time of well over 30 seconds, some even 90 seconds! BUT, the confusing part, the red man/don’t walk man gets a countdown too, and sometimes they switch red to green/ stop to go without finishing the clock. Like yesterday we were crossing and green man said we had 30 seconds left but then it changed to red man and cars started going. I don’t know about that! I am tired. We’ve done a lot and we still have some museums we haven’t discussed yet! Today we are thinking of going to Peterhof, like the Versailles of Russia, but again it is super storming and it’s really a good weather type thing. We will see! Last night we saw the World’s Longest Opera at the Mariinsky Theatre, which was, well, long. It wasn’t as long time-wise as the Mastersingers but it was longer soul-wise. It also might be as fun to write about as the Mastersingers was so stay tuned! A little more on St Pete’s to come (and food!), and then we’re off literally on a midnight train to Moscow. Byeeee!
