2024 trip to Kyryzstan, Germany, and Portugal

 Travels to Bishkek, the Capital of the Kyrgyz Republic and the surrounding mountains.

I will post my pictures to this URL :

https://photos.app.goo.gl/A11RJYktY8e3dYkj6

BACKGROUND

I wanted to go somewhere to get some Russian language immersion to help my learning of Russian, as I used to do in my Chinese period. Obviously, with Russia invading Ukraine I could not go there. By chance, I came across a  travel story about someone traveling to Kyrgyzstan.  I then found out that 75 % of the population there speaks Russian.  I decided that that was a place I wanted to visit.  So I booked some flights on Turkish Airlines, which may have been a mistake and booked a hotel in Bishkek.  

The country is located south of Kazakhstan and north of Afghanistan and west of China.  I knew nothing of this geography a few months ago so do not be surprised if this is all new to you. It is the fun of traveling. My own knowledge of geography comes almost exclusively from traveling.  What ever I was taught about geography in school, mean sweet nothing to me and never stuck in my mind  I need physical contact with a place before I can remember where it is.

MAP OF CENTRAL ASIA

 

MAP OF KYRGZ REPUBLIC

 

OK, so now we know where we are going.  I have not left home, so what I writing is based only on research.  All this will become more interesting when I get there.    I give you below the basics of this country. 

It was formerly part of the Russian Empire as early as 1863, then  part of its successor, known as the USSR. After the USSR fell apart in 1989, the country again become independent for the first time in over a 100 years.  It is Turkic country which is predominantly Muslim.  As the Russian  language was imposed throughout the USSR, Russian is still today one of the official  languages. In the street and of business one hears a lot of people speaking Kyrgyz.

The country sits on the border with China where the Ziangang province ends.  This is the area where the Chinese Uighur  live. If you follow Chinese news, this is the Muslim area of China which has been brutally oppressed by the Chinese to bring the Uighurs under control by rather draconian measures.  I understand that there are also Uighurs living in the Kyrgyz Republic. It is south of Kazakhstan which is a huge country and with whom there were many territorial disputes.  That seems to have been mostly resolved.  It is a mountainous country with the famous Tian Shan mountains which cross the country.

Its recent political history has been up and down with lots of government changes. 3 presidents were overthrown in 2005, 2010 and again in 2021.  Those must have been hectic times.  The current president ( Sadyr Japarov) was elected in 2021 by a large majority (79%) and things have been quiet since  Below of the basic stats on the country:

Country Context

Kyrgyz Republic	2022
Population, million	6.8
GDP, current $ billion	10.9
GDP per capita, current $	1607.3
Life Expectancy at Birth, years	71.8

BISHKEK

Bishkek is the capital of the country.   It has a population of close to 1 million. It sits at 1000 meters on a huge owl surrounded by majestic mountains.  The highest mountain in the country is 7000 meters. The countryside is verdant but mainly used to feed herds of cattle and sheep. Its main export is gold and wool.  Most of its trade and emigration went to Russia until the Ukraine conflict.  Remittances from expatriates back home were a large part of the national income.  These have been drastically curtailed in the current war situation and has badly affected the country.

ON TO BERLIN

After a week in Kyrgyzstan, I am off for meetings in Berlin with a German foundation.

I will also take a couple of days to do some tourism in Berlin. It is such a beautiful city with so much to see and do. Hopefully, Spring will have sprung.

 ON TO CLEEBERG

I will drop in on the last living member of my first wife's familly, Edgar Nabroth.  I have not seen him in years and his health is failing.

ON TO LISBON AND CAISCAIS, PORTUGAL

When I went to book a flight on Lufthansa from Frankfurt back to Miami the cost in economy he was US $ 1500!!! Checking around, I found flight on TAP Portugal for $900.  So I will use some of my savings to do some sightseeing in Lisbon with a day in Caiscais. I hope to meet up for dinner one night with some former World Bank colleagues and take in some lovely Fado Music.

So, I am off this evening for a 12 hour flight from Miami to Istanbul, then a second 5 hour leg from Istanbul to Bishkek. I have a few hours layover so I plan to hit one of the lounges which has a shower and rest up a bit before loading up again. I arrive 2 days from now at 0430 and hopefully my duty driver is waiting there with my name on a cardboard piece to take me to my Smart hotel in Bishkek for a good night rest.  

More later. 

TRIP AND ARRIVAL IN BISHKEK.

So on the afternoon of April 2, I got on the Trirail train which took me direct from Cypress Gardens north of Fort Lauderdale to Miami  International airport in an hour. This is so much more convenient than driving there which can take up to 2 hours. The walk to the check in gates is about 15 minutes. Check in with Turkish Airlines went smoothly. As the trip included a long layover in Istanbul, I decided to check my bag through to Bishkek keeping what I needed for the trip including my meds. When I first got into the terminal I wanted to verify the counter for check-in on the big board. I was upset when I did not find my my destination at first. Then I realized I was looking for Constantinople... Sorry, I guess I was living a few centuries in the past...

 

 We left basically on time but encountered some heavy weather around about Bermuda.  As we were over water for 8 of the 10 hours of flying, this gave the pilot lots of room to manoevre around weather as few other airlines opt for the southern route Turkish chose to cross the Atlantic. I had booked myself an extra legroom seat which was great, just behind the business class section. I felt good as those sitting about 10 feet ahead of me in business class had paid $4000 more than I for what looked like not really much better seats. Food was fine but service was really shoddy.  As anyone who flies in North America knows, most, if not all the airlines have cabin crew come through with water for the passengers. Turkish crew did not once in 10 hours make such an offer, preferring to stay in the back of the plane chatting with each other. Amazing!. As I have a habit of walking around every 2 hours, I got my water each time from the rear staying crew. When I asked them about offering water to passengers they said no, they did not do that.

We arrived on time in Istanbul (got that right this time).  I had a 4 hour layover as Turkish had cancelled my  original connection of the previous day and had given me a new routing without consulting me.  I had noted that one of the lounges in the Istanbul airport, IGA, offered showers. I made a beeline for that lounge and immediately went into the the shower area. As I had been traveling now for 13 hours, the warm water of the shower was miraculous. Such a pleasure is hard to describe. The result was that I felt like a new born. 

After using the various services of the lounge,  I headed out the gate of my next leg to Bishkek. This meant walking for almost 30 minutes to get to my new gate. The Istanbul airport was recently completed at a cost of US$ 35 billion and it is a full fledged disaster. This seems to be the general consensus. The distance from the A gates and the F gates is almost 1.5 kms. There are only a smattering of people-movers and passengers are herded through what is a monstrous shopping center. Prices are reputed to be through the roof. There are occasional little golf carts but very few and they demand a tip from passengers. It must be a lucrative gig for the drivers. Apparently, the airport has no public transport to the city which is said to be miles away. It takes passengers hours to get to and from the new airport which is far to big for the needs of the city. The design is terrible and I do not want to think how may people do not make their connections. Crazy.  The Chinese built a new airport twice the size for half the costs and installed all the necessary facilities for passengers to get to an from their gates with ease.   Somebody must have made a mint in Turkey on this silly project. It is so bad, that I decided to obtain wheel chair service on my return from from Bishkek-Istanbul to Berlin. Otherwise I doubt I could make a 2 hour connecting as my arrrival flight comes into gates F and my departure goes out of Gate A at the other end of the building.

At 8 PM, we left Istanbul for the 5 hour flight to Bishkek arriving on time at 0430. Immigration was simple, with not a single question asked. I immerged into the crowd and found this large lady holding a card with my name. I always find it a relief when such arrangements work in a new place. My driver, Kyrgz lady called Tursunay efficiently dropped me at my hotel. I checked and went straight into my bed which again felt like almost heaven. I slept off and on through most of the day in my huge room in the Smart Hotel.

Tuesday

In the late afternoon I hit the sidewalk and headed to the department store called GUM( As in Moscow). The  was difficult as Bishkek is at almost 3000 feet and air is rare. But it gave me my first view of the people and place. In fact, it is a strange mix of China, Russia and the local country,  The people are definitely Asian with most looking very Chinese. I found that almost all of them were speaking  Kyrgz to each other. Signs are often in both language both written in Russian Cyrillic. I found that everybody I approached also spoke Russian. So my 24 hour trip was starting to pay off.  I went in and out of stores, talking to people, buying little things and asking questions. I got more speaking practice in an hour in the street then I had ever had. I won't end up fluent, but my Russian should move ahead. 

I had been told that there were 2 floors in the GUM department store where one could buy local handicrafts which aways interest me. I started by finding out that fridge magnets which my family collect, cost $1, compared to $4 or 5 elsewhere in this world. It was my first indication that  prices here were very low. I bought a few trinkets and headed back to the hotel for the night.

Wednesday

I made arrangements with my driver, that she would pick me up the next day around noon and she would show me around town. I asked here what her hourly rate was and she said the equivalent of $7 per hour! I did not believe. Anywhere else a tour guide with a car would charge $50 per hour. I had to double check with her to make sure. She confirmed.  So this noon, she picked me up in her very nice new car and we headed to the offices of Turkish where I booked my wheel chair service for my next flights. I then told Sursunay that I wanted to buy a local silk carpet. We drove back to a building which was across from my hotel with a big sign, Carpet market. She told me the market was on the 4th floor so I headed into the building. No lift.  Up 4 stories I went on foot only to find out that the market had recently moved away. Some guys in a small office gave me an address and said that  carpets were sold there.

So off we went, east towards a shopping center called Giant. There on the second floor where endless carpet dealers, not one with a client. I picked one as my source. Bear in mind that no one here speaks english so my Russian is getting a real workout,  When I enquired whether they had any Kyrgz silk carpets the staff said no and that the only place to find that would be at the bazaar, or central market.  My driver hates the bazaar and so far we have stayed away but I may relent on this. Long story short, after looking at a beautiful  silk carpet from Iran which was 1.5 meters by two meters, I decided that would be too heavy to carry. The price was only US$400. I settled on a smaller on of a meter by 1.5 meters. It was rolled up and is about the size of 2 footballs. It was also very cheap. How could I pass that up. This may be the cheapest country to buy carpets.

Thursday

This day we headed out early in the morning to the Ala Archa canyon, about 45 minutes south of Bishkek.  From my hotel, one can see the towering mountains call Tian Shan. I have pictures of them taken Saturday which was the first clear day since I got here. The drive takes about an hour on good roads with little traffic. This location used to be reserved for VIP guests of the country. In fact, there is an electronic gate which is controlled by a machine which needs to be fed with about $7  in  park fees. Once inside, there is a parking area and a hotel. One then can only go on foot up a pleasant path. Bear in mind that one now is at 2300 meters, 7,500 feet so there is a serious lack of air. But the place is beautiful and peaceful.  I walked up for about 20 minutes to reach the snow level and called it a day.  The old heart was pumping at about 106 beats per minute and I figured that was enough. My driver told me that in summer there are so many tourists that cars line up outside the gate for hours to get in. After getting back into the car, Tursunay drove me back to the hotel. It was a great excursion. It is quite amazing how these 14000 feet mountains rise up quite quickly only 45 km from the city. Now they are completely snow covered and rather majestic. One can see more about this canyon at:

https://www.advantour.com/kyrgyzstan/bishkek/ala-archa.htm#:~:text=%22Ala%2DArcha%22%20means%20%E2%80%9C,flora%20and%20fauna%20of%20Kyrgyzstan.

One thing one notices in Bishkek is that there are a lot of multistory buildings rising up to  20 stories where the cement has been poured but there is no more work been done. No doubt these are projects which ran out of money or market, or both as a result of the ongoing recession here.

Friday

The weather has cleared and the moutains are in full view this morning for the first time. If this were Europe or North America, there would be many ski areas. There is now only one. Today, I will be picked up by my driver and I want to visit the  huge white mosque. 

The white mosque was very impressive as you can see from the pictures. It has beautiful blue coloring on the inside and a collection of colored windows which is impressive.  I went in around noon after removing my shoes and found only one man sitting on the carpeted floor taking pictures of his child.

The mosque is the biggest in central asia and can hold 7000 people inside and 20,000 in the courtyard. It is built in Constantinople style and took 6 years to complete. It was financed by Tukey and Jordan.

I have this fixed goal of trying to buy a Kyrgyz silk carpet. Until now I have not found a single store offering this. I have been told that there are no such carpets on sale here. 

So today, Tursunay suggested we try the Dordoi market. It is located 10 miles North of the city and is reputed to be the biggest market in central asia. It is where most of the imported products are delivered before being distributed to individual stores throughout the country. It is a huge ugly place consisting of shipping containers stacked 2 and 3 hight and in places 10 high. Absolute chaos exists with hundreds of cars seeking to park mostly without success. There are an estimated 10000 individual containers with the lower one serving as a store and the upper ones used for storage. Some 70,000 persons make a living here. It is spread over an area of 160 rugby pitches of 10,000 square feet each. Try to figure that out. National Geographic did a report on the market on March 13, 2017 (outofedenwalk.nationalgeoraphic.org). 

After driving slowly through the vast market, Tursunay chose a rather lare carpet store. We found a parking spot from some attendant and paid him $.50 to guard our car. In the vast store with carpets from all over the world, there was not a single Kyrgyz silk carpet. As a matter of fact, the salesman said that there were no such carpets available in the country as silk is too expensive. With that rather sad piece of news, we got back in the car and drove back to the city. What a strange place!!

Saturday

Today is the big trip day over to Lake Issyk Kul. The name means "hot lake" as it never freezes.  This lake is to the south east of Bishkek and about a 3 and half hour drive. The lake itself is the second highest in the world at 1608 meters after Titicaca in Bolivia. It is 180 km long and 60 wide and is salty as it has no outlet and minerals just accumulate. Below is an aerial view of the lake. The Tian Shan moutains on the southern shore rise to 7000 meters. As one can see, the lake sits in a huge plateau surrounded by mountains. Interestingly, the Chinese name for these mountains TIan Shan, has been adopted. In Mandarin, Tain Shan means mountains of heaven. (Like Tian An Men square in Beijing which means " Gates of heaven". In Kyrgyz, the range is called Tenir Too, which also means Mountains of Heaven.

The lake is the main recreation area for the country and a huge attraction for foreign tourists. There are houses, shacks, yourts and hotels all along the shore which fill up in the summer. I am told there are masses of people, local and tourists and that everywhere there are line ups of cars and people. The lake is rich in fish which is a huge food source for locals and tourists. The depth varies from 60 to 270 meters as one can see above.

So Tursunay picked me up at 7.30 this morning and we headed out towards the lake. I must say the roads in this country are very good and far better than in Russia. Traffic was light as it was Sunday morning. The road was very tightly watched with speed cameras set up almost every five miles. I have never seen so many cameras but they do keep most people from speeding. The road is mostly flat half the way until one hits the mountains closer to the lake. It is a beautiful drive with snow capped mountains in the distance almost all the way We arrived a the town of Cholpon Ata and went straight to the cultural center of Ruh Ordo. This is a nice park on north shore of the lake and I was the only person there. It has a nice collection of stone carvings which I always like seeing. I took lots of pictures.  The water of this lake is crystal clear and only lightly salted.  

After spending a couple of hours in the park, we headed back to Bishkek and arrived at the hotel around 3pm. It was a great drive. I  was able to see part of Kazakhstan as the road runs parallel and close to the border. In fact, the lake is due south of Almaty, the largest city of Kazakhstan with a population of 2 million.

SUNDAY

I awoke this morning, my last day, with a splitting headache and feeling woozy in the head. I have to assume that this is the result of the altitude yesterday which took up above 6000 feet.  Luckily,  I had not set up any tourist activities. Tursunay announced yesterday that a friend had recommended an upmarkeet handicraft store that may have the ellusive silk carpet. So this morning she picked me up and off we went to the store only to find that they did not have any silk carpets but only the thick local type which I do not find attractive. So, there will be no silk carpet, but it was fun to chase around. After a last visit to the TSUM store to pick up a few T-shirts for the folk at home, I returned to the hotel for a slow day that included sitting on my balcony in the sun enjoying the beautiful mountains in the distance. 

Tuesday

On Tuesday morning my driver Tursunay was ill and sent her son to take me to the airport. I flew to Istanbul in 5 hours, made my connection to my Berlin flight and arrived in Berlin in the late afternoon. I headed to my digs in the apartment of a member of the Foundation and went to bed early after a long day.

GERMANY

Berlin is a beautiful city. In area, and in population (6 million) it is now the biggest city of Europe. A quarter of the city is parks and huge lakes. Even the now shut Tempelhof airport has been decreed to remain as a park with all its former runways now being used by skateboarders and drone flying pilots. Berlin has huge roads of 6 and 8 lanes and has been turned into a very representative city. It is clean and well maintained in total contrast to Paris which has become a dirty, graffitti covered city with little security.  The Germans have made huge investments in erasing all traces of the former communist East Berlin.  It has more bridges than Venice and probably any other city in the world. It has  a huge number of museums, theatres and 3 Opera houses. The artistic scene is very lively. As there is very little heavy industry in Berlin, the air is fairly clean.

My first days were taken up with meetings with various people of the foundation that invited me.

On Wednesday evening, one of the directors had organized tickets for us to see the Moozart opera, The Magic Flute in the newly  renovated Staatsoper unter den Linden. It is a 3 hour show and a very complicated plot which I could not follow. Opera is not my favorite entertainment so I must confess to having slept through parts of this classic piece. 

On Thursday, I set out to visit the Humboldt Forum museum housed in the completely reconstructed Stadtschloss.  This building stands on the original grounds but has a rather violent past. The palace was badly damaged in the WWII. It was in East Berlin and the communist government decided to tear down the standing walls and build the people's building. It was a huge ugly glass building symbolizing the socialist regime.  When the wall came down in 1989, there were huge discussions about what to do with the monstrosity.  It was finally decided to tear the whole thing down and rebuild the Stadtschloss as a museum. So in 2013 they started a 7 year building period resulting the facade being rebuilt as it was before the last war.  The inside is a very modern and impressive museum. I decided to visit the Asian floor that is the top floor of the new museum.  It holds an impressive collection of Asian art. The artefacts are accessible to visitors and there are explanations on cards in both German and English for each piece.

I decided to give my small  Iranian made carpet that I bought in Bishkek as thankyou  to the family who hosted me during my stay in Berlin.  They much appreciated the gift. One day,  I may find the elusive silk carpet made in Kygyzstan. I had hoped to see or contact some of my cousins who live in Berlin, but frankly, I was coming down with a bad cold and did not feel very sociable.

Sunday

On Sunday, I boarded my train to Frankfurt with a connection to Butzbach to visit my last surviving brother in law. He is the youngest brother of my first wife, Brigitte. His health is weak so I decided I needed to visit him.  The train rides both had hours of delay so I arrived at my destination over 4 hours later than planned. The German rail system seems to be falling apart, as such delays have become frequent in a country where one used to be able to set ones clock on its reliabilty.  

This may be symptom of general stress in the German economy which is reeling from the effects of the Russina agression on Ukraine which has forced Germany to take more than a million Ukrainians refugees, mostly women and children. Germany has been hit with rising costs as trade with Russia has been totally killed. I sensed among Germans an unease about this situation fueled by fears that the Russian agression will expand beyond Ukraine. Also there are more and more strikes in the country which used to enjoy labor peace. Airline staff, airport staff, railroad staff seem to be on constant rolling strikes. These bring the transport sector to chaos with cancelled trains, planes and buses.  In public transport, one can clearly see that 30 to 40% of the ridership are people from other countries.  One hears foreign languages everywhere.  All this is creating feelings of unease amongst many Germans who wonder where the country is headed. This has also feed the rise of extreem right wing politicians who play on these resentments. These huge waves of immigrants, coupled with the lack of new construction, has resulted in severe housing shortages and huge rent increases even in a city like Berlin that used to be one of the cheapest places to live in Germany. Life is still good in Germany with its vibrant cultural offerings and huge selection  of restaurants and cafes everywhere. Grocery stores offer a wider selection of food than most US chains as they are stocked with items from inside and outside Europe.  Alone a cheese section of any large grocery store offers dozens of different and tasty cheeses one does not see in North America. From my limited discussions with Germans it seems that their health system is holding together better than in most places. Coverage is universal and services are delivered quicker than in countries like Canada where operations can wait months and years and emergency services are delivered in days rather than hours.

I had a nice visit with my last brother in law, Edgar. He is the youngest brother of my first wife, Monique who passed away in 2013.  His health is weak and I felt that I needed to visit him to find closure.  His wife Helga is a saint having taken on the role of mother for her two  young granddaughters  when her own daughter died at the age of 38. Now she is fully dedicated to taking care of her husband who is several years older. We had a nice dinner and were able to catch up with news of our  related families. I returned to Butzbach  to my hotel  that same evening. My hotel was only 100 meters from the local train station.

The next morning I took the train to Frankfurt airport where I overnighted. My flight to Lisbon was departing at 0605 so it meant an early morning rise but I only had to walk a few minutes to the checkin counter where there were very few people. I arrived early in the morning in Lisbon to a sunny warm day. Lisbon and Portugal in general are clean and well maintained. I finally go into my room at noon, dumped my bags and headed off to visit Caiscais.

Caiscais is more or less the Riviera of Portugal. It is is located about 60 kms north of Lisbon along the Atlantic coast. There is a little train which goes from the rail station Cais de Sodre to Caiscais. It takes about 45 minutes and is a nice ride along the coast with lots of views of the ocean. At a restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, a Portuguese Maitre D had recommended a restaurant in Caiscais, called Moinho Dom Qixote. So when I got to Caiscais, I jumped into a cab an set off to have lunch there. In fact, the restaurant is about 30 minutes from Caiscais on a climbing road which rises to about 1000 meters above sea level.  The restaurant is on the edge of cliff overlooking the ocean and is a beautiful location.  I had some lunch and headed back down to the town which I drove through. It is a quaint town of some 200,000 people but also a favorite week-end destination for people from Lisbon. I am told that in summer, the place is wall to wall tourists so my timing was good. I was back in my hotel by 9pm after a long and interesting day.