Bishkek Bulletin #1 - Welcome to Bishkek
Dear Readers,
A hearty hello from your faithful correspondent! It is my pleasure to welcome you to the first issue of the Bishkek Bulletin. It's been a full year since the last Beanland Diary, and I owe many of you a very belated update. Since leaving Honduras last July, I've had the pleasure and pain of studying international affairs in our nation's capital. I've learned a bit about such seemingly unrelated topics as the Ottoman Empire and statistical modeling, the Argentine debt crises and Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the AA-DD curve. I've also had the chance to befriend some great people at SAIS, perhaps the only place on Earth where former Peace Corps volunteers and former Green Berets are considered colleagues. Beanland readers, welcome back. SAISers, PCVs and everyone else, welcome to my self-indulgent cross-continental ramblings.
On this pleasant evening your correspondent is writing from the heart of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Do not be embarrassed if you either 1) do not have any idea where Kyrgyzstan is, or 2) take several tries to pronounce it. I also needed the help of both a map and a phonetic spelling only a few months ago. Still squinting at that map? Here's a hint. Look at China and go left. If you hit water or Europe, you went too far.
Bishkek is a surprisingly pleasant city, endowed with wide streets, lots of trees, and what Lonely Planet describes as "traditional Ukrainian-style block architecture". This unique school of architectural design, largely underappreciated by critics outside the former Soviet bloc, is characterized by massive swaths of unpainted concrete, exposed rebar, and long dark hallways from which the light bulbs were either stolen or never installed in the first place. However, out in the streets of Bishkek you are never more than a block away from a hot shish kebab, a refreshing sour milk beverage, or a statue of a former Soviet leader. It's quite welcoming.
The Russian beer called Baltika is sold everywhere. This beer isn't much to write home about taste-wise, but it does have a very practical feature. Each type of Baltika is named according to its alcohol content. Baltika 3, Baltika 5, Baltika 7, even Baltika 9. For your correspondent, inclined towards quantitative analysis, this is great. These numbers allow for very handy estimations of one's beer utility function, and for very precise targeting of optimal drunkenness equilibrium points.
Inevitably, I compare Bishkek to my last host country capital, Tegucigalpa. Perhaps the first difference you notice is the safety situation. In Tegus, every listless 17-year-old "security guard" wields a loaded shotgun, and every conceivably-scalable surface is laced with electrified razor wire and peppered with glass shards. In contrast, doors in Bishkek are open and inviting. I haven't seen an inch of barbed wire. Even uniformed officials carry only batons. Batons!
For the next three months I will be working with a economic development program that offers tiny loans to tiny businesses throughout rural Kyrgyzstan. There will be some field research, but much of my time will be spent in an air-conditioned office on the 9th floor of the surprisingly modern Bishkek Business Center. (Quite a change from the decrepit alcaldia building in Cantarranas) Luckily, we had a chance early on to leave the capital and visit the branch offices around the lake Issyk-Kul, the photos from which are linked below. As you can see, Kyrgyzstan is gorgeous, and Kyrgyz kids give some stiff competition to Hondurans on the cuteness scale.
And finally, we need to talk about the language issue. The wheel of fate has dealt me a cruel spin. After years of building up my Spanish, I now find myself reduced to clunky, one-way, caveman conversations in Russian. Ahhh, Russian. A language where no word is too long. A language that makes German sound romantic. And a language where you are thankful to get even a single vowel. Consider an example. To say "on Thursday", you say roughly "fff-chtt-vvvy-rrkkgg". Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? And my kingdom for a cognate.
Luckily, there is a solution – vodka. On the field visit last week, I was introduced to the Kyrgyz Bloody Mary: a vodka shot chased with a salted tomato wedge. Only eight or ten of these cocktails will empower even the novice Russian speaker with absolute fluency. It was amazing. Unfortunately, this fluency is fleeting. The next morning you will wake unable to speak a word of Russian. Or English. Or communicate with anything other than labored grunting.
For now, fearless readers, I will sign off and let you get back to your real lives. I hope you've enjoyed this little glimpse into life in Bishkek. If you haven't, I'll know when the next Bulletin bounces back off your spam filter. In either case, I hope this email finds you all well and I would love to hear from you, wherever you are. Hasta pronto, amigos!
Sincerely,
Your Correspondent, Moskow St, 8th Micro-region, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
[Please send comments and criticisms in writing to 5 Ridgewood Rd, St. Louis MO 63124 attn: Jerome]
A hearty hello from your faithful correspondent! It is my pleasure to welcome you to the first issue of the Bishkek Bulletin. It's been a full year since the last Beanland Diary, and I owe many of you a very belated update. Since leaving Honduras last July, I've had the pleasure and pain of studying international affairs in our nation's capital. I've learned a bit about such seemingly unrelated topics as the Ottoman Empire and statistical modeling, the Argentine debt crises and Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the AA-DD curve. I've also had the chance to befriend some great people at SAIS, perhaps the only place on Earth where former Peace Corps volunteers and former Green Berets are considered colleagues. Beanland readers, welcome back. SAISers, PCVs and everyone else, welcome to my self-indulgent cross-continental ramblings.
On this pleasant evening your correspondent is writing from the heart of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Do not be embarrassed if you either 1) do not have any idea where Kyrgyzstan is, or 2) take several tries to pronounce it. I also needed the help of both a map and a phonetic spelling only a few months ago. Still squinting at that map? Here's a hint. Look at China and go left. If you hit water or Europe, you went too far.
Bishkek is a surprisingly pleasant city, endowed with wide streets, lots of trees, and what Lonely Planet describes as "traditional Ukrainian-style block architecture". This unique school of architectural design, largely underappreciated by critics outside the former Soviet bloc, is characterized by massive swaths of unpainted concrete, exposed rebar, and long dark hallways from which the light bulbs were either stolen or never installed in the first place. However, out in the streets of Bishkek you are never more than a block away from a hot shish kebab, a refreshing sour milk beverage, or a statue of a former Soviet leader. It's quite welcoming.
The Russian beer called Baltika is sold everywhere. This beer isn't much to write home about taste-wise, but it does have a very practical feature. Each type of Baltika is named according to its alcohol content. Baltika 3, Baltika 5, Baltika 7, even Baltika 9. For your correspondent, inclined towards quantitative analysis, this is great. These numbers allow for very handy estimations of one's beer utility function, and for very precise targeting of optimal drunkenness equilibrium points.
Inevitably, I compare Bishkek to my last host country capital, Tegucigalpa. Perhaps the first difference you notice is the safety situation. In Tegus, every listless 17-year-old "security guard" wields a loaded shotgun, and every conceivably-scalable surface is laced with electrified razor wire and peppered with glass shards. In contrast, doors in Bishkek are open and inviting. I haven't seen an inch of barbed wire. Even uniformed officials carry only batons. Batons!
For the next three months I will be working with a economic development program that offers tiny loans to tiny businesses throughout rural Kyrgyzstan. There will be some field research, but much of my time will be spent in an air-conditioned office on the 9th floor of the surprisingly modern Bishkek Business Center. (Quite a change from the decrepit alcaldia building in Cantarranas) Luckily, we had a chance early on to leave the capital and visit the branch offices around the lake Issyk-Kul, the photos from which are linked below. As you can see, Kyrgyzstan is gorgeous, and Kyrgyz kids give some stiff competition to Hondurans on the cuteness scale.
And finally, we need to talk about the language issue. The wheel of fate has dealt me a cruel spin. After years of building up my Spanish, I now find myself reduced to clunky, one-way, caveman conversations in Russian. Ahhh, Russian. A language where no word is too long. A language that makes German sound romantic. And a language where you are thankful to get even a single vowel. Consider an example. To say "on Thursday", you say roughly "fff-chtt-vvvy-rrkkgg". Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? And my kingdom for a cognate.
Luckily, there is a solution – vodka. On the field visit last week, I was introduced to the Kyrgyz Bloody Mary: a vodka shot chased with a salted tomato wedge. Only eight or ten of these cocktails will empower even the novice Russian speaker with absolute fluency. It was amazing. Unfortunately, this fluency is fleeting. The next morning you will wake unable to speak a word of Russian. Or English. Or communicate with anything other than labored grunting.
For now, fearless readers, I will sign off and let you get back to your real lives. I hope you've enjoyed this little glimpse into life in Bishkek. If you haven't, I'll know when the next Bulletin bounces back off your spam filter. In either case, I hope this email finds you all well and I would love to hear from you, wherever you are. Hasta pronto, amigos!
Sincerely,
Your Correspondent, Moskow St, 8th Micro-region, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
[Please send comments and criticisms in writing to 5 Ridgewood Rd, St. Louis MO 63124 attn: Jerome]
Labels: bishkek
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