Leaving friends behind

After having spent the first month with my parents and friends in Kirchheim, I returned to Berlin this week. It's a really weird feeling to be back. Nothing here seems to have changed, but I've experienced so many new things meanwhile. Being back at my apartment also reminds me of the hard time I had in spring. Now I'm trying to get used to Berlin again and trying to set up a new life!

Although I always felt it's hard for me to make real friends in Bishkek (mostly because of the language barrier), I almost started crying when I looked at some pictures of my farewell party yesterday. In the end it's not about how many friends you have, but the kind of friends you have. I feel so fortunate to have met these people and I truely feel like we have a deep connection (don't ask me why) that will last into the future.

Thank you Aia, Aiyma, Guillana, Altana, Marat, Benja and Boka for welcoming me into your family. Now I know why Philipp still - after 6 years - hasn't stopped talking about you. You are very generous, funny and you are the most fun people to have dinner with. I hope, our families (with more kids by then) will get a chance to meet again in the future!

Thank you Jennifer and Dave for your positive attitude, for all the laughs we shared and for being my friends. How can you feel so close to someone you've only met for a couple of weeks? Honestly, I don't get it, but I do hope that this connection will last and that we all meet again with Kyrgyzstanley, Grant and our kid(s). Maybe on our extended honeymoon in California...?

The "big" (not so secret anymore) reason for coming home early

Well, after we had some time to inform family and close friends I feel now it's ok, to finally post it. The reason for me coming back earlier than originally planned is 6.5 cm long (by now) and 14 weeks "old"...















We are very excited about this new and surprisingly quickly started "project". At first, we didn't consider going back to Germany just because of a pregnancy. But after we had some worries and had seen 2 different Kyrgyz doctors, we realized that we'd feel more comfortable, if I could see a German practitioner. I have to point out, that there was no sign that the Kyrgyz doctors were not right or competent. But we only then realized how hard it is to trust someone, if the language is not your own. Other than that I knew that in Germany they do a lot more tests in the beginning. In Bishkek you always had to ask the doctors to do a test. So knowing you might miss important tests, didn't leave a good feeling in me. Plus, foreigners have to pay a lot more for medical treatments (more compared to Kyrgyz people, not the German treatments of course) and often it's hard to get the kind of receipts you can hand in to your German insurance. So this point just added to our decision, that we would all feel better, if I'd go back earlier...

Which I took with one laughing and one crying eye (a German proverb). On the one hand, I wanted to make sure everything is ok with me and the baby (which it is, by the way!), but on the other hand, I felt like I didn't accomplish my mission in Bishkek. We wanted to do so much travelling in the end, but the doctor recommended better not to travel to the little villages and over the high mountains. So I would have been stuck in Bishkek for the next 2 months with Philipp being busy with his work most of the time.

Oh well, it was a hard but good decision. At this point I'd like to thank Hajo Schmidt - our German friend and practitioner, who luckily had done some projects in Bishkek before - for all his long distance advice over e-mail and the quick and generous support after my return. Your advice meant a lot to us and we feel very lucky to know someone like you! Hopefully we can see you again at the end of October so you can personally present the baby to Philipp with your super-cool 4D real time ultrasound device...

I miss blogging!

I keep wanting to update this blog with the last stories of Bishkek before I went home. But now since I'm staying with my parents, there never seems to be time for blogging anymore. But I do have some more pictures to post - especially now that I have a better internet connection again. Today I went shopping in Kirchheim/Teck (the city where I went to Highschool) and I ran into 2 Russian speaking families. I was so proud that I was able to understand most of it. So seems like I do know some Russian by now. And I feel so bad about having stopped this blog so suddenly, and I feel like I still owe my readers (all 3 of them!) an explanation. Which I promise I'll write about very soon. Next Monday I'll go back to Berlin to our own apartment. I won't have internet at my house anymore, but at least I'll have more time. So I promise I'll head to the internet café and give you an update. Meanwhile I still recommend my friends Bishkek Blog: www.thebishkekadventure.blogspot.com/. Very interesting and sometimes amusing stories!

Home sweet Home

I arrived back home savely. Sorry for the lacking coverage of the past week(s). We were both sick and I was getting ready to fly back home to Germany. And here I am - back in Schwabenland with my parents. Details later...

Issyk-Kul continued

Well, to our disappointment they didn't turn off the power. Seems like in other districts they have started already, but not in our's!!! Philipp got keroseen today and is still very excited about his new lamp. I will have to post a picture of the two of them soon.

Since I haven't taken many pictures lately, I'll show you some more Issyk-Kul ones. So here you see the lake. It's pretty, because you always (when good weather) see the high snow covered mountains on the other side of the lake. But other than that it feels like being at an ocean. Even the water is a little bit salty - and very clear!

The girl in the picture is my new friend Guillana. She's the 10-year-old daughter of one of Philipp's host sisters. Before we had known each other only from pictures, but now we are big friends! Regardless of our little language barrier...

Without Power

Since there is a shortfall in water supplies in Kyrgystan, at least the water supplies used for electric power, the city of Bishkek decided (again) to turn off the power regularly according to a specific schedule. Depending on which district you live in, they turn off the power for a different period each week day. We belong to group 1, which means:

mondays - 00:00 to 6:00
tuesdays - 18:00 to 24:00
wednesdays - 12:00 to 18:00
thursdays - 6:00 to 12:00
fridays - 00:00 to 6:00
saturdays - 18:00 to 24:00
sundays - 12:00 to 18:00

They had the schedule out a week ago, but haven't enforced it. But the last news we know say that they will start today. So we bought a keroseen (no idea how you spell that) lamp today. Unfortunately didn't find any keroseen yet. So the torches will have to do for today (18-24 o'clock). Usually the cafes still have power (generators), so my plan is to meet with friends tonight, get some dinner and enjoy some light. I wonder how dark it will really be in the streets, if really no apartment has any lights on (and there are no street lights in the neighborhood).

Well, it's past 17:00 - I better get the torches, matches etc. out, check the refrigerator and charge my cell phone...

Airline Accident in Bishkek

Sadly, there has been an Airline crash in Bishkek yesterday. We heard about it through German online news. But when we took a taxi this morning, of course, it was also on the local radio. It was a 29-year-old-plane on the way to Iran. Due to technical problems it crashed about 10 km off the Bishkek Manas Airport. The close by US-military base sent a rescue team of firefighters. Apparently about 70 people died and only 20 survived.

To read the full articles (in German) look here: Article in Spiegel-Online and Article in Tagesspiegel. Here is an English Article from NYT.

Now we "personally" have two connections to this accident (although luckily we don't know anyone, involved in it). On board was the Kyrgyz National Youth Basketball Team - 17 people. The news say only 7 of them have survived. The team seems to belong to the 29th school district, which is only one block away from us and many kids from our neighborhood also go to this school. I wonder, if we know anyone, who lost friends in this horrible accident...

The second connection is, that on Friday (see last post) we had gotten to know two firefighters from the US-military base. We had been joking about their job, because they said themselves, that there are not many fires around and that they spend more time on training, working out and beer drinking than putting out fires. I don't know, if those two were actually part of the rescue team, but now I feel bad about joking around...

More portraits!

I'm really getting good at portrait shooting, don't you think so? At least if you have such "dorky" (a word they regularly use to describe themselves) models that love to pose. Tonight we met with Jennifer and David from the neighboring "blog" (haha) and a co-teacher of them and two friends of her husband (all being firefighters at the US base). We went to mainly American bars. Being around them almost felt like being back in the States again - just a little more Southern...

Portraits - finally!

This is the "Wild Horse Games"-Post continued. Today some pictures of the crowd. So finally some pictures of faces and not only the backs. I'm so proud of myself. But it was easy to photograph, because everybody was concentrating on the game. Guess which ones are the Harvard professors being part of our group from the conference...

Wild Horse Games

I still have so many pictures from the Issyk-Kul trip, so that I will just continue posting them, although it's been a couple of weeks by now.

We were very lucky to get invited to some horse games near Tscholpon-Ata. It was a show for tourists (because Tschlopon-Ata is THE tourist destination at the lake), so we could tell that it wasn't as serios as the games we had seen last year for Independence Day, which was a real tournament.

In the game for example happened to be a fight between two players of the opposing teams. They were getting at each other with their whips. But we think it was fake and just set up for the show. But it was still interesting, because I love to see the massive power of horses and I loved to take pictures of the event (last year's didn't come out great).

They showed all different kinds of traditional games. The first one is called "kök börü" and played in teams. It basically works like soccer - except for the ball is a dead body of a goat (without the head). It gets picked up from the floor in the beginning of the game. This is fascinating to see, because it's hard to remain in the saddle at the same time and the goat seems to be really heavy (30 kg I heard). Then the player who picked it up, holds the goat with his thigh and tries to get to the goal, which consists of an elevated hole. Of course, meanwhile the other team tries to take the goat from him. It's amazing to see how the horses must be trained, because it doesn't look like they get a lot of commands from their rider, but as if they just know what to do. And they are so powerful.

The second game is called "sodarysch" can basically be described as wrestling on horses. Two guys wearing a certain type of belt, try to get each other off the horses (if I got the rules right). It was great to watch how much fun they obviously had. I was just wondering why they actually need the horses. They just seemed to be in their way somehow...

The third game is one of my favorites - "kis kummai" (meaning something like "catch the girl"). It's a race between a guy and a girl. While they go really fast for about 200 m the guy has to try to kiss the girl in the first round. Every kiss a point. Then they race back and the girl is supposed to hit the guy with her whip. Each hit a point. Very easy. Very clear. Fun to watch - especially the way back!

[to be continued]

The MPI Hiking Adventure

Today we met the US-couple, who I met over this blog and who moved to Bishkek 2 days ago. It was like a blind-date, so I was excited. They turned out to be really nice people (I have to write this, because they're reading my blog regularly! *g*). But they still seemed kinda "high" from all the impressions and events in the past couple of weeks (if you read their blog, you'll know what I mean). Anyway, I can see us having some fun times together here! They took a picture of the 4 of us, so I suppose it will appear on their blog shortly. (yup, it appeared here) ;)

Right, the headline - The MPI Hiking Adventure - didn't indicate this story. But I also wanted to share our hiking experience at Lake Issyk-Kul with you. Like those who know us know that we are not into hiking (neither do we look like hikers, check out the pictures). However, I really like the view from the top of mountains. So we have a problem there! But fortunately Sophie (one of Philipp's MPI-colleagues) really wanted to go into the mountains the day before the conference started. So we took a taxi, which was supposed to bring us as high up as possible and we planned to walk a little from there. Unfortunately the taxi turned out to be a VW-Passat (meaning "not a Jeep") so due to the road conditions (actually I wouldn't call it road) "high up" wasn't quite that high. But we ended up walking up even higher for a while. Of course Sophie and Nathan, both sharing a love for hiking, went on further, while we just enjoyed the view and went back down to play Durak with the taxi driver while waiting for them.

(Most of the pictures were actually taken by Sophie. Hope you don't mind and thanks!)