Monthly Archives: May 2017

fest prep

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Woke up in Bukhara, aching. Went outside once, because there was some sort of noise that I could not quite identify: It was the final rehearsal for the Silk And Spice Festival parade. The real deal was going to take place the next day. To my untrained eyes and ears, it seemed as though everyone […]


a white dress with flowers

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Things often look very different at night than they do in the light of day. When I woke up this morning, the room seemed much better than before: Sure, it was very hot, so hot in fact that many of the other hotel guests were sleeping with their doors open, but it was an okay […]


forgotten sirup

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I woke up dreading the day. My spine still hurt, and I knew there was a high chance I would have to walk 50k today. I had some breakfast, then I went back to the road. There were truckloads of people being driven around, I suspected that they were working the fields somewhere: I walked […]


redder than red

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I left Bukhara without having looked at Bukhara. The plan was to do this another time. The road needed more walking first. So I set out this morning, and I walked. One of the first things I saw was this gas station, which had a rather long line of cars waiting in front of it: […]


old tourists

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With the Caboose, it was almost always the ball-bearings. I took her to a bicycle repair guy on the street corner today: And it took us a while, but I think we managed to fix the problem. Or at least contain it: I noticed that there were a lot of European tourists in Bukhara, and […]


forget about fast wifi

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Uzbekistan, albeit being a very nice place to visit, didn’t have very good access to the internet. Actually, in most places it was pretty painful. Yet there is one thing I don’t think I ever told you: Jizzakh, somewhere between Tashkent and Samarkand, had excellent internet. And I mean excellent. Bukhara, well, not so much. […]


Bukhara

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I was going to start walking at five in the morning, because I knew I was probably going to have to make 50k today. Only then I decided to sleep until seven, and I left the hotel at eight. On my way out of town, I stopped at this gentleman’s house: People in Uzbekistan seem […]


empty bottles

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I woke up in the same hotel next to Navoiy airport where I had spent the night before. Only it was 40$ instead of 60$ this time. I had breakfast, then I waited for a car to take me back to Kiziltepa: Walking to a place and then taking a car to sleep somewhere else […]


camelopia

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I had parked the Caboose in the back of the hotel, and when I went to pick her up this morning, she was covered in laundry: I thought it was cute, but she looked like she wanted to leave. The day was overcast, which was good for us, because it meant that temperatures wouldn’t get […]


who won World War II?

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See my GPS track on the map above? It branches out into different areas before deciding on a northwestern direction. The branches happened because of the police. My original plan was to walk west and then north, but I didn’t get very far before the police stopped me. I had taken a photograph in an […]


breakfast

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Every morning when I went down to the breakfast hall, I would have two hard-boiled eggs and four little bread thingies: I’d wash it all down with some fruit juice, then ask for some hot water for my thermos. I don’t like being without tea. Then I would sit down and work on the translation […]


characters

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I woke up with a bad head. Not terribly bad, just pulsing. So I had breakfast, then I stayed on the balcony for a while: And then I started working on the translation again: It took me much longer than I had anticipated. Chinese is more concise than German, meaning if you translate a German […]


hot pockets to funk

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My German book “Neuschweinstein” was being translated into Chinese. Not by me, my Chinese was not good enough for that. But I had offered to read the translation and check it for errors. That’s what I did today: Or at least that was the plan. At around two in the afternoon I went outside and […]


night grill

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Okay, neither one of my balconies was very spacious: But it was enough for me. After successfully obtaining a sunburn, I decided that my clothes looked disgusting and needed washing: I hung them all over the room: Then I went outside to a garden restaurant: Ali was working the grill: I ordered a bunch of […]


holiday

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Had an awesome hotel room with two balconies: By loading the video, you agree to YouTube’s privacy policy.Learn more Load video Always unblock YouTube So I sat on my balcony (on one of my TWO balconies): And tried to get a tan: At 35 degrees celsius it felt a little bit like a beach vacation. […]


90 minutes

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There were no marshrutkas in Navoyi. So I hopped on a shared ride and went back to Samarkand: It had taken me several days to walk to Navoiy from there, but it was only a 90-minute car ride. How easy. When I got there, I went straight to the post office: I had to show […]


avoid the sun

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When I left Ziadin in the morning, I saw a lot of people on the road: Most were waiting for rides: There were young women with parasols: And old ladies in colorful outfits: And there were European campers, a lot of them. Sometimes it was just motor home after motor home. Some of the drivers […]


weld grind burn

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So I went back to the road, tripod or not. It took a while to get back to Mirbazar, after all it was more than 100km from Samarkand. I took a cab, and on the way there I slept. When I looked out the window once, I saw rain outside. And then I was in […]


what weekdays mean

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Sometimes, when I am on the road, I lose track of which day of the week it is. Dates are somewhat important to me, mostly because of my visa issues, but weekdays just don’t seem to have a lot of meaning. Today I decided to stay in Samarkand, because I wanted to pick something up […]


night train

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Walked into this charming gentleman at the hostel where I was staying: We introduced ourselves and then talked for quite a long time, so long in fact that when I realized that I had forgotten his name it seemed somehow impolite to ask. He was from Germany, he traveled solo, and his beard was much […]