second tour of Tashkent

Second Tour day of Tashkent – October 12, 2009

Out to the bus at 9 to see the old city of Tashkent. Tashkent apparently moved back and forth over the years as was needed for whatever political climate and population climate. Much of the old city has been torn down and remodeled. The old buildings are made of adobe and now are being purchased by richer Uzbeks and then torn down and huge houses built because the land is cheap and the houses cheap and there are not laws to protect the old buildings in that part of time.

Our first stop this morning was the earthquake memorial. It was in the 60's I believe and during a hot summer night so most of the people were sleeping in their gardens anyway as air conditioning was pretty rare in those days. This saved many, many people as houses fell down but no one was in the houses to be crushed. Still, it injured many and did a lot of damage so the earthquake memorial is on the site of the epicenter. There is a fine metal frieze in the back that shows people coming back to Tashkent to rebuild as they were promised houses and such and plus there was a pride in the city and people wanted to rebuild it.

Next we went to the Islam center. This was a series of Islam buildings, all quite beautiful with domes covered in blue tiles with mosaics around the bottoms. We went into the mausoleum first and had a look around then into the former university which is now a workshop area. According to our guide, almost everyone in there was a "master" of their craft whether it is woodworking or embroidery or painting. They had wonderful book holders but you had to learn how to use them because they fold perfectly flat and you flip them one way or another to get them to stand up. The more complicated ones did 10 different positions.

We then went to a book repository building. It had a special name however it held wonderfully old Korans that were written on gazelle skin out of ink made from ash and olive oil. The printing looked much too dark to be from the 7th century but who knows for sure. There was also a Koran there about the size of a miniature playing card. You would need a very large magnifying glass to read it.

Finally we stopped at the mosque. It had twin minarets and the builders had a competition to build them but I am not sure what the competition was because they looked alike so maybe it was who would finish first. We could not go into the mosque but we did get to look through the windows.

Also in the yard was a small congregation of storks. We all rushed over to take photos of the storks. A woman was there whose child was determined to go play with the storks. The storks would just move out of his reach and pay him no mind but the policeman there was quite irate that the child was “bothering” the storks. I asked if I could take a photo of the woman and she agreed. She was fairly typical of a lot of the Uzbeks we have seen in that she had most of her front teeth capped with gold crowns. Makes for a glittering mouth.

We stopped at a market then. The market was full of fruits and vegetables and also some of the Korean-Uzbeks who were selling their traditional Kim chi. What a delight to find this familiar food so far from Korea. I purchased some for our train ride tonight of some 20 hours.

Our final stop was at another former university of the Islam religion. It was also now a workshop of “masters”. One was doing lovely painted boxes very similar to the Russian ones. He was keeping his colors bright with egg, the same way the old masters did in Europe. He has some beautiful ones and I did purchase one. Another master was doing wonderful painted pictures that were incredibly detailed. He had some wonderful postage stamps with birds on them in a tiny frame but I couldn’t bargain him down enough to justify spending the money. I’ll keep a lookout for the same thing elsewhere as things might be cheaper out of Tashkent.

A nice lunch after our tour and then to the market closest to our hotel so we could buy supplies for our train trip. There is no restaurant car. There is a samovar at each end of the coach that provides hot water and we do get a breakfast of some sort but we will need dinner and lunch before we leave the train. My supplies include: bananas, yogurt, meringue, almonds, apples, carrots, Kim chi, bread, and cherry juice. How balance is that. I’m sure I’ll be well tired of the train by the time we get off.