Saturday, November 19, 2005
Not There Yet...
The route to Bishkek took us from Boston to London's Heathrow Airport to Yerevan, Armenia for a refueling stop then onto to Bishkek. In theory, anyway. Right now, we're still in Yerevan. When we landed to refuel we were told there was "freezing fog" shrouding the airport in Bishkek and that we'd be unable to land. So that was nice.
What followed was an oddly hectic middle of the night run through Armenian customs (3-day visa paid for by British Airways, thank you very much!). First one line for a speed visa, then another for customs, then we were marched to another spot to retrieve our checked luggage. Finally, we were brought outside and told the bus would be arriving shortly to take us to the hotel, but in the meantime we could (and should) take a taxi. Our luggage was loaded into a taxi without much say on our part and we were repeatedly told to "sit down. Hotel next. Sit down." So we sat.
We very shortly after left (we being just me and my wife, Erin), me up front with the taxi driver, her in back with the luggage that didn't fit in the trunk. On the way out of the airport we passed a caravan of other taxis with other passengers from our flight apparently waiting to all go together with the bus which had just then arrived and been taken over more or less completely by a band that was on our flight and their sizable amount of equipment. We slowed down beside the parked taxis, the window beside me was rolled down, words were shouted between the driver of our taxi and another taxi driver in what I think was Russian. Our driver made some annoyed gesture at the other driver as a way of signaling the end of the exchange and we sped off, leaving the rest of the taxis sitting there by the side of the road. We knew only the name of the hotel we were to stay in and pretty much nothing else.
Armenia, like most of the former Soviet countries without massive oil or gold reserves, has only recently crawled out from under the yoke of horrific economic problems. And it shows. The landscape surrounding the airport, as a result, didn't help soothe us any, as it looks something like a BBC News story involving the words "war" and "torn" and possibly "Hurricane Katrina." That is to say, the area directly adjacent the airport looked as though it has been recently bombed, though it hasn't. Lots of concrete in various states of disarray, small stalls selling fruit (it was after midnight - who is buying fruit on an otherwise deserted road after midnight?), and little by way of road signs, traffic lights, etc. This improved as we got closer to the city and into downtown, but we weren't there yet.
We drove in silence. And we drove fast. For a while, anyway. After about ten minutes or so of break-neck speeds, the driver dropped down to about 35-40 km/h, which is slow enough to perk up both my ears and the hair on the back of my neck. About thirty seconds after the speed drop off, the driver began pounding on the dashboard then furiously pressing some buttons beside the radio. Then he picked up the microphone for the CB radio and mumbled something into it (he really did mumble; I was sitting maybe eight inches from him and had trouble hearing anything he said). A few minutes later, still traveling at a disturbingly slow pace, the caravan of our former flight-mates flies by on our left. Our driver ignores them. When the last of the taillights from the bus pulling up the rear of the caravan are no longer visible and we'd still not increased our speed any, the muscles in my legs tense to the point of straining. The taxi kept up its turtle pace for another five minutes or so.
We passed a number of Petrol stations during that time, so my initial thoughts that perhaps we were running out of gas vanished and I was left only with hamstring massages to console myself. That is, until we pulled off the road into what looked like an American self-service car wash, the sort with long standing rows of open-ended cinder block garages equipped with a brush, sprayer, change machine, et cetera. Only there was no brush, no sprayer. Only a long metal pole and the row of garages.
When we'd stopped inside one of the stalls, the driver popped out of the car almost immediately, closing the door behind. Then he opened the door again and spoke to me in any of the three languages he speaks that I don't understand (thank you, American pompousness!) and again shut the door. A few seconds passed then Erin said, "Uhmm, sketchy?" I answered only with a noise part laugh, part agreement. The driver by then was under the hood of the car, attaching the long metal pole to something I couldn't see in the engine. Then he came around to my door and opened it, motioning for me to get out and talking loudly at me. I eventually got out and he said a few more things and pointed back inside the car, then at me, then back inside the car. I went to sit back down and he said "No" in Russian, the first word I understood of the trip, and waved his hand in the same annoyed way that had ended the conversation with the other driver at the airport. He then opened Erin's door and went through the same series of gestures, leaving all three of us very confused. Finally Erin said the name of our hotel a few times and he nodded his head yes and then did the hand wave thing again. He walked out about twenty or thirty feet in front of the car, turned to face us, and made motions for us to join him there. We did, with Erin holding onto my arm tightly while I nattered on about the rest of the world hating monolingual Americans for precisely this reason.
Once in front of the taxi and turned back around to look at it, we saw that this was a taxi hangout of sorts. There was a small army of Armenian men all wearing Addidas sweat suits and black cowboy boots, throwing monkey wrenches between the stalls. Our driver was back under the hood by then, making some adjustments to the engine/long metal pole connection. When he'd finished, another man came over, took some money from our driver, and turned on a rather large electrical box mounted at the front of the stall. So, we were refueling after all, only with electricity. We both relaxed a bit at that point, laughed at ourselves and our apprehensions, and made some apologizing and ha ha-type gestures to the driver. It was still a bit unnerving though that the remainder of the twenty or so others from our flight were nowhere to be seen and very likely already safely at the hotel while we were standing in the middle of a huge parking lot at 1:00 in the morning waiting for our taxi to recharge. But we weren't going to be killed or robbed or made to play soccer or anything right then, so that was a comfort, at least.
Refueled and back on the road, we made up for lost time, taking corners at 130 km/h and turning what seemed like a mini Armenian Vegas into a blur of streaking neon Casino signs. Yerevan showed itself to us first in row houses and small markets, then in monuments and tree-lined streets, and finally in a giant, breathtaking open square (a gift from the Soviets, so to speak) lined with four of the most imposing buildings I've ever seen, just down the street from our hotel, which we finally reached around 1:30 or so. And aside from a rather off-putting drunk quietly haranguing Erin on the sidewalk while the driver and I unloaded the trunk, things picked up from there and continued on rather smoothly.
The hotel is quite posh (I'll have some pictures later; I don't want to rifle through all of our luggage to find the cord I need to transfer pictures from the camera to the computer) and they've arranged special meals for the lot of us and a sight-seeing tour for tomorrow (Saturday). We found out this afternoon that we'll be trying again tomorrow night for Bishkek, though the British Airways woman who gave us this news wasn't too confident with our being able to get in then, either, as November is apparently a rather touchy time weather-wise in the valley where the airport is outside of Bishkek. But, we'll try.
It is currently 5:30 locally and I've just woken up from a twelve hour post-lunch, post-sightseeing nap. Soon, breakfast. Then another day in Yerevan, Armenia. Which today, I think, means a guided tour of some 1st century temples.
What followed was an oddly hectic middle of the night run through Armenian customs (3-day visa paid for by British Airways, thank you very much!). First one line for a speed visa, then another for customs, then we were marched to another spot to retrieve our checked luggage. Finally, we were brought outside and told the bus would be arriving shortly to take us to the hotel, but in the meantime we could (and should) take a taxi. Our luggage was loaded into a taxi without much say on our part and we were repeatedly told to "sit down. Hotel next. Sit down." So we sat.
We very shortly after left (we being just me and my wife, Erin), me up front with the taxi driver, her in back with the luggage that didn't fit in the trunk. On the way out of the airport we passed a caravan of other taxis with other passengers from our flight apparently waiting to all go together with the bus which had just then arrived and been taken over more or less completely by a band that was on our flight and their sizable amount of equipment. We slowed down beside the parked taxis, the window beside me was rolled down, words were shouted between the driver of our taxi and another taxi driver in what I think was Russian. Our driver made some annoyed gesture at the other driver as a way of signaling the end of the exchange and we sped off, leaving the rest of the taxis sitting there by the side of the road. We knew only the name of the hotel we were to stay in and pretty much nothing else.
Armenia, like most of the former Soviet countries without massive oil or gold reserves, has only recently crawled out from under the yoke of horrific economic problems. And it shows. The landscape surrounding the airport, as a result, didn't help soothe us any, as it looks something like a BBC News story involving the words "war" and "torn" and possibly "Hurricane Katrina." That is to say, the area directly adjacent the airport looked as though it has been recently bombed, though it hasn't. Lots of concrete in various states of disarray, small stalls selling fruit (it was after midnight - who is buying fruit on an otherwise deserted road after midnight?), and little by way of road signs, traffic lights, etc. This improved as we got closer to the city and into downtown, but we weren't there yet.
We drove in silence. And we drove fast. For a while, anyway. After about ten minutes or so of break-neck speeds, the driver dropped down to about 35-40 km/h, which is slow enough to perk up both my ears and the hair on the back of my neck. About thirty seconds after the speed drop off, the driver began pounding on the dashboard then furiously pressing some buttons beside the radio. Then he picked up the microphone for the CB radio and mumbled something into it (he really did mumble; I was sitting maybe eight inches from him and had trouble hearing anything he said). A few minutes later, still traveling at a disturbingly slow pace, the caravan of our former flight-mates flies by on our left. Our driver ignores them. When the last of the taillights from the bus pulling up the rear of the caravan are no longer visible and we'd still not increased our speed any, the muscles in my legs tense to the point of straining. The taxi kept up its turtle pace for another five minutes or so.
We passed a number of Petrol stations during that time, so my initial thoughts that perhaps we were running out of gas vanished and I was left only with hamstring massages to console myself. That is, until we pulled off the road into what looked like an American self-service car wash, the sort with long standing rows of open-ended cinder block garages equipped with a brush, sprayer, change machine, et cetera. Only there was no brush, no sprayer. Only a long metal pole and the row of garages.
When we'd stopped inside one of the stalls, the driver popped out of the car almost immediately, closing the door behind. Then he opened the door again and spoke to me in any of the three languages he speaks that I don't understand (thank you, American pompousness!) and again shut the door. A few seconds passed then Erin said, "Uhmm, sketchy?" I answered only with a noise part laugh, part agreement. The driver by then was under the hood of the car, attaching the long metal pole to something I couldn't see in the engine. Then he came around to my door and opened it, motioning for me to get out and talking loudly at me. I eventually got out and he said a few more things and pointed back inside the car, then at me, then back inside the car. I went to sit back down and he said "No" in Russian, the first word I understood of the trip, and waved his hand in the same annoyed way that had ended the conversation with the other driver at the airport. He then opened Erin's door and went through the same series of gestures, leaving all three of us very confused. Finally Erin said the name of our hotel a few times and he nodded his head yes and then did the hand wave thing again. He walked out about twenty or thirty feet in front of the car, turned to face us, and made motions for us to join him there. We did, with Erin holding onto my arm tightly while I nattered on about the rest of the world hating monolingual Americans for precisely this reason.
Once in front of the taxi and turned back around to look at it, we saw that this was a taxi hangout of sorts. There was a small army of Armenian men all wearing Addidas sweat suits and black cowboy boots, throwing monkey wrenches between the stalls. Our driver was back under the hood by then, making some adjustments to the engine/long metal pole connection. When he'd finished, another man came over, took some money from our driver, and turned on a rather large electrical box mounted at the front of the stall. So, we were refueling after all, only with electricity. We both relaxed a bit at that point, laughed at ourselves and our apprehensions, and made some apologizing and ha ha-type gestures to the driver. It was still a bit unnerving though that the remainder of the twenty or so others from our flight were nowhere to be seen and very likely already safely at the hotel while we were standing in the middle of a huge parking lot at 1:00 in the morning waiting for our taxi to recharge. But we weren't going to be killed or robbed or made to play soccer or anything right then, so that was a comfort, at least.
Refueled and back on the road, we made up for lost time, taking corners at 130 km/h and turning what seemed like a mini Armenian Vegas into a blur of streaking neon Casino signs. Yerevan showed itself to us first in row houses and small markets, then in monuments and tree-lined streets, and finally in a giant, breathtaking open square (a gift from the Soviets, so to speak) lined with four of the most imposing buildings I've ever seen, just down the street from our hotel, which we finally reached around 1:30 or so. And aside from a rather off-putting drunk quietly haranguing Erin on the sidewalk while the driver and I unloaded the trunk, things picked up from there and continued on rather smoothly.
The hotel is quite posh (I'll have some pictures later; I don't want to rifle through all of our luggage to find the cord I need to transfer pictures from the camera to the computer) and they've arranged special meals for the lot of us and a sight-seeing tour for tomorrow (Saturday). We found out this afternoon that we'll be trying again tomorrow night for Bishkek, though the British Airways woman who gave us this news wasn't too confident with our being able to get in then, either, as November is apparently a rather touchy time weather-wise in the valley where the airport is outside of Bishkek. But, we'll try.
It is currently 5:30 locally and I've just woken up from a twelve hour post-lunch, post-sightseeing nap. Soon, breakfast. Then another day in Yerevan, Armenia. Which today, I think, means a guided tour of some 1st century temples.
