Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Bus Stop Beauty
I had a nice long post planned for today about last Friday's pseudo-uprising here in Bishkek. But then I took a nap and things got all fuzzy and that post will have to wait until tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm throwing a back-up post at you, one far less manpower-intensive on my end, as the working folk like to say. Plus, it's got pictures!
During our travels around the country, Erin and I have both been admiring the weird and wonderful bus stops adorning roadsides pretty much everywhere. They are truly remarkable, partly-crumbly, fifteen (or so) foot tall cement monuments to various cultural aspects of the Kyrgyz and their Soviet friends. We've seen giant kolpaks (the traditional hat you may have seen the lone Kyrgyz Olympian wearing during the opening ceremonies in Turin this past February), eagles, horses, yurts, Lenin's head, various mosaics, on and on. And all with cozy spots inside to hang out and wait for the marschutka. So that's nice.
On our last trip to Talas, after passing a particularly brilliant fifteen foot kolpak, Erin leaned over and said, "I want to hire a driver next summer and spend time driving around the country taking pictures of these bus stops." Unfortunately, someone beat her to it. In some sense, anyway. His name is Christopher Herwig and you can find him here. But what you really want is this. They're apparently not just in Kyrgyzstan. Who knew?
During our travels around the country, Erin and I have both been admiring the weird and wonderful bus stops adorning roadsides pretty much everywhere. They are truly remarkable, partly-crumbly, fifteen (or so) foot tall cement monuments to various cultural aspects of the Kyrgyz and their Soviet friends. We've seen giant kolpaks (the traditional hat you may have seen the lone Kyrgyz Olympian wearing during the opening ceremonies in Turin this past February), eagles, horses, yurts, Lenin's head, various mosaics, on and on. And all with cozy spots inside to hang out and wait for the marschutka. So that's nice.
On our last trip to Talas, after passing a particularly brilliant fifteen foot kolpak, Erin leaned over and said, "I want to hire a driver next summer and spend time driving around the country taking pictures of these bus stops." Unfortunately, someone beat her to it. In some sense, anyway. His name is Christopher Herwig and you can find him here. But what you really want is this. They're apparently not just in Kyrgyzstan. Who knew?
