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Showing posts from November 19, 2008

Country #76: Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

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This past Monday, I had a brief (10 hours brief) stay in the spell-check bewildering country of Kyrgyzstan. It, along with its fellow "stans", was part of the former Soviet Republic, something which is unmistakable to this very day. To maximize my time in Bishkek, the capital city, I hired a guide and driver to show me around. The guide, whose name, Salabek, I mangled mercilessly in person and probably more so in print, was young, enthusiastic, knowledgeable and distractingly twitchy. While sharing facts about his country and its people, he would blink furiously, constantly fiddle with his messenger bag and worst of all, lose track of where the sidewalk ended and the street began, causing him to wander into oncoming traffic on more than one occasion. My attention was constantly pulled between trying to absorb all this city had to offer and making sure Twitchy did not become Kyrgish roadkill. As part of our tour, he showed me around Bishkek's monuments, squares and gov