getting from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo to Domodedovo airport

If you are flying into Moscow and want to avoid spending time in the capitol city, you may be able to transfer to Domodedovo and catch a flight to your destination the same day. You have three ways of doing this.

1. Take a taxi from one airport to the other. This is likely to cost you several hundred dollars and the traffic can be brutal.

2. Travel by train, which requires three connections – first to Rechnoi Vokzal metro, then Rechnoi Vokzal to Paveletsky, and Paveletsky to Domodedovo. This is the cheapest option, but you’ll need to lug your bags around (and probably can’t avoid stairs entirely). It also takes several hours.

3. Take a taxi to Paveletsky, then take the train to Domodedovo. The taxi to Paveletsky costs 1600 rubles now if you call a taxi to meet you at the airport. This is a good option if you’d have to wait a while at Sheremetyevo for the first train.

At Paveletsky station, for about 300 rubles you can check in for your flight and check in your luggage, allowing you to travel baggage-free to the airport or to spend some time around town.

A few tips to make the transfer easier are:

• Choose a flight that arrives in Moscow in the morning to maximize your time.
• The taxis at the airport are great extortionists. To receive a normal price, call a taxi (232 company (telephone 7 495 232 1111 is reputable) and have it meet you outside customs.
• Pack in a way that allows you to carry your luggage easily.

Arrival at Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport

Upon arrival at Sheremetyevo, you’ll go through immigration, pick up your baggage, then pass through customs. There is an area for people to meet you upon exiting customs. If you order a taxi in advance, this is where you will find the driver.

There are two places to change money in the airport, as well as an ATM machine. The first is just to the right of customs, beyond a door that says Crew Check in. The other is all the way down the hall to the right, just past the bright yellow Evrosite telephone kiosk. The exchange rate is reasonable, currently 34 point something to the dollar, compared to 35 point something you’ll get in the city.

You can buy a local SIM card for your cell phone, or purchase a phone at the bright yellow Evrosite booth. The staff will ask where you plan to call and recommend the cheapest option.

There is a café and several newsstands in the airport.

To get to the city, you can:
1. Take the train.
2. If your luggage is light, you can take a marshrutka (mini-van bus) to Planernaya or Rechnoi Vokzal Metro stations. This the cheapest option. Go out to where the taxis are. Just beyond the taxis, in the third lane from the exit door, the marshrutkas wait.
3. Call a taxi ahead of time, or from the airport, to come meet you. It’s significantly cheaper to do this than to use the airport taxis. One reliable company is 232 (Telephone: 7 495 232 1111).
4. Take a licensed airport taxi. Be prepared to pay a lot.

move to Osh

Hello,

I’m so sorry for the delay since my last post. It’s been a busy few weeks. After a short trip to Osh two weeks ago, I returned to Bishkek and then had to get ready for the first of what may be many moves within Kyrgyzstan. This past Sunday, I took a taxi for the twelve-hour drive to Osh, the second largest city in Kyrgyzstan and urban center of the southern region.

There were so many things I wanted to tell you about in Bishkek, such as my first rat sightings, two wonderful Sunday trips to the mountains, meeting some great Peace Corps trainees, a fun evening with my landlord, her friend and the American/Russian internet couple and the story of a coworker who suddenly moved to Chechnya to marry someone she’d met briefly this summer. But it’s probably best to just fill you in on my trip to Osh and to try to stay better caught up from this point forward.

The main reason I drove to Osh, instead of taking a 45-minute flight was due to the hassle of putting my bike and my many bags on the plane. A secondary reason was that I’d heard that the drive was spectacularly beautiful. As far as I know, none of my coworkers have ever driven and I thought this was a good opportunity to see the sights. I had flown when I visited Osh earlier in the month. It was a stunning flight, with mountain peaks reaching up above the clouds and toward the plane windows.

Anatoli picked me up in a silver Mercedes wagon that he’d just recently purchased. He used to have a nice bus that he used for tourists, but he sold it in order to buy this Mercedes as well as a minivan that he gave to his son-in-law to use as a marshrutka (the main form of local transport). His son-in-law has a college degree, but can’t find a job. His daughter gave birth to his first grandson just last month. “He needs a means of supporting his family,” he told me.

It was a long and tiring day, especially since I’m following Ramadan (called Ramazan here) and don’t eat from dawn until sundown. But it was really wonderful to get such a good sense of the country’s landscape. Leaving Bishkek, we followed the road to Sosnovka, where Gulnara had invited me to her parent’s home. We drove past the waterfall where we’d gone hiking that weekend, then continued south into area I hadn’t visited before. The ambient mountains of the Kyrgyz Ala-Too closed in upon us, mauve rock surrounding us in every direction as we wound through the passes. We climbed and climbed until I could look out the window and saw clouds below us. Anatoli stopped, I jumped out to take a picture, and returned winded. We were at 11,765 feet and I could feel the altitude.

From there, the highest peak of our journey, we descended into a wide, barren valley, the Suusamyr, beautiful in its starkness. There were so few signs of humanity or civilization enroute. The little stands selling koumiss (fermented mare’s milk) and bottles of gasoline seemed to be run by some type of intruders to this planet.

We moved on, crossing the Talas Ala-Too range, then followed a rapidly moving river lined with golden trees and marble mining sites. The ratty tables along this stretch of road were filled with bottles of thick mountain honey, glittering gold in the afternoon sun. We wound past the Toktugul reservoir, a vast smooth blue shimmer amidst the mountain landscape, then wound through another range of mountains. For the last several hours, we returned to flat land, driving through the Ferghana valley, where horse-pulled wooden carts and passengers on donkeys plodded along through cotton, tobacco and rice fields, stretching golden-brownish-green to the sun setting behind the mountains in the distance.

For about two thirds of the journey, the road was great. The Bishkek-Osh road has been recently redone, thanks to financing from the Asian Development Bank, and the northern segment is considered the best road in Kyrgyzstan. During that part of the drive, Anatoli gave me his card and told him to call him whenever I wanted to return. The last several hours went over a horrendous road, alternating patches of asphalt and gravel, long stretches of rocky gravel, and dark, potholed areas that put heavy wear and tear on the cars passing through. During this time, Anatoli couldn’t help but to exclaim his frustration at least every two or three minutes. “I’m not coming back here for the next two years!” he said with determination. “Until they’ve finished this road.” It was dark before we reached Osh and even on the main road heading to the second largest city in the country, there were no streetlights. We drove in darkness and arrived in darkness.

I stayed in a hotel my first night, then found an apartment on my first day. I visited three and chose a nice one about a 15-minute walk from work. The rent of $300 is pricey for this area, but the apartment is newly remodeled and very comfortable compared to local standards. I have a bedroom, a living room, another small room, a kitchen with a stove and refrigerator, and a bathroom. The toilet is in one small room by itself and the bathtub and sink in another room. The TV has a satellite dish with something like 300 channels. I’ve only turned on the TV once and then watched the local Russian news. Part of the deal was that the landlady would use my rent to buy a washing machine. She did that on the first day and will soon have it installed. It’s cold and will remain so until the heat gets turned on in mid-November. The tiny Chinese heater I have only heats a small space. So I very rarely use any space other than the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen.

My first few days were not short on adventure. A car ran over one of my suitcases (thankfully, it only contained clothing), I woke up to a small fire when the extension cord to my heater exploded, the next day my heater cord melted to the floor, leaving a black burn mark, and the entire city water supply was shut off for 24 hours, overflowing toilets and making the whole city stink.

The work here is intense. It’s very interesting and I’m finally getting a good sense of what I’ll be doing when I finish training at the end of next month. But the hours are very long, 10-12 hour days, Monday through Saturday, which has left me very little time for any exploring. Thankfully, a good portion of the work involves driving around the city and the region, so I’ve been able to get at least a visual picture of where I am.

Osh in the daytime has a color and a spice that I like. I was immediately struck by the darker skin (there are a lot of Uzbeks here and few Russians), the colorful clothing, the women’s headscarves, golden jewelry, flowing skirts and slipper-like shoes, the golden carpets of fallen leaves covering the sidewalk, the fruits and the vegetables, the chaotic commotion and bustle. Everyone in Bishkek has a reaction to “the south.” I was told that the people were “different,” that traditions are stronger, that the mentality is trickier, that the food was cheaper and better, that the weather was warmer. It’s definitely a different world from the much more Russified Bishkek.

Osh at night I don’t like so much, though it doesn’t help that my colleague frightens me with tales of thefts, accidents and high numbers of drug addicts and AIDS cases. I haven’t had any problems, but what I really hate is the darkness. Bishkek is the darkest capital city I’ve ever seen. Osh is definitely among the darkest major urban centers. While Bishkek lacked street lights, at least there were people and cars that would provide some light and activity. Here, by the time we leave work at around eight, it’s pitch black dark, there are few people out, and very few cars. Leaving work requires either crossing a small pedestrian bridge over a river (where my colleague says muggings occur) or walking up a tall flight of stairs through the darkness, to the main road. Even on the main road, I put one step in front of another in the hope that it will land on a solid surface. I often end up walking in the road just to benefit from the occasional headlight coming by. During the day it takes me 15 minutes to walk home. At night it’s definitely slower.

I found an aerobics course and hope to attend three nights a week. The first lesson was really surreal. It was held in a brand new sports center built by a local politician. A young Kyrgyz woman taught the step-aerobics class. During a five-minute break, she talked to her six attendees (all local except me) about her new Mary Kay business and tried to recruit clients. I had walked to the club past a mosque emitting the call to prayer and what I assumed might mark the setting of the sun and the ability for those fasting to eat. I then entered this new sports complex, where everyone has to take off their shoes and put them in boxes at the front door, walked past the mats where at least 50 local men were engaged in wrestling, and up the stairs to where locals engaged in the American traditions of step aerobics and Mary Kay. Tradition and modernity seemed to be fused together here, rather than distinct concepts.

Other than aerobics, I really haven’t had any free time. I’m usually pretty cold and tired when I get home and I tend to spend my spare time in the evenings and early mornings sitting in front of my portable heater and reading. I’m about halfway through Ramadan and have to admit that I’m surprised I’ve made it this far. The hardest day was the third, when I took a trip to the mountains and couldn’t eat during the hike. At this point, I think I’ll last the entire month. Since I don’t eat lunch, I treat myself to dinner out almost nightly. The cafes located between work and home don’t offer as much of a culinary adventure as those I found in Bishkek. Last night I found a really good place, owned by an American married to a local. Not only was it the first place I found milk (I love tea with milk, but no one seems to carry milk here), but they also had beans. I always get excited to see things outside of the ordinary and I don’t think I had a bean during my entire time in Bishkek.

I’ll leave this first update at this and will try to write more frequent and shorter posts in the coming weeks. Also, for those who communicate with me directly, if you haven’t heard from me in a while, please check your junk mail files (or send me another email). It seems as though some of my messages are ending up in people’s junk mail boxes, even though they are sent from an official account. I guess email from Kyrgyzstan is considered suspicious.

arrival in Kyrgyzstan

August 30, 2004

Hello from Kyrgyzstan!

I’m a first time blogger, so please let me know how this works for you. I hope to post some photos soon.

I left New York for Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, on Wednesday night. At the counter, the check-in agent asked me, “Where is Bishkek?”

“In Kyrgyzstan.”

“Where’s that?”

“In Central Asia, near Kazkhstan, Uzbekistan and China.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

She passed me to another agent. He checked me in, then announced, “Your bags are checked through to Frankfurt.”

“To Frankfurt? I’m not going to Frankfurt.”

“Yes, Frankfurt,” he said, looking at the FRU on the luggage tags.

“You must mean Frunze,” I said, “the old name for Bishkek. I’m going to Bishkek.”

He looked more carefully and realized his mistake. “I don’t think I’ve ever checked anyone in to Bishkek before,” he said. “I’ll have to go home and look that one up on a map.”

The fact that travel professionals had never heard of my destination was a bit disconcerting. But as I watched my baggage move down the conveyor, I knew I was going whether I was ready or not.

I flew to Baku, then switched to a plane flying to Bishkek, with a stop in Baku, Azerbaijan enroute. When we flew over Georgia and I began to see places like Dushanbe, Astrakhan, Iran, Kabul and Lahore on the flight progress map, I knew I was definitely headed to a new territory.
I met two Kyrgyz on the flight, a student spending the year in Germany, and a man setting up a new private university in Bishkek. Both were very friendly and answered many of the questions I had about Kyrgyzstan.

I landed in Bishkek at 4:20 a.m. on Friday morning. Four of my six check-in bags made it. The other two are still missing. I later found out this is a common occurrence on British Airways flights through London and I’m just hoping that the other two arrive soon. Among the missing items is my bicycle, which I am anxious to use.

A driver picked me up and drove me the half hour to town. My first sights were encouraging – rows of poplar trees, the bottoms painted white, lining the road, golden fields, old men in white pointed traditional Kyrgyz hats, old women wrapped in colorful wool sweaters and headscarves and piles of squash, watermelon, tomatoes and other fresh produce for sale along the road.

The city itself looked very Russian, and except for the Kyrgyz people walking the streets, it reminded me of urban Siberia. It has the same dated Soviet monuments, the same white bus stands, the same Soviet apartment buildings and peeling concrete or wooden homes, the same government buildings and storefronts, the same kiosks selling the same stuff – alcohol, sweets, bread, sausage, cheese, eggs, milk, and yogurt. Even the Kyrgyz people brought back memories of the Buryats, with their brown skin, high cheekbones and wide faces.

My driver was a friendly Russian. He was on his way to Lake Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan’s largest lake, to pick up his wife and children, and invited me to join him for the day. I was too tired at that time, but I do hope to be able to go there some weekend.

I spent my first two nights in the Asia Mountains Guesthouse. It was a chalet-style house with a pool and cozy rooms filled with new wooden furniture. The only downside was that my coworker told me that the “Bikini Club” next door is a brothel, so I wasn’t comfortable going out at night.

When I arrived in the morning, the sound of a passing train caused me to look out my small third-floor window. Beyond the passing green train, snow-capped peaks rose up. I smiled as I lay down and went to sleep.

I spent a few hours in the office on Friday and had a good impression of my coworkers and the work they are doing. A colleague invited me to join her for dinner. Over fish kebab and stirfried beef and mushrooms, she told me about some of the challenges she’s faced. Most compelling was the practice of bride-stealing, still prevalent among the more traditional Kyrgyz in the south of the country. Not only did it occur among the people she serves, but once it happened to one of her employees. This employee went out in the afternoon to do some work and didn’t return. The next morning my colleague asked where she’d been and the employee begin to cry, asking if she had to tell. She’d been stolen as she was walking down the street.

According to tradition, when a man steals a woman, he brings her home to his parents. They can reject her and send her home, can notify her parents, giving them an opportunity to demand her release, or can say nothing. If the woman spends the night at the man’s house, she is obligated to marry him. In this case, luckily, the man’s parents sent her back, but the employee was traumatized nonetheless.

“For someone who grows up expecting to be stolen and to not have a career, maybe it’s not so bad,” my colleague said. “But for someone who has a higher education, a career, or who wants to go overseas, it is terrible. But even they feel they need to follow the tradition.”

There was a similar tradition among the Buryats in Siberia, but I only met one woman who admitted she’d been stolen. She hadn’t wanted to get married, but she did know the man who stole her. For most Buryats, the man and woman agree to marry, then they often reenact the tradition of kidnapping in a humorous way.

Yesterday I moved from the hotel into an apartment nearby. It’s in a block of Soviet-style apartment buildings and is in the center of town, though it’s pretty far from work. The benches on either side of the entrance door are broken. Neither of them have a board across them to sit upon. And the entrance, like most, is crumbly, dark and dank. But greenery grows on either side of it and walking through the courtyard, past the other entrances makes me feel much more a part of the community, as I watch children playing on the Spartan toys, see colorful blankets and rugs hung from balconies or from metal structures in the courtyard to dry, and hear people who have functioning benches sitting outside and chatting.

The landlady is a young, friendly Kyrgyz woman whose mother lives in New York. She told me that her husband recently left her for another woman. When I said I was sorry to hear that, she said it was a good thing, because he played at the casinos too often.

With two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bathroom I have more space than I could possibly use. It’s also equipped with amenities, including a TV, stove, phone and best of all, washing machine. The plan is to stay here for about a month and then move to Kyrgyzstan’s second largest city, Osh.

Jet lag is causing me to head to bed early, but I was able to walk around a bit yesterday. Bishkek is a strange town in that there is no absolute heart. I live in the center, but my work is also in the center, although it’s across town. And in between the two is everything from rose gardens, government buildings, cafes and movie theatres, to empty lots, rusting metal, tall Soviet-style apartment buildings, and small, decrepit homes. There are no clear divisions. Yesterday I saw a shining blue and green new office building right next door to a stinking row of garbage bins and slum houses. I was happy to find a market, with piles of Iranian nuts and dried apricots, fruits, vegetables, plucked chickens, pickles, salads, and all kinds of other goods. Near my apartment is a bread maker, who stands on the corner baking 600 round loaves of the local bread daily in a giant stove that looks ancient, but is only 18 months old. A woman passes balls of dough through a small window, to the baker standing outside. He flattens one at a time against a shaper on the end of a stick, then places it in the oven. A muscular, sweaty man with taut bare arms, he pulls the baked bread out of the hole in the top center with a wire stick or a woven basket attached to a long rod. He plops them on top of the stove, where passerbys can admire then and smell the warm, rich scent, while an assistant, a first year medical student, handles the sales. One loaf costs 8 cents. So far, my favorite part of the city so far is the people. I have yet to meet anyone who has not been incredibly friendly and kind.

These are my initial impressions and interactions with the people and environment. I’ll be in touch later in the week when I’ve had a little more time to adapt. Also, please let me know if there is anything in particular you'd like to know more about.