Trains, Planes and Automobiles

I decided that a corny movie reference (or song reference or something?) would be the perfect way to frame my week in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan’s capital, where I hadn’t been in five months.

Trains

The reasons I hadn’t visited Ashgabat in five months, despite housing Peace Corps’ country headquarters and the country’s fine dining, is because it is a fourteen hour train ride from my home (plus the hour long trip to the train station).

Now before you go on imagining horrific third-world country train rides with no heating or cooling, hard seats and overpowering BO, I must confess that the trains are pretty cushy if you travel with people you know. The two times I took the train, we have gotten a sleeping car, called a coupe, with four beds stacked in two sets of bunks. Again, as long as you travel with friends, the coupe isn’t too bad, More comfortable than Amtrak, though I have never been in a sleeper car on Amtrak.

On the ride to Ashgabat, we shared all the food we had prepared for the trip, including Josh and Rebekah’s bloody marys. They had prepared the peppery tomato juice in their new blender. There was even green pepper garnish. Unfortunately, despite the popularity of vodka in Turkmenistan, the drinks were not a hit with the two Turkmen colleagues traveling with us.

The pre-conference conversation about project and service related concerns (do you have a project idea? Will this conference be a waste of time? Will we be able to speak several hours a day in Turkmen about project ideas?) was interrupted by the periodic wailing of peripatetic salespeople. “Popcorn, ice cream, silver jewelry,, bananas,” they call. Some chemical in the ice cream seems to prevent it from melting properly in the spring heat of the train. The sales women (for they are all women) carry their wares in large plastic bags or unwieldy boxes that take up the entire width of the aisle. I wondered if the salespeople always lived on the train. Well, while wandering from car to car trying to find an open bathroom (squat toilet, in case you’re interested), I saw one of the bag-laden salespeople settle down onto a mattress in a small room the size of a closet. So at least there is somewhere to sit some of the time.

Our conversation is also interrupted by the people selling sheets and the ones checking tickets. I don’t quite understand the selling of sheets, because you are required to buy them (or rather rent them), yet you must pay extra. About 21 cents. The sheets are rented out around 8 pm, and collected (one hopes) for laundering around 6 or 7 am depending on when the train arrives.

At one point that evening, the police who ride the train opened the door to the coupe as Josh was getting onto the top bunk. He had his shoes on. The policeman began to question a Turkmen colleague who was in the coupe with us, “Who are these people? Where are they from?” he barked at her. “America,” we said. Though we answered him, the policeman spoke only to our Turkmen colleague. “Well tell them that in Turkmenistan they must act Turkmen. They can act American in America, but they must act Turkmen here. Tell them that.” It wasn’t until he left that I realized the policeman was yelling about Josh’s shoes on the bed. Our Turkmen friend/colleague was very embarrassed.

While the bunk beds are hard, and the blankets scratchy, the hardest part of the overnight train is the severe stops. The train moves at a glacial pace, stopping every hour or so through the night. On the way to Ashgabat, I slept fitfully, waking up every hour, but on the way back, I was exhausted enough to sleep through most of the jerky, poorly executed stops.

Planes

We arrived at Ashgabat at 9:30 am, dropped our bags in the Peace Corps office, as the hotel wasn’t open yet, then waited around for the glorious free internet. After a lengthy lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Yes, a real Chinese restaurant with delicious beef and chili peppers, I headed over to the Aero Kasa (airplane ticket sales building) to buy my ticket to China for vacation. It’s a large, modern building with a huge decal of a TurkmenAir airplane. Despite planning this trip for the past six months, I was very nervous. Things that might be simple business transactions in America are not always so simple here. Another volunteer who came with us to the office had tried to by an in-country plane ticket in Turkmenabat, and the salesperson had insisted that she must pay in dollars because she only had her American passport, not her green Peace Corps ID. Talking to other people who had bought tickets before, this seemed to be a spur of the moment requirement.

The ticket purchase went off without a hitch. I was in line behind four people, and waiting only fifteen minutes as a women handwrote the ticket. The flight schedules and reservations are computerized for the airline, but the tickets are handwritten, so the ticket will be a nice souvenir. It should go without saying that I couldn’t have bought the ticket online if I had wanted to. Also, Turkmenistan is an all-cash economy. There is no credit unless a local seller as the bazaar wants to keep a handwritten record of his customers. As a result, I had been traveling around with all the cash to buy my ticket. It was a thrilling relief to dispense with all that cash and finally get the ticket. My plane leaves at 2:30 am in the morning on a Sunday, and gets to Beijing at 12:20 pm Beijing time. I still need to look up the time different to find out exactly how long the flight is.

Automobiles

Because we don’t know the bus roots of the capital well, and because our hotel was far from the PC office, we spent a lot of time taking taxis.

On the way back from the Chinese embassy, where I had picked up my visa application, Kelsey and I were pessimistic about finding a taxi quickly. The Chinese embassy is in the ritziest, but most isolated part of town, Berzini where lots of luxury cars drive. As a rule, drivers of luxury cars don’t pick up extra passengers to earn a few more manats. Imagine our surprise when a BMW pulled over. He even asked us to name our own price, suggesting he picked us up for the intrigue of international passengers rather than the money. Immediately he put American pop music on the stereo (it must have been a CD because it doesn’t play on the radio). We spent the whole ride in awe of the smooth roads and working shocks, a major difference from the lawn mower feel of a Lada on country roads.

Then, a few days later, a large group of PCVs heading to the hotel were surprised to get picked up by a minivan. Inside, the man quickly started up in uncertain English He was from Kazakhstan, and a Jehovah’s Witness. But he didn’t spend the time testifying for us. Instead, he wanted to talk politics. Unfortunately, responsibility towards Peace Corps prevents me from relating his political diatribe. Suffice it to say that he compared the fate of Jehovah’s Witnesses in all the Central Asian countries.