November 21 -- Balkanabat

Breakfast at the hotel this morning was simple and good. As I said before it was not included in the room charge. The cost was about 42 manat or $14 for both of us. Pretty inexpensive I would say as hotel restaurants go. We even got to watch Russian music videos while we ate. That was a special bonus. Maral’s brother picked us up about 9:30 this morning and took us to a local bazaar. You could buy just about anything you had a desire for there. We bought nothing. Maral’s brother bought us a gift to hang over our door at home to keep the evil eye away from our home. Bazaars seem to be the malls and supermarkets of the U.S.

Balkanabat Library

After the bazaar we drove around the city looking at different building landmarks. The place they perform weddings, a theatre, a library, police headquarters. There was one monument that was a sculpture of six people and a camel struggling to get through a sandstorm. Will have to find out what the monument was for because I don’t remember. We then went to a new museum in the city. It was very new and not all of the exhibit halls were yet filled. There was one hall on natural history of the Balkan Province that was very nice and informative. Another on the history of the people of the area, also enlightening. The last we went through was an exhibit on the oil and gas industry in the Balkan Province. This was something I actually knew something about having been in the business and having done a little research when Maral came to live with us. We were in the museum for just a little over an hour and did not see anyone else except the people that worked there. We were told generally only tourists visited the museum and at this time of the year there are not many tourists.

Silk Road Monument

From the museum we went back to the hotel to pick up the gifts for Maral and then off to her home for the afternoon festivities. Maral’s family and friends were at her house having a party and the grooms family and friends were at his house having a party. There were two groups at the party the men and the women. I stayed with the women because that is better and because at least some of them spoke English. We ate many wonderful foods. Maral received the gifts from her family and at about 2 PM the ladies from the groom’s house arrived to give their gifts. There was much singing as the day moved forward. Later all of the gifts were gathered and another showing was done on all the things the bride will take with her to the groom’s home after the wedding. All of this made little sense to me but everyone, including me, seemed to have a wonderful time. Of course between each gift event there was more food.

Came back to the hotel to rest for a bit and then went out for a walk. We walked down to the library we had seen earlier in the day. We went inside and communicated to the librarian that we would like to look at the facility. She showed us around on the first floor. Unlocking doors as she went. The facility was beautiful but it looked very unused. My idea of a library is stacks and stacks of books but we saw no stacks at all. Some books were on display on stands and standing but no stacks. There were many computers on the first floor that I would assume had access to the internet but all of them were without operators. The second floor was just as fantastic. Here there were half a dozen children using the computers. Two that I noticed were playing games. One was playing chess and the other was playing something I didn’t recognize. A couple of young ladies were working on some kind of a project. Except for one room we went into they were all very hot, probably 80 +F. For a facility of such great size I was astonished there were only two people working. But at least they have a library.

We stopped at a couple of monuments along the way but could not determine for sure why they were there. Two of them were the first president of Turkmenistan. I think we are done roaming for the day and will probably go down to dinner soon and then hit the sack. Maybe we can get a good night’s sleep tonight. I certainly hope we will.

When we got back to the hotel Maral called and said that her friend, Laurens,  from the Netherlands wanted to go out for dinner to a place he had been before for dinner. She wanted to know if we could join him and we did. We met in the lobby and were introduced around by Rejep and then departed for the restaurant. Rejep was going to drive us but we decided to walk to the place.

Soon we were at a restaurant called Burawcy. The food was excellent though the service was a bit slow by U.S. standards though it turns out the service was very reasonable by Turkmen standards. At 9 PM they turned the music up and the laser lights on and the “disco” was in full swing. We left shortly after that. Asked for the check just before it started and then couldn’t hear one another to break it down so I paid the whole and when we got outside we squared things up. The food was great. The music was even louder than in the U.S. I think it’s time to put some money in hearing aid manufacturing and sales.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped to pick up water at a convenience store. A 1.5 liter bottle was twenty cents. Yup, that’s correct, just 20 cents for 1.5 liter bottle of water. Went back to the hotel and now it’s time for a good night’s sleep.