Steppe in Style: adventures in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

It’s a beautiful spring day. The last traces of ice have melted from the roadsides and tiny shoots of new grass are peeping through the mud in the Kyrgyz Football Federation’s garden. I’m here for a press conference ahead of Kyrgyzstan’s World Cup qualifier against Tajikistan. “Football?” asked my editor, when I told her about the…

If the poverty in Bishkek is sometimes bad, it’s nothing compared to Kyrgyzstan outside the city. I’m not going far, just to the town of Tokmok, which three months ago I attempted to explore, and failed miserably. This time I’m going with a group of missionaries and charity workers to a hospital in Tokmok —…

Manas airport isn’t just the Kyrgyz capital’s civilian international airport, since 2001 the US and its partners have used it as a military base for both fighting and humanitarian operations in Afghanistan.  After a brief Christmas and New Year break back home, I was flying into Istanbul at the beginning of January, where I’d meet…

The day my flatmate flies home for the winter break, I decide to cheer myself up by doing something Christmassy, so I go to the Bishkek Opera and Ballet Theatre to see The Nutcracker.  I’m doing this partly in a spirit of nostalgia. I saw The Nutcracker when I was five years old, and it…

Winter has come to Bishkek. Every day this week Channel 1 has shown footage of deserted, snow covered petrol stations. The Kyrgyz som has just fallen against the dollar, so prices for imports are increasing. Petrol has already gone up by 7 som (12p) a litre. At Osh Bazaar, the women have bundled themselves in…

The tradition of bride stealing, sadly, is still alive and well in Kyrgyzstan. In fact, there has been a resurgence since the fall of communism, and it’s quite common in Kyrgyzstan, especially outside the northern urban areas.  My colleague and I met Leda (not her real name), one of its victims. She’s only 24, a…

It’s dark and cold as I head out to my colleague’s flat for dinner, and the streets and buildings of Bishkek are being drenched in icy rain.  I look at the faces of the other passengers in the marshrutka, illuminated by passing headlamps, and at the Kyrgyz man standing at the bus stop, rain plastering…

At 6.23pm on Friday the newspaper’s marketing director drops by the office to give me a lift to the Tequila Blues nightclub, which is due to re-open tonight. Everyone stares as we leave, wondering where I’m going seven minutes before I’m due to punch my timesheet, with the office hunk. “You want to change first?”…

Bishkek and other towns in northern Kyrgyztan have a large Russian population, and many of the people I know — colleagues at the newspaper and my landlady — are Russians whose families stayed on in independent Kyrgyzstan after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Those old enough to remember are nostalgic about the Soviet days,…

I’ve promised to take my new Italian colleague to Osh Bazaar, the food market where most people in Bishkek go for their weekly shop. My neighbour Lara came home yesterday laden with carrier bags of tomatoes that she’s planning to bottle for the winter. We meet outside Tsum and take the bus to the opposite…