watch the TV so much that I could have become significantly more
informed. If I had time, I went out and looked for sights in and around
the city.
This way it happened that at the beginning of June I visited the
Botanical Garden with an acquaintance. It lies at the northern limit
of Moscow and had been the property of the counts Sheremetev.
The goal of our walk has been suggested by my companion. She
knew Moscow fairly well. Before she accepted the offer of a private
company for this term to represent them and manage the Hung-
arian grocery, she had been working with the largest, earlier even
the only, tourist agency of our country. She had been travelling all
over the world and had a good talent for organising events. She was
properly prepared for the walk as a guide, with prospectuses, even
when we had to catch a tram she had tickets with her to punch. First
we walked through the Botanical Garden.
I have always been fond of forests and this garden is more a
woods than a park. At the limit of the park there was a lake separ-
ating it from VDNH (exhibition) premises that had belonged to the
same estate before the Great Revolution. From the park we went
over to see the palace of the former estate, still closed, alas, only its
direct surroundings and one big room could be surveyed. She
taught me some details about the building, structure and function. I
have always been a great fan of cultural tourism. In towns visited I
have left out only in Rome -- as I told it in its place -- the visit of
museums, galleries or other sights worth its fee. With her I have got
a private guide who knew a lot of those details unknown generally
even for locals.
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Already during spring I decided to have a look on the Central
Asian Republics of the S.U., being always out of reach for me earli-
er. I went to see Samarkand and Bokhara. Around May 1 there was
a break of 3 days because of May-Day holiday. I bought a ticket to
Samarkand, another from there to Bokhara and a third one to the
return trip from there to Moscow. I wanted to have two days in Bok-
hara and one in Samarkand, but the time-table of flights between
the Uzbekistani towns turned it the opposite. Through DiplService I
could arrange all.
Joe has taken me to the airport and fetched me at arrival. Flights
on all three legs have been event-less, I have experienced the well
known conditions of Soviet domestic flights. Uzbeks were sitting
around me, except a Tajik resembling one of my former colleagues,
he talked all the time, didn't give up, until everybody was listening to
him. The Uzbeks could have been sun-tanned Hungarians from our
Great Plain. In Samarkand a bus took me to the town, I found the
hotel easily. There I bought all maps needed for my walks. I have
never dreamt it could be so marvellous. The town lies in a basin
among great mountains. In clear weather you can see the Pamir
over Tajikistan. The town has a history of two and a half thousand
years, Alexander the Great had been here and he found a great
town even at his time. The hordes of Genghis Khan devastated not
only this town, but the whole country, killing or taking into slavery
millions of peaceful people. All has been survived by this tough
people. It became the seat of Timur Lenk and his successors. His
tomb is in the centre of the town. His grandson, Ulugbek, also a
monarch, but at the same time a brilliant mind of his time, had built
the oldest observatory in the world. It is still in an excellent state
after 6 centuries.
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In the centre of the town there is the greatest complex of still
working Muslim religious buildings I have seen. It occupies a square
almost regular with sides of one thousand feet. Anyway, the four
sides are far from identical. They differ not only in shape, but in
function, too. You find everything from operational religious institut-
ions to museums to a bazaar of small shops there. At the main
entrance of the ensemble there are benches well arranged, where
spectators can watch dance performances and listen to the music
at given times. Passing through gates in the outer walls you get into
the inner court, there the original arrangement of the garden is
preserved, it looks very well cared for. The small shops operate in
the inner court, where you find really valuable carpets and miniature
statuettes near each-other. The small statuettes are very varied,
there are caricature-like humorous folk figures, and also little copies
of buildings. Architecture of that ancient people has been wonder-
ful. The town has at least a dozen famous ruins or buildings still
utilised. All were under reconstruction at my first visit after a long
pause in such activities.
From the ensemble of buildings mentioned on route to the
airport there was a great bazaar and I walked through it with a
feeling I had been there already. I realised, I felt the similarity of it
with Mercato in Addis Ababa. It is worth spending some time there.
There are rows of shops along the route, where mainly women find
goods for themselves, as I haven't seen any stores of technical
equipment. I probably haven't found it only. At the same time women
cannot get away from them. Beside local cloths there are heaps of
different silks, oriental scarves -- if you want scarf, the saleswoman
cuts one of the roll, as the whole roll is made up of the same scarves
--, here you can find silks with all the patterns of the world. As you
walk on the road, you sometimes have to jump aside, as a horse-
drawn open omnibus is coming, sometimes more than twenty
people on it. Otherwise it has not been the only thing in Samarkand
to remind me of the Ethiopian capital.
I took neither buses nor taxis to see the town. Although it was
tiring, I went by foot to all places. Weather has not been hot, rain fell
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sometimes, but my interest has been limitless. Samarkand is very
similar to Addis Ababa both in its location and architecture. People
are white, but sun-tanned, with a look to be mistaken for a Hung-
arian peasant. Their hospitality is enormous, they speak to the
stranger as if he were from their own family. It was interesting to see
the great sofas of tea-houses made of sheer wood, the size of 7 by 7
feet. Their height is about 3 feet and they have a wooden railing
around. People, usually old Uzbeks in their national caps called
tubeteyka, are sitting on it in lotus style, drinking tea. Tea-houses
are called chaikhanas. Of course, it is not necessary to sit down (or
up) to those stages, there are tables in the room, only that more re-
sembles Russian tea-rooms.
I walked through all the time I spent there. You find the tomb of
Timur Lenk directly at the Intourist Samarkand hotel. That time I
visited it only casually, actually there is not too much to see, if you
are not allowed to enter the grave itself. I would manage to do so
only two years later, visiting the town with my family. Also there are
some churches in ruins at the outskirts of the town, I think, they will
be further spoiled, I haven't seen too much efforts to save them. At
the same time, some others are cared for, renovated, they will get
back their former shapes sooner or later. Some of these latter are so
huge, I could see them through the windows of the hotel from many
miles. It is very important for these religious structures to have
proper maintenance. They are made of earth in some forms of brick,
they have a beautiful blue dome covered with ceramic tiles, but in
the gaps grass seeds settle soon, some domes look as if they had
grown a beard, weeds are so dense. And where plants grow, the
raw materials will be spoiled, if not stopped in time.
The small plane of AN-24 took me to Bokhara. Altitude of the
flight was about 10,000 feet, the fine sight made me forget the
extreme noise of the two turboprops, from which the small plane
almost fell into pieces in the air. The country, Uzbekistan is large,
especially compared to Hungary, its western border is made by the
shore of the Aral Sea, and its other end goes to the Pamir Mount-
ains. Here lies Samarkand and the capital, Tashkent. On the East
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the country is mountainous, on the West there is a great dry desert.
Here Bokhara is found, about 200 miles from Samarkand. When the
Mongols began their expansion at the turn of the 12th and 13th
centuries, the country was called Khorezm, and its capital had been
Bokhara. After breaking in his own tribes, Genghis Khan was look-
ing for new preys, and this land was the first of them.
After my arrival in Bokhara I found a guide on the airport in the
person of a taxi driver. He offered to take me all over the town that
afternoon for 7 dollars. We agreed, but, when in the afternoon we
met, he told me, he had other passengers, too. It became clear that
they were my neighbours in Moscow, Frenchmen, working next to
my block of apartments in their embassy. We became friends and
changed cards, but I have never seen them again, as it is customary
with accidental acquaintances.
There was only one memorable detail in the sightseeing by car,
the summer palace of the emir a couple of miles from the town. As
the driver took us around the town in a short time, so, when I be-
came free, I went myself by foot once more. It was worth much
more. I had only a primitive map, but could find my way. One of the
funny things: when I wanted to go by a route shown on the map as
Communism Street, I found that somebody built a fence across it.
Imagine the road to communism a dead end in Bokhara!
The settlement shows the clear signs of being situated within a
very dry area. Buildings are covered with a thick layer of dust, that
makes all look like an old yellowish black-and-white photograph.
The structures of adobe can last to the end of eternity, as they are
exposed to no humidity. Even the fortress has been built of the
same material. Hard-top streets you find only at places of denser
traffic, or, where they have been built recently, all the others are
original dirt roads. That is not completely true that they were the
original streets, only their direction has remained, the roads are
very deep, as the wind has always taken away the loose upper
layer. As I walked the dirt streets of the town I found mulberry trees
with ripe fruit. I ate them from the tree and remembered the cold
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weather in Moscow -- snow was falling as Joe took me to the airport.
If Samarkand was similar to Addis Ababa, Bokhara was even
more similar to Assab, the Red Sea harbour town. All streets in the
old town were dirt roads, some of them so worn out that ground floor
of the houses were level with my shoulder. There were amazing
buildings. Most of them within the complex around the former mos-
que turned tourist hotel turned retail centre of small shops. The
complex formed a square with booths, refreshment stands and a
tea-house. The popular Uzbek folk hero Nasreddin has a statue in
the middle.
From the complex I threaded my route down to the fortress. It
was here that the last of the emirs lived, until revolution took his pro-
perty and drove him away. As I have mentioned, during morning the
taxi driver had taken me to the summer palace of the emir and there
almost all remained intact, even a museum has been made of it. In a
souvenir shop at the entrance to the palace building I bought a fun-
ny thing looking like a cap, but it actually was a heat preserving
equipment. It had to be put over a tea-pot full of tea and it remained
hot for four hours. At the same place I bought a silver bracelet of
typical Uzbek make for my wife, with a large turquoise in its middle.
Later I realised it has been actually glued together of small pieces
and polished to look one. Prices I paid would have seemed astro-
nomical even some months ago, when I arrived to Moscow on my
mission, but to that date conditions had changed profoundly. The
sum of 3,000 roubles I paid for the bracelet could have bought a
second-hand car in good condition half a year before.
At that time, although the Soviet Union still existed, rouble
began to erode away. Its first step has been around March, when
the transferable rouble, that had been always mysteriously confus-
ed by cashiers with Soviet roubles, became distinct from it: 1 US
dollar was equal to 0.60 transferable rouble -- just as before --, but to
6 Soviet roubles. In a short time that previous phenomenon vanish-
ed, only Soviet rouble remained, with always decreasing rate.
When I visited Bokhara, one dollar was equal to 13 roubles. It would
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soon change to 27, then 40. After my holiday, in September, the
daily rate would be determined by the Central Bank, which would
appear generally as an average in the currency tables.
There were other numerical modifications. From the beginning
of the year 1991 in shops there appeared “agreed prices”. Agreed
between the retailer and the manufacturer above the heads of cus-
tomers, who did not get “agreed salaries”. It was the time of about
1,000 percent decrease in living conditions of Soviet people. There
were news in papers that you did not understand with clear mind,
e.g. the county of Tula -- to the south from Moscow -- decided to stop
“export of goods to the capital”. What? Export to the capital? Well,
they wanted to keep some of their own production in their home
town. I was living in a world where backward children had been right
with their slogan.
Well, to come back to my trip to Central Asia, Uzbekistan has
caught me so much that I would come back twice together with my
family.
I had to visit another part of Russia by plane around that time.
My set of hard contact lenses began to wear away for dry air and
small crystals of quartz in it. I could not bear them all day. I decided
to react to an ad in the local paper about soft lenses of English make
from Leningrad. I called the firm and we agreed in a Saturday morn-
ing date. I bought the air ticket and flew there. I went to the town by
METRO and found the shop.
There were two doctors, husband and wife, dealing with eye-
glasses and contact lenses. I was offered a pair of Russian lenses,
but I wanted the English ones rather, which I am sure I haven't got at
last. The woman, who cared for me, was awfully sorry for my decis-
ion, as she said even one of the American astronauts -- mysterious-
ly his name she forgot -- found the proper soft lenses only with them.
These lenses were very good at the beginning, but one of them
would become soon figured like a mosquito net. The other would
crack in two at the middle.
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I wouldn't become too distressed from that, I began to use my
hard lenses again, during the healing period of some weeks my
eyes had calmed down and were able to bear hard lenses. Soft
ones I haven't tried again since. That had not been the first occasion
for me to wear soft lenses, before I got out to Moscow, my right eye
was reacting the same way to the hard one, I made a shock to the
doctor in the optical shop by asking her to prescribe a soft one only
for my right eye. She had not been able to accept that something
new could come from an outsider, and not from her or her col-
leagues. At last I argued that those with one healthy eye were carry-
ing lens on the other eye only. This mixed solution was fine for a
time, but at last I would return to hard ones during my holiday.
After this small detour I go on my story with the morning after my
visit to the Botanical Garden. Early morning on Sunday (it was a-
round the middle of June) there was a phone call from the parking
that a driver of one of our frigoes were taken to hospital because of
an accident. On my questions they told me that the man was falling
off the top of the cabin, when he took a can of beer from the small
compartment of the cooler set for the drivers' use. He fell very un-
fortunately with his head on the concrete ground. I asked them
which hospital he was taken in and drove there at once.
It was too early -- about 7 a.m. --, there were no doctors, I had to
wait. But the man was conscious after a long period of unconscious-
ness. He came against me on the corridor. As I have not met him
yet, I asked the man if it was he. Yes, it was. He was very slow in
every sense. It might have been from some medicine, but also from
the fall. We agreed to wait until he would get some strength and also
to speak with his doctor. In about an hour the doctor arrived. He
checked his patient and then told me, he would have to wait some
days, before he would let him go. I asked him about documents and
cloths of the driver and he said, they were in the store until his de-
parture.
I went to the parking place and talked with drivers who had been
present at the accident. I told them I hoped there would be no com-
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plication. In the afternoon I visited the man again and then he was
completely normal in behaviour. His stunned manner has passed.
He complained about food -- I have never been in a Russian hos-
pital, but I know that in a hospital food is worse than usual in the
country -- and wanted to go home as soon as possible. On his head
there was a bandage, but he had no open wound. I consulted with
the doctor and he was of the opinion not to let him drive and not to
transport him in the cabin of a truck, either. I told the driver to wait,
until I could speak to our doctor at home. The next morning my first
action -- taking into account the two-hour difference between Mos-
cow and Budapest -- has been to call our health centre and speak to
the chief medical officer.
He listened to my report and said he would come for the man by
plane.
“Well, I suppose you speak Russian well”, I said.
“Not a word.”
“Then let me propose something else. You organise his recept-
ion in Budapest from the airport to the hospital and I would do my
duty here and accompany him on the plane.”
He agreed, he promised to inform our executive in charge for
passports and tickets. Anyway, I called her and that afternoon I
could already get the prepaid tickets at the Aeroflot office. The next
day -- Tuesday -- we went to the hospital with Joe, he took my car
back to the office, and I went with the patient in the ambulance. The
nurse or assistant in the ambulance praised us for taking so much
care about our drivers. I took it seriously, as I wanted to be sure
about the safety of the sick man. To tell the truth, I wanted to stay
one day at home, but the man responsible for my return ticket,
Frank, was waiting for me at the airport and my place has been
booked on the next day's plane. I had only a night at home. The man
came back a year later and said he did not feel heat or cold since his
accident.
When I arrived in Moscow in August 1990, I could experience
the greatest goods shortage in that city ever. Earlier when I had
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been to that city, shortage involved only individual wares, mainly
those looked for by foreigners. Such as samovar, jewels of amber,
certain kinds of tools or machines as machine tools for wood that
had been much cheaper there than elsewhere (at the same time we
had had fine machine tools in our stores, only they had cost much
more). Food had always been ample, shops were full. People who
had gone farther into the country had said that situation there had
been quite different, the capital had been only a window for foreign-
ers. In short, I had never had any problem to spend my allowance
(no big sum compared to that of people coming from the West).
But at that time I am writing about, in the sixth year of Mr. Gor-
bachev's reign, shops were empty, even for food there were long
queues, especially for milk products. Processors even tried to sell
milk made of powder as fresh milk, at first nothing hinted at such a
thing, I only guessed the situation, when I wanted to make cottage
of it, milk didn't want to curdle. You can imagine my stand, when I
wanted to buy basic equipment for my household. My employer pro-
vided for the refrigerator and furniture in the apartment, but washing
machine was the employee's own concern, either he bought it there
or took it with him from home. With me this latter fell out, for this
reason I tried to get one, when I occupied the flat in Moscow.
It is worth remembering how I got my washing machine. For that
I have to go back in time again. My first all-night service on the
agency -- it was to be given by company representatives for Satur-
days and Sundays -- coincided with my encounter with the institut-
ion's managing director, who said me he was leaving for good at the
end of the year 1990. We were somewhere in November. I asked
him to sell me his things he would not take home. He promised me
his washing machine, his microwave oven and a complete China
set. I led his name into my agenda not to forget to give him a truck for
his moving. The transaction happened in order and I became the
lucky owner of the mentioned three items. But I have an additional
story in connection with one of them.
Some weeks after the time, when he left, I met a woman, whom I
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held in high respect for her intelligence, who said I got my micro-
wave oven because of psychological reasons. I did not catch the
meaning of her words.
“How do you know at all about it?” I put her the question.
“Oh, you know that I was his secretary.” I knew, but still did not
understand her statement.
“You know”, she continued, “he was a great admirer of girls and
a despot. He tried it with me, too, but as he could not be successful,
he did not sell me the oven.” Now I understood. That man wanted to
turn the general shortage to his advantage, even with methods
nearing prostitution.
“How much did you want to give him for the oven?” I asked her
the most important thing.
She said the same sum I paid for it.
“Well, it is yours at that price”, I told her. She would not believe
her ears, she was so happy.
Well, I liked the device, it was a sophisticated oven for a Russian
one. Anyway, I have always hated blackmail, especially when it was
for getting someone's favours.
After my trip to Budapest for taking home the driver involved in
the accident I had my opportunity to visit one of the top attractions
around Moscow. Joe S. had visitors from home -- they arrived dur-
ing my homeward trip and, as Joe thought I would stay long enough,
he moved them into my flat in my absence, which I acknowledged
with resentment --, and he went with them to show the sights of
Moscow. It was they, who needed me, actually my car, as Joe's one
was somehow out-of-order, to make the sixty miles to Zagorsk and
back. The place is the orthodox Vatican. The town and the monast-
ery has been renamed since, it has got back the old name, Sergiev
Posad.
It was a fine experience, I did not resent to have visited it. Only I
would have chosen other companions, if it had been possible. The
institution called lavra (holy monastery) has originally been only a
fortified monastery for monks, but, when Bizantium, the centre of or-
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thodox Christianity became lost for believers around the end of the
Middle Ages, as it was made into the capital of the Turkish Empire,
the bigger churches of the orthodox Christian religion as the Greek,
the Russian, and even that of Kiev originally the se