Welcome to freaktown

I already got complaints: "18 days without a new story!!!" (and now as I write this even more...)
Yes, I know, I didn't write for an unusally long time - to my defence: Iran soaked me in completely, and I did in fact enjoy that bit of delay.

But I don't want to omit another country I've been to, even though I was there only 48 hours in total. So before writing about amazing Iran, I want to write about this country - because it is worth writing about:

Turkmenistan

I could again - like I did it for other -stan-countries - ask youm what you know about Turkmenistan, but I spare you that embarrassment.

It is indeed a quite special country (they make themselves special), and difficult to travel to. If you want to travel to Turkmenistan you can either apply for a tourist-visa. However, you won't get one without having booked a tour, because you're not allowed to be in Turkmenistan on a tourist-visa without at tourguide. Or you do like me and Lise did: you apply for a transit-visa. With such a visa you're allowed to be without a guide, but only in towns and places on the direct connection between your entry- and your exitpoint (which are written on your visa as you can see). And of course, you would usually get only three to maximum five days visa.

Getting the visa was a pain already: we tried it when we were still in Tashkent, but immediately let go: it would have taken around 20 days, and the application process included some mysterious waiting lists you should write your name on in the middle of the night... Well, skip that. Even the consul told us to apply for the visa in Dushanbe, as we were going there anyways. Which we did.
The consul in Dushanbe was quite unique too: flirting with us convinced that we liked his tight trousers. When we collected the visa he told me that he had given us a five-day visa, whereasthe Japanese guy had only gotten three days. I was quite embarrassed later, when this very Japanese guy asked me how many days we had...

So far so good, after all that hassle, we had our Turkmenistan visa in hand and were ready to enter the country on the 22nd of October.

And now, 48 hours of complete freakdom started... In the North, where we entered the country, everything went quite usual, for Central Asian standards (apart form the fact that the border guards were unusally unfriendly).

Our aim was to get a shared taxi straight from Konye-Urgench all the way South through the huge Karakum desert to Ashgabad, the big countrys capital. We were lucky to have found two businessmen in our age, who wanted to have company while driving to Ashgabad (oh guash, this one guy was really only talking about money, with his American accent...). They not only drove us all the way there for free, but also helped us to find a "cheap" hotel in Ashgabad and drove us around the city the next day and more important next night...

Mission one: Finding a cheap hotel in Ashgabad

It all depends on what you call "cheap". In my guidebook from 2010 there were a few hotels and guesthouses for around 10USD per person. The only problem is that Ashgabad is a fastly changing city (their dear president, whose picture is more or less everywhere, demolishes all old parts of the city to build a new disneyland-like town): so out of the eight telephone numbers in my book, only one worked. Hooray! The hotel, which was around 12USD in my guidebook now cost 60USD. No no, not per room, per person!

Erm, well, that's far more than what we consider as "cheap". This very hotel looked rather creapy. The guys were really helpful, but the budget-section was definitely not a section they were really familiar with. So they drove us to the part of town, where all new hotels were located lined one next to the other... Hotels they were indeed: huge buildings, all in white marmor, with beautifully set gardens and lawns. After checking a few of these hotels (many of which simply did not accept foreigners) we finally found a hotel which accep,ted foreigners and was not reasonably priced but affordable: 55USD for a double room. And as we didn't want these guys to drive even longer all around the city for us we bit in the sour apple and agreed to stay in this hotel.

So, what would you, being used to pay around 15USD for a room, expect from a hotel, in which the cheapest room is 55USD?! Service? Breakfast? Cleanliness? Of course, right: in cheap hostels all this is included.
But in this huge but empty hotel (the photo shows the entrance hall) nothing, literally NOTHING was included. No breakfast. Service?? what's that?! Cleanliness? Nope.
We came to the room which looked quite nice, but when I took away the bed cover I found a lot of hair of former customers, in the bathroom there was a cigarette butt in the toilet, and the small bottles for shampoo, showergel were half-full and even the soap, nicely put in the small box, had already been used. I mean, what he hell: we paid 55USD for the room and got used stuff and not even breakfast!!

But there is no sense in getting angry...
The next evening we could only smile, when we saw another foreign customer shouting at the lazy and incompetent receptionist, who doesn't speak one word of English, and even struggles with Russian: "That's not funny!! There was even blood on my blanket!!" (we were lucky with having found only hair...)

At least my revenge was to call the receptionist for every little thing that was not ok, to swich on and off the aircon (they had the remote control for it... really intelligent, right?!).

Mission two: buying Iran-compatible clothes at the bazaar

The next morning (after having annoyed the receptionist to prepare us tea) we went to the bazaar. Luckily the guys from the day before were just around and offered us to drive us there. The new bazaar is most conveniently located around 11km out of town. In our guidebook it said, that the bazaar of Ashgabad (which at the time of writing had been at another place) was one of the most sprawling and interesting of Central Asia. Maybe it had been at that time, now it definitely is not anymore! It was simply huuuuuge, big marmor buildings, really clean, a lot of empty space between the different sections of the bazaar. So even the comparably big amount of people were far away from filling the empty space. So this one was far from the typical messy but sympathetic atmosphere of bazaars. We had only gone there to buy clothes for Iran: women not only need to cover their hair there, but they also need to wear a manteau which covers their butts. So after some while we were lucky to find some really ugly black grandma-style manteaus.

We both really really liked the style of Turkmen women. And if we have had more time we would have got ourselves some typical Turkmen dresses (like on the picture above). And they have really beautifully coloured scarves, which they put in a voluminous way on their heads. Those who don't have long hair are cheating: they put some kind of hat under the scarves, which makes them look as if they had a lot of hair too. I really liked this style and bought one of these hats too: so that's as close as I got to Turkmen style while beeing there (in the background you can see the "sprawling" bazaar...)

Mission three: checking our emails

After the bazaar, which was boring after we had what we needed, we went back to the center to check our emails in a internet cafe. At least, that's what we had hoped to do. But no, not possible without a passport! I am really wondering, if the people are aware of what that means: when you go online in an internet cafe you need to leave you passport details, so there is a 100% control of what you are checking on the web! (of course many sites - like facebook and others - are filtered) We finally convinced the girl at the internet cafe to let us go online quickly by giving them my passport-copy only.

Mission four: visiting Ashgabad

We had already seen a bit of the splendor of Ashgabad on the day before, when arriving at dusk. Splendor indeed!

Ashgabad is a complete freak-town! It is nothing more but the dollhouse of the two Turkemenistans presidents - the last (and first) president Saparmurat Niyazov (renamed himself Turkmenbashi) succeeded by his dentist Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. There would be so much to tell about these presidents: the god-like president Niyazov named the days of the week after his family members, his book Ruhnama is something like the bible and pupils have to know parts of it by heart, ... But I will skip that and leave you to research more about their megalomania by yourself, it's worth giving it a go! And yes, this does exist!!

In fact the whole country is their playground, with Ashgabad as the center piece, where they want to show the whole world the splendor and richness of this country (the world doesn't really give a shit about it, but that's another question...).

The aim now is to get rid of the old parts of the city (which are the only ones which have some kind of flair and livelyness to them; where people are actually living) and replace them by a new imperial city completely built fro scratch. All buildings there are uniquely designed (the oil-ministery has the form of a lighter; the pharmacy-department the form of a cobra...). But of course there are some red threats combining the whole new city: everything is huge, built for a big empire. All buildings have white marmor walls and ornaments in gold. You will find the same symbols everywhere: the Turkmen star (like on my visa), the five symbols representing the carpet symbols of the five regions of Turkmenistan (which are also featured on the flag of Turkmenistan in the beginning of this story). So no doubt about the style: it is stylish and chic indeed!

Who cares about functionability, right?! Who cares that you can't really open your eyes anymore, because the strong sun is even stronger being reflected by all the white marmor-buildings? Important persons don't walk in the streets anyways, but drive in cars with shaded windows. The city is not built for pedestrians anyways: All the amazingly beautiful and stylish new buildings are really far away from each other, with beautifully set and well maintained gardens and flowers between them.

We were really amazed by this huge and scary new town: it is like disney land, huge beautiful white buildings, decorated with golden ornaments. But no people! There is simply nobody around! The new town is a splendid city of a rich empire, but without any life.

The whole town is a like our hotel - a Potemkin village: a nice and beautiful facade, but what is true and real behind it?!
But the little we saw of the life of the people - on our way from the North to Ashgabad; when walking around the lively downtown bazaar, which was in the old town; or when driving through the old town - was far from being related to the splendid city: people seemed poor, food in the bazaar was cheap (which is in my eyes the most representative factor for the average wage in the country) and when stopping in the desert to get some food we were confronted with the same fucked-up road-side restaurants with a shithole as toilets. Our dear (brainwashed) guys wanted to convince us that this was the first time they saw such a toilet in all over Turkmenistan and usually everything was modern. They also wanted to convince us that it is absolutely reasonable that locals are not allowed to host foreigners anymore, because they need to be registered, after there had been some attacks on their beloved president. And yes, of course he was convinced that his president was great and that people had a great life: of course, they don't pay anything for gas, water or electricity (which is why the town is completely lit during the whole night...) - is that all that makes up a good life?!

Yes, Ashgabad at night is yet another level: it's a great sight and we were really lucky that these business-men took the time to drive us around at night and showed us their splendid town. Everything is beautifully lit, the white marmor buildings reach their full grandiosity.

He drove us up to a plateau, from which we could see and admire the city. At this plateau was a huge place with fountains and beautiful laterns and a big buiding in the form of a ferries wheel. It was closed at night, but they told us what it was for: inside are many different playgrounds and games for kids. Its a playhouse for kids!
No need to mention, that there were no people around when we were there...

He drove us back through the beautifully lit streets, along the huge empty boulevards lined with gardens and big marmor buildings. On the main street the white medial strips seperating the lanes were even electrically lit!

Oh my dear Ashgabad, you beautiful city... We didn't like it there AT ALL!! Too freaky, too brainwashed, simply too wrong. And also too expensive for foreigners. So we were more than happy to leave this against foreigners so suspicious country...

For all German-speaking readers: I really recommend you to read this travelreport about Ashgabad, it is great! It so much represents what I have experienced there, with much more background information and much better pics!