Tashkent Local Customs

Tashkent is full of nice parks and squares. People love to sit there in the sun and enjoy the nice surroundings. Many fountains can be found. Children like to jump into the fresh water, when the weather is hot during summer.

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I already mentioned that the Palace of Peoples’ Friendship is a very popular place for Uzbek couples to have their wedding parties.
But obviously parties are held in any other places or restaurants. While I was wandering around Amur Timur park looking for a nice place to have dinner, I suddenly heard trumpets and followed the sound. There was obviously a wedding or maybe birthday party going on, given the elegant dressed people that got inside.
The guys blowing the trumpets outside were all dressed in festive robes, of which you can see a lot also in the bazaars. They had a lot of fun, blowing their trumpets and were all aware that they’d been photographed. Still, sorry for my blurry pictures (I think I was hungry that evening).

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Tashkent’s climate is perfect to grow all kind of fruits and plants. What I liked very much is the vast use of grapevine for shady planting. The positive side is also that you can grab some grapes and other fruits if you get hungry. Well, of course (please!) only if this is in a public place, such as around museums or in parks, but never from private houses ! Some of these grapes are huge; the one in photo 1 was around 20 cm long. And they taste very good, sweet and full of aroma !
Often you can find also pomegranate trees – ahh yummm as well.

Another funny, simple and well thought out local custom is to water parks and gardens with a “special equipment”, almost all over in Uzbekistan. The water nozzle is covered by a fixed plastic water bottle with holes in there. Turn on the water and it sprays all around – lovely :-)

Tashkent has its share of monumental statues - Temur on his horse in the pretty park on Amir Timur Square, the Earthquake Memorial to the thousands who died in the great quakes of the 1960s, the statue of the Uzbek blacksmith and his wife with the 15 Russian children they fostered during the war outside the Palace of the Friendship of the Peoples, the huge globe with only Uzbekistan marked that has replaced Lenin on Independence Square - all share a degree of grandiose swagger and bravado.
The you come to the Statue of the Grieving Mother, part of the monument to the Fallen of World War II , keeping watch by the Eternal Flame, and your heart breaks for all the mothers who grieve for their sons and daughters, lost to the ambitions of men and the madness of war.

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No once-Soviet city is complete without great blocks of faceless apartments. Tashkent is no exception. What is more surprising is how much traditional housing there is in the city. From the mud-brick houses of the oldest part of the city near the Chorsu bazaar to houses like these much newer ones, there are streets and streets of traditionally built houses, many in quieter back streets with vegetable gardens along the street frontages and even chickens running around.
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I was in Tashkent for a brief amount of time and I met Dr. Umid while assessing his office for network upgrades. Dr. Umid was very gracious and he and his wife and younger brother showed me the Tashkent I would have probably never seen.

He and his family were the best tour guides. Dr. Umid introduced me to his good friend Alexey a local muscian and he took us all out to dinner where he refused my payment for my share of the bill. Uzbek hospitality is unmatched and I was pleasantly impressed.

Getting stopped by the police in the Metro system is as routine as drinking tea in Tashkent. You get to know the policemen on a first name basis. It's hilarious. "Hello, Josh! Good to see you. Do you have your passport?" This actually came in handy the one time my passport was at the Kazakh embassy because I'd met the guy the day before. So we just talked a bit about things to do in Shymkent.

Now, to achieve a Tashkent Hat Trick, you must be stopped by the police at least three times in the course of an outing. A natural hat trick, of course, is to be stopped by the police in three consecutive metro stations in a single journey. This must be done without breaks (you'll need to change trains to be in a position for this to happen). So you get picked off by a the cops waiting for the first train, again when you change trains, and then again on your way out of the Metro system. I scored a natural hat trick on the morning of August 31st, 2004 on my way from Hotel Tara to Shymkent.

We were at Navoi Park at the Ali Shir Nava'i monument when we saw a wedding party taking photos. I asked my Tashkent friend about it and he told me that it was tradition for newlyweds to visit historic and cultural places on their wedding day.

We saw a similar scene while at the Tashkent Tomb of the Unknown Soldier next to the WWII Memorial. An interesting story was unfolding that my friend was telling me about as he overheard their conversation.

Apparently the photographer was drunk and not cooperating with the bride and groom on taking the photos they wanted. The argument got pretty heated but the photographer eventually smiled and composed himself and off he went to continue taking their pictures.