First and last impressions deliver a sadly wrong picture of Tashkent, and of Uzbekistan. This night, they managed to exceed all my dark expectations...:
I was first at the Check-In, because of tricks you just know after using this catastrophic airport regularly. Good move - that can easily save you half an hour, because Check-In at Tashkent is notoriously slow. Some of the people checking you in apparently use a computer for the first time, don't know what to do with your foreign passport, and it regularly takes them ten to fifteen minutes to check in a single person. I started to be optimistic.
Too early. There was nobody at the customs. It was simply - closed. Nobody anywhere around. And of course none of the uniformed folk walking around (smoking; carrying books; talking about lipstick; or just showing off their big hats) had any clue if anyone would ever open the customs. They did - after about 40 minutes, facing a long queue. Ah yes, and they opened one of the customs rows, of course. I was the first, but by this time, it was already clear it wouldn't help, since with these delays, this wouldn't turn into a "have a cup of coffee near the departure gate and wait for other pax", but the more common "be pushed into a bus at the departure gate and wait in there for ages".
After customs, there's this small space in front of the passport control. Surprise: Nobody there, too. The room is filling, and the regional queuing system starts to kick in: Essentially a behavior you might have noticed in the After-Christmas sale of a big discount store somewhere in Europe, if you ever were silly enough to go there. After another 45 minutes, they open one passport control booth. At least one for "citizens of all countries". It could've been worse.
Security was fairly straight-forward.
The gate staff indeed tried to get us into the buses, or at least to get us into the corridor that leads to the exit - always a fabulous place to have people waiting. Knowing that there are probably about fifty people behind me, stuck somewhere at customs, at passport control, or (with growing numbers of pax) at security control, I did have my cup of coffee instead.
The flight left only about an hour late, and once again, I love airBaltic's soft sense of irony, with the pilot remarking that they apologize for the delay which was caused on one hand by a late arrival of the plane, and on the other hand by the late ground handling.
All in all, about two hours to get from Check-In to departure gate. During a time of the day with little traffic, hardly more than some fifty people for the Riga flight, and some more who were heading to St Petersburg, but mostly behind us. Well done, TAS.
It's been like this since my very first visit to Tashkent. Almost every single time. It's rather obvious that things don't work, but that doesn't trigger any reaction by the airport. Except for the fact that they (respectively Uzbekistan Airways, but that's about the same actually) recently uploaded an online poll, asking pax how they like the service, with questions about both airline and ground handling at TAS.
Yeah. If they ever hire someone to actually look at the results, that may be a step forward. But probably they'll print out a vast Excel chart with the feedback, archive it neatly in a black folder on a shelf behind the oversized desk of some fat guy whose main interest during his working day is to trade his private real estate and plan a shopping trip to Dubai with one of his girlfriends.
I was first at the Check-In, because of tricks you just know after using this catastrophic airport regularly. Good move - that can easily save you half an hour, because Check-In at Tashkent is notoriously slow. Some of the people checking you in apparently use a computer for the first time, don't know what to do with your foreign passport, and it regularly takes them ten to fifteen minutes to check in a single person. I started to be optimistic.
Too early. There was nobody at the customs. It was simply - closed. Nobody anywhere around. And of course none of the uniformed folk walking around (smoking; carrying books; talking about lipstick; or just showing off their big hats) had any clue if anyone would ever open the customs. They did - after about 40 minutes, facing a long queue. Ah yes, and they opened one of the customs rows, of course. I was the first, but by this time, it was already clear it wouldn't help, since with these delays, this wouldn't turn into a "have a cup of coffee near the departure gate and wait for other pax", but the more common "be pushed into a bus at the departure gate and wait in there for ages".
After customs, there's this small space in front of the passport control. Surprise: Nobody there, too. The room is filling, and the regional queuing system starts to kick in: Essentially a behavior you might have noticed in the After-Christmas sale of a big discount store somewhere in Europe, if you ever were silly enough to go there. After another 45 minutes, they open one passport control booth. At least one for "citizens of all countries". It could've been worse.
Security was fairly straight-forward.
The gate staff indeed tried to get us into the buses, or at least to get us into the corridor that leads to the exit - always a fabulous place to have people waiting. Knowing that there are probably about fifty people behind me, stuck somewhere at customs, at passport control, or (with growing numbers of pax) at security control, I did have my cup of coffee instead.
The flight left only about an hour late, and once again, I love airBaltic's soft sense of irony, with the pilot remarking that they apologize for the delay which was caused on one hand by a late arrival of the plane, and on the other hand by the late ground handling.
All in all, about two hours to get from Check-In to departure gate. During a time of the day with little traffic, hardly more than some fifty people for the Riga flight, and some more who were heading to St Petersburg, but mostly behind us. Well done, TAS.
It's been like this since my very first visit to Tashkent. Almost every single time. It's rather obvious that things don't work, but that doesn't trigger any reaction by the airport. Except for the fact that they (respectively Uzbekistan Airways, but that's about the same actually) recently uploaded an online poll, asking pax how they like the service, with questions about both airline and ground handling at TAS.
Yeah. If they ever hire someone to actually look at the results, that may be a step forward. But probably they'll print out a vast Excel chart with the feedback, archive it neatly in a black folder on a shelf behind the oversized desk of some fat guy whose main interest during his working day is to trade his private real estate and plan a shopping trip to Dubai with one of his girlfriends.
This won't make sense to anyone except, probably, some two of us. And maybe one or two more, if they remember. If they do. I'm sure they do.
I knew that, but until today didn't have any... well, call it proof.
It's been a good time, Tom. Old Guns'n'Roses songs are playing.
The-Consulting Thomas Esser
(Sitz: Unterseen)
SHAB-Nr.: 215 - 04.11.2005
Grund: Handelsregister (Löschungen)
The-Consulting Thomas Esser, in Unterseen, CH-092.1.003.615-3, Neutrale Versicherungsberatung, Einzelfirma (SHAB Nr. 89 vom 10. 05. 1999, S. 3083). Die Firma ist infolge Todes des Inhabers erloschen.
Tagebuch Nr. 2119 vom 31.10.2005
(03090502/CH09210036153)
I knew that, but until today didn't have any... well, call it proof.
It's been a good time, Tom. Old Guns'n'Roses songs are playing.
The-Consulting Thomas Esser
(Sitz: Unterseen)
SHAB-Nr.: 215 - 04.11.2005
Grund: Handelsregister (Löschungen)
The-Consulting Thomas Esser, in Unterseen, CH-092.1.003.615-3, Neutrale Versicherungsberatung, Einzelfirma (SHAB Nr. 89 vom 10. 05. 1999, S. 3083). Die Firma ist infolge Todes des Inhabers erloschen.
Tagebuch Nr. 2119 vom 31.10.2005
(03090502/CH09210036153)
I had forgotten to mention it: The hotel where I was staying in Oslo happens to be a sponsor of an annual metal festival.
Which explains the "please be kind to the interior and to other guests"-signs in the elevator, as well as my fellow guests, whom I greatly appreciate. As I personally feel myself a lot closer to any youth subculture than to the global community of business travelers, it truly is a relief to share a hotel with a lot of fun people for once.
Not only, but especially when you have to catch an early flight and therefore leave the hotel at 05:30, only to find the corridor crowded with drinking and smoking people dressed in black all sitting on the floor. One of my best stays.
Which explains the "please be kind to the interior and to other guests"-signs in the elevator, as well as my fellow guests, whom I greatly appreciate. As I personally feel myself a lot closer to any youth subculture than to the global community of business travelers, it truly is a relief to share a hotel with a lot of fun people for once.
Not only, but especially when you have to catch an early flight and therefore leave the hotel at 05:30, only to find the corridor crowded with drinking and smoking people dressed in black all sitting on the floor. One of my best stays.
Rainy-snowy-wet-gloomy-cloudy Riga, the road to the airport, with a freaky taxi driver who already parked a long distance from my apartment and makes a face as if the only thing that he hates even more than me is himself. The road is quite empty, I'm on the way to Zurich, I'm early on my way to spend an hour or two at the airport working, it's cold and the cars look like they were afraid to catch a cold, in that shy and somewhat hiding way they reveal their front lights only in the last moment possible. It's cold, the taxi driver listens to a terrible countryside radio station that plays some poorly made Latvian 'schlager', the worst I've heard so far, a non-song performed by a non-singer and his toy shop keyboard.
And then, all of a sudden, this hopeless hideous radio station changes its program, and it's 'Creep' by Radiohead, and it just fits the gloomy Riga road to airport mood so well, that I think even the taxi driver hates me more than himself now, and isn't that good, too?
And then, all of a sudden, this hopeless hideous radio station changes its program, and it's 'Creep' by Radiohead, and it just fits the gloomy Riga road to airport mood so well, that I think even the taxi driver hates me more than himself now, and isn't that good, too?
That's how it looks near my favorite Chelsea Arms when it's been raining unusually much in Tashkent, so that the sewer can't keep up...
.JPG "rain")
We spent 50 USD today to get out of Kazakhstan. And while bribing is relatively common in this region of course, this case was particularly annoying.
The thing is that when you come to Kazakhstan through an international airport, as I had so far done in each and every of my trips there, you don't need to register your passport with the local OVIR (a sort of foreigner police, to keep it short). Or if you stay at a hotel, they would anyway do the registration for you - though no registration is needed if you enter the country, as said, through an airport.
Many times I had already noticed the signs near the passport control desks at Almaty airport that say essentially that "the obligatory passport registration for foreigners visiting Kazakhstan has been abolished in September 2006, except for foreigners arriving through the international airports". These signs had confused me on my first visit, since our office manager told me that I didn't need to register my passport when coming through an airport, and this has obviously proven to be true, as I never had any problems. Then I forgot about these signs; and anyway upon arrival, you fill in a little migration card and get it stamped, and this is said to be the registration.
Last week, we went to Kyrgyzstan for a few days, and came back crossing the land border near Bishkek. After staying in Kazakhstan for another six or seven days, we wanted to leave today, and were stopped at the border for not having our passports registered. Now if you tell me in a friendly way, everything is fine, but the guard in question was doing his best to be as cliche-Soviet as he could only be. Spoke angrily and rudely, and just kept pointing at the sign mentioned above. Which essentially says that we wouldn't need a registration, unless we had entered through an airport (and if entering through an airport, the migration card would substitute the registration anyway).
It turned out that the sign said a rather different thing in Russian, namely quite precisely the opposite. Now it's very typical for Kazakhstan that people don't speak or understand English, not even in the modern industries in the capital city; but facing a sign that gave contradicting information in the translation is quite a different thing. Anyway, obviously the guy tried his best to make us trouble, kept our passports there and had us wait for a while, and obviously was waiting for an offer. We couldn't do much else but to make him an offer, and eventually got away with a rather reasonable "fee" of 50 USD for two people. Anyhow, both the event and the guy, and especially the reason why we got into this situation, a poor translation of a rather important message, just piss me off.
Sunday March 18th, at 22:25 in the evening, passport control booth number 9.
The thing is that when you come to Kazakhstan through an international airport, as I had so far done in each and every of my trips there, you don't need to register your passport with the local OVIR (a sort of foreigner police, to keep it short). Or if you stay at a hotel, they would anyway do the registration for you - though no registration is needed if you enter the country, as said, through an airport.
Many times I had already noticed the signs near the passport control desks at Almaty airport that say essentially that "the obligatory passport registration for foreigners visiting Kazakhstan has been abolished in September 2006, except for foreigners arriving through the international airports". These signs had confused me on my first visit, since our office manager told me that I didn't need to register my passport when coming through an airport, and this has obviously proven to be true, as I never had any problems. Then I forgot about these signs; and anyway upon arrival, you fill in a little migration card and get it stamped, and this is said to be the registration.
Last week, we went to Kyrgyzstan for a few days, and came back crossing the land border near Bishkek. After staying in Kazakhstan for another six or seven days, we wanted to leave today, and were stopped at the border for not having our passports registered. Now if you tell me in a friendly way, everything is fine, but the guard in question was doing his best to be as cliche-Soviet as he could only be. Spoke angrily and rudely, and just kept pointing at the sign mentioned above. Which essentially says that we wouldn't need a registration, unless we had entered through an airport (and if entering through an airport, the migration card would substitute the registration anyway).
It turned out that the sign said a rather different thing in Russian, namely quite precisely the opposite. Now it's very typical for Kazakhstan that people don't speak or understand English, not even in the modern industries in the capital city; but facing a sign that gave contradicting information in the translation is quite a different thing. Anyway, obviously the guy tried his best to make us trouble, kept our passports there and had us wait for a while, and obviously was waiting for an offer. We couldn't do much else but to make him an offer, and eventually got away with a rather reasonable "fee" of 50 USD for two people. Anyhow, both the event and the guy, and especially the reason why we got into this situation, a poor translation of a rather important message, just piss me off.
Sunday March 18th, at 22:25 in the evening, passport control booth number 9.
We had a flight from Baku to Tashkent today, and I knew that maybe one of my clients might be on the same flight: A very nice Uzbek guy who is the brand manager for Nescafe in the region, and a guy with whom I really enjoy working because he's smart, constructive, fast, and he knows what he's talking about way better than I do.
Anyway, we couldn't see him anywhere near the check-in, so we checked in and went to have a coffee in that bar in the departure lounge. And when we waited at the gate after that, he suddenly stood next to us. And the best part: He had seat 8C, I had 8B. Thanks to Uzbekistan Airways for the courtesy of making such nice coincidences happen...
Anyway, we couldn't see him anywhere near the check-in, so we checked in and went to have a coffee in that bar in the departure lounge. And when we waited at the gate after that, he suddenly stood next to us. And the best part: He had seat 8C, I had 8B. Thanks to Uzbekistan Airways for the courtesy of making such nice coincidences happen...
We're sort of State guests in Georgia, my partly new acquaintances and me - essentially a bunch of ad guys, 2 from London, 2 from Moscow, 1 from Kyiv, and me from Wheretheheckever. But while they pick us up from the airplane (from the airplane, yes, not just from the airport), and they take us around the country in a military helicopter to show us everything, they didn't have a very lucky hand wtih the hotel. It's okay, but that's about all you can tell about it. Luckily I'm not picky. Still, there are a few funny things about Primavera Hotel in Tbilisi...:
We're in Georgia for a communiction project for the Georgian government (any Russian secret service agents might now want to write me an e-mail, feel free to do so, but no attachments please); and we're treated nicely as guests. So we were taken to a rather upscale restaurant, situated on a steep hill in the city centre. Seemingly, some government members were there as well, and had a birthday party on a big table a few metres away.
The short story is: Someone outside accidentally set the restaurant on fire, and nobody really cared much.
The longer story, a little more differentiated:
The short story is: Someone outside accidentally set the restaurant on fire, and nobody really cared much.
The longer story, a little more differentiated:
Had a flight from Kyiv to Tbilisi, Georgia, today. Firstly, the flight was operated with a Tupolev 134, which is not one of my most favorite planes. Get me right: It's a fine plane just like most planes, but it's also a sign. It's a sign that an airline doesn't have the money to buy new planes. And if an airline doesn't have money to buy new planes, I see this as a rather bad sign, as they might generally not have too much money to spend on the things necessary. Not accusing anyone of anything, just generally thinking around the subject.
So today, I was flying for the first time with a Georgian airline called "Tbilaviamsheni" according to my ticket (what a name!). The good old Tupolev stuff all happened: Weird noises before take-off. Steam coming from absolutely every hole in the plane while standing on the runway, not only from the ventilation system but also from the cabin covering and the gaps between plastic parts. Lights going on and off, some lamps not working, all that. None of it is anyhow dangerous (as far as I know...?), but pretty normal when flying Tupolevs.
Yet the Georgian lady sitting diagonally in front of me wasn't a very frequent flyer obviously, but very religious instead. First I didn't quite understand what she was doing all the time, as I was reading and only saw her from the side. Later during the flight, I understood and wanted to start counting how often she'd do it, but got tired of this. In any case: She was crossing herself six times while we were taxiing, about eight or nine times during take-off, and after that every time the plane moved either up, down, left, right, and also every time the plane vibrated.
Don't want to make fun of her, though. In a way, I perfectly understand her on board of this plane, in this region.
So today, I was flying for the first time with a Georgian airline called "Tbilaviamsheni" according to my ticket (what a name!). The good old Tupolev stuff all happened: Weird noises before take-off. Steam coming from absolutely every hole in the plane while standing on the runway, not only from the ventilation system but also from the cabin covering and the gaps between plastic parts. Lights going on and off, some lamps not working, all that. None of it is anyhow dangerous (as far as I know...?), but pretty normal when flying Tupolevs.
Yet the Georgian lady sitting diagonally in front of me wasn't a very frequent flyer obviously, but very religious instead. First I didn't quite understand what she was doing all the time, as I was reading and only saw her from the side. Later during the flight, I understood and wanted to start counting how often she'd do it, but got tired of this. In any case: She was crossing herself six times while we were taxiing, about eight or nine times during take-off, and after that every time the plane moved either up, down, left, right, and also every time the plane vibrated.
Don't want to make fun of her, though. In a way, I perfectly understand her on board of this plane, in this region.
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